Alcuin

Alcuin of York
A Carolingian manuscript, c. 831. Rabanus Maurus (left), with Alcuin (middle), dedicating his work to Archbishop Otgar of Mainz (right) A Carolingian manuscript, c. 831. Rabanus Maurus (left), with Alcuin (middle), dedicating his work to Archbishop Otgar of Mainz (right)
Born	c. 735 York, Northumbria
Died	19 May 804 (aged around 69) Tours, Francia
Occupation	Deacon of the Catholic Church
Academic background
Influences	Ecgbert of York
Academic work
Era	Medieval philosophy Carolingian Renaissance
Main interests	Mathematics Philosophy Christian theology Poetry
Notable works	Propositiones ad Acuendos Juvenes Quaestiones in Genesim

Alcuin of York (/ˈælkwɪn/; Latin: Flaccus Albinus Alcuinus; c. 735 – 19 May 804), also called Ealhwine, Alhwin, or Alchoin, was an Anglo-Saxon scholar, clergyman, poet, and teacher from York, Northumbria, who was active in the Carolingian Empire in the 8th century. He was born around 735 and became the student of Archbishop Ecgbert at York. At the invitation of Charlemagne, he became a leading scholar and teacher at the Carolingian court, where he remained a figure in the 780s and 790s. Before that, he was also a court chancellor in Aachen. "The most learned man anywhere to be found", according to Einhard's Life of Charlemagne (c. 817–833), he is considered among the most important intellectual architects of the Carolingian Renaissance. Among his pupils were many of the dominant intellectuals of the Carolingian era.

Alcuin wrote many theological and dogmatic treatises, as well as a few grammatical works and a number of poems. In 796, he was made abbot of Marmoutier Abbey, in Tours, where he worked on perfecting the Carolingian minuscule script. He remained there until his death.

Biography

Background

Alcuin was born in Northumbria, presumably sometime in the 730s. Virtually nothing is known of his parents, family background, or origin. In common hagiographical fashion, the Vita Alcuini asserts that Alcuin was of "noble English stock", and this statement has usually been accepted by scholars. Alcuin's own work only mentions such collateral kinsmen as Wilgils of Ripon, father of the missionary saint Willibrord; and Beornrad (also spelled Beornred), abbot of Echternach and bishop of Sens. Willibrord, Alcuin and Beornrad were all related by blood.

In his Life of St Willibrord, Alcuin writes that Wilgils, called a Pater familias, had founded an oratory and church at the mouth of the Humber, which had fallen into Alcuin's possession by inheritance. Because in early Anglo-Latin writing paterfamilias ("head of a family, householder") usually referred to a ceorl ("churl"), Donald A. Bullough suggests that Alcuin's family was of cierlisc ("churlish") status: i.e., free but subordinate to a noble lord, and that Alcuin and other members of his family rose to prominence through beneficial connections with the aristocracy. If so, Alcuin's origins may lie in the southern part of what was formerly known as Deira.

York

The young Alcuin came to the cathedral church of York during the golden age of Archbishop Ecgbert and his brother, the Northumbrian King Eadberht. Ecgbert had been a disciple of the Venerable Bede, who urged him to raise York to an archbishopric. King Eadberht and Archbishop Ecgbert oversaw the re-energising and reorganisation of the English church, with an emphasis on reforming the clergy and on the tradition of learning that Bede had begun. Ecgbert was devoted to Alcuin, who thrived under his tutelage.

The York school was renowned as a centre of learning in the liberal arts, literature, and science, as well as in religious matters. From here, Alcuin drew inspiration for the school he would lead at the Frankish court. He revived the school with the trivium and quadrivium disciplines, writing a codex on the trivium, while his student Hrabanus wrote one on the quadrivium.

Alcuin graduated to become a teacher during the 750s. His ascendancy to the headship of the York school, the ancestor of St Peter's School, began after Æthelbert of York became Archbishop of York in 767. Around the same time, Alcuin became a deacon in the church. He was never ordained a priest. Though no real evidence shows that he took monastic vows, he lived as if he had.

In 781, King Ælfwald I of Northumbria sent Alcuin to Rome 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. On his way home, he met Charlemagne (whom he had met once before), this time in the Italian city of Parma.

Charlemagne

Alcuin's intellectual curiosity allowed him to be reluctantly persuaded to join Charlemagne's court. He joined an illustrious group of scholars whom Charlemagne had gathered around him, the mainsprings of the Carolingian Renaissance: Peter of Pisa, Paulinus II of Aquileia, Rado, and Abbot Saint Fulrad. Alcuin would later write, "the Lord was calling me to the service of King Charles".

Alcuin became master of the Palace School of Charlemagne in Aachen (Urbs Regale) in 782. It had been 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, Charlemagne wanted to include the liberal arts, and most importantly, the study of religion. From 782 to 790, Alcuin taught Charlemagne himself, his sons Pepin and Louis, as well as young men sent to be educated at court, and the young clerics attached to the palace chapel. Bringing with him from York his assistants Pyttel, Sigewulf, and Joseph, Alcuin revolutionised the educational standards of the Palace School, introducing Charlemagne to the liberal arts and creating a personalised atmosphere of scholarship and learning, to the extent that the institution came to be known as the "school of Master Albinus".

In this role as adviser, he took issue with the emperor's policy of forcing pagans to be baptised on pain of death, arguing, "Faith is a free act of the will, not a forced act. We must appeal to the conscience, not compel it by violence. You can force people to be baptised, but you cannot force them to believe". His arguments seem to have prevailed – Charlemagne abolished the death penalty for paganism in 797.

