The Carolingian Renaissance was the first of three medieval renaissances, a period of cultural activity in the Carolingian Empire. Charlemagne's reign led to an intellectual revival beginning in the 8th century and continuing throughout the 9th century, taking inspiration from ancient Roman and Greek culture and the Christian Roman Empire of the 4th century. The period saw an increase of literature, writing, visual arts, architecture, music, jurisprudence, liturgical reforms, and scriptural studies. Carolingian schools were effective centers of education, and they served generations of scholars by producing editions and copies of the classics, both Christian and pagan.
The movement occurred mostly during the reigns of Carolingian rulers Charlemagne and Louis the Pious. It was supported by the scholars of the court, notably Alcuin of York. Charlemagne's Admonitio generalis (789) and Epistola de litteris colendis served as manifestos. Alcuin wrote on subjects ranging from grammar and biblical exegesis to arithmetic and astronomy. He also collected rare books, which formed the nucleus of the library at York Cathedral. His enthusiasm for learning made him an effective teacher. Alcuin describes himself
Another prominent figure was Theodulf of Orléans, a refugee from the Umayyad invasion of Spain who became involved in the cultural circle at the imperial court before Charlemagne appointed him bishop of Orléans. Theodulf's greatest contribution to learning was his scholarly edition of the Vulgate Bible, drawing on manuscripts from Spain, Italy, and Gaul, and even the original Hebrew.
The effects of this cultural revival were mostly limited to a small group of court literati. According to John Contreni, "it had a spectacular effect on education and culture in Francia, a debatable effect on artistic endeavors, and an unmeasurable effect on what mattered most to the Carolingians, the moral regeneration of society". The secular and ecclesiastical leaders made efforts to write better Latin, to copy and preserve patristic and classical texts in the Carolingian libraries, and to develop a more legible, classicizing script, with clearly distinct capital and minuscule letters. This new script was called Carolingian minuscule, and it separated Carolingian script from that in the previous Latin world. The latter contained and practiced many different scripts which, although based on Roman upper-case letters, fractured into further regional variations, adding greater diversity to the foundational script. The Carolingians sought to establish uniformity by creating Carolingian minuscule. In their script, standardized practices were established, including consistent letter heights, punctuation, and separation between words, all of which improved legibility. It was the Carolingian minuscule that Renaissance humanists took to be Roman and employed as humanist minuscule, from which has developed early modern Italic script. They also applied rational ideas to social issues for the first time in centuries, providing a common language and writing style that enabled communication throughout most of Europe.
Background
As Pierre Riché points out, the expression "Carolingian Renaissance" does not imply that Western Europe was barbaric or obscurantist before the Carolingian era.Pierre Riché, Les Carolingiens. Une famille qui fit l'Europe, Paris, Hachette, coll. « Pluriel », 1983 p. 354 The centuries following the dissolution of the Roman Empire in the West did not see an abrupt disappearance of the ancient schools. Indeed, from them emerged Martianus Capella, Cassiodorus, and Boethius, essential icons of the Roman cultural heritage in the Early Middle Ages, thanks to which the disciplines of liberal arts were preserved.Michel Lemoine, article Arts libéraux in Claude Gauvard (dir.), Dictionnaire du Moyen Âge, Paris, PUF, coll. « Quadrige », 2002 p. 94 The 7th century saw the "Isidorian Renaissance" in the Visigothic Kingdom of HispaniaSur le sujet, voir Jacques Fontaine, Isidore de Séville et la culture classique dans l'Espagne wisigothique, Paris, 1959 in which sciences flourished and the integration of Christian and pre-Christian thought occurred,Jacques Fontaine, Isidore de Séville et la culture classique dans l'Espagne wisigothique, Paris, 1959 while the spread of Irish monastic schools (scriptoria) over Europe laid the groundwork for the Carolingian Renaissance.Pierre Riché, Éducation et culture dans l'Occident barbare (VIe-VIIIe siècles), Paris, Le Seuil, coll. « Points Histoire », 1995, 4e éd.. p.256-257, 264, 273-274, 297Louis Halphen, Les Barbares, Paris, 1936, p. 236; Étienne Gilson, La Philosophie au Moyen Âge, Paris, 1944, p. 181.
