If the hope of gain stimulated those outside to follow it as a trade, more spiritual motives were laid before the children of the cloister. As a work of charity done for the love of God and man, it was promised an eternal reward, and the persevering toils of a long life were, it was thought, capable of being offered as an acceptable work of penance. Meanwhile, the spirit of improvement was diffusing itself from the court through the whole country. The Capitulars of Charlemagne—so called because arranged in heads, or chapters—included amongst various laws for the regulation of the civil government others which regarded the encouragement of learning. A circular letter addressed by Charlemagne on his return from Rome in 787 to all the bishops and abbots of the kingdom, after thanking them for their letters and pious prayers, proceeded to criticise the grammar in which these had been expressed. “They who endeavour to please God by a good life,” writes the king, “should not neglect to please Him by correct phraseology, and it is well that monasteries and episcopal seminaries should pay attention to literature as well as to the practices of religion. It is better indeed to lead a good life than to become learned; nevertheless knowledge precedes action. Each one, then, should understand what he is about, and the mind better comprehends its duty when the tongue in praising God is free from mistakes of language.” The writer then goes on to notice that the excellent sentiments of his clergy had been expressed in a rude and uncouth style; they had been inspired by true devotion, but the tongue had failed for want of culture. “But if errors in words are dangerous, much more so are errors in their signification. We exhort you therefore that you fail not to cultivate learning with the humble intention of pleasing God, so as more surely to penetrate the mysteries of the Holy Scriptures. We wish, in short, to see you what the soldiers of Christ ought to be—devout in heart, learned in intercourse with the world, chaste in life, and scholars in conversation—so that all who approach you may be as much enlightened by your wisdom as they are edified by your holy life.” This was not allowed to remain an empty recommendation; it was followed by ordinances for reviving the old monastic and cathedral schools, and for founding other public schools, the establishment of which forms the most important feature in Charlemagne’s revival of learning. In the Benedictine monasteries two kinds of schools had always existed, or been supposed to exist—the greater and the less. In the minor schools, according to Trithemius, were taught “the Catholic faith and prayers, grammar, church music, the psalter, and the Computum, or method of calculating Easter,” while in the major schools the liberal sciences were also taught. In the Capitular of Aix-la-Chapelle, published in 789, Charlemagne required that minor schools should be attached to all monasteries and cathedral churches without exception, and that children of all ranks, both noble and servile, should be received into them. At the same time the larger and more important monasteries were to open major schools, in which mathematics, astronomy, arithmetic, geography, music, rhetoric, and dialectics were taught; and these again were of two descriptions.[83] Some were interior, or claustral, intended only for the junior monks, while others were exterior, or public, and intended for pupils as well secular as ecclesiastic. Some monk, qualified by his learning, was appointed scholasticus, and if none such were to be found in the community, it was not an uncommon practice to invite a monk from some other religious house to take charge of the school. A claustral and an exterior school often existed attached to the same monastery or cathedral, governed by separate masters, the scholars of the claustral school forming part of the community, while those of the exterior school, though subject to a certain claustral discipline, did not follow the same religious exercises. Lay students were received in these exterior schools, and that far more extensively than is commonly supposed, most popular writers having represented the monastic schools as exclusively intended for those in training for the religious life, thus confusing together the interior and exterior schools. Public schools of this kind were erected at Fulda, St. Gall’s, Tours, Hirsauge, Hirsfield, Gorze, Fleury, L’Isle Barbe, Fontanelles, and Ferrières, as well as at many other monasteries and cathedrals, a list of which is given by Mabillon.[84] Bulæus, indeed, endeavours to show that Charlemagne limited the studies of the ecclesiastical schools to grammar and sacred learning, and only permitted the monasteries and episcopal churches to retain the minor schools, “from the clear view that a variety of sciences, sacred and profane, is inconsistent with the profession of ascetics.” He even ventures to put forth the notion that the higher schools were confined to certain central spots, such as Pavia, Bologna, and Paris. But Bulæus wrote with an object, which was to magnify his university at the expense of the monastic schools. We ask ourselves with surprise where he could have found evidence even for the existence of any schools at all at Paris and Bologna in the reign of Charlemagne?[85] And as to limiting the monastics to minor schools, it may be safely affirmed that the idea of limitation of any kind was the very last that ever suggested itself to the mind of the emperor. As Theodulph of Orleans says, he did nothing all his life but urge forward his monks and bishops in the pursuit of learning. During the whole Carlovingian period the schools of most repute were certainly not those of Bologna, Paris, and Pavia. They were the episcopal and monastic schools of Tours, Fulda, Rheims, St. Gall, and Hirsfield, the teachers of which were all either monks or canons. The ordinance of 789 must be clearly understood, not as forbidding ecclesiastics to study anything but theology, grammar, and church music, but as rendering it obligatory on them to study at least so much; whilst, to use the words of Trithemius, “where temporal means were more abundant, and by reason of the number of the monks, more likelihood existed of finding one skilled in the teaching of sacred letters,” the other liberal arts were also required. The monks of those monasteries in which the higher studies were not taught travelled to other religious houses, and studied in their public schools; and we certainly find no trace, however faint, of the principle that the higher studies were considered unsuitable to ascetics, for, in point of fact, the ascetics were all but the only scholars of the age. If lay students were also to be met with—and even, as I think we shall see, more frequently than is ordinarily acknowledged by modern historians—yet they were still exceptional cases, and the vast majority of those who studied, as of those who taught, continued for centuries to be drawn from the monastic body.
