Palace School

The Carolingian Palace School is a very innovative institution. In Merovingian times, literacy learning was led only by monastic and cathedral schools. There was a so-called "schola palatina" at the Merovingian court, but its purpose was to train young Frankish nobles in the art of war and of court ceremonies. And this retinue of young nobles was at the same time the elite troops attached to the court. The will to have this "schola palatina" become a place of cultural learning took form since 780 and since Alcuin was named at the head of it. It may be stated, on the other hand, that a similar school had been maintained by Pippin the Short at Utrecht, or that Boniface, in addition to his missions, wrote a Latin grammar. Carolingian court also kept being the place where the art of fighting was taught. Alcuin certainly not was the sole actor at the Palace School and he surely incorporated in it proeminent scholars already present at court, of them Italians who were the most influential group among them. The common place of the Palace School was in the palace of Aachen, as the scholars however had to accompany Charlemagne wherever he was journeying

click to a map of the Imperial Palace in Aachen

The Palace School had three main functions: a centre of knowledge and learning for the whole kingdom, a place of high learning for the Frankish nobility, Charlemagne and his family, and for clerics of the Palace Chapel, and a place of book production. Palace School was the place indeed where liturgical as well as pagan works were copied and preserved. Liturgical works were aimed at better Church texts; pagan at teaching Latin literacy and the liberal arts. Books came from kingdom's abbeys and were copied as completed works were in turn given to them. Such works were used as much for the monks' studies than for the training -both ecclesiastical and lay one- which was given by the schools. Such an increased production of books brought to the apparition of very large libraries, like the one constituted by Angilbert as he was abbott of St Riquier in 790. The fact that the Caroline minuscule, that new kind of script, was devised, allowed, on the other hand, an increase of that copy work, as it was easier to use and that, as it was used by all the 'scriptoria' in the Empire, the book production could be uniformized. The Palatine School as such -associated to Charlemagne that is- did not survive the death of him -that's to be noted. The Palatine School with Charles the Bald did reappear in the 860's only, as it seems to have then move along with the successive moves of the Court (Soissons, Saint-Denis, Ponthion, Compiègne). Another point of view however doesn't share that advice about that the Palace School would have ceased to be extent during some time, as, on the other hand, it states that the head of the School was void during 804 and 814 -so, when Charlemagne was still living (this might match, in fact, when Theodulf was the master of the Palace School). Alcuin officially was the head of the Palace School from 782 to 796 A.D. as, retired to Tours at that latter date, he likely kept directing the School until his death, in 804. The successors to Alcuin into the function of chief of the Palace School were, in that order: Claude, bishop of Turin (from 814 to 818), Aldric, abbot of Ferrières (from 818 to about 821), Amalaire-Symphosius (from 821 to 837), Angelome, monk in Luxeuil (about 837), Thomas (from 837 to 845), John Scotus Eriugena (from 845 to 871), and Mannon (from 871 to 879). No name is to be found after that date, which is about the end of the reign of Charles the Bald for the West, after, too, the sharing of Lotharingia through the Treaty of Mersen, in 870, and, for the East, after the death of Louis the German. This hints well to a relatively swift decline of the institution, with the culture mainly harboured, from then, in the remaining monastic, or cathedral schools. It is unknown whether some remnants of a Palace School are to be found, after 879, in the varied courts which existed since then

