It was Charlemagne's ideal that throughout his entire dominion opportunity should be open to all to obtain at least an elementary education and to carry their studies as much farther as they liked. To this end a regular system of schools was planned, beginning with the village school, in charge of the parish priest for the most elementary studies, and leading up through monastic and cathedral schools to the School of the Palace. In the intermediate stages, corresponding to our high schools and academies to-day, the subjects studied were essentially the same as those which received attention in the Scola Palatina. They were divided into two groups: (1) the _trivium_, including grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic (or philosophy), and (2) the _quadrivium_, including geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music. The system thus planned was never fully put in operation throughout Frankland, for after Charlemagne's death the work which he had so well begun was seriously interfered with by the falling off in intellectual aggressiveness of the sovereigns, by civil war, and by the ravages of the Hungarian and Norse invaders [see p. 163]. A capitulary of Louis the Pious in 817, for example, forbade the continuance of secular education in monastic schools. Still, much of what had been done remained, and never thereafter did learning among the Frankish people fall to quite so low a stage as it had passed through in the sixth and seventh centuries. Charlemagne's interest in education may be studied best of all in his capitularies. In the extract below we have the so-called letter _De Litteris Colendis_, written some time between 780 and 800, which, though addressed personally to Abbot Baugulf, of the monastery of Fulda, was in reality a capitulary establishing certain regulations regarding education in connection with the work of the monks. To the Church was intrusted the task of raising the level of intelligence among the masses, and the clergy were admonished to bring together the children of both freemen and serfs in schools in which they might be trained, even as the sons of the nobles were trained at the royal court. Source--Text in _Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Leges_ (Boretius ed.), Vol. I., No. 29, pp. 78-79. Adapted from translation by Dana C. Munro in _Univ. of Pa. Translations and Reprints_, Vol. VI., No. 5, pp. 12-14. Charles, by the grace of God, king of the Franks and Lombards and Patrician of the Romans.[193] To Abbot Baugulf, and to all the congregation--also to the faithful placed under your care--we have sent loving greetings by our ambassadors in the name of all-powerful God. [Sidenote: Men of the Church charged with the work of education] [Sidenote: Even the clergy often unable to speak and write correctly]