Audiobook · read by volunteers
Life of Charlemagne
Notker the Stammerer (840–912)
Read by R. S. Steinberg, Nicholas James Bridgewater · 9 chapters · 2 h 36
About the book
Charlemagne was the great ruler who united much of Western Europe and was crowned emperor in the year 800, and many stories were told about him after his death. This book collects some of them. They were written down by a monk of the abbey of Saint Gall, who spoke of the emperor’s court, of his habits, of the bishops and nobles who surrounded him, and of the clever answers and surprising pranks that made him a legend. They are not a conventional history, and scholars have often found them unreliable. But they are a lively mixture of anecdote, piety and gossip, and they show how the memory of a great king was kept alive. The tone is cheerful, shrewd and often funny. Short, curious and entertaining, it makes a good introduction to the Middle Ages.
Introduction
Notker the Stammerer, also known as Notker Balbulus, lived from about 840 to 912. He was a monk of the Swiss abbey of Saint Gall, one of the great centres of learning in the early Middle Ages. He was known as a composer of sequences, a form of liturgical song, and as a poet and teacher, and he also wrote this account of the life of Charlemagne.
The work consists of anecdotes about Charlemagne and his family. It was written for Charles the Fat, the emperor’s great-grandson, who visited Saint Gall in 883. Notker did not set out to write a systematic biography; he gathered stories from older members of the monastery, who had heard them from men that had been at Charlemagne’s court. Historians have often scorned the book, because it mixes fact and fancy, and one critic remarked that the monk took pleasure in amusing anecdotes. Yet that is exactly why it is entertaining, and why it reveals how Charlemagne was remembered a generation or two after his death.
The English translation heard here is by Arthur James Grant and dates from 1922. The recording has nine sections and lasts a little over two and a half hours, with readings by two LibriVox volunteers. It is a short and curious book that will interest anyone who likes medieval history told in a lively voice.
The anecdotes vary from the solemn to the comic, and they offer an unusual view of Charlemagne, not as a remote figure but as a ruler who liked to test his courtiers and bishops. They are brief enough to be enjoyed in small doses, and they invite the listener to consider how legends of great men are made.
Public domain
Notker the Stammerer died in 912: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text