7 - HISTORY, POLITICS AND THE END OF THE EMPIRE IN NOTKER'S DEEDS OF CHARLEMAGNE

Summary

The events of the mid to late 880s were, as we have seen, crucial for understanding the nature of the crisis of Charles the Fat's reign in particular and of Carolingian political hegemony more generally. In order to find some further reflection of how contemporaries, and in particular members of the imperial court, understood these events, we have at our disposal a text which stands among the major historical works of the whole period, namely the Deeds of Charlemagne (Gesta Karoli – the title is not contemporary) by Notker the Stammerer, a monk of St-Gall. Earlier generations of historians looked unfavourably upon Notker's anecdotal, humorous, moralising and, by positivist standards, historically inaccurate approach, dismissing it as a laughably gauche imitation of the more stately Carolingian biographies penned by Einhard, Thegan and the Astronomer. Louis Halphen summed up this evaluation when he colourfully pronounced that Notker's Deeds was as useful a source for the reign of Charlemagne as was Dumas's The Three Musketeers for that of Louis XIII. Recent commentators have been more sympathetic, coming at the Deeds from different angles. In particular, David Ganz has shown that the very mangling of historical sources which Halphen saw as the most reprehensible aspect of the Deeds is in fact its central structural element.