Something of the originality which the pressing political exigency imparted to these tracts of Agobard might be transmitted to such history as was occupied with contemporary events. As long as the historian was a mere excerpting chronicler extracting his dry summaries from the writings of former men, his work would not rouse him to independence of conception or presentation. That would have come with criticism upon the old authorities. But criticism had scarcely begun to murmur among the Carolingians, too absorbed with the task of grasping their inherited material to weigh it, and too overawed by the authority of the past to question the truth of its transmitted statements. Excerpts, however, could not be made to tell the stirring events of the period in which the Carolingian historian lived. He would have to set forth his own perception and understanding of them, and in manner and language which to a less or greater extent were his own: to a less extent with those feebly beginning Annals, or Year-books, which set down the occurrences of cloister life or the larger happenings of which the report penetrated from the outer world;[1] to a greater extent, however, with a more veritable history of some topic of living and coherent interest. In the latter case the writer must present his conception of events, and therewith something of himself.[2]
An example of this necessitated originality in the writing of contemporary history is the work of Count Nithard. He was the son of Charlemagne's daughter Bertha and of Angilbert, the emperor's counsellor and lifelong friend. His parents were not man and wife, because Charles would not let his daughters marry, from reasons of policy; but the relationship between them was open, and apparently
- ↑ See Wattenbach. Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen, i. 130-142 (5th ed.). Writings known as Annales drew their origin from the notes made by monks upon the margin of their calendars. These notes were put together the following year, and subsequently might be revised, perhaps by some person of larger view and literary skill. Thus the Annals found in the cloister of Lorsch are supposed to have been rewritten in part by Einhart.
- ↑ There were two great earlier examples of such histories: one was the Historia Francorum of Gregory of Tours, the author of which was of distinguished Roman descent, born in 540 and dying in 594; the other was Bede's Church History of the English People, which was completed shortly before its author's death in 735. In individuality and picturesqueness of narrative, these two works surpass all the historical writings of the Carolingian time.
