If the hope of gain stimulated those outside to follow it as a trade, more spiritual motives were laid before the children of the cloister. As a work of charity done for the love of God and man, it was promised an eternal reward, and the persevering toils of a long life were, it was thought, capable of being offered as an acceptable work of penance. Meanwhile, the spirit of improvement was diffusing itself from the court through the whole country. The Capitulars of Charlemagne--so called because arranged in heads, or chapters--included amongst various laws for the regulation of the civil government others which regarded the encouragement of learning. A circular letter addressed by Charlemagne on his return from Rome in 787 to all the bishops and abbots of the kingdom, after thanking them for their letters and pious prayers, proceeded to criticise the grammar in which these had been expressed. “They who endeavour to please God by a good life,” writes the king, “should not neglect to please Him by correct phraseology, and it is well that monasteries and episcopal seminaries should pay attention to literature as well as to the practices of religion. It is better indeed to lead a good life than to become learned; nevertheless knowledge precedes action. Each one, then, should understand what he is about, and the mind better comprehends its duty when the tongue in praising God is free from mistakes of language.” The writer then goes on to notice that the excellent sentiments of his clergy had been expressed in a rude and uncouth style; they had been inspired by true devotion, but the tongue had failed for want of culture. “But if errors in words are dangerous, much more so are errors in their signification. We exhort you therefore that you fail not to cultivate learning with the humble intention of pleasing God, so as more surely to penetrate the mysteries of the Holy Scriptures. We wish, in short, to see you what the soldiers of Christ ought to be--devout in heart, learned in intercourse with the world, chaste in life, and scholars in conversation--so that all who approach you may be as much enlightened by your wisdom as they are edified by your holy life.” This was not allowed to remain an empty recommendation; it was followed by ordinances for reviving the old monastic and cathedral schools, and for founding other public schools, the establishment of which forms the most important feature in Charlemagne’s revival of learning. In the Benedictine monasteries two kinds of schools had always existed, or been supposed to exist--the greater and the less. In the minor schools, according to Trithemius, were taught “the Catholic faith and prayers, grammar, church music, the psalter, and the _Computum_, or method of calculating Easter,” while in the major schools the liberal sciences were also taught. In the Capitular of Aix-la-Chapelle, published in 789, Charlemagne required that minor schools should be attached to all monasteries and cathedral churches