Carolingian Schools - Actual Spreading

Actual Spreading

The "new learning" inaugurated at the palace school, which seems to have had no fixed location, but to have followed the court from place to place, was not slow in spreading throughout the empire. Its first noticeable success was at Fulda, which since the days of its first abbot, Sturm, had maintained a tradition of fidelity to the ideals of St. Benedict. The man to whose enlightened zeal the success of the schools of Fulda was largely due was Rhabanus Maurus. While still a young monk at Fulda, Rhabanus, learning of the fame of Alcuin, begged to be sent to Tours, where he listened a year to the aged teacher and imbibed some of his zeal for the study of the classics and the cultivation of the sciences. On his return to Fulda he was placed at the head of the monastic school and, amid many difficulties, continued to labour for the intellectual reform of his own monastery and his own land. What these difficulties were we may judge from the treatment which he received at the hands of his abbot, Ratgar, who, believing that the monks were better employed in building churches than in studying their lessons, closed the school of the monastery and confiscated the teacher's note-books. Rhabanus' unpleasant experiences on this occasion are reflected by his saying "He alone escapes calumny who writes nothing at all." He was not, however, discouraged, and the day finally came when, as Abbot of Fulda, he could give full authority to his measures for educational reform.

Later, as Archbishop of Mainz, Rhabanus continued to sustain the programme of the Carolingian revival, and by his efforts for the improvement of popular preaching, and by his advocacy of the use of the vernacular tongue, earned the title of the "Teacher of Germany". His influence may be traced beyond the territory which belonged to the monastery of Fulda; to him and to his educational activity is due the revival of learning in the schools of Solenhofen, Celle, Hirsfeld, Petersburg and Hirschau. Even Reichenau and St. Gall owe much to him, and it is perhaps no exaggeration to say that who, like Otfried of "Der Krist", first the Old High German an instrument of literary expression.

In France, the Carolingian revival was, as has been said, taken up by Theodulf, Bishop of Orléans, who by his own diocesan enactments and by the advice which he gave the emperor proved his right to the title of Alcuin's successor. Alcuin himself, after his retirement to the monastery of Tours, devoted his attention almost exclusively to monastic education and the transcription of liturgical and theological works. Whatever love he had for the classics changed towards the end of his life into a deep-seated suspicion of all "pagan literature." In this he offers a striking contrast, with Lupus Servatus, a disciple of Rhabanus, who, as Abbot of Ferrières, early in the ninth century encouraged and promoted the study of the pagan classics with all the ardour of a fifteenth century Humanist. Through the influence of Alcuin, Theodulf, Lupus and others, the Carolingian revival spread to Reims, Auxerre, Laon and Chartres, where even before the schools of Paris had come into prominence, the foundations of scholastic theology and philosophy were laid.

In Southern Germany and Switzerland the Carolingian revival was felt before the close of the eighth century in Rheinau, Reichenau and St. Gall, and early in the following century in Northern Italy, especially in Pavia and Bobbio. Under the successors of Charlemagne there sprang up the schools of Utrecht, Liège and St. Laurent in the Low Countries which continued the movement.