So there was no break politically or socially between the Carolingian Empire and its antecedents, which had made it possible. Likewise there was no discontinuity spiritually and intellectually between the earlier time and that epoch which begins with Charlemagne’s first endeavours to restore knowledge, and extends through the ninth and, if one will, even the tenth century.[244] Western Europe (except Scandinavia) had become nominally Christian, and had been made acquainted with Latin education to the extent indicated in the preceding chapter, the purpose of which was to tell how Christianity and the antique culture were brought to the northern peoples. The present chapter, on the other hand, seeks to describe how the eighth and ninth centuries proceeded to learn and consider and react upon this newly introduced Christianity and antique culture, out of which the spiritual destinies of the Middle Ages were to be forged. The task of Carolingian scholars was to learn what had been brought to them. They scarcely excelled even the later intermediaries through whom this knowledge had been transmitted. One need not look among them for better scholarship than was possessed by Bede, who died in 735, the birth year of Alcuin who drew so much from him, and was to be the chief luminary of the palace school of Charlemagne. Undoubtedly, Charlemagne’s exertions caused a revival of sacred and profane studies through the region of the present France and Rhenish Germany. His primary motive was the purification and extension of Catholic Christianity. Here Charles Martell and Pippin (with his brother Carloman) had done much, as their support of Boniface bears witness to. But Charlemagne’s efforts went beyond those of his predecessors. More clearly than they he understood the need of education, and he was himself intensely interested in knowledge. Hence his endeavours, primarily to uplift the Faith, brought a revival of learning and a literary productivity, consisting mostly in reproduction or rearrangement of old material, doctrinal or profane.[245]