Charlemagne gathered the best men of every land in his court and became far more than just the king at the centre. It seems that he made many of these men his closest friends and counsellors. They referred to him as "David", a reference to the Biblical king David. Alcuin soon found himself on intimate terms with Charlemagne and the other men at court, where pupils and masters were known by affectionate and jesting nicknames. Alcuin himself was known as 'Albinus' or 'Flaccus'. While at Aachen, Alcuin bestowed pet names upon his pupils – derived mainly from Virgil's Eclogues. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, "He loved Charlemagne and enjoyed the king's esteem, but his letters reveal that his fear of him was as great as his love."

After the death of Pope Adrian I, Alcuin was commissioned by Charlemagne to compose an epitaph for Adrian. The epitaph was inscribed on black stone quarried at Aachen and carried to Rome where it was set over Adrian's tomb in the south transept of St. Peter's Basilica just before Charlemagne's coronation in the basilica on Christmas Day 800.

Return to Northumbria and back to Francia

In 790, Alcuin returned from the court of Charlemagne to England, to which he had remained attached. He dwelt there for some time, but Charlemagne then invited him back to help in the fight against the Adoptionist heresy, which was at that time making great progress in Toledo, the old capital of the Visigoths and still a major city for the Christians under Islamic rule in Spain. He is believed to have had contacts with Beatus of Liébana, from the Kingdom of Asturias, who fought against Adoptionism. At the Council of Frankfurt in 794, Alcuin upheld the orthodox doctrine against the views expressed by Felix of Urgel, an heresiarch according to the Catholic Encyclopedia. Having failed during his stay in Northumbria to influence King Æthelred I in the conduct of his reign, Alcuin never returned home.

He was back at Charlemagne's court by at least mid-792, writing a series of letters to Æthelred, to Hygbald, Bishop of Lindisfarne, and to Æthelhard, Archbishop of Canterbury in the succeeding months, dealing with the Viking attack on Lindisfarne in July 793. These letters and Alcuin's poem on the subject, "De clade Lindisfarnensis monasterii", provide the only significant contemporary account of these events. In his description of the Viking attack, he wrote: "Never before has such terror appeared in Britain. Behold the church of St Cuthbert, splattered with the blood of God's priests, robbed of its ornaments."

Tours and death

In 796, Alcuin was in his 60s. He hoped to be free from court duties and upon the death of Abbot Itherius of Saint Martin at Tours, Charlemagne put Marmoutier Abbey into Alcuin's care, with the understanding that he should be available if the king ever needed his counsel. There, he encouraged the work of the monks on the beautiful Carolingian minuscule script, ancestor of modern Roman typefaces using a mixture of upper- and lower-case letters. Latin paleography in the 8th century leaves little room for a single origin of the script, and sources contradict his importance as no proof has been found of his direct involvement in the creation of the script. Carolingian minuscule was already in use before Alcuin arrived in Francia. Most likely he was responsible for copying and preserving the script while at the same time restoring the purity of the form.

Alcuin died on 19 May 804, some 10 years before the emperor, and was buried at St. Martin's Church under an epitaph that partly read:

Dust, worms, and ashes now...
Alcuin my name, wisdom I always loved,
Pray, reader, for my soul.

The majority of details on Alcuin's life come from his letters and poems. Also, autobiographical sections are in Alcuin's poem on York and in the Vita Alcuini, a hagiography written for him at Ferrières in the 820s, possibly based in part on the memories of Sigwulf, one of Alcuin's pupils.

Scholarly and literary output

Mathematician

The collection of mathematical and logical word problems entitled Propositiones ad acuendos juvenes ("Problems to Sharpen Youths") is sometimes attributed to Alcuin. In a 799 letter to Charlemagne, the scholar claimed to have sent "certain figures of arithmetic for the joy of cleverness", which some scholars have identified with the Propositiones.

The text contains about 53 mathematical word problems (with solutions), in no particular pedagogical order. Among the most famous of these problems are: four that involve river crossings, including the problem of three anxious brothers, each of whom has an unmarried sister whom he cannot leave alone with either of the other men lest she be defiled (Problem 17); the problem of the wolf, goat, and cabbage (Problem 18); and the problem of "the two adults and two children where the children weigh half as much as the adults" (Problem 19). Alcuin's sequence is the solution to one of the problems of that book.

Theologian

Alcuin's work as a theologian was more concerned with conservation than originality. His nine scriptural commentaries—on Genesis, the Psalms, the Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, Hebrew Names, the Gospel of John, the Epistles to Titus, Philemon, and the Hebrews, The Sayings of St. Paul, and the Apocalypse—consist mostly of sentences taken from the Church Fathers, the apparent motive being to collect into convenient form the observations on the more important scriptural passages of the best commentators who had preceded him. Alcuin also engaged in textual criticism of the Vulgate, which had many variant readings in his time. Four Bibles are shown by the dedicatory poems affixed to them to have been prepared by him, or under his direction at Tours, probably during the years 799–801. Whatever the exact changes made by Alcuin in the Bible text may have been, the known disposition of the man—that he intended to recover Jerome's original text as much as possible—no less than the limits of the scholarship of his time, makes it certain that these changes were not of a far-reaching kind.

Of the three brief moral treatises Alcuin has left us, two, De virtutibus et vitiis, and De animae ratione, are largely abridgments of the writing of Augustine on the same subjects, while the third, "On the Confession of Sins," is a concise exposition of the nature of confession, addressed to a congregation of monks. Closely allied to his moral writings in spirit and purpose are his sketches of the lives of saints Martin of Tours, Vedast, Richarius, and Willibrord, the last being a biography of considerable length.

Alcuin opposed Spanish Adoptionism, a Christological viewpoint advanced by bishops Felix of Urgell and Elipandus of Toledo.

