The young Alcuin had come to the cathedral church of York during the golden age of Archbishop Egbert and Northumbrian King Eadberht.
Egbert had been a disciple of the Venerable Bede, who had urged him to raise York to an archbishopric.
King Eadbert and his brother Egbert had overseen the reenergizing and reorganization of the English church, with an emphasis on reforming the clergy and on the tradition of learning that Bede had begun.
Egbert had been devoted to Alcuin, who thrived under his tutelage.
The York school is renowned as a center of learning in the liberal arts, literature, and science, as well as in religious matters.
Alcuin had graduated during the 750s to become a teacher.
His ascendancy to the headship of the York school, the ancestor of St Peter's School, began in 767 after Aelbert became Archbishop of York.
Alcuin around the same time became a deacon in the church.
He was never ordained as a priest and there is no real evidence that he became an actual monk, but he lived his life as one.
King Elfwaldhad had sent Alcuin to Rome in 781 to petition the Pope for official confirmation of York's status as an archbishopric and to confirm the election of the new archbishop, Eanbald I.
At some point he either met or was summoned by Charles I, who seeks to inspire the revival of education in the hope of forming one great Christian empire of all the Germanic peoples.
Alcuin's love of the church and his intellectual curiosity allows him to be reluctantly persuaded to join Charles's court.
He joins an illustrious group of scholars that Charles has gathered around him, the mainsprings of the Carolingian Renaissance: Peter of Pisa, Paulinus of Aquileia, Rado, and Abbot Fulrad.
Alcuin will later write that "the Lord was calling me to the service of King Charles."
Charles is determined to have his children educated, including his daughters, as he himself is not.
His children are taught all the arts, and his daughters are learned in the way of being a woman.
His sons take archery, horsemanship, and other outdoor activities.
Alcuin is welcomed by Charles to the Palace School in Aachen (Urbs Regale) in 782, founded by the king's ancestors as a place for the education of the royal children (mostly in manners and the ways of the court).
However, Charles wants to include the liberal arts and, most importantly, the study of the religion that he holds sacred.
Drawing inspiration from the York school, he revives the Palace School with the trivium and quadrivium disciplines, writing a codex on the trivium, while his student Hraban will write one on the quadrivium.
