SOURCE: Grant, A. J. Introduction to Early Lives of Charlemagne by Eginhard & The Monk of St Gall, translated and edited by A. J. Grant, pp. v-xxi. London: Chatto & Windus, 1926.

In the following excerpt, Grant remarks on the veracity and balance of Einhard's Life of Charlemagne, particularly as compared with the Life written by the Monk of St. Gall.

The Two “lives” Contrasted.

This volume contains two lives of Charles the Great, or Charlemagne (for both forms of the name will be used indifferently in this introduction); both written within a century after his death; both full of admiration for the hero of whom they treat; both written by ecclesiastics; but resembling one another in hardly any other particular. It is not merely the value which each in its different way possesses, but also the great contrast between them, that makes it seem useful to present them together in...