“He who ordains the fate of kingdoms in the march of the centuries, the all-powerful Disposer of events, having destroyed one extraordinary image, that of the Romans, which had, it was true, feet of iron, or even feet of clay, then raised up, among the Franks, the golden head of a second image, equally remarkable, in the person of the illustrious Charlemagne. Notker the Stammerer, the monk of St. Gall, wrote these words in AD 844 to describe the reign of th