Carolingian schools comprised a small number of educational institutions which had a major share in the Carolingian Renaissance, specifically cathedral schools and monastic schools.
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Charlemagne and the Carolingian revival
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In Our Time: S8/27 The Carolingian Renaissance (March 30 2006)
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The Development of Caroline Miniscule
Transcription
(piano) Man: I love to find out where things come from. The question mark is Carolingian. It comes from about 800. Woman: It is odd to find out the origin of something we take for granted like the question mark. We use the term Carolingian to refer to the time of Charlemagne and his successors. Charlemagne, also Charles the Great, or Carolus Magnus, hence the name Carolingian. Man: He was a king. He was famously crowned emperor in 800 by the Pope in Rome and he ruled over a collection of kingdoms that he had conquered, that his father had conquered, that his grandfather had conquered. Woman: He was a frank. Man: The ancient Romans would have considered them barbarians. These are people who migrated into Western Europe from the East, and who settled into what is now Germany and Northern France. Eventually, over generations, this is before Charlemagne, they were able to consolidate their power and by the time we get to about 800, Charlemagne is ruling a vast expanse of Europe. So how do we put together this idea of this warlord conquering whole kingdoms and somebody who invents the question mark, who invents punctuation as we use it? Woman: Well strangely, those things go together. Charlemagne had to govern a vast kingdom where there were many different languages and dialects spoken. He really needed to organize and educate to create a Christian kingdom, a Christian empire. Man: This was a really brutal period. These were warlords. These were when castles were being built because people were marauding. Armies were attacking. Fields were being burned. This was a tough period. Woman: So the stability that was there because of the Roman Empire, the relative stability is gone. There are really only vestiges of the civilizing functions of the Roman Empire. Man: The Romans had law, they had roads, they had trade systems. They had educational systems. Woman: They had a vast bureaucracy and trained civil servants to help the government run. All of that was gone. Man: So they had to figure out how they could create systems again based in part on the old Roman systems, that were capable of holding this empire together. But Charlemagne was deeply religious. He took his Catholic faith very seriously, and that became the binding agent for all of these diverse peoples and lands. Woman: Charlemagne wanted to rule over a Christian kingdom and saw himself as a divinely ordained emperor. Man: The problem was that most of his religious bureaucracy, his priests, were illiterate. He needed to find a way that he could begin to educate these people so that he could expose the population to a correct version of Catholicism, that is, that they could get it right. Woman: And it was important to get it right, because what had happened over the centuries is that because of the lack of a central government and central structures, different tribes were doing things differently. Different tribes had their own set of laws. They had different ways of practicing Christianity. You had too many diverse practices. He was interested in education. Educating the abbots, the bishops, the priests, so that when they read the literagy, they were reading the correct thing. They were teaching the correct ideas. Man: Right, so we're not talking about the peasantry. Woman: The priests are teaching to those very people, but it's the priestly class that needed to be literate and educated. Man: Charlemagne is creating schools in order to accomplish this. He's bringing together scholars for his own palace school in fact. From all across Europe. He brings in people from Spain, from Italy, from England, from Ireland. He wants to learn how to write Latin himself. Woman: Well, to get a sense of how important learning was to Charlemagne, we have this quote from an early biographer. "He avidly pursued the liberal arts "and greatly honored those teachers whom "he deeply respected. "To learn grammar he finally followed "the teaching of Peter of Pisa. "For the other disciplines, "he took as his teacher Alcuin of Britain, "the most learned man in the entire world. "Charlemagne invested a great deal of time "and effort setting rhetoric, dialectic, "and particularly astronomy with him. "He learned the art of calculating "and with deep purpose and great curiosity, "investigated the movement of the stars. "He also attempted to learn how to write, "and for this reason, he used to place "wax tablets and notebooks under his pillow "on his bed so that if he had any free time, "he might accustom his hand to forming letters. "But this effort came too late in life "and he achieved little success." I love that image of Charlemagne, the emperor sleeping with a tablet under his pillow so he can squeeze in some time to practice writing. Man: So Charlegmane created the political stability and the wealth that allowed him to begin to institute a kind of rigorous educational system. Not for the vast majority, but for the bureaucracy, the clergy. Those people needed to be able to read the Bible. They needed to be able to read Latin. This is a particularly important moment in European history. Remember, Latin had been spoken by the ancient Romans, but that was hundreds of years before. Woman: And Latin was importantly the language of government, and it was the language of the church. The two central authorities in Charlemagne's kingdom. Man: But language is a living thing and