Information on Guido's life is scarce; the music historian Charles Burney asserted that the paucity of records was because Guido was a monk. Burney furthered that, in the words of musicologist Samuel D. Miller, "Guido's modesty, selfless abandon from material gain life, and obedience to authority tended to obscure his moves, work, and motivations". The scholarly outline of Guido's life has been subject to much mythologization and misunderstandings. These dubious claims include that he spent much of life in France (recorded as early as Johannes Trithemius's 1494 De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis); that he trained in the Saint-Maur-des-Fossés near Paris; and unsupported rumors that he was imprisoned because of plots from those hostile to his innovations. The primary surviving documents associated with Guido are two undated letters; a dedicatory letter to Bishop Tedald of Arezzo and a letter to his colleague Michael of Pomposa, known as the Epistola ad Michaelem. These letters provide enough information and context to map of the main events and chronology of Guido's life, though Miller notes that they do "not permit a detailed, authoritative sketch".
