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Abstract
This dissertation investigates the role of education in royal administration in early Medieval France from approximately 969-1031. Part One analyzes the education students received at the cathedral school of Reims, including curriculum, underlying ideology, educational goals, and teaching methods, to demonstrate that a cathedral school education balanced a combination of classical scholarship and practical training. This system of education was built on medieval educational traditions, but was adapted, implemented, and supervised by Gerbert of Aurillac, a teacher recruited to reform and reinvigorate the school at Reims. This section also provides a prosopographical reconstruction of the student populations at Reims. Part Two of this dissertation tracks those students into their subsequent careers, and investigates the connection between a Reims education and the functioning of Capetian royal government. Reims personnel orchestrated the dynastic change of 987, secured the end of the ensuing civil war, and prosecuted the losing faction of that war. Royal events like councils and synods fit into the umbrella of state administrative service because of the cooperation between the sacred and profane spheres of activity. Ideological debates, such as that over the Peace and Truce of God, also reveal some political partisanship, awareness, and activity by Reims alumni, and reveal the way former students at Reims conceptualized the proper order of society. As a whole, my dissertation argues that the cathedral school at Reims functioned as an unofficial training ground for royal and ecclesiastical administrators, and therefore Reims personnel played a pivotal role in legitimizing and solidifying a new royal dynasty around the year 1000.