->The Palace School in Its Historical Perspective

• 7th century A.D.: next to a cultural activity of the monks and the Abbot of the King's Chapel of the King, there existed, since the 7th century, in the Court, a 'Academy' which was the ancestor to the Palace school from the Carolingian era. That academy served for the teaching of young nobles and princes as they were given lessons in all arts suitable to their birth. Various great men of that century came out and, as the political functions then like Mayor of the Palace, Chancellor, etc. asked knowledge, literature and the liberal arts were to be teached. All those who came out from the Academy, on a other hand, were also remarkable by their piety, a sign that the Academy was not content to provide a secular knowledge only and that she likely had also educated in theology and sacred letters. Under Chlothar II, fater to Dagobert I, the Palatine school was parting between the 'quartier latin,' in Paris, and Clichy-la-Garenne, close to Paris, where the Court also was
• 8th century A.D.: interest in culture at the Court found a renewed momentum because of the honor that Charlemagne brought to the letters or even, especially, becuase of the fact that he had care to study them himself, turning the student of the scholars that he had made come. Charles soon quickly mastered all of the liberal arts and 'almost all languages' as theology was also the object of his interest. Charlemagne, moreover, made princes and princesses, his children, studying letters. It is from that activity that the former Academy of the the Merovingians times turned the Palace school. As soon as the end of the 8th century, the School had strongly grown and great scholars (like Alcuin or Peter of Pisa) and senior students alike were found into. The school possessed a 'very large' library, that Charlemagne had taken care to build up. The school followed the Court, which at the time was still essentially nomadic, but, on the other hand, Aachen already became its privileged place. Like all other schools, the school of the Palace had a "school's master
• 9th century A.D.: under Louis the Pious, the Palace School, which had already been so successful by the end of the 8th century, retained its splendour. A 'King's librarian' had the charge of it. Ebbo (to become Archbishop of Reims) or Gervard were the librarian under Louis. The reputation of the school was especially due to the fact that it was great scholars who were the school's masters. Claude, a Visigoth by origin and then Bishop of Turin, priest of the Louis's Palace when he was King of Aquitaine then became the Palace School's master when Louis turned Emperor. Claude developed study, he had a deep knowledge of Scriptures and he wrote many books; he also had many links with the monasteries of Gaul. Aldric succeeded him. Aldric had been noted during a theological controversy and he was the disciple of Sigulf, himself Alcuin's disciple of Alcuin and he was then Abbot of Ferrières and Archbishop of Sens. Then came Amalaire, a deacon (he wrote various writings about liturgy and Angelome, a monk in Luxeuil, was then his student there), then Thomas. Under Charles the Bald, despite the troubles, the Palace School remained at his level or even more. As the King loved letters, he endeavoured to restore all its luster. He attracted scholars from distant countries -- especially from Ireland -- and the Palace became a school where letters were as much studied than military art. John Scotus Eriugena was long, then, the School's master of the school. He knew both the Greek and latin as Hilduin (next to become Abbot of Sithiu) ran the library. He enriched it a lot. Manno succeeded John Scotus as he was one of the most major scholars of the end of the 9th century A.D. He trained many students like Radbot (who was to become Bishop of Utrecht), Stephen (from Liège) or Mancion, (from Châlons-sur-Marne) along with Franco, a young man of high birth, who then became Abbot of Laubes. One considered that the Palace School had a 'happy influence in many places' of the Frankish monarchy and that it revived the letters which then had been 'almost completely turned off' due to Nordmen and the civil wars. 'France' then took place above Greece or the Ancients, a opinion too exaggerated, but the reign of Charles the Bald however had scholars to greatly multiply and write quantity of books on all sorts of subjects. The Palace School still continued 'with some reputation' under the following reigns. Mannon kept like the School's master and to teach under Louis the Stammerer and it cannot be doubted that Louis and Carloman, his successors, took care to maintain the School -- at least the first one, a prince who loved letters and writings of piety, according to Angilbert, Abbot of Corbie when writing the preface to the book about the Christian doctrine of St Augustine which he had copied to the use of the young King
• 10th century A.D.: it looks like that the Palace Schools disappeared among the disorders of the end of the 9th century and the beginning of the 10th. In addition, it is possible that the emergence of the Ottonians in the in Francia orientalis, and the passage of the Empire to their lineage did that, if any Palace School existed at the time, it was the Palatine School one of the Ottonian Renaissance

Some authors state that this endeavour, by the Carolingians, to initiate this revival of the learning and the preservation of the antique, Mediterranean -Roman and Greek that is- culture, matches the fact that, by succeding to the Merovingians, the new dynasty eventually was putting an end to the Mediterranean world, which had managed to last until then, from the decline and fall of Rome, as it was centering the West, now, on the core of the ancient, Germanic, Frankish world, Austrasia, and making it a world of a more landish, and farming, than a one of conquests and trade. Thus, such authors state, the Carolingians, paradoxically, endeavoured to save the culture -Mediterranean- of the Antiquity as the world which had given birth -then harbour to it, until the end of the Merovingians- was falling part and leaving room for a new Europe. That's likely, even if the reasons which motivated the Carolingians are most unclear, especially when one refers to such a same move, which was seen among the Visigoths of Spain by the time, by the last decades of the 6th century, when Spain left arianism to embrace catholicism. At that time too, Leander, Isidore of Sevilla's brother, had established an endeavour to copy and preserve the ancient works, an endeavour he shared with the rest of the Spanish Church. It seems well that in such the case of Spain, the effort to preserve the ancient culture -both ecclesiastical and profane- was the fact of the Church like the mean to ascertain the intellectual foundations of it, and to get trained clerics. This effort, like the one under the Carolingians, about a century later, even extended to the layman and down to the humblest peasants in Spain. Did the Carolingian renaissance was initiated by Charlemagne -or even Pippin the Short- selves, or did the move came from Rome. It most likely seems that the move was initiated by the Carolingian rulers, but in a period of time when their links with the pope in Rome were increasing due to the geopolitic then, and that the reform of the Frankish Church -and the missionarization of Germany- had begun! The Carolingian renaissance, like was likely the case in Spain, eventually, benefited to the kings, with a better cultivated aristocracy, to the Church, with better trained clerics -and apt to deepen the reform of the Frankish Church, and to the people, who, down to the smallest parish and village schools were able to get some basic training. A characteristic of the education and training reform among the Wisigoths in Spain was that it had benefited -or benefited- from the flux of exilees from North Africa, who were succedingly forced out by the Barbaric Vandals, the Byzantine reconquest and the Arab sweep. The Arab conquest, at last, put a definitive end to any intellectual endeavour in Spain, as initiated by Isidore of Seville. It seems certain, in any case, that the Carolingian revival deeply is anchored into this decisive step of the building of the European synthesis, which consists in shifting the center of there from the Mediterranean world to the North. That shift, as it makes the Europe distant from the South and the merchandise, is bringing a fundamental sense to that synthesis

When the University of Paris had been born, about 1200 A.D., a Cistercian chronicler and a Dominican are seen stating that the Palatine School be the heiress of the School of Athens which had then been transfered into Rome like the 'School of Wisdom', and that the Palatine School then follow Alcuin on his route to Tours and settled in Paris