Liturgist

Besides his fame as an educator and a theologian, Alcuin was also the principal agent of the liturgical reform accomplished under the authority of Charlemagne. Upon Charlemagne's accession the Gallican Rite prevailed in France, but it was so modified by local customs and traditions as to constitute a serious obstacle to complete ecclesiastical unity. It was the purpose of the king to substitute the Roman Rite in place of the Gallican, or at least to bring about such a revision of the latter as to make it substantially one with the Roman. The strong leaning of Alcuin towards Roman traditions, combined with his conservative character and the universal authority of his name, qualified him for the accomplishment of a change which the royal authority in itself was powerless to effect.

The first of Alcuin's liturgical works appears to have been a homilary, or collection of sermons in Latin for use by priests. Another liturgical work of Alcuin consists of a collection of readings to be read on Sundays and holy days throughout the year, the Comes ab Albino ex Caroli imp. praecepto emendatus. As, previous to his time, the portions of Scripture to be read at Mass were often merely indicated on the margins of the Bibles used, the Comes commended itself by its convenience, and as he followed Roman usage here also, the result was another advance in the way of conformity to the Roman liturgy. The work of Alcuin which had the greatest and most lasting influence in this direction, however, was the missal which he compiled; prescribed as the official liturgical book of the Frankish church, Alcuin's missal soon came to be commonly used throughout Europe and was largely instrumental in bringing about uniformity in respect to the liturgy of the Mass in the whole Latin Church. Other liturgical productions of Alcuin were a collection of votive Masses drawn up for the monks of Fulda, a treatise called De psalmorum usu, a breviary for laymen, and a brief explanation of the ceremonies of baptism.

Literary influence

Alcuin made the abbey school into a model of excellence and students flocked to it. He had many manuscripts copied using outstandingly beautiful calligraphy, the Carolingian minuscule based on round and legible uncial letters. He wrote many letters to his English friends, to Arno, bishop of Salzburg and above all to Charlemagne. These letters (of which 311 are extant) are filled mainly with pious meditations, but they form an important source of information as to the literary and social conditions of the time and are the most reliable authority for the history of humanism during the Carolingian age. Alcuin trained the numerous monks of the abbey in piety, and in the midst of these pursuits, he died.

Alcuin is the most prominent figure of the Carolingian Renaissance, in which three main periods have been distinguished: in the first of these, up to the arrival of Alcuin at the court, the Italians occupy a central place; in the second, Alcuin and the English are dominant; in the third (from 804), the influence of Theodulf of Orléans is preponderant.

Alcuin also developed manuals used in his educational work – a grammar and works on rhetoric and dialectics. These are written in the form of a dialogue, and in two of them the interlocutors are Charlemagne and Alcuin. He wrote several theological treatises: a De fide Trinitatis, and commentaries on the Bible. Alcuin is credited with inventing the first known question mark, though it did not resemble the modern symbol.

Alcuin transmitted to the Franks the knowledge of Latin culture, which had existed in Anglo-Saxon England. A number of his works still exist. Besides some graceful epistles in the style of Venantius Fortunatus, he wrote some long poems, and notably he is the author of a history (in verse) of the church at York, Versus de patribus, regibus et sanctis Eboracensis ecclesiae. At the same time, he is noted for making one of the only explicit comments on Old English poetry surviving from the early Middle Ages, in a letter to one Speratus, the bishop of an unnamed English see (possibly Unwona of Leicester): "verba Dei legantur in sacerdotali convivio: ibi decet lectorem audiri, non citharistam; sermones patrum, non carmina gentilium. Quid Hinieldus cum Christo?" ("Let God's words be read at the episcopal dinner-table. It is right that a reader should be heard, not a harpist, patristic discourse, not pagan song. What has Ingeld to do with Christ?").

Possible homoeroticism

Some historians, including the queer historian John Boswell, have identified what they consider to be a homoerotic or homosexual subtext in Alcuin's writings. Others, like Allen Frantzen, have disputed this characterisation of his work; Frantzen identifies Alcuin's language with that of medieval Christian amicitia or friendship. Douglas Dales and Rowan Williams say "the use of language drawn [by Alcuin] from the Song of Songs transforms apparently erotic language into something within Christian friendship – 'an ordained affection'". According to David Clark, passages in some of Alcuin's writings can be seen to display homosocial desire, even possibly homoerotic imagery, though he argues that it is not possible to necessarily determine whether they were the result of an outward expression of erotic feelings on the part of Alcuin.

Legacy

Alcuin is honoured in the Church of England and in the Episcopal Church on 20 May, the first available day after the day of his death (as Dunstan is celebrated on 19 May).

Alcuin is also venerated as a Saint by Eastern Orthodox Christians in the British Isles and Ireland. The Orthodox Fellowship of John the Baptist publishes a liturgical calendar that is widely used in that region, and this calendar includes a feast for St Alcuin.

Alcuin College, one of the colleges of the University of York, is named after him. In January 2020, Alcuin was the subject of the BBC Radio 4 programme In Our Time. In December 2024, Alcuin was prominently featured in Part 2 of a 3-part podcast series on Charlemagne in The Rest Is History.

At the entrance of St. Michael's Catholic Cemetery, a private cemetery in Hong Kong, two lines of his poem "Ashes and Dust" are demonstrated as Duilian; which is "You are now, traveller, what I once was, and what I am now you will one day become."

Selected works

For a complete census of Alcuin's works, see Marie-Hélène Jullien and Françoise Perelman, eds., Clavis scriptorum latinorum medii aevi: Auctores Galliae 735–987, Tomus II – Alcuinus, Turnhout, Brepols, 1999.

