[38]“The Monk of St Gall” says that the cause of this repudiation was the constant illness of his wife, and her incapacity to bear him children.
[39]This Hildigard was only thirteen years of age at the time of her marriage with Charles. Besides the children mentioned by Eginhard she bore to Charles three others—Lothaire, Adelais, and Hildigard.
[40]Fastrada is regarded by Eginhard elsewhere as the evil influence on Charles’s life, urging him against the natural bent of his character to acts of cruelty and violence. Dr Hodgkin, however, points out that the most cruel act of his reign—the massacre of 4500 Saxons—took place before his marriage with Fastrada.
[41]The betrothal of Hruotrud to the Eastern Emperor, and the rupture of the marriage contract, is a somewhat obscure thread in the diplomacy of the reign of Charles. Note that the betrothal took place in 781, during the residence of Charles at Rome, but nineteen years before he had assumed the imperial title. Religious difference and political jealousies probably both played their part in the rupture. [pg 167] Both Frankish and Greek chroniclers are anxious to maintain that the repudiation came from their side.
[42]If scandal is to be believed, the Court of Charles, in spite of his devotion to the Church and his anxiety to maintain a high standard of morals, was the scene of much licence and disorder.
[43]This conspiracy of Pippin took place in the years 785 and 786.
[44]We have here the natural and simple beginnings of the ceremony that afterwards reached such great proportions in the lever and coucher of the French kings.
[45]This reference to Greek at the Court of Charlemagne is interesting in view of the exaggerated views sometimes held on the disappearance of Greek in the Middle Ages.
[46]This is Alcuin of York, one of the greatest of Englishmen; undoubtedly, as Eginhard says, the most learned man of his time. His letters form a valuable source of information for the inner life of Charlemagne and his Court.
[47]This passage has been closely scrutinised and commented on. Do Eginhard’s words imply that Charlemagne could not write at all? This seems a very improbable interpretation of them. Parum successit would rather mean that “he made but little headway.” It may well be that the King was able to write roughly and in an ordinary way but failed to acquire the elegant and delicate calligraphy that was aimed at by the scribes of the time.