EGINARDO (Einhardus, Einardus, Agenardus). – Biographer of Charlemagne, born to Eginardo and Engilfrit in the Maingau between 768 and 770, died at the abbey of Seligenstadt on 14 March 840. He studied successfully at Fulda, where he appears as the scribe of Abbot Baugulf in six documents from 788–91, and in the “scola palati” under the direction of Alcuin, from which he emerged as a consummate humanist. His academic name was Beseleel. He stayed at the court of Charlemagne (792–94 until 814), at first as «nutritius», then as «exertor operum regalium in Aquisgrani palatio» (Gesta abbatum Fontanellensium, 17: MGH, Scriptores, II, p. 293), charged with supervising the construction of the imperial monumental complex at Aachen. In 806, on behalf of the Emperor, he took to Rome the act of Thionville containing the division of the Empire. Louis the Pious gave E. and his wife Imana (legend in the twelfth century would later seize upon their youthful idyll) the localities of Micheletadt in the Odenwald and Upper and Lower Mühlheim on the Main (11 January 815); he also assigned E. the great abbeys of St Peter of Mont Blandin, St Bavo (Ghent), Fontenelle, St Servatius near Maastricht, and other benefices. E. thus became one of the most powerful lay abbots of the period. From about 817 he was secretary to Louis the Pious, tutor to Lothar, and took an active part in court life until 829, distinguishing himself «non solum pro scientia, verum etiam pro universa morum honestate» (Walafrid Strabo in the prologue added to the Vita Karoli). In 830 he obtained permission to retire to Upper Mühlheim, where he founded the abbey called Seligenstadt and erected a basilica, modelled on Santa Prassede, in honour of the martyrs Saints Marcellinus and Peter, whose bodies he received in 827 through the intervention of the notorious distributor of false relics, the deacon Deusdona. He governed the new abbey wisely as a lay abbot and made it an active centre of culture. In 836 he lost, to his profound grief, his wife (cf. the correspondence of Lupus of Ferrières, ed. E. Dümmler in MGH, Ep. aevi Kar., IV, Berlin 1925, pp. 9–17). E. was buried in the aforementioned basilica, and Hrabanus Maurus composed his epitaph (ed. E. Dümmler, in MGH, Poetae latini aevi Karolini, II, pp. 237–38). E. is regarded as the prototype of the lay intellectuals of the Carolingian age: devout, a man of letters, artist, historian, and theologian.
Works: the principal one is the Vita Karoli Magni (critical ed. O. Helder-Egger, in MGH, Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum [1911]; BHL, 1580, Supplementum, p. 66), written between 817 and 822, a source of primary importance for the history of Charlemagne, despite real defects that there is no need to exaggerate, such as faulty chronology, the glorification of the hero, etc.; in it the author displays genuine gifts as a historian and man of letters. In addition to a certain number of letters (ed. K. Hampe, in MGH, Epistolae aevi Karolini, III [1899], pp. 125–45), two short works by E. connected with the iconoclastic Claudius of Turin (v.) are preserved, namely the Translatio et miraculo ss. Marcellini et Petri (ed. G. Waitz, in MGH, Scriptores, XV, I [1887], pp. 338–64; BHL, 5233), written between 830 and 834 in a prologue to four books, in which the author demonstrates how justified the faithful’s trust in the relics of the holy martyrs is; and the Quæstio de adoranda croce (ed. K. Hampe, cited above, pp. 146–49), written for Lupus of Ferrières (April 836), a small gem of literature and precision; after a subtle distinction between oratio and adoratio, it concludes in favour of the adoration, that is, veneration, of the Cross. He is also credited with a rhythmic composition, the Poesia Christi Martyrum Marcellini et Petri (ed. E. Dümmler, in MGH, Poetae latini aevi Karolini, II, pp. 125–35; BHL, 5232). The annals, sometimes called the Annales Einhard, do not belong to him.