The establishment or revival of the ecclesiastical schools scattered the seeds of learning broadcast over the Frankish empire. All the great men whom Charlemagne gathered around him took part in one way or other in this work. Theodulph, Bishop of Orleans, a Goth by nation, and an Italian by birth, specially distinguished himself by his zeal in the establishment of schools throughout his diocese. He published a Capitular on the duties of priests, in which he permitted them to send their nephews or other relations to certain schools in the diocese which were not then regarded as public. He also enjoined that priests should open schools in villages and rural districts, “and if any of the faithful should wish to confide their little ones to him in order to study letters, let him not refuse to receive and instruct them, but charitably teach them.” This was to be done gratis, no remuneration being accepted save what might be willingly offered by the parents. One would gladly know more of the kind of teaching given in these parochial schools, and specially how far the children of the peasantry were admitted into them. That village rustics really went to school and learnt something in the days of Charlemagne seems, however, past dispute; and among the Capitulars of the King of Europe we find one which requires the peasants, as they drive their cattle to pasture and home again, to sing the canticles of the Church, that all men may recognise them as Christians. This command obviously implied that the Latin canticles were well known to the peasantry, and probably the conning of church hymns and antiphons formed a very large portion of their school instruction. Theodulph was one of the missi dominici, or envoys sent by Charlemagne through the provinces of his empire to inquire into and reform abuses. On his return from one of these expeditions he published a poem entitled, “An Exhortation to Judges,” in which he gives a very remarkable account of his progress through the Narbonnese provinces, and describes the difficulty he found in resisting the attempts that were made to bribe him. The proffered bribes were of all kinds—gold and precious stones, delicately chased vases—which, from the classic subjects they represented, were doubtless relics of ancient Grecian art—horses, mules, furs, woollen stuffs, and candles. He refused everything, however, except food for himself and hay for his horses, and advises all judges to do in like manner. This was the same Theodulph whose name is familiar to us as author of the Responsory, Gloria, laus et honor. Having incurred the displeasure of the Emperor Louis, he was imprisoned by order of that prince at Angers; but on Palm Sunday as the emperor passed in the solemn procession of the day by the bishop’s prison walls, Theodulph sang from the window the words which he had composed, and thereby so touched the heart of the Debonnaire monarch that he gave him his liberty, and caused the same anthem to be thenceforth introduced into the office of the day, of which it still forms a part.
The name of Theodulph is to be had in remembrance not only as a founder of schools, but also as a writer of school-books. He felt compassion for young and tender minds condemned to gather all their knowledge from the dry and unattractive treatises of Priscian, and Martian Capella, and hit on a plan of his own for rendering them a little more popular. He composed in easy Latin verse the description of a supposed tree of science, which he caused moreover to be drawn and painted, on the trunk and branches of which appeared the seven liberal arts. At the foot of the tree sat Grammar, the basis of all human knowledge holding in her hand a mighty rod; Philosophy was at the summit: Rhetoric stood on the right with outstretched hand, and on the left the grave and thoughtful form of Dialectics; and so of the rest. The whole was explained in the Carmina de septem artibus, wherein the good bishop endeavoured with all his might to scatter the thorny path of learning with the flowers of imagination. The attempt was at least commendable, and in so great a scholar it had the gracefulness of condescension, for Theodulph is reported to have pursued some rare branches of study, and to have had at least a tincture of Greek and Hebrew.
