In this attractively-produced, sensibly-priced and thoroughly user-friendly volume Paul Dutton has made a valuable collection of translated sources available to a wide audience. In doing so, he follows in the footsteps of his earlier collection, Carolingian Civilization . Indeed, the idea for the current volume came whilst collecting, correcting and adapting the earlier translations of Einhard's Life of Charlemagne , his Translation of Saints Marcellinus and Peter , and his Letters , collected in the earlier volume. Dutton now offers wholesale retranslations of these three works, plus translations of a wide range of other material associated with Charlemagne's biographer. Like its predecessor, this volume will be hugely welcome to all teachers of Carolingian history: its tight focus makes it particularly valuable for undergraduate teaching, giving students an individual to follow and feel, and thus encouraging them to explore the Carolingian world rather than remain aloof in the discourse of the secondary literature.
Dutton's thirty-page introduction is the best available survey of Einhard's career and work, summarising earlier scholarship concisely and fairly, which on some points of controversy is no easy task. Nor is Dutton afraid of advancing new ideas: his comments on Einhard's authorial self-effacement and its possible relationship to his famed political adroitness take the debate forward. In fact, it comes remarkably close to fulfilling the dual task of being an excellent introduction for beginners reading the Life of Charlemagne for the first time, whilst also providing a sound point of entry for those wishing to enter the debate about Einhard's literary and political career at an altogether more advanced level. At points, however, there is a slight danger of falling between two stools. Dutton writes with an admirable lucidity, but his fondness for allusion and the level of knowledge he assumes may make this a little difficult for some undergraduates to follow in full. The bibliography is, in this connection, the least successful part of the book: it seems to try, simultaneously, to detail the most recent contributions, give an introductory English-language reading list, and signal the classic (mostly German) contributions to the debate. A really welcome addition to this book would be a good, historiographically orientated bibliographical essay, or a more complex reading list with comments on individual works.
In placing the Life of Charlemagne , the Translation and the Letters so closely and accessibly together Dutton has done us all a great service. He translates on the standard editions available in the MGH, which indeed established clear texts. The one emendation is the restoration of the letters to their manuscript order, which is both sensible, encouraging us to view the collection as an entity, and -- judging by the experience of this reviewer -- not too confusing when using the translation side-by-side with Hampe's MGH text. Dutton follows previous translators of the Life of Charlemagne by using Walahfrid Strabo's reworking of Einhard's masterpiece, complete with chapter headings. Walahfrid was working after Einhard's death, and between one and three decades after the initial circulation of the earliest text: this is effectively Dutton's translation of Walahfrid's rendering of Einhard, slightly complicated by the fact that Dutton has dissociated Walahfrid's preface from the Life and printed it in a separate section of his book. In part, this illustrates the problems of modern editorial techniques which seek to isolate one agreed text, and underlines the need to consider textual variation. But there is a more fundamental point, which Dutton himself acknowledges when he stresses that it is the later prefaces which unmask Einhard as author: the text history of the Life is of paramount important in understanding its meaning(s) and reception. It is a shame that Dutton does not take the opportunity of indicating Walahfrid's contribution, and of highlighting earlier revisions, to allow readers to ponder how and why the text was reshaped. Given that some of these reworkings were substantive, for example concerning Charlemagne's various liaisons, they ought to help us identify some particular points of controversy within the Life . Future research will need to address these issues -- the text history is the only likely source of new argument in the debate about the Life 's context and reception -- and Dutton could have set the ball rolling by highlighting their significance in his translation.
This book is subtitled 'the complete Einhard', and Dutton attempts to complement Einhard's three surviving literary monuments with other material relating to him, including contemporary reflections (mainly in court poetry), charters, art and architecture, although oddly not capitularies. This goal is laudable, and there is much usefully presented here. But these sections as a whole are less successful than the rest of the book. Partly there is an almost insurmountable problem, given that constraints of time and space force Dutton to translate the snippets concerning Einhard alone, but the very act of taking such a cutting from a longer work renders the translations contextless and difficult to use effectively. This problem is most marked in the translations of charters included here. The criterion for inclusion seems to have been the mention of Einhard as an actor, although surprisingly Dutton does not include charters which Einhard subscribes as a witness, which are arguably -- in fact, in at least two cases certainly -- far more important in understanding his social and political world than some of the monastic property dealings conducted in his name which are included. The omission of everything bar the place and date of enactment and scribal signing-off in those charters in which a youthful Einhard is named as scribe is bizarre: Einhard was here? The art and architecture section usefully reproduces seventeenth-century drawings of a small triumphal arch made by Einhard, recognised by scholars as being of exceptional interest: although not the easiest material to use, Dutton's comments here are helpful. But the bare plans of the churches at Steinbach and Seligenstadt, without any explanation, are of more limited value. As the Steinbach church stands in a magnificently atmospheric and little altered form, it is a shame that more could not have been included. Constraints of price may have been an issue here, but there is lavish provision of relevant but non-Einhardian illustration, whilst opportunity of evoking directly the world of the Translation and Letters is lost. Another disappointing omission are later ninth-century sources which evoke Einhard, such as the Visio Karoli Magni and the Annals of Fulda . Ignored almost universally, presumably because accounts of dreams and visions found little favour in nineteenth-century Quellenkritik, I had expected Dutton, the doyen of Carolingian dreams and visions, to make more of them.
