A real effort at division of labor is to be found solely in what might be called, with some elasticity of phrase, the Record Office, where notaries prepared the King’s letters, charters, and acts of immunity. At their head was an ecclesiastic, the protonotary, or chancellor. He was a dependent of the arch-chaplain, and did not have charge of the seal, yet his position was especially confidential, as he kept the archives. The King consulted the court officials, who, according to his pleasure, were gathered about him in an informal way whenever he saw fit to call them. But, besides this, we are told that Charles had always with him three of his counselors, chosen among the wisest and most eminent about him; without their advice he did nothing. To the royal household there were regularly attached a number of young men, the “discipuli,” sent there to be educated, and the “comites,” or personal retainers of the King, a continuation of a custom mentioned by Tacitus. VIII CAROLINGIAN CULTURE The Emperor’s solicitude in promoting learning has caused his reign to be spoken of as the Carolingian Renaissance. But Charles’ intellectual interests were not those of a fifteenth century humanist. He desired the revival of letters because he saw in learning a means by which the Church, which, to his mind, was the organization of the state Christianized, might overcome pagan survivals, and take the lead in civilizing the various nationalities in his realm. The clergy and the monks were ignorant--they could neither preach nor teach. The Emperor planned a kind of Christian Athens, a new community of scholars, in which learning was to be the handmaid of religion. After he had assumed the title of Emperor, he recalled how closely the glory of letters was associated with the renown of the Roman world, and he desired his own reign to be signalized by the same elements of culture.