Charlemagne’s Reform of Church and Learning

On 23 March 789, at his palace at Aachen, Charlemagne issued a long capitulary addressed to the clergy and the lay powers of his kingdom (Admonitio generalis date clause of the accompanying edict (p. 62)). In the preface he calls himself the defender and helper of the church. He is sending envoys, he says, to correct with the bishops whatever needs correcting, and no one should think this presumptuous: the book of Kings tells how Josiah went through his kingdom, correcting and admonishing, to call it back to the worship of the true God (2 Kings 23:1–25) (Admonitio generalis preface (pp. 53–54)).

The first part of the text repeats canons of the old councils. The second gives the king’s own orders. Bishops are to see that their priests hold the right faith, baptize correctly, and understand the prayers of the mass and the Lord’s Prayer (Admonitio generalis 70 (p. 59)). Schools are to be set up where boys can learn to read. In every monastery and bishop’s house the psalms, the chant, the reckoning of the calendar and grammar are to be taught, and the church’s books carefully corrected, because people who wish to pray well often pray badly from faulty books (Admonitio generalis 72 (pp. 59–60)). The clergy are to learn the Roman chant, as King Pepin had ordered for the sake of unity with the apostolic see. Sunday work is forbidden. Preachers are to teach the Trinity, the incarnation and the judgment, and nothing of their own invention (Admonitio generalis 80–82 (pp. 61–62)).

Two undated letters give the reason. Letters from monasteries had shown the king sound thoughts in uncouth language, and he feared that men who wrote badly would understand the Scriptures badly; so bishoprics and monasteries were to teach letters to all who could learn (Charlemagne, De litteris colendis whole letter). To the clergy he wrote that he had set himself to repair the knowledge of letters, that the books of the Old and New Testament, corrupted by the ignorance of copyists, had been corrected, and that he was sending out a collection of sermons from the fathers compiled by Paul the Deacon (Charlemagne, Epistola generalis whole letter).

Einhard names two of the scholars at court: the deacon Peter of Pisa, who taught the king grammar, and the Englishman Alcuin, “the greatest scholar of the day”, who taught him rhetoric, logic and astronomy. He adds that the king took great pains over church reading and singing (Einhard, Life of Charlemagne 25) (Einhard, Life of Charlemagne 26). Alcuin later described his own teaching at Tours and asked leave to fetch books from York (Alcuin, Letters 78 (pp. 345–346)). In 800 he wrote that the king’s command to correct the Old and New Testament was keeping him from other work (Alcuin, Letters 136 (p. 529)).

The programme joined the reform of the Frankish church that Boniface had begun to the learning of the English schools from which Bede and Alcuin came.