LL-L 'History' 2006.07.13 (09) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L * 13 July 2006 * Volume 09
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From: Henry Pijffers <henry at saxnot.com>
Subject: LL-L 'History' 2006.07.12 (06) [E]

Ron wrote:
>
> Henry:
>
>> Actually, he couldn't, say at least 2 books about him.
>
> This is what I remember being taught too.
>
I also read that the school thing wasn't his idea at all.
It was one of his subordinates that brought it up and he
just said "ok, do it".

regards,
Henry

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From: 'Mark Dreyer' <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L 'History' 2006.07.12 (06) [E]

Dear Theo, Luc, Henry:

Subject: LL-L 'History'

> Actually, he (Charlemagne) couldn't, say at least 2 books about him.

This is what I remember being taught too (Ron).

Seconded, Ron! But I remember reading that he could read but couldn't write,
or at the least to the end of his days was busy trying to learn to write,
with a well-used & sadly abused tablet beside him day & night. Knowing how
my brain learns, I don't have a problem with the notion, though others
may...

Unless I find out that a certain medieval ruler received formal education I
assume he (or she) was illiterate and that historiographies just made them
sound
more educated than they really were.

I'd like to offer an exception here: Alfred the Great (touching on another
string). & by the way, what would rate as formal education in & around
850AD, unless you were in the novitiate? He writes how his mother read to
him from a beautiful book, & he expressed a longing for it. She told him if
he could read it, he would have it, & he concluded: It was not long before
he did have it. He was mildly bragging, of course, but not about reading -
but about gaffing a book, which was a serious treasure, none the least to a
youth, in the days before printing, & the scribes were craftsmen & artists
then, gilding the lily with beautiful work & glorious illuminations.

His - written - plaint about the state of learning in the Country rings from
& to the heart (I feel) of a reader, but whether he himself was reading
literate or not he WAS a one man walking renaissance. It was at his
instigation Gregory's 'Pastoral Care' was translated into English & put in
circulation, & also Boethius's 'Consolations of Philosophy' & the historical
apologetics of Orosius. He was also a major mover in the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle. Other, lesser people did riddles & pagan sagas & gnomic verses &
drinking songs, but this man's thrust, going by the selection of priestly
service, philosopy, history & current affairs was the upliftment of the
English, & literacy was promoted not for it's own sake but as an instrument
in the program. Thanks to that the big man of learning in Charlemagne's
Court was Alcuin his bishop, from Britain, himself a Briton he not, did he
not write a Life of Alfred, an English King?

Yrs,
Mark 

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