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 Beginning in the 5th century with the fall of the Roman empire, a new civilisation arose in the western part of the latter, based on the encounter between the German conquerors, the people living there, and the Roman Catholic Church. The Carolingian era was part of this creation. The Carolingians, in the 8th century, began to reign over the people living from the Baltic Sea to Spain and from the North Sea to Italy. This power, in turn, allowed the famed Carolingian Revival which safeguarded the works of the Antiquity. It's not sure this revival was the primary purpose of Charlemagne as it might just have been part of his concern to bring back the clergy of the time to more learning and knowledge. It's this effort, nevertheless, which allowed such works to pass to the next generations of Europeans
First Things First
 First things first! Let's begin with an overview of the Carolingian era. Chronology, society, state of the world. The Carolingians sprang from the disorders
of the Merovingian era, as they eventually turned into the second race of the Frankish rulers. The time is the one of the advance of the Arabs against the South of Europe, as Byzantium is perpetuating the idea of empire. The Carolingians, ruling over a large swath of Europe, are standing like the defenders of it and those who managed to get from Byzantium that they acknowledge the rebirth of the empire in the West
Charlemagne and Alcuin
From 780 AD onward, Charlemagne aims at completing by learning the work he is leading by arms to extend and develop the Frankish kingdom. In 781, in Parma, he meets Alcuin. Alcuin was born in 735. Since 767 he has become master of the cathedral school of York. Charlemagne proposes him to become "Master of the Palace School". A palace school ("scola palatina") had been originally created at Merovingian times, at court, as a place for young Frankish nobles to learn the art of war and ceremonies of the court. With Charlemagne, Palace School is going to become a place of literary learning. Another piece of Charlemagne's effort was to enlist clerics. Through a series of capitularies (capitulary of 787, council of Aachen 789), clergy was advised to become more learned at the same time for the benefit of the Church herself, but, too, as a mean of forwarding the educational reform throughout the kingdom. Monastic and cathedral schools were soon going to spread
Carolingian Scholars
Before Alcuin became Master of the Palace School, it is thought that diverse scholars originating in Ireland were already present in the kingdom and that Alcuin just enlisted them into service of new politics. Then Palace School and other schools formed next generation masters. A main step was the monastery school of Fulda too, founded by Rabanus Maurus. Other generations of Irishmen came again in what had become the Empire, under Charlemagne's successors, of them the famous John Scotus Erigena. It is possible that a first epoch of the Carolingian Renaissance, the one of Charlemagne and Alcuin, had an utilitarian purpose mainly, as that was, under the successors of Charlemagne, outpaced by a real intellectual current
Rome and Iona
Two main learning trends appeared in the Frankish kingdom, then in the Empire. The first, initiated by Alcuin himself, was one of Roman orthodoxy, according to the tradition of Canterbury, Jarrow and York. The other was the one of Ireland which, from Iona, had already disseminated the classical culture throughout England and the Continent. Alcuin's school was building mainly upon Cassiodorus, St. Isidore of Seville and Venerable Bede, as the Irish school did upon the teaching of Greek, neo-Platonists, and Martianus Capella
The Seven Liberal Arts
From Palace School to monastic and cathedral schools, it was the so-called seven liberal arts which were taught. These domains were summarizing knowledge as it was then understood: grammar, rhetoric, dialectic (which formed the "trivium"); arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music (the "quadrivium"). I.e. humanities and science. Teachers were reading, and pupils wrote on their wax-tablets. A strict discipline was performed through a "proscholus", a prefect of discipline
A Base for Middle Ages' True Renaissance
Carolingian educational efforts are important as, despite the times of disorder which soon arose, these efforts continued underground, everywhere troubles did not impede the work of monastic and cathedral schools, until dawn of universities later in the Middle Ages. Reims, Fulda, St. Gall, Liège, or Laon, were centers of learning appeared in Carolingian times. Antique culture was thus preserved until times were ripe for a real renaissance, as the Carolingian thinkers and theologians really may be considered the founders of Scholasticism, this new, rationalistic, move of the Christian thought, which culminated during the 13th century
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