Carolingian Renaissance
The Carolingian Renaissance was the first of three medieval renaissances, a period of cultural activity in the Carolingian Empire. Charlemagne's reign led to an intellectual revival beginning in the 8th century and continuing throughout the 9th century, taking inspiration from ancient Roman and Greek culture and the Christian Roman Empire of the 4th century. The period saw an increase of literature, writing, visual arts, architecture, music, jurisprudence, liturgical reforms, and scriptural studies. Carolingian schools were effective centers of education, and they served generations of scholars by producing editions and copies of the classics, both Christian and pagan.
The movement occurred mostly during the reigns of Carolingian rulers Charlemagne and Louis the Pious. It was supported by the scholars of the court, notably Alcuin of York. Charlemagne's Admonitio generalis and Epistola de litteris colendis served as manifestos. Alcuin wrote on subjects ranging from grammar and biblical exegesis to arithmetic and astronomy. He also collected rare books, which formed the nucleus of the library at York Cathedral. His enthusiasm for learning made him an effective teacher. Alcuin writes:
Another prominent figure was Theodulf of Orléans, a refugee from the Umayyad invasion of Spain who became involved in the cultural circle at the imperial court before Charlemagne appointed him bishop of Orléans. Theodulf's greatest contribution to learning was his scholarly edition of the Vulgate Bible, drawing on manuscripts from Spain, Italy, and Gaul, and even the original Hebrew.
The effects of this cultural revival were mostly limited to a small group of court literati. According to John Contreni, "it had a spectacular effect on education and culture in Francia, a debatable effect on artistic endeavors, and an unmeasurable effect on what mattered most to the Carolingians, the moral regeneration of society". The secular and ecclesiastical leaders made efforts to write better Latin, to copy and preserve patristic and classical texts in the Carolingian libraries, and to develop a more legible, classicizing script, with clearly distinct capital and minuscule letters. This new script was called Carolingian minuscule, and it separated Carolingian script from that in the previous Latin world. The latter contained and practiced many different scripts which, although based on Roman upper-case letters, fractured into further regional variations, adding greater diversity to the foundational script. The Carolingians sought to establish uniformity by creating Carolingian minuscule. In their script, standardized practices were established, including consistent letter heights, punctuation, and separation between words, all of which improved legibility. It was the Carolingian minuscule that Renaissance humanists took to be Roman and employed as humanist minuscule, from which has developed early modern Italic script. They also applied rational ideas to social issues for the first time in centuries, providing a common language and writing style that enabled communication throughout most of Europe.
Background
As Pierre Riché points out, the expression "Carolingian Renaissance" does not imply that Western Europe was barbaric or obscurantist before the Carolingian era. The centuries following the dissolution of the Roman Empire in the West did not see an abrupt disappearance of the ancient schools. Indeed, from them emerged Martianus Capella, Cassiodorus, and Boethius, essential icons of the Roman cultural heritage in the Early Middle Ages, thanks to which the disciplines of liberal arts were preserved. The 7th century saw the "Isidorian Renaissance" in the Visigothic Kingdom of Hispania in which sciences flourished and the integration of Christian and pre-Christian thought occurred, while the spread of Irish monastic schools over Europe laid the groundwork for the Carolingian Renaissance.There were numerous factors in this cultural expansion, the most obvious of which was that Charlemagne's uniting of most of Western Europe brought about peace and stability, which set the stage for prosperity. This period marked an economic revival in Western Europe, following the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. Local economies in the West had degenerated into largely subsistence agriculture by the early 7th century, with towns functioning merely as places of gift-exchange for the elite. By the late 7th century, developed urban settlements had emerged, populated mostly by craftsmen and merchants and developing street grids, artisanal production, and regional and long-distance trade. A prime example of this type of emporium was Dorestad.
File:Kloster Lorsch 07.jpg|thumb|250px|left|Lorsch Abbey gatehouse,, an example of the Carolingian architectural style—a first, albeit isolated classical movement in architecture
The development of the Carolingian economy was fueled by the efficient organization and exploitation of labor on large estates, producing a surplus of primarily grain, wine and salt. In turn, inter-regional trade in these commodities facilitated the expansion of towns. Archaeological data shows the continuation of this upward trend in the early 8th century. The zenith of the early Carolingian economy was reached from 775 to 830, coinciding with the largest surpluses of the period, large-scale building of churches as well as overpopulation and three famines that showed the limits of the system. After a period of disruption from 830 to 850, caused by civil wars and Viking raids, economic development resumed in the 850s, with the emporiums disappearing completely and being replaced by fortified commercial towns.
