Category: Uncategorised
On Christmas Day 800, Charlemagne was crowned emperor in Rome. What decisions and discussions led to that event? The account by Charlemagne’s biographer, Einhard, is well-known. But here’s a source that’s often neglected, though it was written much closer to events than Einhard’s Vita Karoli. The ‘Cologne Notice’ is not strictly speaking a historical work, […]
What did Carolingian kings know about the Roman army? The Latin treatise translated below is part of the answer to that question. It is a précis of Vegetius’s De re militari (c. 400), and it was probably written for the young king Lothar II by Archbishop Hraban Maurus in 855. The purpose of the treatise, and […]
For a discussion of this ninth-century letter from a Frankish priest to an abbot, see https://academic.oup.com/hwj/article/81/1/1/2385576 (open access). Translation* The Letter of Hubert the Priest to Haimin. Doing my best to satisfy your instructions, my dearest instructor, I will thoroughly reveal the depths of my own ignorance, and will describe the vision manifestly shown […]