King and Emperor: A New Life of Charlemagne. By Janet L. Nelson (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2019) 668 pp. $34.95

Abstract

Quoting Lewis Carroll, Nelson opens her biography of Charlemagne with the solemn advice of the King of Hearts, “Begin at the beginning…, and go on until you come to the end: then stop” (7). This is no literary affectation: Over the course of the next several hundred pages, Nelson tells the story of the Frankish king and Emperor Charles the Great in precisely this fashion. It is a measure of both the relative profusion of the sources and Nelson’s profound command of them that a biography of a single early medieval figure can indeed proceed for several hundred pages, beginning with Charles’ early life, continuing with his accession to sole rule of the Franks, his wars and conquests, his attempts to reform Frankish letters and manners, his court and family life, and finally his death and burial. Prominent throughout the book are contemporary and near-contemporary sources, often given in lengthy translated extracts and always accompanied by learned critique. This material is presented chronologically rather than thematically. In her introduction, Nelson justifies such a strictly sequential approach as a ploy to avoid teleology, and in this respect, she certainly succeeds, though the book’s organization does give it something of the feel of a textbook (see below).Given the book’s tight focus on the sources, however, the first order of business is to discuss how it handles them. The book uses a lot of sources, and Nelson’s commentary on them is both insightful and clearly written. Her interventions into extant historiographical debates have a light touch, universally thoughtful but calculated not to drown a casual reader in technicalities. The material that Nelson consults is largely textual. She brings in material evidence at points, and in a number of passages—notably the discussion of the archaeology of Aachen (356–359)—nonwritten sources receive the same kind of detailed analysis accorded to (for instance) letters or poetry. Within the written source material, Nelson switches with equal facility between many different genres. For example, in Chapter 10, she analyzes annals, abbatial gesta, miracle stories, letters, conciliar records, sacramentaries, legal collections, and theological tracts. Notwithstanding this variety of written sources, the traditional material of the historian acts as undisputed king for most of the book, with archaeology, numismatics, and so on serving as counselors rather than as co-rulers.The combination of tight chronological focus and meticulously source-based analysis, moreover, lends the book a certain bittiness, or fragmentation. Yet the “one thing at a time” approach has its downsides as well as its advantages. She certainly conveys a visceral impression of how many different things Charlemagne juggled at one time in a way that would have been lost in a more thematic book. Yet any sense of the overall trajectory of Charlemagne’s career can also get lost. Were this book a novel, the plot would be somewhat difficult to follow. Non-specialists may find themselves losing the wood for the trees, and specialists may find Nelson’s wider points to be a little opaque.Nonetheless, the sheer number of sources quoted at length—many untranslated elsewhere and a not insignificant number likely to be unfamiliar—as well as the learned commentary on both the translated and the untranslated sources means that the work lends itself perfectly for use as an undergraduate textbook. Specialists or non-specialists looking for an erudite, well-written, if narrowly focused, account of Charlemagne’s life will find much to like in this book; someone organizing an undergraduate course about the king may find this book to be the perfect complement.