changes over time. This is the moment in history Latin begins to evolve into what we will eventually recognize as Spanish, as French, as Italian. The divergence of what had been Latin, Charlemagne was interested in revising Latin, removing the change that had accumulated in Latin over the centuries, and reforming Latin, bringing it back to what he thought was its classical form, which means that we really have two different kinds of language. The high language Latin of the church, of government, and we have the common spoken languages of the people. So what does he do? He sets up schools throughout his kingdom, especially in monasteries. Woman: Charlemagne set up Scriptoria, places where the Monks could copy books. Man: Now what this allows is the ramping up of the production of religious texts and other ancient texts. So a number of manuscripts that come out of Scriptoriums increases dramatically. Woman: In the several hundred years before Charlemagne, we have 500 manuscripts that survive. But between 750 and 900, about the time that we consider the Carolingian period of Charlemagne and his successors, we have 7,000. So there is clearly a deliberate attempt to retrieve, to preserve and to copy text and also to correct texts. Man: Think about what went into creating a book. These were handmade objects on materials that were quite expensive. This is long before paper was used in the West. What they used was parchment, sheepskin. Woman: All of this is being done by hand. This is a really hard thing for us to imagine. There is a Monk in a Scriptorium. By some accounts, one skilled scribe could copy as many as 7 pages with 25 lines on each page in one day. So this is slow going. It's expensive and the scribes themselves had to be literate. Man: As a great quote by a scribe complaining about his work. Woman: "The art of scribes is the hardest of arts. "It is difficult toil. "It is hard to bend the neck and plow "through the pages for three hours. "Three fingers write, but the whole body toils. "Just as it is sweet for the sailor to reach harbor, "so sweet is it for the writer to put "the final letter on the page." Man: Of course there was this newfound emphasis on doing it exactly right. Woman: And because they were so concerned about doing it exactly right, the Carolingians helped to develop a new kind of script called Minuscule. So just like Charlemagne was interested in standardizing, correcting the Bible and other texts, he was interested in standardizing writing so that more and more people could read it and more and more Monks would be able to copy it. Man: Right. He was lowering the bar in terms of the difficulty of writing so that he could create more efficiency and create more production so that more books could go out from the monasteries to the local churches and more people could get it right. Woman: Before this, writing had become very unclear. Words were elided with one another. Scribes often showed off with little calligraphic flourishes that made it difficult to read. Charlemagne was all about legibility. Making everything clear and correct. Charlemagne is all about correcting, reforming, standardizing, and wielded enormous power to make those things happen. It's important to remember at the same time that he is doing all these fabulous educational and cultural reforms, he is also leading armies and conquering people. Man: So all this education was necessary because Charlemagne was trying to create this Christian kingdom. He had moved beyond the borders that his father, his grandfather, his great grandfather had accumulated. He moved South into Italy, conquering the Germanic tribe, the Lombards, and taking on the title King of the Lombards. He pushed successfully into Spain just a bit in the area that is now Catalonia and the Basque region. He pushed into Brittany and probably with the most difficulty he subdued the Saxons. This was a non-Christian tribe in the Northeast. Woman: He Christianized them. It took several decades. For all his educational reforms, we have to also remember that he could be a ruthless warrior. Man: There is one particular episode that really brings that home. Charlemagne apparently had thought he had subdued the Saxons. He had granted titles to their leaders as Aristocrats in his kingdom. But some of his men were attacked by a group of rebel Saxons and Charlemagne took his vengeance on Saxon captives, executing 4,500 in one day cutting off their heads. Woman: We still have an enormously important legacy from Charlemagne and his successors. Many historians call this Carolingian period a Renaissance or at the very least a Revival. A Revival of classical learning. Charlemagne intentionally looked back to ancient Rome, especially the period of ancient Rome that was Christian. For example, under Constantine. Above and beyond the question mark, 90% of classical texts survived due to Charlemagne's scribes. Man: We're talking about the great writings of ancient Rome. We have these because Charlemagne and Charlemagne's court thought that they were important. They copied them multiple times and some of those manuscripts have survived. Woman: In fact, some scholars believe that Charlemagne actually issued a call across his empire for rare and important books so that they would be copied and preserved. Man: So we have a lot to thank Charlemagne for. We have the question mark. We have our understanding of classical authors and early religious texts. And people have seen Charlemagne as responsible for, to a large extent, inventing what we will come to know as modern Europe. (piano music)
Precursors
Under the Merovingian Kings of the Frankish kingdoms, a 'palatial' school -- scola palatina was established at the court. The chroniclers of the eighth century styled it—for the training of the young Frankish nobles in the art of war and in the ceremonies of the court.
