UNIVERSITIES, S'CHOOLS, STUDENTS. 



Alcuiii and some learned foreign clerks were summoned to the court. It was 

 under their supervision that he created within the. walls of his own palace an 

 academy, to which he made a point of belonging, and at the sittings of which 

 he was sometimes present. The mode of writing, which had become illegible, 

 was remodelled ; the Latin tongue, which had been replaced by barbaric 

 idioms, resumed its place ; the ancient manuscripts, which were lying in the 

 monasteries, were revised and recopied with great care ; and thus the teach- 

 ing of sciences and letters began to flourish anew in the ecclesiastical schools. 



So it was that, long after the death of the great Emperor, the literary 

 renaissance which was attributed, to him, and which was perpetuated by the 

 legends of the time, also acquired for him the title of patron and founder of 

 the University : even to the present day the forehead of St. Charlemagne 

 remains crowned with the literary aureole conferred upon him by the grati- 

 tude of our ancestors. 



" In those days," says Nicholas Gilles, a chronicler of the fifteenth cen- 

 tury, paraphrasing a passage from the Carlovingian chronicle of the Monk 

 of St. Gall, "there arrived in France from Ireland two Scotch monks of 

 great erudition, and very saintly men. They preached and proclaimed in the 

 cities and in the fields that they had knowledge to sell, and whoso wished to 

 purchase it came to them. This' was told to the Emperor Charlemagne, who 

 had them brought before him, and asked them if it was true that they had 

 knowledge to sell, to which they replied that they had it by the grace of 

 God, and that they had come to France to lend it and to teach it to all who 

 wished to learn. The Emperor asked them what remuneration they expected, 

 and they replied that they asked for nothing more than a fitting place to 

 teach in, and subsistence for their bodies. When- the Emperor heard this he 

 was very joyful, and retained them with him until he had to set out for the 

 war. He then ordered that one of them, Clement, should remain in Paris, 

 that children of all ranks, the most intelligent that could be found, should be 

 sent to him, and provided him with proper schools to teach in, and ordered 

 that their wants should be ministered to, and gave them great privileges, 

 rights, and liberties ; and therefrom came the first institution of the body of 

 the University of Paris, which was at Rome, whither it had been transferred 

 from Athens." 



Such are the facts which were generally taken as undeniable for more than 

 eight centuries; that is to say, until the learned Etienne Pasquier (1564), 



