Annales laureshamenses

Those for the years from 785 onward form an independent source and provide especially important coverage of the imperial coronation of Charlemagne in 800.

[2] The "Sankt-Paul codex", as it is now called, which is the sole surviving quire of an otherwise lost manuscript, was still in the library of Sankt-Blasien in 1790, when it was edited by Aemilianus Ussermann,[3] bishop of Bamberg, in his collection of documents illustrative of "Alemannian" German history, Germaniae sacrae prodomus seu collectio monumentorum res Alemannicas illustrantium.

In 1809, as a result of the Napoleonic Wars, the monks of Sankt-Blasien moved, with their library, to the Abbey of Sankt-Paul im Lavanttal.

In 1820 G. H. Pertz sought the manuscript for the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, but it could not be found and so the MGH version was based on Ussermann's printed edition of 1790.

[5] Katz described the codex (today lost again), dated it to the ninth century and suggested it originated at the Abbey of Reichenau because of a marginal notice of the burial of Charlemagne's brother-in-law Gerold of Anglachgau there.

[2] The nature of the Sankt-Paul codex supports the contention that unfinished batches of annals were circulated in libelli (booklets) comprising single quires.

[3] The Belgian historian François-Louis Ganshof believed that the Chronicle of Moissac represented a fuller version of the Lorsch annals that had been extended down to 818.

[8] The so-called "Northern Annals" that cover the years 732 to 802, and which comprise a section of the Historia regum of Simeon of Durham, contain a reference to the golden lettering of the poetic epitaph on the marble memorial Charlemagne provided to commemorate Pope Hadrian I.

[2] Heinrich Fichtenau argued that the author of the Lorsch annals was Richbod, a pupil of Alcuin of York and a member of Charlemagne's court circle until about 784.

Knowledge of the Synod of Frankfurt, which Richbod attended in 794 and which condemned adoptionism in the same terms as a treatise of Alcuin's, is displayed in the annals under that year.

[2] There is no evidence, however, that the annals that best correspond to Richbod's abbacy in fact originate from Lorsch, and so they can provide little support for Fichtenau's attribution.

[3] Significantly, the Lorsch annals are the only primary source to contradict the statement of Einhard that Charlemagne was ignorant of Pope Leo III's intention to crown him Emperor on 25 December 800.