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Alcuin of York – also called Ealhwine, Alhwin, or Alchoin – was a scholar, clergyman, poet, and teacher from York, Northumbria. He was born around 735 and became the student of Archbishop Ecgbert at York. At the invitation of Charlemagne, he became a leading scholar and teacher at the Carolingian court, where he remained a figure in the 780s and 790s. Before that, he was also a court chancellor in Aachen. "The most learned man anywhere to be found", according to Einhard's Life of Charlemagne, he is considered among the most important intellectual architects of the Carolingian Renaissance. Among his pupils were many of the dominant intellectuals of the Carolingian era.
Charlemagne was King of the Franks from 768, King of the Lombards from 774, and Emperor of what is now known as the Carolingian Empire from 800, holding these titles until his death in 814. He united most of Western and Central Europe and was the first recognised emperor to rule in the west after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, approximately three centuries earlier. Charlemagne's reign was marked by political and social changes that had lasting impact on Europe throughout the Middle Ages.
Jacopo Sannazaro was an Italian poet, humanist, member and head of the Accademia Pontaniana from Naples.
Pepin or Pippin was King of Italy from 781 until his death in 810. Born Carloman, he was the third son of Charlemagne. Carloman was renamed Pepin upon his baptism in 781, where he was also crowned as king of the Lombard Kingdom his father had conquered. Pepin ruled the kingdom from a young age under Charlemagne, but predeceased his father. His son Bernard was named king of Italy after him, and his descendants were the longest-surviving direct male line of the Carolingian dynasty.
Ermoldus Nigellus, or Niger—translated Ermold the Black, or Ermoald, was a poet who lived at the court of Pippin of Aquitaine, son of Frankish Emperor Louis I, and accompanied him on a campaign into Brittany in 824. Ermoldus was a cultured man with a knowledge of the Latin poets, and his poem, In honorem Hludovici imperatoris, has some historical value. It consists of four books and deals with the life and exploits of Louis from 781 to 826. He also wrote two poems in imitation of Ovid, which were addressed to Pippin.
Dungal of Bobbio was an Irish monk, teacher, astronomer, and poet. He was to live at Saint-Denis, Pavia, and Bobbio.
A planctus is a lament or dirge, a song or poem expressing grief or mourning. It became a popular literary form in the Middle Ages, when they were written in Latin and in the vernacular. The most common planctus is to mourn the death of a famous person, but a number of other varieties have been identified by Peter Dronke. The earliest known example, the Planctus de obitu Karoli, was composed around 814, on the death of Charlemagne.
The anonymous Saxon poet known as Poeta Saxo, who composed the medieval Latin Annales de gestis Caroli magni imperatoris libri quinque was probably a monk of Saint Gall or possibly Corvey. His Annales is one of the earliest poetic treatments of annalistic material and one of the earliest historical works to concentrate on Saxony. It is considered characteristic of the dénouement of the Carolingian Renaissance.
Peter of Pisa, also known as Petrus Grammaticus, was an Italian grammarian, deacon and poet in the Early Middle Ages. In 776, after Charlemagne's conquest of the Lombard Kingdom, Peter was summoned to the Carolingian court along with Paul the Deacon and Alcuin. Peter had originally taught at Pavia, in Italy. Peter of Pisa was asked to be Charlemagne’s primary Latin teacher. Peter’s poetry provides a personal look at the workings of the innermost sanctum surrounding Charlemagne. Peter’s grammar texts provide insight into the transformation Latin education underwent in this period.
The Versus de Verona, also Carmen Pipinianum or Rhythmus Pipinianus, was a medieval Latin poetic encomium on the city of Verona, composed during the Carolingian Renaissance, between 795 and 806. It was modeled on the Laudes Mediolanensis civitatis (c.738), which is preserved today only in a Veronese manuscript. The anonymous Versus have been ascribed to Pacificus, archdeacon at Verona from 803 until his death in 846, but this ascription is unlikely. The poem consists of thirty-three strophes and three verses.
