 Henry Mayr-Harting suggests that the court held at Aachen in 802 is the most plausible context of composition.Janet Nelson says that "one of [Charlemagne's counsellors] surely wrote this poem," and it may have been written by his own biographer, Einhard.Francesco Stella has argued for the authorship of Modoin, whose debt to Virgil in his description of Aachen elsewhere equals that of the Paderborn poet.