Poetry

• Carmina, ed. Ernst Dümmler, MGH Poetae Latini aevi Carolini I, Berlin, Weidmann, 1881, 160–351.
  • Godman, Peter, trad., Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance, Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1985, 118–149.
  • Stella, Francesco, trad., comm., La poesia carolingia, Firenze: Le Lettere, 1995, pp. 94–96, 152–161, 266–267, 302–307, 364–371, 399–404, 455–457, 474–477, 503–507.
  • Isbell, Harold, trad; The Last Poets of Imperial Rome, Baltimore, Penguin, 1971.
• Poem on York, Versus de patribus, regibus et sanctis Euboricensis ecclesiae, ed. and trad. Peter Godman, The Bishops, Kings, and Saints of York, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1982.
• De clade Lindisfarnensis monasterii, "On the destruction of the monastery of Lindisfarne" (Carmen 9, ed. Dümmler, pp. 229–235).

Letters

Of Alcuin's letters, over 310 have survived:

• Epistolae, ed. Ernst Dümmler, MGH, Epistolae, IV.2, Berlin, Weidmann, 1895, 1–493;
• Jaffé, Philipp, Ernst Dümmler, and W. Wattenbach, eds. Monumenta Alcuiniana, Berlin, Weidmann, 1873, 132–897;
• Chase, Colin, ed. Two Alcuin Letter-books, Toronto, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1975;
• Allott, Stephen, trad. Alcuin of York, c. AD 732 to 804 – His life and letters, York, William Sessions, 1974;
• Sturgeon, Thomas G., trad. The Letters of Alcuin – Part One, the Aachen Period (762–796). Harvard University PhD thesis, 1953.

Didactic works

• Ars grammatica. PL 101, 854–902;
• De orthographia, ed. H. Keil, Grammatici Latini VII, 1880, 295–312; ed. Sandra Bruni, Alcuino de orthographia, Florence, SISMEL, 1997;
• De dialectica, PL 101, 950–976;
• Disputatio regalis et nobilissimi juvenis Pippini cum Albino scholastico, "Dialogue of Pepin, the Most Noble and Royal Youth, with the Teacher Albinus", ed. L. W. Daly and W. Suchier, Altercatio Hadriani Augusti et Epicteti Philosophi, Urbana, IL, University of Illinois Press, 1939, 134–146; ed. Wilhelm Wilmanns, "Disputatio regalis et nobilissimi juvenis Pippini cum Albino scholastic", Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum, 14 (1869), 530–555, 562.
• Disputatio de rhetorica et de virtutibus sapientissimi regis Carli et Albini magistri, ed. and trad. Wilbur Samuel Howell, The Rhetoric of Alcuin and Charlemagne, New York, Russell and Russell, 1965 (1941); ed. C. Halm, Rhetorici Latini Minores, Leipzig, Teubner, 1863, 523–550;
• "De virtutibus et vitiis moral treatise (dedicated to Count Wido of Brittany, 799–800), PL 101, 613–638". A new critical edition is being prepared for the Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Medievalis;
• De animae ratione (ad Eulaliam virginem) (written for Gundrada, Charlemagne's cousin), PL 101, 639–650;
• De Cursu et Saltu Lunae ac Bissexto, astronomical treatise, PL 101, 979–1002;
• (?) Propositiones ad acuendos iuvenes, ed. Menso Folkerts, "Die älteste mathematische Aufgabensammlung in lateinischer Sprache, Die Alkuin zugeschriebenen Propositiones ad acuendos iuvenes; Überlieferung, Inhalt, Kritische Edition", in idem, Essays on Early Medieval Mathematics: The Latin Tradition, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2003.

Theology

• Compendium in Canticum Canticorum: Alcuino, Commento al Cantico dei cantici – con i commenti anonimi Vox ecclesie e Vox antique ecclesie, ed. Rossana Guglielmetti, Firenze, SISMEL 2004;
• Quaestiones in Genesim, PL 100, 515–566;
• De Fide Sanctae Trinitatis et de Incarnatione Christi; Quaestiones de Sancta Trinitate, ed. E. Knibbs and E. Ann Matter (Corpus Christianorum – Continuatio Mediaevalis 249, Brepols, 2012).

Hagiography

• Vita II Vedastis episcopi Atrebatensis, Revision of the earlier Vita Vedastis by Jonas of Bobbio, Patrologia Latina, 101, 663–682;
• Vita Richarii confessoris Centulensis, Revision of an earlier anonymous life, MGH Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum, 4, 381–401;
• Vita Willibrordi archiepiscopi Traiectensis, ed. W. Levison, Passiones vitaeque sanctorum aevi Merovingici, MGH Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum, 7, 81–141.

See also

• Propositiones ad Acuendos Juvenes
• Carolingian art
• Carolingian Empire
• Category: Carolingian period
• Correctory
• Codex Vindobonensis 795