There were numerous factors in this cultural expansion, the most obvious of which was that Charlemagne's uniting of most of Western Europe brought about peace and stability, which set the stage for prosperity. This period marked an economic revival in Western Europe, following the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. Local economies in the West had degenerated into largely subsistence agriculture by the early 7th century, with towns functioning merely as places of gift-exchange for the elite. By the late 7th century, developed urban settlements had emerged, populated mostly by craftsmen and merchants and developing street grids, artisanal production, and regional and long-distance trade. A prime example of this type of emporium was Dorestad.
The development of the Carolingian economy was fueled by the efficient organization and exploitation of labor on large estates, producing a surplus of primarily grain, wine and salt. In turn, inter-regional trade in these commodities facilitated the expansion of towns. Archaeological data shows the continuation of this upward trend in the early 8th century. The zenith of the early Carolingian economy was reached from 775 to 830, coinciding with the largest surpluses of the period, large-scale building of churches as well as overpopulation and three famines that showed the limits of the system. After a period of disruption from 830 to 850, caused by civil wars and Viking raids, economic development resumed in the 850s, with the emporiums disappearing completely and being replaced by fortified commercial towns.
One of the major causes of the sudden economic growth was the Arab slave trade. Following the rise of the Arab Muslim caliphates, the Arab elites created a major demand for slaves in the Muslim world, with European slaves particularly prized. As a result of Charlemagne's wars of conquest in Eastern Europe, a steady supply of captured Slavs, Avars, Saxons, and Danes reached merchants in Western Europe, who then exported the slaves via Ampurias, Girona, and the Pyrenees passes to Muslim Spain and other parts of the Arab world. The market for slaves was so lucrative that it almost immediately transformed the long-distance trade of the European economies. The slave trade enabled the West to re-engage with the Arab Muslim caliphates and the Eastern Roman Empire, so that other industries, such as textiles, were able to grow in Europe as well.
Import Kenneth Clark was of the view that by means of the Carolingian Renaissance, Western civilization survived by the skin of its teeth.Clark, Civilization. A substantial portion of the classical corpus we possess today owes its survival to the copies produced by Carolingian scribes. As Conrad Leyser notes, "fewer than 2,000 Latin manuscripts survive from the period before AD 800; from the century after AD 800, we have over 7,000. For every eighth-century copy of a text that has survived, we have ten copies from the ninth century."
As important a role as the Carolingians played in collecting, copying, and disseminating ancient manuscripts and knowledge, it is equally important to remember that they did this through their own value systems. As such, it is important to recognize that although many ancient texts and ideas were preserved by the Carolingians, it is impossible to know how many others were not, whether accidental or otherwise. The Carolingians were a Christian people and certainly sought to preserve Christian documents and knowledge. Therefore, it is likely non-Christian resources were deliberately passed aside in favor of preserving Christian ones. However, this was not always the case. Secular texts and information were indeed preserved by the Carolingians, often as part of educational reforms undertaken during the Carolingian Renaissance. And none of this is to suggest that ancient Christian sources were preserved unscathed (or at all) by the same Renaissance. Indeed, these manuscripts were likely to become distorted or lost as well. For example, Christian sources might be copied so many times that their original versions were lost, separating contemporaries and those of us today from their original productions such as scripts and materials. Also, Christian authorities among the Carolingians might believe themselves experts, no longer needing entire ancient Christian texts. As such, they could purposely omit portions of ancient manuscripts no longer believed necessary for preservation and instruction.
However, the use of the term renaissance to describe this period is contested because its aims and output differ markedly from those of the 15th- and 16th-century Renaissance. The Carolingian project was a top-down initiative, driven by royal patronage and executed by literate elites who trained and served in ecclesiastical institutions, in contrast to the wide-ranging social movements of the later Italian Renaissance..
Earlier scholarship sometimes portrayed the Carolingian period as an attempt to recreate the previous culture of the Roman Empire, motivated by humanist and antiquarian interests. More recent historiography, however, tends to view the Carolingian Renaissance primarily as a religious reform project. Rather than a pure revival, Carolingian scholars described their engagement with classical learning as correctio. This notion of correctio, combined with pragmatic concerns, aimed to "correct" and transform older knowledge into something useful and suitable for a newly unified Christian society—society whose salvation Charlemagne, as its ruler, felt personally responsible for.
Scholarly efforts