Library › Latin: Law › Chartae
These six charters relate to Einhard, the courtier and biographer of Charlemagne. In the first, Einhard and his wife Imma, quoting the Lord’s command to give alms, grant for the salvation of their souls the cell of Michelstadt in the Odenwald on the river Mümling, which Emperor Louis the Pious had given them. The second describes the boundaries of the estate of Michelstadt. Others record transactions as lay abbot of Saint-Servais at Maastricht and Saint-Bavo and Blandinium at Ghent: an exchange of serfs with an abbess and grants of land in precarial tenure to individuals, as well as a manumission granting full freedom to a former serf, who may go where he wishes like other Roman citizens.
Einhard is best known for his Life of Charlemagne, but these documents show him as a landowner and holder of several abbeys under Louis the Pious. The Michelstadt donation, made to the abbey of Lorsch, reflects the religious concerns of a lay aristocrat and his wife, and the boundary description is an early example of its kind for the Odenwald. The charters are useful sources for Carolingian landholding, the status of dependants, and the use of abbeys as rewards for royal servants.
About this edition. The Latin text comes from Corpus Corporum, the Latin text repository of the University of Zurich (edition: Jacques-Paul Migne, Patrologia Latina, vol. 104, Parisiis 1851), reused with attribution for non-commercial purposes (CC BY-NC-SA). Every word has been analyzed with LatinCy, a neural language model for Latin — click or tap any word for its dictionary form, part of speech, and complete morphology, together with the full entry from Lewis & Short’s A Latin Dictionary.