Notes and references

Sources

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• Bromell, David (2002). "Alcuin". Who's Who in Gay and Lesbian History - From Antiquity to World War II. Psychology Press. ISBN 978-0-415-15983-8.
• Browne, G.F. (1908). Alcuin of York. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.
• Bullough, Donald A. (2004). Alcuin – Achievement and Reputation. Being Part of the Ford Lectures Delivered in Oxford in Hilary Term 1980. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-12865-1.
• Bullough, Donald (2010) [2004]. "Alcuin (c. 740–804)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/298. (Subscription, Wikipedia Library access or UK public library membership required.)
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• Jaeger, C. Stephen (1999). Ennobling Love: In Search of a Lost Sensibility. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 0-8122-1691-1.
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• Stella, Francesco; "Alkuins Dichtung" in Alkuin von York und die geistige Grundlegung Europas, Sankt Gallen, Verlag am Klosterhof, 2010, pp. 107–128.
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• Throop, Priscilla; trans. Alcuin – His Life; On Virtues and Vices; Dialogue with Pepin (Charlotte, VT: MedievalMS, 2011)
• Truss, Lynne (2003). Eats, Shoots and Leaves – The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. Profile Books. ISBN 978-1-86197-612-3.
• Andrew Fleming West Alcuin and the Rise of the Christian Schools (C. Scribner's Sons, 1912) ISBN 0-8371-1635-X
• Wilmot-Buxton, E. M. (1922). Alcuin. New York: P.J. Kenedy & Sons.
• Texts on Wikisource:
  • "Alcuin". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 1 (11th ed.). 1911.
  • "Alcuin". Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 1. 1907.
  • "Alcuin". The New Student's Reference Work. Vol. 1. 1914.
  • "Alcuin or Ealhwine", A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature, 1910 – via Wikisource
  • "Alcuin". Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 1. 1885.

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Alcuin (Alhwin, Alchoin: Lat. Albinus, also Flaccus), an eminent educator, scholar, and theologian, b. about 735; d. 19 May, 804. He came of noble Northumbrian parentage, but the place of his birth is a matter of dispute. It was probably in or near York. While still a mere child, he entered the cathedral school founded at that place by Archbishop Egbert. His aptitude, and piety early attracted the attention of Ælbert, master of the school, as well as of the Archbishop, both of whom devoted special attention to his instruction. In company with his master, he made several visits to the continent while a youth, and when, in 767, Ælbert succeeded to the Archbishopric of York, the duty of directing the school naturally devolved upon Alcuin. During the fifteen years that followed, he devoted himself to the work of instruction at York, attracting numerous students and enriching the already valuable library. While returning from Rome in March, 781, he met Charlemagne at Parma, and was induced by that prince, whom he greatly admired, to remove to France and take up residence at the royal court as "Master of the Palace School". The school was kept at Aachen most of the time, but was removed from place to place, according as the royal residence was changed. In 786 he returned to England, in connection, apparently, with important ecclesiastical affairs, and again in 790, on a mission from Charlemagne. Alcuin attended the Synod of Frankfort in 794, and took an important part in the framing of the decrees condemning Adoptionism as well as in the efforts made subsequently to effect the submission of the recalcitrant Spanish prelates. In 796, when past his sixtieth year, being anxious to withdraw from the world, he was appointed by Charlemagne Abbot of St. Martin's at tours. Here, in his declining years, but with undiminished zeal, he set himself to build up a model monastic school, gathering books and drawing students, as before, at Aachen and York, from far and near. He died 19 May, 804. Alcuin appears to have been only a deacon, his favourite appellation for himself in his letters being "Albinus, humilis Levita". Some have thought, however, that he became a priest, at least during his later years. His unknown biographer, in describing this period, says of him, celebrabat omni die missarum solemnia (Jaffé, "Mon. Alcuin., Vita," 30). In one of his last letters Alcuin acknowledged the gift of a casula, or chasuble, which he promises to use in missarum solemniis (Ep. 203). It is probable that he was a monk, and a member of the Benedictine Order, although this also has been disputed, some historians maintaining that he was simply a member of the secular clergy, even when he exercised the office of abbot at Tours.

I. Educator and Scholar

Of his work as an educator and scholar it may be said, in a general way, that he had the largest share in the movement for the revival of learning which distinguished the age in which he lived, and which made possible the great intellectual renaissance of three centuries later. In him Anglo-Saxon scholarship attained to its widest influence, the rich intellectual inheritance left by Bede at Jarrow being taken up by Alcuin at York, and, through his subsequent labours on the Continent, becoming the permanent possession of civilized Europe. The influences surrounding Alcuin at York were made up chiefly of elements from two sources, Irish and Continental. From the sixth century onward Irishmen were busy founding schools as well as churches and monasteries all over Europe; and from Iona, according to Bede, Aidan and other Celtic missionaries bore the knowledge of the classics, along with the light of the Christian faith, into Northumbria. Both Aldhelm and Bede had Irish teachers. Celtic scholarship appears, however, to have entered only remotely and indirectly into Alcuin's training. The strongly Roman cast which characterized the School of Canterbury, founded by Theodore and Hadrian, who were sent by the Pope to England in 669, was naturally reproduced in the School of Jarrow, and from this, in turn, in the School of York. The influence is discernible in Alcuin, on the religious side, in his devoted adhesion to Roman, as distinguished from particular local or national, traditions, as well as, in an intellectual way, in the fact that his knowledge of Greek, which was a favourite study with Irish scholars, appears to have been very slight.

