Julianne Stoker Milestone Document Analysis

The author of the document is Julianne Stoker. This paper was written for the Milestone Documents website and is peer reviewed, making it acceptable for citation.

Carolingian Renaissance, 500-100:

When Charlemagne was crowned King of the Franks in 768, he embarked on a path that created the most successful reign in Western Europe since the Roman Empire. Seeking to expand his kingdom and create a unified Christendom, he initiated a series of military conquests, expanded the borders of his reign to Italy, and brought all of modern day France and most of Germany into the Frankish kingdom. To further accomplish this goal of unification, he built bridges and roads, established a single currency based on silver, standardized tax codes and created

Charlemagne was himself a semi-literate man and worked to ensure that the level of education improved during his reign and according to his biographer Einhard, at dinner he would often have music played or books read to him, his favorite being Augustine’s City of God. He spoke Latin as well as his native tongue, Frankish, and he also understood Greek. Not satisfied with his own level of learning, he began to gather the brightest minds of Europe to his court in an effort to increase learning, more efficiently run his empire, and unite Christian culture.

The greatest of these scholars was Alcuin of York who proved to be an invaluable addition to Charlemagne’s court. Alcuin established the trivium and quadrivium curriculum at the Palace school at Aachen but, it was his work to standardize Catholic orthodoxy which proved most useful for uniting the kingdom. He wrote several commentaries on the Bible, sermons which could be used by priests, compiled the Missal which became commonplace throughout Western Europe, and helped to provide a

In addition to the errors found in Scripture because of uneducated scribes, the script that was used made the Bible difficult to read because scribes used only capital letters and no punctuation. To create a better, more accurate and more legible copy of the Bible, Charlemagne’s scribes used the newly developed Carolingian miniscule script, the forerunner of the modern fonts used in printing today. Because books in general were important to Charlemagne, Bibles and other books were highly ornamental with jewel encrusted covers and illuminated illustrations. The most famous example of this style is the Coronation Gospel. It is one thing to have beautiful, readable versions of Scripture, but Charlemagne was also concerned that the Bible be correctly interpreted. He required all clergy to be educated to the level necessary to perform their duties. Additionally, to further create a religious experience, Latin was modernized; and, not satisfied with better educated clergy, a universal system of elementary education run by parish priests encouraged basic learning among the people of the Holy Roman