I 140. PATRONAGE OF LETTERS BY CHARLEMAGNE. 617
daughters were well informed. He issued a circular letter to all the bishops and abbots of his empire (787), urging them to establish schools in connection with cathedrals and convents. At a later period he rose even to the grand but premature scheme of popular education, and required in a capitulary (802) that every parent should send his sons to school that they might learn to read. Theodulph of Orleans (who died 821) directed the priests of his diocese to hold school in every town and vil lage/ to receive the pupils with kindness, and not to ask pay, but to receive only voluntary gifts.
The emperor founded the Court or Palace School (Schola Palatind) for higher education and placed it under the direction of Alcuin.2 It was an imitation of the Pcedagogium ingenuorum of the Roman emperors. It followed him in his changing resi dence to Aix-la-Chapelle, Worms, Frankfurt, Mainz, Regeusburg, Ingelheim, Paris. It was not the beginning of the Paris University, which is of much later date, but the chief nursery of educated clergymen, noblemen and statesmen of that age. It embraced in its course of study all the branches of secular and sacred learning.3 It became the model of similar schools, old and new, at Tours, Lyons, Orleans, Rheims, Chartres, Troyes, Old Corbey and New Corbey, Metz, St. Gall, Utrecht, Luttich.4
The rich literature of the Carolingian age shows the fruits of this imperial patronage and example. It was, however, a for eign rather than a native product. It was neither French nor German, but essentially Latin, and so far artificial. Nor could it- be otherwise ; for the Latin classics, the Latin Bible, and the Latin fathers were the only accessible sources of learning, and
1 "per villas et n'cos."
2 A similar school had existed before under the Merovingians, but did not accomplish much.
3 Comp. Oebeke, De academia Caroli M. Aachen, 1847. Philips, Karl der Gr. im Kreise der Gelehrten. Wien, 1856.
*The Histoire litteraire de France, Tom. III., enumerates about twenty epis copal schools in the kingdom of the Franks.
618 FOURTH PEKIOD. A.D. 590-1049.
the French and German languages were not yet organs of liter ature. This fact explains the speedy decay, as well as the sub sequent revival in close connection with the Roman church.
The creations of Charlemagne were threatened with utter destruction during the civil wars of his weak successors. But Charles the Bald, a son of Louis the Pious, and king of France (843-877), followed his grandfather in zeal for learning, and gave new lustre to the Palace School at Paris under the direction of John Scotus Erigena, whom he was liberal enough to protect, notwithstanding his eccentricities. The predestinarian contro versy, and the first eucharistic controversy took place during his reign, and called forth a great deal of intellectual activity and learning, as shown in the writings of Rabanus Maurus, Hincmar, Remigius, Prudentius, Servatus Lupus, John Scotus Erigena, Paschasius Radbertus, and Ratramnus. We find among these writers the three tendencies, conservative, liberal, and speculative or mystic, which usually characterize periods of intellectual energy and literary productivity.
After the death of Charles the Bald a darker night of igno rance and barbarism settled on Europe than ever before. It lasted till towards the middle of the eleventh century, when the Berengar controversy on the eucharist roused the slumbering intellectual energies of the church, and prepared the way for the scholastic philosophy and theology of the twelfth century.
The Carolingian male line lasted in Italy till 875, in Germany till 911, in France till 987.
§ 141. Alfred the Great, and Education in England.
Comp. the Jubilee edition of the Whole V/orks of Alfred the Great, with Preliminary Essays illustrative of the History, Arts and Manners of the Ninth Century. London, 1858, 2 vols. The biographies of Alfred, quoted on p. 395, and FREEMAN'S Old English History 1859.
In England the beginning of culture was imported with Christianity by Augustin, the first archbishop of Canterbury, who brought with him the Bible, the church books, the writings