So far as this reviewer, far more an historian than a Latinist, is competent to judge the translations, they are clear, elegant and accurate. They can never, of course, be a substitute for the Latin text, but Dutton does attempt to get the feeling of the original, and these make for an excellent guide and primer. Einhard's tightness as a writer, the careful choice of vocabulary and the economy of expression which can be seen, in different ways, in both the Life and the Letters , makes him difficult to translate without loosing shades of meaning. To some extent, a full appreciation can only really come in the Latin, but Dutton may have missed a trick by not leaving some key words in the Latin, perhaps in parenthesis. Alternatively, light footnoting could have been used to identify central notions such as the relationship between 'nomen' and 'potestas' which runs through the Life . Certainly a crucial Einhardian concept like 'conversatio', with its monastic origins and its relation to the theme of conversion, is probably untranslatable, and needs highlighting if it is to be appreciated: Dutton translates 'character' at p.15, but perhaps 'vocation' would work better? In general, Dutton has -- quite legitimately -- taken an opposite path to the recent Manchester University Press translations of the Annals of St-Bertin and Fulda , which have a very full apparatus detailing matters of terminology and translation, outlining problems of interpretation, supplying cross-references and context, almost constituting a research work in themselves. Where, as a teacher, I wished for some more editorial guidance was in the Life , which reads very differently once its literary complexity is appreciated. Whilst it might be difficult, it might have been possible to have devised a means of indicating the allusions, borrowings and conventions which are such a central part of the Life 's rhetorical strategy, even if only by supplying the key passages from Sulpicius and Suetonius.
Translating Latin terminology into modern English becomes a real problem in the Letters . When it comes to the vocabulary of social relations Dutton studiedly attempts simply to translate without interpreting: hence 'servant' for 'servus'. Whilst Dutton sticks close to the vocabulary of the sources, with 'vassal' only used for 'vassus' and distinguished from 'faithful man' for 'fidelis', the issues at stake are such an historiographical minefield that more transparency might have been desirable. If the audience can cope with 'missus dominicus', surely they could manage a handful of other untranslated terms, thus stripped of their historiographical baggage? At the very least, it would have been worth explaining the practice in handling these terms and alerting readers to their issues of interpretation. It is fair to say Dutton is more a cultural than a social historian, and the discussion of the letters and of Einhard's social context in the introduction is its weakest part. Whilst he realises and stresses the value of the Letters and the Translation as a window onto Carolingian society, his pointers here are less useful than usual. It is possible to reconstruct a good deal about patterns of landholding, lordship and estate organisation from the letters, although this potential is yet to be tapped in published work: questions like 'was Einhard a good and fair administrator of the properties he held?' (p.xxxviii) are not quite the right way in. Similarly -- as Dutton himself demonstrates -- there is rather more in the Translation and the Letters as sources for religious belief and practice than their characterisation as 'fairly crude . . . like some traveling medicine show' (p.xxix) suggest. But Dutton's neat and useful maps show a good awareness of the spatial organisation of Einhard's world.
All those engaged in research or teaching on the Carolingian world owe Paul Dutton a debt of gratitude for producing this book. The translations of the three key texts are the best currently available: the way forward would be to print them with a facing Latin text. As this review itself indicates, Dutton's book ought to constitute an important stimulus to research in Einhard's political and literary career, and the society within which he operated. Even a specialist who has lived with Einhard for most of his adult life and knew full well the value and volume of source-material associated with him paused for thought with the realisation that 'the complete Einhard' constituted a book of this size. By pulling the material on Einhard together thus, in an accessible form with an excellent introduction, Dutton has done us a great service. Anyone who claims that the Carolingian programme was essentially courtly window-dressing, and that the sources for the study of Carolingian Europe are inadequate, ought to forced to read this book and blush!