103 Theodulf, Haimo, and Jewish Traditions of Biblical Learning: Exploring Carolingian Culture’s Lost Spanish Heritage Johannes Heil When Charlemagne, exhausted after years of struggle and painful defeats in Saxony and Spain, undertook a sharp turn in his policy shortly before 780 and, following the example of King Josiah, decided to combine the efforts for military and political expansion with a program for spiritual and ecclesiastical reform 1 , he initiated what modern scholars have called the “Carolingian Renaissance” (or, better, the “Carolingian Reform”), a period of impressive cultural productivity which contributed to the emergence of European medieval and modern culture. Yet there were almost no resources to mobilize from the midst of his empire for such an ambitious, unparalleled undertaking. Ecclesiastical structures existed in Gaul from the third century AD and in the Germanic lands east of the Rhine from the the fifth century onwards. However, almost any written record of teaching and learning is lacking up to the eighth century, not only in the lands east of the Rhine, but in Gaul as well, with the notable exceptions of 1 2 Kings 22-23:30, as pointed out in John J. Contreni, “‘By Lions, Bishops are Meant; by Wolves, Priests’: History, Exegesis, and the Carolingian church in Haimo of Auxerre's Commentary on Ezechiel,” Francia 29 (2002), 29-56. For overviews, see Pierre Riché, Écoles et enseignement dans le Haut Moyen Age, 2 nd ed. (Paris, 1989); Rosamond McKitterick, The Frankish Church and the Carolingian Reforms, 789-895 (London, 1977); Rosamond McKitterick, ed., Carolingian culture: emulation and innovation (Cambridge, 1994); Ulrich Nonn, “Zur Vorgeschichte der Bildungsreform Karls des Großen,” in Karl der Grosse und sein Nachwirken. 1200 Jahre Kultur und Wissenschaft in Europa, vol. I: Wissen und Weltbild, ed. Paul Leo Butzer et al. (Turnhout, 1997), 63-77; Mayke de Jong and Ian Wood, in Rosamond McKitterick, ed., The Early Middle Ages, Short Oxford History of Europe (Oxford, 2001), 131ff., 181ff.