The Charlemagne Legend in Medieval Latin Texts

Essays on the various manifestations of Charlemagne and his legends.

This book explores the multiplicity of ways in which the Charlemagne legend was recorded in Latin texts of the central and later Middle Ages, moving beyond some of the earlier canonical "raw materials", such as Einhard's Vita Karoli Magni, to focus on productions of the eleventh to fifteenth centuries. A distinctive feature of the volume's coverage is the diversity of Latin textual environments and genres that the contributors examine in their work,including chronicles, liturgy and pseudo-histories, as well as apologetical treatises and works of hagiography and literature. Perhaps most importantly, the book examines the "many lives" that Charlemagne was believed to have lived by successive generations of medieval Latin writers, for whom he was not only a king and an emperor but also a saint, a crusader, and, indeed, a necrophiliac.

William J. Purkis is a Senior Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Birmingham; Matthew Gabriele is an Associate Professor of Medieval Studies in the Department of Religion & Culture at Virginia Tech.

Contributors: Jeffrey Doolittle, Matthew Gabriele, Miguel Dolan Gómez, Oren Margolis, William J. Purkis, Andrew J. Romig, Sebastián Salvadó, Jace Stuckey, James Williams.