Paul Edward Dutton is a Professor of History and Humanities at Simon Fraser University and the President of
the Canadian Society of Medievalists for 1997-98. He has authored a number of articles and studies on the early
medieval period as well as serving as series editor for Broadview's Readings in Medieval Civilizations and Cultures.
Review
"This is the first really complete Einhard. The intriguing personality of the biographer of Charlemagne,
the small man of far-ranging activities, emerges in all its complexity - as statesman and manager, as relic-thief
and loving husband, as a peace-maker struggling for his own faith. Paul Dutton assembles all his works and letters
and all contemporary references in a new and sensitive translation. The circumspect introduction is attentive also
to all the issues of this crucial time of the Carolingian Empire. . . . This is a necessary book for beginners
and a helpful one for scholars."
--Johannes Fried, University of Frankfurt
Broadview Web Site, February 2000
Summary
Among the readings included are several existing letters by Emma (Einhard's wife), and The History
of His Relics. This work transports us into an almost unknown world as Einhard, the cool rationalist, arranges
for a relic salesman, a veritable bone seller, to acquire saints' relics from Italy for installation into his new
church. The reader is taken on an intrigue-filled trip to Rome, where Einhard's men creep into churches at night
to steal bones and then spirit them away to Einhard in the north. The relics are received in town after
town as if they were the living saints come to cure the infirm. Einhard's descriptions of the sick, the
lame, and the blind of northern Europe vividly expose us to a side of medieval life too rarely encountered in other
medieval sources.
