As Alcuin is commonly regarded as the most important educator of the first half of the Middle Ages, and as it was through Alcuin that England influenced continental education, a slight digression from the main purpose of this chapter, for the sake of indicating the importance of Alcuin, may be allowed. The only education which Alcuin received was obtained at the bishop's school at York, and a consideration of this fact should assist us in realising that these schools were in practice the universities of the period. The reputation which Alcuin gained must have spread beyond the borders of this country, because Charles the Great, who had determined upon a scheme of educational reform in the dominions ruled by him, invited Alcuin to come to his court to occupy a position analogous to that of a Minister of Education of modern days. This position Alcuin occupied for fourteen years, and during that period the famous capitularies of 787, 789, and 802 were issued.[66] The effect of the reforms carried out by Alcuin was, that scholars were attracted from all parts of Europe to the court of Charles the Great, the Palace Schools were developed and invigorated, learning was promoted among the clergy, and the activities of the monastic and episcopal schools were stimulated. It has been suggested that the reforms attributed to Alcuin owed little to his individual genius, but were based entirely upon the practice he found in operation in York.[67] If this is so, then the educational facilities provided in this country in the eighth century must have been of much greater importance than is commonly conceived. The available evidence is, however, too scanty for any definite statements to be made on the subject. Alcuin was a voluminous writer, and his works bear further witness to the intellectual activity of his day. They include epistles, poems, exegetical works, dogmatic writings, liturgical writings, biographical writings, studies, and dialogues.[68] His educational writings include works _On Grammar_, _On Orthography_, _On Rhetoric_, _On Dialectic_, etc. They are written in the characteristic Anglo-Saxon dialogue form. In his _On Grammar_, Alcuin shows that true happiness is to be found in the things peculiar to the soul itself rather than in those things which are alien to it; of these things, "wisdom is the chief adornment." Progress in wisdom was to be obtained, so far as secular knowledge was concerned, by the "seven ascents of theoretical discipline," _i.e._ the trivium and the quadrivium.