27 - The Carolingian renaissance: education and literary culture

Summary

the impetus for learning

writing towards the end of the ninth century, Notker Balbulus, teacher, scribe and librarian at the monastery of St Gall, recorded what he and doubtless many others thought about the origins of the Carolingian revival of learning. Two Irishmen, he claimed in his Gesta Karoli Magni, came to the Continent hawking wisdom and were eventually brought to the attention of Charlemagne who ‘was always an admirer and great collector of wisdom’. Soon after, Notker reported, the Anglo-Saxon Alcuin heard of the king’s love of wisdom and took to sea to meet him. Although the simplicity of Notker’s explanation of the wellspring of the Carolingian renaissance is attractive, it reduces a complex phenomenon to virtual parody. Irishmen, Anglo-Saxons, Visigoths and Italians were instrumental in defining the renaissance, but the programme had its roots in the eighth century with missionaries like Boniface and with political leaders such as Charlemagne’s father, Pippin III. What Charlemagne and his coterie of scholars, principally Alcuin but others as well, contributed to the revival of learning was a sense of mission, constancy, example, reinforcement and support.