ty did he cultivate the
Christian religion with which he had been imbued from his infancy. He
was a constant church-goer, a regular worshipper at the mass. Near to
his religious interest was his interest in education. A famous letter
of his to the abbats of monasteries {167} throughout the Empire,
written in 787, is a salient example of the close connection between
learning and monasticism in his day. He urged that "letters" should be
studied, students selected and taught, that all the clergy should teach
children freely, and that every monastery and cathedral church should
have a theological school. "Although right doing is better than right
speaking," he wrote, "yet must the knowledge of what is right go before
the doing of it."

What he tried to do throughout his empire was a reflection of what he
did in his own court. He delighted to surround himself at Aachen with
learned men. Most notable among them were Paul the Deacon, the
historian of the Lombards, and Alcuin the Northumbrian whom he had met
in Italy and whom he made prominent among his counsellors.

Charles, says Einhard, spent much time and labour in learning from
Alcuin, and that not only in religion, but "in rhetoric and dialectic
and especially astronomy"; and he "carefully reformed the manner of
reading and singing; for he was thoroughly instructed in both, though
he never read publicly himself, nor sang except in a low voice, and
with the rest of the congregation."

[Sidenote: Alcuin of Northumbria.]

Alcuin connects the learning of England with the revival on the
Continent. He had been trained in the school at York by Archbishop
Egbert, who was himself a pupil of Bede. He had studied the ancient
classics in Greek as well as Latin and knew at least a little of
Hebrew. The library at York is known to have contained books in all
those languages, and Aristotle was among them. Vergil, he said, when
he was a boy he cared more for [Transcriber's note: a line appears to
be missing here] than the vigils of the Church and the chanting of the
{168} psalms. About 782 he took charge of the schools which Charles
had founded at his court, and he became a very close friend and trusted
adviser of the emperor himself. With him (but for a short return to
England) he lived till in 796 he had leave to retire to Tours, where he
was abbat of the great monastery of S. Martin, and where he died in
804. He was a great teacher; a writer of books of education and