V 



THE VALUE OF WITNESS TO THE 

 MIRACULOUS 



[1889] 



CHARLES, or, more properly, Karl, King of the 

 Franks, consecrated Roman Emperor in St. 

 Peter's on Christmas Day, A.D. 800, and known 

 to posterity as the Great (chiefly by his agglutina- 

 tive Gallicised denomination of Charlemagne), 

 was a man great in all ways, physically and 

 mentally. Within a couple of centuries after his 

 death Charlemagne became the centre of innum- 

 erable legends ; and the myth-making process 

 does not seem to have been sensibly interfered 

 with by the existence of sober and truthful 

 histories of the Emperor and of the times which 

 immediately preceded and followed his reign, by a 

 contemporary writer who occupied a high and 

 confidential position in his court, and in that of 

 his successor. This was one Eginhard, or Einhard, 