With the accession of the future emperor Charlemagne (768) a scheme of educational reform was inaugurated, first in the palace school itself, and later in the various schools established or reformed by imperial decrees throughout the vast empire over which Charlemagne reigned. The reform of the palace school, i.e. the change from a school of military tactics and court manners to a place of learning, was begun in 780, as soon as the victories over the Lombards, Saxons and Saracens (in Iberia) afforded.
Beginning at the court
It was not until the arrival of Alcuin at his court seat Aachen in 782 that the work of educational reform began to prove any success. Alcuin was not made head of the emperor's school in the palace, but was admitted to the council of the emperor in all educational matters and became Charlemagne's "prime minister of education". Charlemagne also built new monasteries and encouraged the learning of Latin. He represented the learning of the school of York, which united in its traditions the current of educational reform inaugurated in the South of England by Theodore of Tarsus and that other current which, starting from the schools of Ireland, spread over the entire northern part of England. He was not an original thinker, but he exerted a profound cultural influence on the whole Frankish Kingdom by reason of the high esteem in which Charlemagne and his courtiers held him. He taught grammar, rhetoric, dialectic and the elements of geometry, astronomy and music (see Seven Liberal Arts), and his success as a teacher of these branches seems to have been generally acknowledged by all the courtiers as well as by his royal patron. Einhard's biography of Charlemagne mentions that the emperor, the princes and princesses and all the royal household formed a kind of higher school at the palace in order to learn these fundamentals from Alcuin.
Further ambition
Charlemagne was not content with securing the services of the best teacher of that age for his palace school. 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 [for the work of teaching] 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 were to be sent to all suffragan bishops and to all (dependent) monasteries, in order to introduce the reform of education into all the cathedral schools and monastic schools of the empire.
In the major Council of Aachen of 789, Charlemagne issued more explicit instructions regarding the education of the clergy. He also wrote, in the capitulary of 789, "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".
Theodulf, Bishop of Orléans, succeeded Alcuin as adviser of the emperor in educational matters at the court in 796. A 797 enactment by Theodulf orders "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).
Actual spreading
The "new learning" inaugurated at the palace school (which seems to have followed the court from place to place rather than being in a fixed place) quickly spread 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 whom 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. His Abbot, Ratgar, 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. On this incident, Rhabanus wrote, "He alone escapes calumny who writes nothing at all." He was not discouraged though, and the day 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, and even Reichenau and St. Gall.
In France, the Carolingian revival was taken up by Theodulf, Bishop of Orléans. 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 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 and by that ahead of his time, encouraged and promoted the study of the pagan classics. Through the influence of Alcuin, Theodulf, Lupus and others, the Carolingian revival spread to Reims, Auxerre, Laon and Chartres, where the foundations of scholastic theology and philosophy were already laid.
In Southern Germany and Switzerland the Carolingian revival was felt before the close of the eighth century in Rheinau, Reichenau and St. Gallen, 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[note 1] in the Low Countries which continued the movement.
The Irish teachers
Various Irish teachers, competitors of Alcuin, were also associated with the early spread of the movement. According to the St. Gall chronicler who wrote the Life of Charlemagne dedicated to Charles the Fat (d. 888), two Irish monks arrived in France before Alcuin had received Charlemagne's invitation. Having set out their stall in the marketplace to somewhat boastfully teach wisdom, they were received by the emperor with honour, and one of them placed at the head of the palace school. The story, however, is not accepted as entirely reliable.