An important feature of Alcuin's educational work at York was the care and preservation, as well as the enlargement, of its precious library. Several times he journeyed through Europe for the purpose of copying and collecting books. Numerous pupils, too, gathered around him, from all parts of England and the continent. In his poem "On the Saints of the Church of York", written, probably, before he took up his residence in France, he has left us a valuable description of the academic life at York, together with a list of the authors represented by its catalogue of books. The course of studies embraced, in the words of Alcuin, "liberal studies and the holy word", or the seven liberal arts comprising the trivium and the quadrivium, with the study of Scripture and the Fathers for those more advanced. A feature of the school that deserves mention was the organization of studies on the modern plan, the students being separated into classes, according to the subjects and divisions of subjects studied, with a special teacher for each class. But it was when he took charge of the Palace School that the abilities of Alcuin were most conspicuously shown. In spite of the influence of York, learning in England was declining. The country was a prey to dissensions and civil wars, and Alcuin perceived in the growing power of Charlemagne and his eagerness for the development of learning an opportunity such as even York, with all its pre-eminence and scholastic advantages, could not afford. Nor was he disappointed. Charlemagne counted on education to complete the work of empire-building in which he was engaged, and his mind was busy with educational projects. A literary revival, in fact, had already begun. Scholars were drawn from Italy, Germany, and Ireland, and when Alcuin, in 782, transferred his allegiance to Charlemagne, he soon found surrounding him at Aachen, in addition to the youthful members of the nobility he was called upon to instruct, a band of older learners some of whom were ranked among the best scholars of the time. Under his leadership the Palace School became what Charles had hoped to make it, the centre of knowledge and culture for the whole kingdom, and indeed for the whole of Europe. Charlemagne himself, his queen, Luitgard, his sister Gisela, his three sons and two daughters became pupils of the school, an example which the rest of the nobility were not slow to imitate. Alcuin's supreme merit as an educator lay, however, not merely in the training up of a generation of educated men and women, but above all, in inspiring with his own enthusiasm for learning and teaching the talented youths who flocked to him from all sides. His educational writings, comprising the treatises "On Grammar", "On Orthography", "On Rhetoric and the Virtues", "On Dialectics", the "Disputation with Pepin", and the astronomical treatise entitled "De Cursu et Saltu Lunæ ac Bissexto", afford an insight into the matter and methods of teaching employed in the Palace School and the schools of the time generally, but they are not remarkable either for originality or literary excellence. They are mostly compilations—generally in the form of dialogues drawn from the works of earlier scholars, and were probably intended to be used as textbooks by his own pupils.

Alcuin, like Bede, was a teacher rather than a thinker, a gatherer and a distributor rather than an originator of knowledge, and in this respect, it is plain to us now, the bent of his genius responded perfectly to the imperative intellectual need of the age, which was the preservation and the representation to the world of the treasures of knowledge inherited from the past, long buried out of sight by the successive tides of barbarian invasion. Disce ut doceas (learn in order to teach) was the motto of his life, and the supreme value he attached to the office of teaching is recognizable in his admonition to his disciples that the idle youth would never become a teacher in his old age (Qui non discit in pueritia, non docet in senectute, Ep. 27). Alcuin was eminently qualified to be the schoolmaster of his age. Although living in the world and occupied much with public affairs, he was a man of singular humility and sanctity of life. He had an unbounded enthusiasm for learning and a tireless zeal for the practical work of the class-room and library, and the young men of talent whom he drew in crowds around him from all parts of Europe went away inspired with something of his own passionate ardour for study. His warm-hearted and affectionate disposition made him universally beloved, and the ties that bound master and pupil often ripened into intimate friendship that lasted through life. Many of his letters that have been preserved were written to his former pupils, more than thirty being addressed to his tenderly loved disciple Arno, who became Archbishop of Salzburg. Before he died Alcuin had the satisfaction of seeing the young men whom he had trained engaged all over Europe in the work of teaching. "Wherever", says Wattenbach, in speaking of the period that followed, "anything of literary activity is visible, there we can with certainty count on finding a pupil of Alcuin's." Many of his pupils came to occupy important positions in Church and State and lent their influence to the cause of learning, as the above-mentioned Arno, Archbishop of Salzburg; Theodulph, Bishop of Orleans; Eanbald, Archbishop of York; Adelhard, the cousin of Charles, who became Abbot of (New) Corbie, in Saxony; Aldrich, Abbot of Ferrières, and Fridugis, the successor of Alcuin at Tours. Among his pupils also was the celebrated Rabanus Maurus, the intellectual successor of Alcuin, who came to study under him for a time at Tours, and who subsequently in his school at Fulda, continued the work of Alcuin at Aachen and Tours.

The development of the Palace School, however, important as it was, was only a part of the broad educational plans of Charlemagne. For the diffusion of learning, other educational centers had to be established throughout the kingdom, and for this, in an age when education was so largely, under the control of the Church, it was essential that the clergy should be a body of educated men. With this object in view, a series of decrees or capitulars were issued in the name of the Emperor, which enjoined upon all clerics, secular as well as regular, under penalty of suspension deprivation of office, the ability to read and write and the possession of the knowledge requisite for the intelligent performance of the duties of the clerical state. Reading-schools were to be established for the benefit of candidates for the priesthood, and bishops were required to examine their clergy from time to time, to ascertain the degree of their compliance with these educational laws. A scheme for universal elementary education was also projected. A capitular of the year 802 enjoined that "everyone should send his son to study letters, and that the child should remain at school with all diligence until he should become well instructed in learning" (West, 54). Following the decrees of the Council of Vaison, a primary school was to be established in every town and village to be taught by the priests gratuitously. It is impossible to say to what extent Alcuin deserves credit for the organization of the vast educational system which was thus set up, comprising a central higher institution, the Palace School, a number of subordinate schools of the liberal arts scattered throughout the country, and schools for the common people in every city and village. His hand is nowhere visible in the series of legislative enactments referred to; but there can be no doubt that he had much to do with the instigation, if not with the framing, of these laws. "The voice", Gaskoin aptly says, "is the voice of Charles, but the hand is the hand of Alcuin". It was with Alcuin, too, and his pupils that the responsibility rested for carrying out the legislation. True, the laws were only imperfectly carried into effect; the measures planned and partially put into practice for the enlightenment of the people did not meet with complete success; the movement for the revival and diffusion of learning throughout the Empire did not last. Yet much was accomplished that did endure. The accumulated wisdom or the past, which was in danger of perishing, was preserved, and when the greater and more permanent renaissance of learning came, several centuries later, "when the light began to pierce through the storm-clouds of feudal strife and anarchy, the foundations laid in the eighth century were still there, ready to receive the weight of the higher learning which the scholars of the new revival should build up" (Gaskoin, 209). Alcuin's poems range from brief, epigrammatic verses, addressed to his friends, or intended as inscriptions for books, churches, altars, etc., to lengthy metrical histories of biblical and ecclesiastical events. His verses seldom rise to the level of real poetry, and, like most of the work of the poets of the period, they often fail to conform to the rules for quantity, just as his prose, though simple and vigorous, shows here and there a seeming disregard for the accepted canons of syntax. His principal metrical work, the "Poem on the Saints of the Church at York", consists of 1657 hexameter lines and is really a history of that Church.

