Editing Carolingian Renaissance (section)

==Import==
[[Kenneth Clark]] was of the view that by means of the Carolingian Renaissance, Western civilization survived by the skin of its teeth.<ref>[[Kenneth Clark|Clark]], ''Civilization''.</ref> However, the use of the term ''renaissance'' to describe this period is contested, notably by [[Lynn Thorndike]],{{sfnp|Thorndike|1943}} due to the majority of changes brought about by this period being confined almost entirely to the [[clergy]], and due to the period lacking the wide-ranging social movements of the later [[Italian Renaissance]].<ref name=Scott30>{{harvp|Scott|1964|p=30}}.</ref> Instead of being a rebirth of new cultural movements, the period was more an attempt to recreate the previous culture of the [[Roman Empire]].{{sfnp|Cantor|1993|p=190}} The Carolingian Renaissance in retrospect also has some of the character of a false dawn, in that its cultural gains were largely dissipated within a couple of generations, a perception voiced by [[Walahfrid Strabo]] (died 849), in his introduction to [[Einhard]]'s ''Life of Charlemagne'',{{refn|group=n|Einhard's use of the Roman historian [[Suetonius]] as a model for the new genre of [[biography]] is itself a marker for the Carolingian Renaissance.{{sfnp|Innes|1997}}}} summing up the generation of renewal:
<blockquote>Charlemagne was able to offer the cultureless and, I might say, almost completely unenlightened territory of the realm which God had entrusted to him, a new enthusiasm for all human knowledge. In its earlier state of barbarousness, his kingdom had been hardly touched at all by any such zeal, but now it opened its eyes to God's illumination. In our own time the thirst for knowledge is disappearing again: the light of wisdom is less and less sought after and is now becoming rare again in most men's minds.<ref>[[Lewis Thorpe]], tr., Einhard and Notker the Stammerer, ''Two Lives of Charlemagne'', 1969:49f.</ref></blockquote>