University of Virginia Library

V.9.1

THE MONASTERY'S EDUCATIONAL
TASKS

ROYAL DIRECTIVES

Be it known, therefore, to your devotion pleasing to God, that we,
together with our faithful, have considered it to be useful that the
bishoprics and monasteries entrusted by the favor of Christ to our
control, in addition to the order of monastic life and the intercourse
of holy religion, in the culture of letters also ought to be zealous
in teaching those who by the gift of God are able to learn, according
to the capacity of each individual, so that just as the observance of
the rule imparts order and grace to honesty of morals, so also zeal
in teaching and learning may do the same for sentences, so that
those who desire to please God by living rightly should not neglect
Him also by speaking correctly.[346]

Thus wrote Charlemagne to Abbot Baugulf of Fulda in
a letter drafted by Alcuin, probably in 784 or 785. In a
second issue of the same letter, made out to Archbishop
Angilram of Metz, the emperor adds the admonition:

The letter from which these sentences are quoted,
Charlemagne's famous epistola de litteris collendis,[347] is one
of the first of a series of royal directives assigning to the
episcopal and monastic schools of the Frankish kingdom
an active role in education. It is one of the cornerstones of
that programmatic revival of both theological and classical
studies in which Charles took an intense personal interest
and which ushered in the Carolingian Renascence. One of
Charles's specific concerns was the intellectual formation of
the youth who were to form the core of the coming generation
of priests and clerics. In a great circular directive of
789, the admonitio generalis,[348] he ruled that the children of
free laymen be admitted to the monastic schools, and that
reading classes be established for the young (scolae legentium
puerorum) in which the psalms, music, chant, the calendar
of the religious festivals, grammar, and the creeds of the
faith be taught.[349] In the pursuit of these as well as the
more general aims of his educational reform, the emperor
systematically enlarged the body of his personal entourage
by adding to the old nucleus of administrative officers of
the Palace distinguished scholars from England, Ireland,
Italy, and Spain, thus setting up at the court itself a school
of learning that could be used as a model for the other
schools in his realm.[350]

The close relationship that existed between so many
medieval rulers and their leading bishops and abbots was
due in no small measure to friendships struck up between
these rulers and their former fellow students and teachers
during their education in monastic schools.[351] Some monasteries
were understandably proud of these connections, as
may be gathered from a boastful passage in Hariulf's
Chronicle of St.-Riquier:

STRESSES LEADING TO DIVISION INTO
INNER AND OUTER SCHOOLS

The stresses that these new educational obligations imposed
upon monastic seclusion were great and must have
been in debate at the second synod of Aachen which passed
the perplexing resolution, "There shall be no other school
in the monastery than that which is used for the instruction
of the future monks."[353] I have already had occasion to point
out that it could not have been the intent of this ruling to
relieve the monasteries entirely from their share in the intellectual
training of the secular youth, which would have
been a complete reversal of the educational policies promoted
by Charlemagne. Rather it was the expression of a
conflict which in practice was settled by the division of the
monastic educational system into an "inner" and an "outer"
school, the former for the training of the future monks, the
latter for the instruction of those who planned to enter upon
the career of the secular clergy and of such laymen, poor
or noble, whose education was entrusted to monastic
teachers. The former was located in the cloister; the latter
outside it, at a place where it would not intrude on monastic
privacy. This is precisely the manner in which this problem
was settled on the Plan of St. Gall. The inner school is in
the cloister of the Novices,[354] the Outer School lies between
the House for Distinguished Guests and the Abbot's House,
i.e., in a tract which in all other respects held a transitional
position between the monastic and secular world. Unlike
the schola interior, which remained essentially confined to
elementary learning, the schola exterior developed quickly
into a school for advanced study.[355]

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DISTINGUISHED TEACHERS

In the ninth and tenth centuries in the monastery of St.
Gall, these schools produced some of the greatest teachers
of the period, the lives and works of whom Ekkehart IV
describes in his Casus sancti Galli with as much detail and
color as those of the greatest abbots.[356] From Ekkehart's
account we also learn that the Outer School of the monastery
of St. Gall lay to the north of the Church, at almost
the same location it occupies on the Plan of St. Gall; for
in his description of the fire of 937 Ekkehart relates how the
dry shingles of the burning roof of the school were blown
by the north wind onto the church tower and ignited its
roof.[357]

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