Review: The Life of Charlemagne

The Life of Charlemagne by Einhard
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read an excerpt in The Medieval Reader that so interested me that I sought the full text. Of the ones I found, this was easy to read (well-translated for modern readers) and has over fifty elucidating footnotes. As a math teacher, I often get the "When I am going to use this?" question. My answer is generally around the "When you use your brain" type of response as I believe studying math makes for better thinking. In this recreational reading by an author also called Einhard I came across this observation of the famous Emperor of the Franks:

He was ready and fluent in speaking, and able to express himself with great clearness. He did not confine himself to his native tongue, but took pains to learn foreign languages, acquiring such knowledge of Latin that he could make an address in that language as well as in his own. Greek he could better understand than speak. Indeed, he was so polished in speech that he might have passed for a learned man.

He was an ardent admirer of the liberal arts, and greatly revered their professors, whom he promoted to high honors. In order to learn grammar, he attended the lectures of the aged Peter of Pisa, a deacon; and for other branches he chose as his preceptor Albinus, otherwise called Alcuin, also a deacon, - a Saxon by race, from Britain, the most learned man of the day, with whom the king spent much time in leaving rhetoric and logic, and more especially astronomy. He learned the art of determining the dates upon which the movable festivals of the Church fall, and with deep thought and skill most carefully calculated the courses of the planets. Charles also tried to learn to write, and used to keep his tablets and writing book under the pillow of his couch, that when he had leisure he might practice his hand in forming letters; but he made little progress in this task, too long deferred and begun too late in life.

I think it is interesting that he learned to calculate motions of the planets without ever becoming truly literate we are told. (Footnotes here also doubt complete illiteracy.) Why would he even invest so much time as "with deep thought and skill most carefully calculated the courses of the planets"? I think he felt it improved his mind, if only to impress visitors to court with this acumen. (How else would we know? Did he show of his calculated orbits and periods with pride?)

It is interesting to see the apotheosis of this expansionist and politically astute rule who became a "Holy Roman Emperor" and nearly deified in retrospect even by Otto III who strongly aspired to be the successor of Charlemagne. In 1000, he visited Charlemagne's tomb in Aachen, removing relics from it and basically worshipping the corpse, as detailed in the final footnote here.

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