II. Alcuin as a Theologian

Alcuin's work as a theologian may be classed as exegetical or biblical, moral, and dogmatic. Here again the characteristic that has been noted in his educational work is conspicuous it is that of conservation rather than originality. His nine Scriptural commentaries—on Genesis, The Psalms, The Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, Hebrew Names, St. John's Gospel, the Epistles to Titus, Philemon, and the Hebrews, The Sayings of St. Paul, and the Apocalypse—consist mostly of sentences taken from the Fathers, the idea, apparently, being to collect into convenient form the observations on the more important Scriptural passages of the best commentators who had preceded him. A more important Biblical undertaking by Alcuin was the revision of the text of the Latin Vulgate. At the beginning of the ninth century, this version had displaced in France, as elsewhere throughout the Western Church, the Old Itala (Vetus Itala) and other Latin versions of the Bible; but the Vulgate, as it existed, showed many variants from the original of St. Jerome. Uniformity in the sacred text was in fact, unknown. Every church and monastery had its own accepted readings, and varying texts were often to be found in the Bibles used in the same house. Other scholars besides Alcuin were engaged in the task of endeavouring to remedy this condition. Theodulph of Orléans produced a revised text of the Vulgate which has survived in the "Codex Memmianus". The original work of Alcuin has not come down to us, the carelessness of copyists and the extensive usage to which it attained having led to numberless, though for the most part unimportant variations from the standard he sought to fix. In his letters he simply mentions the fact that he is engaged, by the order of Charlemagne, "in emendatione Veteris Novique Testamenti" (Ep., 136). Four Bibles are shown by the dedicatory poems affixed to them to have been prepared by him, or under his direction at Tours, probably during the years 799–801. In the opinion of Berger the "Tours Bibles" all represent in a greater or less degree, notwithstanding their variations in detail, the original Alcuinian text (Hist. de la vulg., 242). Whatever the exact changes made by Alcuin in the Bible text may have been, the known temper of the man, no less than the limits of the scholarship of the age, makes it certain that these changes were not of a far-reaching kind. The idea being, however, to reproduce the genuine text of St. Jerome, so far as possible, and to correct the gross blunders which disfigured the Sacred writings, the Biblical work of Alcuin was, from this point of view, important. Of the three brief moral treatises Alcuin has left us, two, "De virtutibus et vitiis", and "De animæ ratione", are largely abridgments of the writing of St. Augustine on the same subjects, while the third, "On the Confession of Sins", is a concise exposition of the nature of confession, addressed to the monks of St. Martin of Tours. Closely allied to his moral writings in spirit and purpose are his sketches of the lives of St. Martin of Tours, St. Vedast, St. Riquier, and St. Willibrord, the last being a biography of considerable length.

It is upon his dogmatic writings that the fame of Alcuin as a theologian principally rests. Against the Adoptionist heresy he stood forth as the foremost champion of the Church. It is a proof of his power of penetration—a quality of mind which some historians appear to deny him altogether—that he so clearly perceived the essentially heretical attitude of Felix and Elipandus toward the Christological question, an attitude whose heterodoxy was shrouded perhaps even from their own eyes in the beginning, by the specious distinction between natural and adoptive sonship; and it was a worthy tribute to the range of his patristic scholarship when Felix, the chief intellectual defender of Adoptionism, after the disputation with Alcuin at Aachen, acknowledged the error of his position. The condemnation of the rising heresy by the Synod of Regensburg (Ratisbon), in 792, having failed to check its spread, another and a larger synod, composed of representatives of the Churches of France, Italy, Britain, and Galicia, was convened at Frankfort by the order of Charles, in 794. Alcuin was present at this meeting and no doubt took a prominent part in the discussions and in the drawing up of the "Epistola Synodica", although, with characteristic modesty, he furnishes no evidence of the fact in his letters. Following up the work of the Synod, he addressed to Felix, for whom he had formerly entertained high esteem, a touching letter of admonition and exhortation. After his transfer to Tours, in 796, he received from Felix a reply which showed that something more than friendly entreaty would be needed to stay the progress of the heresy. He had already drawn up a small treatise consisting mainly of patristic quotations, against the teaching of the heretics, under the title "Liber Albini contra hæresim Felicis", and he now undertook a larger and more thorough discussion of the theological questions involved. This work, in seven books, "Libri VII adversus Felicem", was a refutation of the position of the Adoptionists, rather than an exposition of Catholic doctrine, and hence followed the lines of their arguments, instead of a strictly logical order of development. Alcuin urged against the Adoptionists the universal testimony of the Fathers, the inconsistencies involved in the doctrine itself, its logical relation to Nestorianism, and the rationalistic spirit which was forever prompting to just such attempted human explanations of the unsearchable mysteries of faith. In the spring of 799 a disputation took place between Alcuin and Felix in the royal palace at Aachen, which ended by Felix acknowledging his errors and accepting the teachings of the Church. Felix subsequently paid a friendly visit to Alcuin at Tours. Having sought in vain to bring about the submission of Elipandus, Alcuin drew up another treatise entitled "Adversus Elipandum Libri IV", entrusting it for circulation to the commissioners whom Charlemagne was sending to Spain. In 802 he sent to the emperor the last, and perhaps the most important, of his theological treatises, the "Libellus de Sancta Trinitate", a work which is uncontroversial in form, although probably suggested to him during the discussions with the Adoptionists. The treatise contains a brief appendix entitled "De Trinitate ad Fridegisum quæstiones XXVIII". The book is a compendium of Catholic doctrine concerning the Holy Trinity, St. Augustine's treatise on the subject being kept steadily in view. It is uncertain to what extent Alcuin shared in the attitude of remonstrance assumed by the Frankish Church, at the instance of Charlemagne, towards the badly translated and ill understood decrees of the second Council of Nicæa, held in 787. The style of the "Libri Carolini" which condemn, in the name of the King, the decrees of the Council, favours the assumption that Alcuin had at least no direct part in the composition of the work.