Other ministers of Charlemagne are also named as actively sharing in the labours of the Renaissance. Smaragdus, abbot of St. Michael’s, in the diocese of Verdun, and one of the emperor’s prime councillors, not only established schools in every part of the diocese, and specially in his own abbey, but wrote a large Latin grammar for the use of his scholars. The copy which Mabillon saw preserved in the abbey of Corby bore on the title-page the words: In Christi nomine incipit Grammatici Smaragdi Abbatis mirificus Tractatus. Then follows a prologue in which the abbot declares that having, according to his capacity, taught grammar to his monks, they had been accustomed to transfer the pith of his lectures to their tablets, that what they took in with their ears they might retain by dint of frequent reading. And from this they took occasion to conjure him to write this treatise, which he has done, adorning his little book with sentences not from Maro or Cicero, but from the Divine Scriptures, that his readers may at one and the same time be refreshed with the pleasant drink of the grammatical art and also of the Word of God. And his reason for doing so has been that many defend their ignorance by saying that in grammar God is not named, but only pagan names and examples, and that therefore it is an art rightly and justly neglected. But he is rather of opinion that we should do as the Israelites did when they spoiled the Egyptians, and offer to God the treasures taken from the heathen. He appears to have devoted some attention to the vulgar dialects, and gives lists of Frank and Gothic patronymics with their Latin interpretations.[86]
St. Benedict of Anian, the cupbearer of Charlemagne, and afterwards the great reformer of the Benedictine order, was almost as zealous in restoring studies as in bringing back regular discipline. “Everywhere,” says his disciple St. Ardo, “he appointed cantors, taught readers, established grammar-masters, and those skilled in sacred letters; also he collected a great multitude of books.” Nor must we omit to notice the labours of Leidrade, the emperor’s librarian, and one of the “missi dominici,” who, being appointed Archbishop of Lyons, addressed a curious letter to his imperial master, in which he describes the result of his various labours. He has, by God’s grace, established regular psalmody in his church; he has schools of singers, and schools of readers, who cannot only read the Scriptures correctly, but who understand the spiritual sense of the gospels and the prophecies; some even have attained to the mystical signification of the books of Solomon and of Job. He has also done what in him lay to promote the copying of books, and has built, repaired, and decorated an incredible number of churches and monasteries. Besides these there was Angilbert, the favourite minister both of Pepin and Charlemagne, who retiring from court became abbot of St. Riquier and founder of a noble library; and Adalhard, the emperor’s cousin, created by him count of the royal palace, who, out of a holy fear of offending God, and losing His grace in the seductions of a court atmosphere, took refuge in the abbey of Corby, where he was eventually chosen abbot. In this capacity he greatly raised the reputation of the Corby schools. Paschasius, who wrote his life, says that Adalhard was a most elegant scholar, having been carefully educated in the Palatine school, and that he was equally eloquent in the Tudesque and Romanesque dialects as in Latin, and instructed the common people in their own barbarous tongues. His literary friends gave him the double surname of Antony Augustine—Antony from his love of that saint, and Augustine, because like him he studied to imitate the virtues of all those around him.
Meanwhile Alcuin, who had been master to most of these illustrious men, ceased not to cherish the hope that he might be suffered to return to his native land. “The searcher of hearts knows,” he writes, “that I neither came thither, nor do I continue here for the love of gold, but only for the necessities of the Church.” Like a true Englishman his heart clung to his old home, to the memory of his quiet cell at York, where he had studied Horace and Homer, undisturbed by other sound than the waving of the branches as they were shaken by the genial morning breeze, a sound which, he says, did but stir his mind the more to meditation. The flowery meadows and murmuring streams of England, the smiling garden of his monastery full of its May apple blossoms or its July roses, and the abundance of birds singing in the Yorkshire woods, all these find a place in the sweet verses in which the English exile paints the beloved scenes in the midst of which he had passed his childish days;[87] and all the brilliancy of Charles’s court could not compensate to his mind for the loss of home. In 790 he was, therefore, permitted to revisit England, but two years later he was recalled by urgent messages from the emperor, who desired that he should attend the Council of Frankfort held to condemn the heresy of Elipandus. Alcuin felt himself obliged to obey the summons, but he did not bid farewell to York without testifying the regret with which he tore himself from its peaceful retirement. “I am yours in life and in death,” he writes to his brethren, “and it may be that God will have pity on me, and suffer that you should bury in his old age, him whom in his infancy you brought up and nourished.” Charlemagne, however, having regained possession of his favourite scholar, was not to be induced a second time to give him up; the utmost that poor Alcuin could obtain was permission to retire from the court to some monastery within the Frankish dominions. Fulda was too far distant from the royal residence, and the death of Ithier, abbot of St. Martin’s of Tours, in 796, enabled the emperor to appoint Alcuin as his successor.
