25. He was very eloquent and could express himself clearly on any subject. He spoke foreign languages besides his own tongue, and was so proficient in Latin that he used it as easily as his own language. Greek he could understand better than he could speak.... He was devoted to the study of the liberal arts and was a munificent patron of learned men. Grammar he learned from Peter, an aged deacon of Pisa; in the other studies his chief instructor was Alcuin, a Saxon from England, also a deacon, and the most learned man of his time. With him he studied rhetoric, dialectic, and especially astronomy.... He tried also to learn to write, keeping tablets under the pillow of his couch to practise on in his leisure hours. But he never succeeded very well, because he began too late in life.{50} 28. His last visit to Rome was made because the Romans had attacked and injured pope Leo, tearing out his eyes and tongue, and had thus forced the pope to call on the king for aid. And having come to Rome to restore the church which had greatly suffered during the strife, he remained there all winter. It was during this time that he received the title of emperor and Augustus, to which he was at first so averse, that he was wont to say that he would never have entered the church on that day, although it was a great feast day [Christmas], if he had foreseen the plan of the pope. But his great patience and magnanimity finally overcame the envy and hatred of the Roman emperors [of the east], who were indignant at his receiving the title. This he did by sending them frequent embassies and addressing them in his letters as brothers.{51} 29. After he became emperor he undertook a revision of the laws of his empire, which were very defective, for the Franks had two laws [Salic and Ripuarian] differing in many points from one another. But he was never able to do more than to complete the various laws with a few additional sections and cause all the unwritten laws to be put into writing. He also wrote down for preservation the ancient German songs, in which the wars and adventures of old heroes are celebrated. He began also to make a grammar of his native tongue.... 30. ... While he was spending the winter in Aachen, he was taken with a severe fever, which the Greeks call pleurisy, and died there on Tuesday, the fifth of the Kalends of February [January 28], in the seventy-second year of his age and the forty-seventh of his reign.