Introduction: A Series of Unfortunate Events

Abstract

With these words, written shortly after 786 in a circular letter to the religious lectors,2 Charlemagne (d. 814) invited scholars, bishops and abbots, to improve the learning in his kingdom.3 Underlining the role of the king and his court, Charlemagne led a vigorous campaign to revive learning, that had, according to him, become practically defunct.4 Charlemagne’s patronage of learning served to enhance his dignity by linking him with Roman imperial practices, and Carolingian propagandists stressed this feature of his reforms unashamedly. For eighth- and ninth-century writers it was axiomatic that Charlemagne had indeed revived learning after a long period of neglect and decline. Modern scholars, however, have noted that Charlemagne’s statement and the subsequent image of his patronage of learning were too sweeping and exaggerated. No doubt Charlemagne’s personal involvement and the grandiose scale in which he operated, created what we still call the ‘Carolingian Renaissance’. But one has to bear in mind that Charlemagne was not the only ruler to promote cultural and intellectual activity in his court, nor did his impetus spring out of the blue. It may well be that Charlemagne’s own awareness of the importance of learning at court was nurtured by models of active learning centres, not only in Rome and Byzantium, but also in the various Barbarian kingdoms that succeeded the Roman empire.5 Court and culture, so it seems, were bound together in the early medieval West as part of a common undeclared ideology of kingship, and it is precisely on this interesting issue that I wish to focus in the present book.