Carolingian Schools - Further Ambition

Further Ambition

Charlemagne was not content with securing for his palace school the services of the ablest teacher of that cage. Acting under Alcuin's advice he proceeded by a series of enactments dating from 787 (two years after the final triumph over the Saxons) to 789, to inaugurate a reform in the educational conditions throughout the empire.

In 787 he issued the famous capitulary which has been styled the "Charter of Modern Thought", addressing himself to the bishops and abbots of the empire, informing them that he "has judged it to be of utility that, in their bishoprics and monasteries committed by Christ's favour to his charge, care should be taken that there should not only be a regular manner of life, but also the study of letters, each to teach and learn them according to his ability and the Divine assistance". He has observed, he says, in the letters which, during past years, he has received from different monasteries, that though the thoughts contained therein are most just, the language in which those thoughts are expressed is often uncouth, and the fear arises in his mind lest if the skill to write correctly were thus lacking, the power of rightly comprehending the Scriptures might be less than it should be. "Let there, therefore, be chosen men who are both willing and able to learn and let them apply themselves to this work with a zeal equal to the earnestness with which we recommend it to them". Copies of this letter are to be sent to all suffragan bishops and to all (dependent) monasteries. In the major council of Aachen of 789 he issued more explicit instructions regarding the education of the clergy. From the wording of the capitulary of 787, it is clear that Charlemagne intended to introduce the reform of education into all the cathedral schools and monastic schools of the empire. Again in the capitulary of 789 we read: "Let every monastery and every abbey have its school, in which boys may be taught the Psalms, the system of musical notation, singing, arithmetic and grammar".

There can be no doubt that by boys are meant not only the candidates for the monastery and the wards (generally the children of nobles) committed to the care of the monks, but also the children of the village or country district around the monastery, for whom there was usually an external school attached to groups of monastic buildings. This is made evident by an enactment of Theodulf, Bishop of Orléans, who succeeded Alcuin (retired to the monastery of Tours) in 796 at the Court as adviser of the emperor in educational matters. The document dated 797, ten years after Charlemagne's first capitulary was issued, enacts explicitly "that the priests establish schools in every town and village, and if any of the faithful wish to entrust their children to them to learn letters, that they refuse not to accept them but with all charity teach them ... and let them exact no price from the children for their teaching nor receive anything from them save what parents may offer voluntarily and from affection" (P.L., CV., col. 196). To Alcuin himself tradition has assigned the lines set up in the streets of Strasbourg in which the attractions of a school are compared with those of a nearby tavern: "Choose, O traveller; if thou wilt drink thou must also pay money, but if thou wilt learn thou wilt have what thou seekest for nothing." In these free schools the teacher was, apparently, the priest of the town or village, and, as far as we can judge, the curriculum composed what may be called the rudiments of general education, with an elementary course in Christian Doctrine.