III. Alcuin as a Liturgist

Besides his justly merited fame as an educator and a theologian, Alcuin has the honour of having been the principal agent in the great work of liturgical reform accomplished by the authority of Charlemagne. At the accession of Charles the Gallican rite prevailed in France, but it was so modified by local customs and traditions as to constitute a serious obstacle to complete ecclesiastical unity. It was the purpose of the King to substitute the Roman rite in place of the Gallican, or at least to bring about such a revision of the latter as to make it substantially one with the Roman. The strong leaning of Alcuin towards the traditions of the Roman Church, combined with his conservative character and the universal authority of his name, qualified him for the accomplishment of a change which the royal authority in itself was powerless to effect. The first of Alcuin's liturgical works appears to have been a Homiliary, or collection of sermons in Latin for the use of priests. The Homiliary which was printed under his name in the fifteenth century was by a different hand, although it is probable, its Dom Morin contends, that a recently discovered manuscript of the twelfth century contains the genuine Alcuinian sermons. Another liturgical work of Alcuin consists of a collection of the Epistles to be read on Sundays and holy-days throughout the year, and bears the name, "Comes ab Albino ex Caroli imp. præcepto emendatus". As, previous to his time, the portions of Scripture to be read at Mass were often merely indicated on the margins of the Bibles used, the "Comes" commended itself by its convenience, and as he followed Roman usage here also, the result was another advance in the way of conformity to the Roman liturgy. The work of Alcuin which had the greatest and most lasting influence in this direction, however, was the Sacramentary, or Missal which he compiled, using the Gregorian Sacramentary as a basis, and to this adding a supplement of other liturgical sources. Prescribed as the official Mass-book for the Frankish Church, Alcuin's Missal soon came to be commonly used throughout Europe and was largely instrumental in bringing about uniformity in respect to the liturgy of the Mass in the whole Western Church. Other liturgical productions of Alcuin were a collection of votive Masses, drawn up for the monks of Fulda, a treatise called "De psalmorum usu", a breviary for laymen, and a brief explanation of the ceremonies of Baptism.

A complete edition of Alcuin's works, with the exception of some of his Epistles, is to be found in Migne, comprising volumes 100–101 of the "Patrologia Latina". The text of the Migne edition was first published by Froben, Abbot of St. Emmeran, at Ratisbon, in 1777, a previous and and less complete edition having been published by Duchesne at Paris, in 1617. A critically accurate edition of the "Epistles" of Alcuin, together with his poem, "On the Saints of the Church at York", his "Life of St. Willibrord" and the "Life of Alcuin", composed about 829, is found in the fourth volume of the "Bibliotheca Rerum Germanicarum", under the title "Monumenta Alcuiniana" edited by Jaffé, Wattenbach, and Duemmler (Berlin, 1873). This edition contains 293 of Alcuin's Epistles, against the 230 in Migne.

Mon. Germ. Hist.: Legum Sectio, I, II; Poetæ Aevi Carol., I; Gaskoin, Alcuin, His Life and Work (London, 1904); West, Alcuin and the Rise of the Christian Schools (New York, 1892); Mullinger, The Schools of Charles the Great (London, 1877); Hauck, Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands (Leipzig, 1900), II; Werner, Alcuin und sein Jahrhundert (2d ed., Vienna, 1881); Dupuy, Alcuin et l'école de Saint Martin de Tours (Tours, 1876); Laforet, Alcuin, restaurateur des sciences en occident sous Charlemange (Louvain, 1851); Monnier, Alcuin et son influence littéraire, religieuse, et politique chez les Francs (Paris, 1853); Drane, Christian Schools and Scholars (London, 1881); Berger, Histoire de la vulgate (Paris, 1893); Hefele, Conciliengeschichte (Freiburg, 1877), III; Vernet. in Dict. de théol. cath., s. v.; Stubbs, in Dict. Christ. Biog. (Boston, 1877), I. 73–76.

External links

• Alcuin 1 at Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England
• Alcuin: Problems for the Quickening of the Minds of the Young
• Robert Levine and Whitney French Bolton: Introduction to Alcuin's writings (Boston University Websites)
• The Alcuin Society
• Anglo-Saxon York on History of York site
• Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis – new critical editions in preparation
• Corpus Grammaticorum Latinorum – complete texts and full bibliography^[]
• Frederick Lorenz: The Life of Alcuin
• Works by or about Alcuin at the Internet Archive
• Works by Alcuin at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Literature by and about Alcuin in the German National Library catalogue
• Works by and about Alcuin in the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek (German Digital Library)
• "Alcuin". Repertorium "Historical Sources of the German Middle Ages" (Geschichtsquellen des deutschen Mittelalters).
• "Alcuin" in the Ecumenical Lexicon of Saints