Up to the time of Charlemagne there appears to have been so little facility in writing and so few scribes were available, that government records were not kept even at the Courts. The schools established by Alcuin at Tours, under the direction of Charlemagne, were in fact the first schools for writers which had existed in Western Europe for centuries. One of the earlier applications made of the knowledge gained in the imperial schools was for the critical analysis of certain historical documents which had heretofore been accepted as final authorities. In the earlier centuries of the Middle Ages, anything that was in writing appears to have been accepted as necessarily trustworthy and valuable, very much as in the earlier times of printing the fact that a statement was in print caused it to be accepted as something not to be contradicted. The critical faculty, combined with the scholarly knowledge necessary and properly applied, was, however, of slow growth, and centuries must still have passed before, in this work of differentiating the value of documents, the authority of scholars secured its full recognition. After this work of Alcuin began, that is to say, after the beginning of the ninth century, it became the rule of each properly organised monastery to include, in addition to the _scriptorium_, an _armarium_, or writing-chamber, which was utilised as a class-room for instruction in writing and in Latin. In a letter of Canonicus Geoffrey, of St.-Barbe-en-Auge, dated 1170, occurs the expression, _Claustrum sine armario est quasi castrum sine armamentario_,[154] (a monastery without a writing-chamber is like a camp without a storehouse of munitions or an armory.) The Capitular of Charlemagne, issued in the year 789, addressed itself to the correction of the ignorance and carelessness of the monks, and to the necessity of preserving a standard of correctness for the work of transcribing holy writings. It contains the phrase: _Et pueros vestros non sinite eos vel legendo vel scribendo corrumpere. Et si opus est evangelium, psalterium et missale scribere, perfectæ ætatis homines scribant cum omni diligentia._ (Do not permit your pupils, either in reading or writing, to garble the text;--and when you are preparing copies of the gospel, the psalter, or the missal, see that the work is confided to men of mature age, who will write with due care.) The following lines were written by Alcuin as an injunction to pious scribes: AD MUSÆUM LIBROS SCRIBENTIUM. _Hic sedeant sacræ scribentes famina legis, Nec non sanctorum dicta sacrata patrum. His interserere caveant sua frivola verbis, Frivola ne propter erret et ipsa manus, Correctosque sibi quærant studiose libellos, Tramite quo recto penna volantis eat. Per cola distinguant proprios et commata sensus. Et punctos ponant ordine quosque suo, Ne vel falsa legat taceat vel forte repente, Ante pios fratres lector in ecclesia._ * * * * *