Carolingian Renaissance | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

The reign of Charlemagne (768–814) ended the long period of cultural decay and intellectual stagnation that had begun over three centuries before with the barbarian invasions of Western Europe. Despite the disintegration of the Carolingian Empire under Charlemagne's successors, the cultural revival that he inspired continued until the Vikings put an end to it, and even then something of the achievement of the eighth and ninth centuries survived to foster the renaissance of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

The "Carolingian Renaissance" was dominated by two practical interests, ecclesiastical reform and social progress. Since Charlemagne depended on churchmen to implement his educational policy, the religious motives and ecclesiastical achievements—liturgical reform, monastic renewal, advancement of clerical education—inevitably predominated. Literary sensibility and intellectual curiosity were not, however, wholly lacking in the churchmen of the age, and some charming poems and substantial doctrinal treatises remain to testify to their intellectual versatility.

The chief agent, though not the finest mind, of the Carolingian Renaissance was the Englishman Alcuin (735–804). The Irishman John Scotus Erigena (c. 810–c. 877), the Lombard Paul Warnefrid (d. c. 800), the Spaniard Theodulf of Orleans (d. 821), the Frenchman Remigius of Auxerre (d. c. 908), and the German Rabanus Maurus (d. 856) exemplify the cosmopolitan character of the movement.

The centers of the revival were cathedral and monastic schools established by legislation throughout the Frankish dominions. In addition to a theology consisting mainly of traditional biblical exegesis, their curriculum included the seven liberal arts—the trivium of grammar, rhetoric, and logic and the quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. The assimilation of ancient learning was stressed, and little original work was done; the chief forms of academic literature were commentaries and handbooks.

In philosophy the arts curriculum did not go beyond logic. Several scholars are known to have touched on the question of universal ideas, but the issue does not seem to have been widely debated. The Carolingian Renaissance produced very little speculative philosophy; the great exception, the work of Erigena, stands alone both in its systematic character and in its Neoplatonic inspiration. The few philosophically interesting ideas of the age emerged more or less incidentally in the course of theological reflection and debate.

Perhaps the most important single fragment of philosophical theology to survive from the ninth century is the Dicta Candidi de Imagine Dei, attributed to the monk Candidus, schoolmaster at Fulda in 822, which includes the earliest known dialectical demonstration of God's existence by a medieval author. The principle of the proof is the idea of the scale of perfection. Moving from that which simply exists through that which exists and lives and that which exists, lives, and possesses intelligence, the writer argues that the scale would be incomplete without the omnipotent intelligence which is God.

Another small work of some philosophical interest was obviously inspired by consideration of the problem of universals. Fredegisus of Tours (died 834), in his Epistola de Nihilo et Tenebris, assumes that every term has some real entity corresponding to it. He concludes that the "nothing" (nihil) of the orthodox Christian doctrine of creation "out of nothing" must be conceived as a preexistent, undifferentiated stuff out of which God created everything, including human souls and bodies. Fredegisus was evidently an early instance of a theological dialectician who found difficulty in reconciling the results of his logical analysis of the meaning of terms with doctrinal orthodoxy; the problem was not widely recognized as urgent until the eleventh century.

The outstanding intellectual issue of the Carolingian Renaissance was unquestionably the problem of predestination. The German monk Gottschalk (d. c. 868) was accused of teaching that from eternity God has infallibly predestined some men to salvation and others to damnation; that God therefore does not in any sense will the salvation of all men; that Christ's atoning sacrifice was offered only for the elect; and that each man's will is irresistibly determined either to good or to evil. The authority of Augustine and of his great disciples Fulgentius of Ruspe and Prosper of Aquitaine was invoked by Gottschalk and others in favor of these ideas. In opposition to this intransigent Augustinianism, Erigena expounded a libertarian doctrine, inspired by Greek thought; others sought a middle way within the Augustinian tradition. The controversy was long and heated, and its terms were not always clearly defined, but it is obvious that the crucial issue was the relation between divine immutability and omnipotence, on the one hand, and human freedom and moral responsibility, on the other. After a series of conflicting synodical decisions, the moderate Augustinians were officially vindicated, but the debate was to be repeatedly renewed in the later Middle Ages and the Reformation and Counter-Reformation.

A second vigorous controversy of the period had to do with the presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Paschasius Radbertus (d. c. 860), in his De Corpore et Sanguine Domini, the first technical elaboration of Eucharistic doctrine in theological history, asserted the identity of the sacramental elements with the historical body of Jesus crucified and glorified. Although he insisted at the same time on the spiritual and mystical manner of Christ's presence, some of his statements could be interpreted in a crudely materialistic sense, and Ratramnus (d. 868), in his De Corpore et Sanguine Domini, opposed an ostensibly symbolist doctrine to the realism of Radbertus; owing to vagueness of definition, however, it remains uncertain how far and in precisely what way the two doctrines were incompatible. The debate is significant primarily because it eventually issued in the definition of the dogma of transubstantiation by the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) and in the subtle metaphysical elaboration of that dogma in the theology of Thomas Aquinas.

Alcinous; Augustine, St.; Augustinianism; Determinism, a Historical Survey; Erigena, John Scotus; Libertarianism; Reformation; Thomas Aquinas, St.

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