Intellectual life in this period is often given labels which relate to other politico-cultural events and phenomena: the post-Carolingian or pre-Gregorian age. The Carolingian renaissance largely ended Germanic oral tradition and popular culture, and created a need for a written culture based on manuscripts. At the end of the century Æthelwold's pupil Ælfric, who became abbot of Eynsham, represented the highest pinnacle of Benedictine reform and Anglo-Saxon literature. During the Carolingian period schools and intellectual life ran on parallel paths, and schools were equated with culture; even imperial culture under Charlemagne was conceived of as a school. The intellectual centre of Europe still lay in France, Burgundy and Lotharingia, where Carolingian culture had developed most fully. This chapter referres a number of Anglo-Saxon hagiographies and shows what might be termed missionary writings from the eastern frontier of Christianity. Intellectual production during the whole century was notably historiographic.