After Alcuin left the court of Charlemagne, one of these monks Clement the Irishman (Clemens Scotus) succeeded him as master of the palace school, and that he had pupils sent to him even from the monastery of Fulda. The grammarian Cruindmelus, the poet Dungal of Bobbio and Bishop Donatus of Fiesole were among the many Irish teachers on the Continent who enjoyed the favour of Charlemagne. The anonymous Hibernicus exul also wrote at his court. Indeed, the emperor, according to Einhard, "loved the strangers" and "had the Irish in special esteem".
His successors likewise invited the Irish teachers to their court. Louis the Pious was the patron of the Irish geographer Dicuil, Lothair II stood in a similar relation to the Irish poet and scribe Sedulius Scottus, founder of the school at Liège, and Charles the Bald equalled his grandfather in his affectionate esteem for the Irish teachers. Under him Elias taught at Laon, Dunchad at Reims, Israel at Auxerre, and the greatest of all the Irish scholars, Johannes Scotus Eriugena, was head of the palace school. Other Irish scholars taught at Reichenau, St. Gall and Bobbio. To the curriculum already in vogue in the Carolingian Schools the Irish teachers added the study of Greek, and wherever they taught philosophy or theology (dialectic and the interpretation of the Scriptures) they drew largely from the writings of the neo-Platonists and from the works of the Greek Fathers.
School resources
The course of studies in the town and village schools (per villas et viccos) comprised at least the elements of Christian Doctrine, plainsong, the rudiments of grammar, and perhaps, where the influence of St. Benedict's rule was still felt, some kind of manual training.
In the monastic and cathedral schools the curriculum included grammar (including general language instruction and poetry), rhetoric, dialectic, geometry, arithmetic, music and astronomy. The text-book in these subjects was, wherever the Irish teaching prevailed, Martianus Capella, "De Nuptiis Mercurii et philologiae"; elsewhere, as in the schools taught by Alcuin, the teacher compiled treatises on grammar, etc. from the works of Cassiodorus, St. Isidore of Seville and Venerable Bede. In some instances the works of Boethius were used as texts in dialectic.
The master, scholasticus or archischolus (earlier capiscola), had at his command, besides his assistants, a proscholus or prefect of discipline, whose duty it was (in the monastic school of Fulda, at least) to teach the children "how to walk, how to bow to strangers, how to behave in the presence of superiors". The teacher read (legere was synonymous with docere) while the pupils took down his dictation in their wax tablets (parchment was too expensive).
Discipline in the Carolingian schools was maintained by the proscholus, and that the medieval scholar dreaded the rod is clear from an episode in the history of the school of St. Gall where, in order to escape a birching, the boys set fire to the monastery. Regulations regarding neatness, the hours to be given to work, and provision for the mid-day siesta etc. show that some attention was paid to the health and comfort of the pupils.
The "school-room" was, until as late as the twelfth century the cloister of the monastery and, in the case of some very popular teachers, the street or a public square. The floor of the schoolroom was strewn with straw on which the pupils sat -boarded floors and benches do not appear to have been in use in schools until the fifteenth century, although seats of a certain kind were provided at Cluny Abbey, in the twelfth century, namely wooden boxes which served both as seat and repository for writing materials.
Dawn
After the death of Charlemagne and the dismemberment of the empire, the educational reforms introduced by him received a setback. There was a brief period under Charles the Bald, when royal favour was once more bestowed on scholars, but this waned again at the beginning of the tenth century. Nevertheless, the monastic and episcopal schools, and no doubt the village schools too, continued wherever war and pillage did not render their existence impossible. Thus the educational influence of the Carolingian revival of learning was continued in some way down to the dawn of the era of university education in the thirteenth century.
Notes
References
- ^ Guichard, G. "Schools of Carolingian Times". Learning and Knowledge in the Carolingian Times. Retrieved October 20, 2022.
Sources
- Info, newadvent.org. Accessed 23 February 2024.
This page was last edited on 13 April 2024, at 15:01