Tours at that time held the first rank among the religious houses of France, and what with the task of reforming its discipline and establishing a first-rate school within its walls, Alcuin enjoyed little of the leisure after which he yearned. He found himself in fact in possession of a great abbatial lordship, to which were attached vast revenues and 20,000 serfs. The revenues were expended by him in foundations of charity, such as hospitals, which earned for him the gratitude of the people of Tours. He applied himself to his new duties with unabated energy, enriched his library with the precious manuscripts he had brought from York, and by his own teaching raised the school of Tours to a renown which was shared by none of its contemporaries. In the hall of studies a distinct place was set apart for the copyists, who were exhorted by certain verses of their master, set up in a conspicuous place, to mind their stops, and not to leave out letters. Here were trained most of those scholars whom we shall have to notice in the following reigns, such as Rabanus Maurus, the celebrated abbot of Fulda. A letter addressed by Alcuin to the emperor soon after his establishment at Tours gives a somewhat bombastical account of his labours, but the reader will pardon the pedantry of one who had spent all his life as a schoolmaster. “The employments of your Flaccus in his retreat,” he says, “are suited to his humble sphere, but they are neither inglorious nor unprofitable. I spend my time in the halls of St. Martin, teaching the noble youths under my care: to some I serve out the honey of the Holy Scriptures; others I essay to intoxicate with the wine of ancient literature: one class I nourish with the apples of grammatical studies, and to the eyes of others I display the order of the shining orbs that adorn the azure heavens. To others again I explain the mysteries contained in the Holy Scriptures, suiting my instructions to the capacity of my scholars, that I may train up many to be useful to the Church of God and to be an ornament to your kingdom. But I am constantly in want of those excellent books of erudition which I had collected around me in my own country, both by the devoted zeal of my master Albert and my own labour. I therefore entreat your majesty to permit me to send some of my people into Britain that they may bring thence flowers into France....” After some lengthy praises of the utility of learning, he proceeds: “Exhort then, my lord the king, the youth of your palace to learn with all diligence, that they may make such progress in the bloom of their youth as will bring honour on their old age. I also, according to my measure, will not cease to scatter in this soil the seed of wisdom among your servants, remembering the words, ‘In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thy hand.’ To do this has been the most delightful employment of my whole life. In my youth I sowed the seeds of learning in the flourishing seminaries of my native soil. Now in the evening of my life, though my blood is less warm within me, I do not cease to do the same in France, praying to God that they may spring up and flourish in both countries.” In consequence of this suggestion, a commission was despatched to England for the purpose of transcribing some of the treasures of the York library. The French scribes made copies of the English service books, and that so exactly, that they took no heed of the geographical distinctions of the two countries, but copied the pontifical of Archbishop Egbert, and its form for the anointing and coronation of kings, exactly word for word. Hence in a Rheims pontifical of the ninth century, still preserved in Cologne cathedral, the emperor of the Franks is addressed as King of the Saxons, Mercians, and Northumbrians—a circumstance which has induced some modern critics to speculate as to the exact time when the North of England was subject to the Frankish sceptre. The copies procured through the industry of these scribes were multiplied at Tours, and thence dispersed throughout the kingdom. Alcuin’s own works were also in great demand, specially his elementary treatises on the different sciences. His other works, which are very numerous, consist chiefly of theological treatises and commentaries on the Scriptures, some metaphysical and philosophical writings, and a collection of poems, among which are the Eulogium on the Archbishops and the Church of York, and the Elegy on the Destruction of Lindisfarne, the latter of which is perhaps the happiest production of his pen, and evinces the real feeling of a poet. The news of the sad event which it commemorates excited consternation throughout Europe, but by none was it received with bitterer sorrow than by the abbot of Tours. “The man,” he says, “who can think of that calamity without terror, and who does not cry to God in behalf of his country, has a heart not of flesh but of stone.” He at once wrote letters of sympathy to Ethelred, King of Northumbria, and the monks who had escaped from the sword, which would be sufficient to evince how fondly his heart still clung to his native land even without the touching apostrophe which he introduces to his cell at York. What view was taken by Alcuin of the work of education, to which his whole life was devoted may be gathered from his treatise on the seven liberal arts, the introduction to which is cast in the form of dialogue between the master and his disciples. I will give an extract which may suffice to show the noble and elevated sentiments which these early scholars entertained on the subject of learning:—
Dis. “O, wise master, we have often heard you repeat that true philosophy was the science that taught all the virtues, and the only earthly riches that never left their possessor in want. Your words have excited in us a great desire to possess this treasure. We wish to know where the teaching of philosophy will lead us, and by what steps we may attain to it. But our age is weak and without your help we shall not be able to mount these steps.”
Master. “It will be easy to show you the way of wisdom, provided you seek it purely for God’s sake to preserve the purity of your own soul, and for the love of virtue; if you love it for its own sake, and do not seek in it any worldly honour and glory or, still less, riches or pleasure.”