SOURCE: Thorpe, Lewis. Introduction to Two Lives of Charlemagne, by Einhard and Notker the Stammerer, translated and edited by Lewis Thorpe, pp. 1-45. Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1969.

In the following excerpt, Thorpe examines the biographies of Charlemagne and Einhard and comments on the latter's reticence to write anything negative about his subject.

1. Charlemagne, King and Emperor

The Sources of Our Knowledge

Charles the Great, King of the Franks and later ruler of the Carolingian Empire, may at first sight seem comparable with that other famous medieval figure, Arthur of Britain, for in both cases the fictional hero into which each later developed tends to obscure the original historical personage. Of the real Arthur we know very little, although most historians and students of literature accept that he was a Romano-British guerrilla leader who lived in the district called Strathclyde in the first half of the sixth century. The...