Charlemagne: Letter to Abbot Baugualf of Fulda

The crowning of Charlemagne (742–814) as “Emperor of the Romans” by Pope Leo III in the year 800 marks a major turning point in the history of Western Europe. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476, European civilization suffered from a long and steady decline in arts, jurisprudence, and letters. Some scholars of Late Antiquity, such as Cassiodorus (485–585) and Boethius (474–524), kept the forms and ideals of classical culture alive, and learned early medieval monks such as the Venerable Bede (672–735) and Gregory of Tours (538–594) applied themselves to the labor of writing extensive ecclesial chronicles of their peoples. Despite the faithful efforts of such scholars, aside from the learning directly associated with religious instruction or iconography, few advancements were made in the areas of general education or cultural production in the early Middle Ages.

Western Europe also suffered from the lingering effects of the migrations and political fragmentation that had hastened the end of the western empire. As the descendants of Vandals, Goths, Franks, and other “barbarians” founded European kingdoms, they became military rivals for political and economic power in the post-imperial “Dark Ages.”

The rise of Islam in the sixth century, attended by Muslim incursions into Italy, Spain, and France, posed an added challenge to Western political stability, and to the hegemony of Christian culture as a whole. By the mid-eighth century, the Islamic caliphate was entering its Golden Age, and was not only presenting a direct military threat to Western Europe, but continuing its pressure upon the Byzantine Christian Empire in the East.

In the seventh and eighth centuries, several Frankish kingdoms of formerly Roman Gaul began to consolidate into a unified monarchy. Under the late Merovingian (481–751) and Carolingian (751–843) dynasties, the political entity that eventually became modern France began to take shape as a legitimate kingdom and the long-lost ideal of a Christian Empire. “Carolingian Renaissance” is the term historians give to the revival of learning and culture that took place as a result of the determination of the Carolingian kings to build a civilization as well as a strong polity.

In such documents as Charlemagne’s Letter to Abbot Baugualf of Fulda, which was likely transcribed by the monk Alcuin of York (735–804)— because the king himself was probably not able to write—we can clearly see the priorities of this renaissance. The instructions in the letter not only provide evidence of Charlemagne’s desire to foster learning in the realm of “Christendom,” but also shows his insights into the relationship between learning and religious faith. The goals of knowledge, piety, and methodical study are presented as an essential triad for monastic learning, as well as mutually reproductive elements of a Christian education.