SOURCE: “The Renaissance of Literature” in The Civilization of Charlemagne, translated by Frances Partridge, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1968, pp. 118-56.

In the following excerpt, Boussard describes the state of culture at the time Charlemagne began his reign and the educational program he ordered as a remedy. He discusses the results—evident in the Church, civil law, the writing of history and poetry, and the birth of philosophical argument.

A Guided Movement

The end of the eighth century and the whole of the ninth saw a remarkable advance in all branches of culture, which has been described as the Carolingian Renaissance. The sovereigns took an active part in this movement, which was inspired and directed by the Church.

It was indeed a kind of renaissance, for the whole of the seventh century and the first half of the eighth had been a period of almost complete barbarism in the regnum...