=Condition of Education in the Eighth Century.=--In the course of the seventh and eighth centuries mediæval education met with considerable retrogression. The learning of the sixth century was disappearing, the copying of manuscripts had almost ceased, and the cathedral and monastic schools had been sadly disrupted. The secular clergy, monks, nobility, and others who might have been expected to be trained, at times seem even to have lost the art of writing, although the leading churchmen must generally have maintained their knowledge of ecclesiastical Latin and some acquaintance with the classical authors and various compilations of the seven liberal arts. Just before this time the Franks had succeeded in establishing a supremacy over the other barbarian tribes and had spread their rule through what is now France, Belgium, and Holland, and most of Western Germany. Under a dynasty of vigorous kings, they now drove back the Moslems, conquered the Lombards and Saxons, and subdued the Slavs and Bohemians, and finally Charlemagne (742-814) even planned to re-establish the Western Roman Empire under his sovereignty. This monarch greatly strengthened and centralized his dominions by a number of improvements in external administration, but, even before his recognition as emperor by the pope (800), he had realized that a genuine unity of his people could be brought about only through a much more effective and universal education. He had a keen sense of the unfortunate educational situation, and made every effort to improve it. To assist him in his endeavors, in 782 he called Alcuin (735-804) from the headship of the famous cathedral school at York (see p. 56) to be his chief adviser in education. [Sidenote: Methods and curriculum.] =Higher Education at the Palace School.=--Through this noted scholar Charlemagne proceeded to revive the cathedral, monastic, and parish schools, and to increase the importance of the ‘Palace School.’ At this latter school the great king, all his family, and many of his relatives and intellectual friends studied under the Saxon educator. Alcuin must, however, have used a more discursive and less _memoriter_ method with his adult students than the formal catechetical plan employed in instructing the youth. Among the subjects taught were grammar, including some study of the Latin poets and the writings of the Church Fathers, rhetoric, dialectic, arithmetic, astronomy, and theology, but Alcuin appears to have had but little command of the Greek learning. Charlemagne himself seems to have become proficient in Latin and other languages, but, in spite of strenuous efforts, he began too late in life to train his hand to write. [Sidenote: Capitularies to abbots and bishops.] [Sidenote: Course in the monastic, cathedral, and village schools.] [Sidenote: Free tuition.]