invented or rewritten in response to this wish bulk very large in the Acta Sanctorum. Not unimportant are the versified Passions and Lives which perhaps begin with Prudentius and Paulinus of Nola and are carried on by Fortunatus (St Martin), Bede (St Cuthbert), Heiric (St Germanus), Notker (St Gall) and a whole host of anonymi. All these, fiction or fact, have their interest, but are of course much inferior to the rare contemporary biographies such as those of St Boniface by Willibrord and of St Anschar by Rimbert.
The mention of these leads naturally to the single biographies of uncanonised persons. Charlemagne, we have seen, is the subject of the two best. Those of Louis the Pious by the "Astronomus" and by Thegan have nothing of the charm and skill of Einhard and Notker. Nearest to them is a British writing, the first to be mentioned after a long interval of silence, Asser's life of Alfred.
Of others, that of Eigil by Candidus, a Fulda production of about 840, and that of John of Gorze by Abbot John of Metz have distinct interest. Agnellus's collections on the Archbishops of Ravenna, full of archaeological lore (839), and some of the lives of Popes in the Liber Pontificalis, perhaps due to the pen of Anastasius the Librarian, supply us with many facts we are glad to have, but do not pretend to be artistic biographies.
History writing takes three other principal forms. There is the world-chronicle, of which Freculphus of Lisieux and Regino of Prüm (near Trèves) and, later, Marianus Scotus, give examples; there are the annals, commonly connected with a religious establishment, such as those of Lorsch; and there is the episodic, telling of some particular campaign or the rise of some great church. To this last class belongs Nithardus († 844), natural son of Angilbert by Charlemagne's daughter Bertha, and successor (ultimately) to his father as lay-abbot of St Riquier. He writes four short books in clear and simple prose, on Louis the Pious and the quarrels of Lothar, Charles the Bald, and Louis the German – a strictly contemporary record. Incidentally he has preserved, by transcribing the terms of the Oath of Strasbourg, the oldest piece of French and one of the oldest pieces of German which we have. The church of Rheims had two historians. Flodoard (also author of some immense poems) begins in the mists of antiquity and carries the story down to about 966. Richer, whose book is extant (at Bamberg) in the author's autograph, dedicates his history to Gerbert; he devotes small space to early history and much to his own time: his narrative ends in 995. Widukind of Corvey is another name that cannot be passed over: his Gesta Saxonum in four books run to the year 973, but by the 16th chapter of the first book he has reached 880, so that his also must rank as a history of his own time. Of all these chroniclers and observers Liudprand of Cremona is by far the smartest. His spiteful pictures of the Byzantine court are not easily to be paralleled: he has a real turn
