He taught grammar, rhetoric, dialectic and the elements of geometry, astronomy and music (see Seven Liberal Arts), and his success as a teacher of these branches seems to have been generally acknowledged by all the courtiers as well as by his royal patron.
Einhard's biography of Charlemagne mentions that the emperor, the princes and princesses and all the royal household formed a kind of higher school at the palace in order to learn these fundamentals from Alcuin.
In 787 he issued the famous capitulary which has been styled the "Charter of Modern Thought", addressing himself to the bishops and abbots of the empire, informing them that he "has judged it to be of utility that, in their bishoprics and monasteries committed by Christ's favour to his charge, care should be taken that there should not only be a regular manner of life, but also the study of letters, each to teach and learn them according to his ability and the Divine assistance".
While still a young monk at Fulda, Rhabanus, learning of the fame of Alcuin, begged to be sent to Tours, where he listened a year to the aged teacher and imbibed some of his zeal for the study of the classics and the cultivation of the sciences.
Later, as Archbishop of Mainz, Rhabanus continued to sustain the programme of the Carolingian revival, and by his efforts for the improvement of popular preaching, and by his advocacy of the use of the vernacular tongue, earned the title of the "Teacher of Germany".
His influence may be traced beyond the territory which belonged to the monastery of Fulda; to him and to his educational activity is due the revival of learning in the schools of Solenhofen, Celle, Hirsfeld, Petersburg and Hirschau, and even Reichenau and St. Gall.
In this he offers a striking contrast, with Lupus Servatus, a disciple of Rhabanus, who, as Abbot of Ferrières, early in the ninth century and by that ahead of his time, encouraged and promoted the study of the pagan classics.
Through the influence of Alcuin, Theodulf, Lupus and others, the Carolingian revival spread to Reims, Auxerre, Laon and Chartres, where the foundations of scholastic theology and philosophy were already laid.
After Alcuin left the court of Charlemagne, one of these monks Clement the Irishman (Clemens Scotus) succeeded him as master of the palace school, and that he had pupils sent to him even from the monastery of Fulda.
Under him Elias taught at Laon, Dunchad at Reims, Israel at Auxerre, and the greatest of all the Irish scholars, Johannes Scotus Eriugena, was head of the palace school.
The course of studies in the town and village schools (per villas et viccos) comprised at least the elements of Christian Doctrine, plainsong, the rudiments of grammar, and perhaps, where the influence of St. Benedict's rule was still felt, some kind of manual training.
The text-book in these subjects was, wherever the Irish teaching prevailed, Martianus Capella, "De Nuptiis Mercurii et philologiae"; elsewhere, as in the schools taught by Alcuin, the teacher compiled treatises on grammar, etc.
The master, scholasticus or archischolus (earlier capiscola), had at his command, besides his assistants, a proscholus or prefect of discipline, whose duty it was (in the monastic school of Fulda, at least) to teach the children "how to walk, how to bow to strangers, how to behave in the presence of superiors".