Either in the lifetime of their royal patron or after
his death all these scholars became great dignitaries of the Church, or
ended their lives in monasteries of note; but, so long as they lived,
they served Charlemagne or his sons not only with the devotion of
faithful advisers, but also as followers proud of the master who had
known how to do them honor by making use of them.
It was without effort and by natural sympathy that Charlemagne had
inspired them with such sentiments; for he, too, really loved sciences,
literature, and such studies as were then possible, and he cultivated
them on his own account and for his own pleasure, as a sort of conquest.
It has been doubted whether he could write, and an expression of
Eginhard's might authorize such a doubt; but, according to other
evidence, and even according to the passage in Eginhard, one is inclined
to believe merely that Charlemagne strove painfully, and without much
success, to write a good hand. He had learned Latin, and he understood
Greek. He caused to be commenced, and, perhaps, himself commenced the
drawing up of the first Germanic grammar.
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