The Song of the Watchmen of Modena, also known by its incipit O tu qui servas, is an anonymous late ninth-century Latin lyric poem encouraging the guards who stood watch on the walls of Modena. The poem contains later interpolations, but its musical notation has survived. Peter Godman called it "hauntingly beautiful".
Rythmusde Pippini regis Victoria Avarica, also known by its incipit as Omnes gentes qui fecisti, is a medieval Latin encomium celebrating the victory of King Pepin of Italy over the Avars in the summer of 796. It is associated with an experimental trend of the Carolingian Renaissance and, though its author, probably a cleric, is unknown, is associated with the Veronese "school" of poets, one of whom, at the same time, produced the Versus de Verona, praising the royal capital of Italy, where it and De Pippini were probably written.
The Planctus (de obitu) Karoli, also known by its incipit A solis ortu, is an anonymous medieval Latin planctus eulogising Charlemagne, written in accented verse by a monk of Bobbio shortly after his subject's death in 814. It is generally considered the earliest surviving planctus, though its melody is written in tenth-century neumes, one of the earliest surviving examples of this sort of musical notation. The poem has been translated into English by Peter Godman.
The Swan Sequence is an anonymous Carolingian-Aquitainian Latin poem sequence first written around 850. Its melody, Planctus cygni, was popular for some two centuries after its composition.
Moduin, Modoin, or Mautwin was a Frankish churchman and Latin poet of the Carolingian Renaissance. He was a close friend of Theodulf of Orléans, a contemporary and courtier of the emperors Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, and a member of the Palatine Academy. In signing his own poems he used the pen name Naso in reference to the cognomen of Ovid. From 815 until his death he was the Bishop of Autun.
Angelbert was a Frankish soldier and poet, possibly from Aquitaine. His "Verses on the Battle that was Fought at Fontenoy" are a first-hand description of the Battle of Fontenoy of 25 June 841, in which he participated with the army of Lothair I. They are an important piece of battle literature from the twilight of the Carolingian Renaissance. Historian Bernard Bachrach has examined them as a source for the emotional effects of battle during the ninth century.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Gerold was a franconian nobleman who served the Frankish King, Charlemagne, as Margrave of the Avar March and Prefect of Bavaria in what is now South-Eastern Germany. Gerold played a significant role in the integration of Bavaria into the Frankish Kingdom during Carolingian expansion in the late 8th, and early 9th centuries. Gerold both aided the continuity of Agilofing rule of Bavaria, as well as took steps to integrate Bavarians into the wider scope of the Frankish Kingdom. Gerold was related both to the Agilofing family, the ruling class of Bavaria, as well as the Carolingian family. The Agilofings had ruled Bavaria since Duke Garibald I in 548. Gerold was born into the Agilofings, and his sister Hildegard was married to Charlemagne in 771. From these familial connections, he was appointed Prefect of Bavaria following the deposition of Duke Tassilo III in 788. Gerold was heralded as a superb military commander, giving rise to his promotion to Prefect as a defender of the eastern border of the Frankish Kingdom. In 799, Gerold is said to have fallen in battle against the Avars, shortly after the same Avars killed his ally, Eric, Duke of Friuli, through treachery.
The Karolus magnus et Leo papa, sometimes called the Paderborn Epic or the Aachen Epic, is a Carolingian Latin epic poem of which only the third of four books is extant. It recounts the meeting of Charlemagne, king of the Franks, with Pope Leo III, in AD 799.
The Carmen de conversione Saxonum—or in English, Poem Concerning the Conversion of the Saxons—is a Latin poem celebrating the conversion of the Saxons to Christianity in 777. It was written by a poet of the Frankish Kingdom for or shortly after the assembly held by Charlemagne at Paderborn in Saxony in that year. This marked the end of the first phase of the Saxon Wars and was believed at the time, as shown by the Carmen and other contemporary sources, to mark the full acceptance by the Saxons of their defeat and conversion. The following year, however, the Saxons rebelled and the wars continued for several decades.
