The Medieval Church · c. 784–796
The Letter on the Cultivation of Letters
Epistola de Litteris Colendis
Charlemagne, drafted by Alcuin · Charlemagne, c. 748 – 814
What it is
A circular to the monasteries observing that letters arriving from them are devout in sentiment and illiterate in grammar, and reasoning that if men cannot get the words right they will get the meaning wrong. Every house is to teach letters properly.
Why it lasted
The founding document of the Carolingian renaissance, and its argument is exegetical rather than cultural: scripture cannot be understood by people who cannot parse it. Nearly every classical Latin text that survives does so through the copying this letter set in motion.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
This work is in the public domain and can be read in full, free, at the archives below.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
Read next