One of the major causes of the sudden economic growth was the Arab slave trade. Following the rise of the Arab Muslim caliphates, the Arab elites created a major demand for slaves in the Muslim world, with European slaves particularly prized. As a result of Charlemagne's wars of conquest in Eastern Europe, a steady supply of captured Slavs, Avars, Saxons, and Danes reached merchants in Western Europe, who then exported the slaves via Ampurias, Girona, and the Pyrenees passes to Muslim Spain and other parts of the Arab world. The market for slaves was so lucrative that it almost immediately transformed the long-distance trade of the European economies. The slave trade enabled the West to re-engage with the Arab Muslim caliphates and the Eastern Roman Empire, so that other industries, such as textiles, were able to grow in Europe as well.
Import
was of the view that by means of the Carolingian Renaissance, Western civilization survived by the skin of its teeth. A substantial portion of the classical corpus we possess today owes its survival to the copies produced by Carolingian scribes. As Conrad Leyser notes, "fewer than 2,000 Latin manuscripts survive from the period before AD 800; from the century after AD 800, we have over 7,000. For every eighth-century copy of a text that has survived, we have ten copies from the ninth century."As important a role as the Carolingians played in collecting, copying, and disseminating ancient manuscripts and knowledge, it is equally important to remember that they did this through their own value systems. As such, it is important to recognize that although many ancient texts and ideas were preserved by the Carolingians, it is impossible to know how many others were not, whether accidental or otherwise. The Carolingians were a Christian people and certainly sought to preserve Christian documents and knowledge. Therefore, it is likely non-Christian resources were deliberately passed aside in favor of preserving Christian ones. However, this was not always the case. Secular texts and information were indeed preserved by the Carolingians, often as part of educational reforms undertaken during the Carolingian Renaissance. And none of this is to suggest that ancient Christian sources were preserved unscathed by the same Renaissance. Indeed, these manuscripts were likely to become distorted or lost as well. For example, Christian sources might be copied so many times that their original versions were lost, separating contemporaries and those of us today from their original productions such as scripts and materials. Also, Christian authorities among the Carolingians might believe themselves experts, no longer needing entire ancient Christian texts. As such, they could purposely omit portions of ancient manuscripts no longer believed necessary for preservation and instruction.
However, the use of the term renaissance to describe this period is contested because its aims and output differ markedly from those of the 15th- and 16th-century Renaissance. The Carolingian project was a top-down initiative, driven by royal patronage and executed by literate elites who trained and served in ecclesiastical institutions, in contrast to the wide-ranging social movements of the later Italian Renaissance.
Earlier scholarship sometimes portrayed the Carolingian period as an attempt to recreate the previous culture of the Roman Empire, motivated by humanist and antiquarian interests. More recent historiography, however, tends to view the Carolingian Renaissance primarily as a religious reform project. Rather than a pure revival, Carolingian scholars described their engagement with classical learning as correctio. This notion of correctio, combined with pragmatic concerns, aimed to "correct" and transform older knowledge into something useful and suitable for a newly unified Christian society—society whose salvation Charlemagne, as its ruler, felt personally responsible for.
