Something has been said in earlier chapters of the relation of several great Churchmen towards education, towards the ancient classics, and towards the studies of their own times. Something has been said, too, in the last chapter, of Greek monastic life. The period which begins with the eighth century deserves a longer mention, inadequate though it be; for there was over a great part of Europe in the days of Charles the Great a veritable literary renaissance which broke upon the long period which men have called the dark ages with a ray of light. [Sidenote: Learning at the court of Charles the Great.] Charles the Great had all the interests of a scholar. He knew Latin well and Greek passably. He delighted to listen to the deeds of the past, or to theological treatises, when he dined, after the fashion of monks. His interest in learning centred in his interest in the teaching and services of the Church. Most reverently, we are told by his biographer, and with the utmost piety did he cultivate the Christian religion with which he had been imbued from his infancy. He was a constant church-goer, a regular worshipper at the mass. Near to his religious interest was his interest in education. A famous letter of his to the abbats of monasteries {167} throughout the Empire, written in 787, is a salient example of the close connection between learning and monasticism in his day. He urged that "letters" should be studied, students selected and taught, that all the clergy should teach children freely, and that every monastery and cathedral church should have a theological school. "Although right doing is better than right speaking," he wrote, "yet must the knowledge of what is right go before the doing of it." What he tried to do throughout his empire was a reflection of what he did in his own court. He delighted to surround himself at Aachen with learned men. Most notable among them were Paul the Deacon, the historian of the Lombards, and Alcuin the Northumbrian whom he had met in Italy and whom he made prominent among his counsellors. Charles, says Einhard, spent much time and labour in learning from Alcuin, and that not only in religion, but "in rhetoric and dialectic and especially astronomy"; and he "carefully reformed the manner of reading and singing; for he was thoroughly instructed in both, though he never read publicly himself, nor sang except in a low voice, and with the rest of the congregation." [Sidenote: Alcuin of Northumbria.]