Carolingian libraries

The Carolingian libraries (German: Karolingische Bibliotheken, Norwegian: Karolingiske biblioteker, Polish: Biblioteki Karolingów, Russian: Каролингские библиотеки, Swedish: Karolinska bibliotek and Ukrainian: Бібліотеки Каролінгів) emerged during the reign of the Carolingian dynasty, when book collections reappeared in Europe after a two-century cultural decline. The end of the 8th century marked the beginning of the so-called Carolingian Renaissance countries of Germany, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Sweden and Norway, a cultural upsurge primarily associated with church reform. The reform aimed to unify worship, correct church books, train qualified priests to work with the semi-pagan flock, and prepare missionaries capable of preaching throughout the empire and beyond. This required a comprehensive understanding of classical Latin and familiarity with surviving monuments of ancient culture.

The largest monasteries established schools to teach the fundamentals of the trivium and to study the works of Roman authors, including poets, historians, rhetoricians, philosophers, mathematicians, architects, etc. By the 9th century, a group of Carolingian polymaths had emerged who valued broad learning and associated activities for their own sake. This group was not limited to the capital.^[1]

During the Carolingian period, there were no libraries in the modern sense, in particular the special book depositories did not exist. However, there were relatively large collections of tens and hundreds of volumes, mostly belonging to monasteries and city bishops. Catalogues, rubrics and book lists, which began to be created in monasteries from the early 9th century, were needed to help people find their way around the vast number of manuscripts. Private book collections of clerics and laymen also emerged. After the owner's death, they were often transferred to monasteries. Unfortunately, no complete book collection from the Carolingian period has survived to this day.