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 CARLO VINGIAN

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CARLO VINGIAN

self, 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, the change, namely, 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 afforded leisure for domestic improvements. It was not, how- ever, until the arrival of Alcuin at Aachen in 7S2 that the work of educational reform began to have any measure of success. Alcuin was not only placed at the 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". He represented the learning of the school of York, which united in its traditions the current of educational reform inaugu- rated 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, indeed, an original thinker. Nevertheless, 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, arithmetic, astronomy, and music (see Arts, Seven Liberal). And his success as a teacher of these branches seems to have been generally acknowledged by all the court- iers as well as by his royal patron. We know from Einhard's biography of Charlemagne that the em- peror, the princes and the princesses, and all the royal household formed a kind of higher school at the pal- ace in order to learn from Alcuin what would now- adays be considered the merest rudiments.

Charlemagne was not content with securing for his palace school the services of the ablest teacher of that age. 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 7S9, to inaugurate a reform in the educational conditions throughout the empire. In 7S7 he issued the famous capitulary which has been styled the "Charter of Modern Thought". In it he addresses 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 tin- study of letters, each to teach and learn them ac- cording to his ability and the Divine assistance". He has observed, he says, in the letters which, during past years, he has received from different monas- teries, 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, so too 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 de- sirous of instructing others; and let them apply themselves to this work with a zeal equal to the ear- nestness 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 great council held at Aachen (789) he issued more explicit instructions regarding the education of the clergy. From the wording or the capitulary of 787, it is clear thai Charlemagne intended to introduce the reform of education into all the cathedral and i .i.i ic schools of the empire.

Again in the capitulary of 780 we read: "Let every monastery and every abbey have its school, in which boys may be taught the I'salms, the system of musical notation. Singing, arithmetic and giammnr". There can be no doubt, that by boys

are meant not only the candidates for the mon- astery 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 Orleans, who, when Alcuin retired to the monastery of Tours in 796, succeeded him at the Court as adviser of the emperor in educa- tional matters. The document dates from 797, ten years after Charlemagne's first capitulary was issued, and 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 Strasburg in which the attrac- tions 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 cur- riculum comprised what may be called the rudiments of general education, with an elementary course in Christian Doctrine.

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, Rha- banus, learning of the fame of Alcuin, begged to be sent to Tours, where, for a year, he listened to the aged teacher, and imbibed some of his zeal for the study of the classics and the cultivation of the sci- ences. On his return to Fulda he was placed at the head of the monastic school and, amid many diffi- culties, continued to labour for the intellectual re- form of his own monastery and his own land. What these difficulties were we may judge from the treat- ment 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 con- fiscated the teacher's note-books. Rhabanus' un- pleasant experiences on this occasion are reflected by his saying: " He alone can escape calumny who writes nothing at all." He was not, however, discouraged, and the day finally came when, as Abbot of Fulda, he could givefull authority to his measures for educa- tional reform. Later, as Archbishop of Mainz, he continued to sustain the programme of the Carlo- vingian revival, and by his efforts for the improve- ment of popular preaching, and by his advocacy of the use of the vernacular tongue, earned the title of the "Teacher of Germany". His influence, indeed, may be traced beyond the territory wlrich belonged to the monastery of Fulda; to him and to his educa- tional activity is due the revival of learning in the schools of Solcnhofen, Celle, Hirsfeld, Petersburg and Hirschau. Even Eteichenau and St. Gall owe much to him, and it is perhaps no exaggeration to say that, lie is the inspiration of all those who, like Ot fried of Weisscnberg in Alsace, author of "Der Kris) ". first tried in the ninth century to make the Old High Ger- man an instrument, of literary expression.

In France, the Carlovingian revival was, a* has been