'Urbs Aquensis, urbs regalis,
Sedes regni principalis,
Prima regum curia.'
This city is commonly called Aken in English books of the seventeenth century, and probably that ought to be taken as its proper English name. That name has, however, fallen so entirely into disuse that I do not venture to use it; and as the employment of the French name Aix-la-Chapelle seems inevitably to produce the belief that the place is and was, even in Charles's time, a French town, there is nothing for it but to fall back upon the comparatively unfamiliar German name.
[80] Engilenheim, or Ingelheim, lies near the left shore of the Rhine between Mentz and Bingen.
[81] Eginhard, Vita Karoli, cap. 29.
[82] Eginhard, Vita Karoli, cap. 17.
[83] It is not a little curious that of the three whom the modern French have taken to be their national heroes all should have been foreigners, and two foreign conquerors.
[84] This basilica was built upon the model of the church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, and as it was the first church of any size that had been erected in those regions for centuries past, it excited extraordinary interest among the Franks and Gauls. In many of its features it greatly resembles the beautiful church of San Vitale, at Ravenna (also modelled upon that of the Holy Sepulchre) which was begun by Theodoric, and completed under Justinian. Probably San Vitale was used as a pattern by Charles's architects: we know that he caused marble columns to be brought from Ravenna to deck the church at Aachen. Over the tomb of Charles, below the central dome (to which the Gothic choir we now see was added some centuries later), there hangs a huge chandelier, the gift of Frederick Barbarossa.
[85] 'Romuleum Francis præstitit imperium.'—Elegy of Ermoldus Nigellus, in Pertz; M. G. H., t. i. So too Florus the Deacon,—