Scholarly efforts
A lack of Latin literacy in eighth-century western Europe caused problems for the Carolingian rulers by severely limiting the number of people capable of serving as court scribes in societies where Latin was valued. Of even greater concern to some rulers was the fact that not all parish priests possessed the skill to read the Vulgate Bible. While lack of literacy was not unexpected among lay people, it was surprising to find poor reading and writing skills among the clergy. However, this is what Charlemagne discovered, largely through letters written to him and his court from monasteries. This lack of education among religious authorities, and thus wisdom to understand the Bible was alarming to Charlemagne, who sought to convert his subjects to Christianity. The agents of conversion were supposed to be the clergy. However, Charlemagne feared their ability to instruct lay people on Christianity, and therefore lead them to salvation, was impaired by their own poor education. To rectify this, and therefore accomplish the task of Christianizing his empire, Charlemagne ordered new educational mandates, specifically aimed at instructing clergy and future clergy. Charlemagne made this first pronouncement on education in a letter, the De litteris colendis, and sent it to the abbot of Fulda, Baugulf, with the added instruction that it be copied and sent to other major monasteries throughout his realm. An additional problem was that the vulgar Latin of the later Western Roman Empire had begun to diverge into the regional dialects, the precursors to today's Romance languages, that were becoming mutually unintelligible and preventing scholars from one part of Europe being able to communicate with persons from another part of Europe.To address these problems, Charlemagne ordered the creation of schools in a capitulary known as the Charter of Modern Thought, issued in 787. A major part of his program of reform was to attract many of the leading scholars of the Christendom of his day to his court. Among the first called to court were Italians: Peter of Pisa, who from 776 to about 790 instructed Charlemagne in Latin, and from 776 to 787 Paulinus of Aquileia, whom Charlemagne nominated as patriarch of Aquileia in 787. The Lombard Paul the Deacon was brought to court in 782 and remained until 787, when Charles nominated him abbot of Montecassino. Theodulf of Orléans was a Spanish Goth who served at court from 782 to 797 when nominated as bishop of Orléans. Theodulf had been in friendly competition over the standardization of the Vulgate with the chief among the Charlemagne's scholars, Alcuin of York. Alcuin was a Northumbrian monk and deacon who served as head of the Palace School from 782 to 796, except for the years 790 to 793 when he returned to England. After 796, he continued his scholarly work as abbot of St. Martin's Monastery in Tours. Among those to follow Alcuin across the Channel to the Frankish court was Joseph Scottus, an Irishman who left some original biblical commentary and acrostic experiments. After this first generation of non-Frankish scholars, their Frankish pupils, such as Angilbert, would make their own mark.
The later courts of Louis the Pious and Charles the Bald had similar groups of scholars many of whom were of Irish origin. The Irish monk Dicuil attended the former court, and the more famous Irishman John Scotus Eriugena attended the latter becoming head of the Palace School at Aachen.
Other notable ecclesiastical authorities of the Carolingian Renaissance to assist with educational and religious reforms were Baugulf abbot of Fulda, Claudius bishop of Turin, Hraban Maur abbot of Fulda and archbishop of Mainz, Lupus abbot of Ferrières, and Hincmar archbishop of Rheims.
Educational reforms played a crucial role in the Carolingian Renaissance. While much of this reform centered on educating the ecclesiastical body, who could then teach and convert others in the empire to Christianity, Charlemagne aimed to educate members of the aristocracy and even lay people as well. Two types of schools emerged as a result. The palace school emerged at the Carolingian court, the result of Charlemagne inviting great scholars, and others arriving themselves for the hope of patronage. One of these scholars' contribution at court was to educate aristocratic children. This was a loosely organized body which disbanded before long, the scholars leaving court with some beginning their own educational centers at cathedrals and monasteries, for example.
External schools emerged throughout the empire rather than being centered at court. Students not aiming to become monks could be trained in Latin literacy at these institutions. This was especially beneficial, as most records in the Carolingian Empire were composed in Latin, including theological materials. There was a Christian element to this as well. Due to the prevalence of Latin in the empire, to understand Christian doctrine and Biblical texts, it was necessary to possess Latin literacy.
One of the primary efforts was the creation of a standardized curriculum for use at the recently created schools. Alcuin led this effort and was responsible for the writing of textbooks, creation of word lists, and establishing the trivium and quadrivium as the basis for education.
Another contribution from this period was the development of Carolingian minuscule, a "book-hand" first used at the monasteries of Corbie and Tours that introduced the use of lower-case letters. A standardized version of Latin was also developed that allowed for the coining of new words while retaining the grammatical rules of Classical Latin. This Medieval Latin became a common language of scholarship and allowed administrators and travellers to make themselves understood in various regions of Europe.
The earliest concept of Europe as a distinct cultural region appeared during the Carolingian Renaissance of the 9th century, and included the territories which practiced Western Christianity at the time.
It has been estimated that Carolingian workshops produced over 100,000 manuscripts in the 9th century, of which some 6000 to 7000 survive. The Carolingians produced the earliest surviving copies of the works of Cicero, Horace, Martial, Statius, Lucretius, Terence, Julius Caesar, Boethius and Martianus Capella. No copies of the texts of these authors were made in the Latin West in the 7th and 8th centuries.