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Title: Alcuin of York


Lectures delivered in the cathedral church of Bristol in
1907 and 1908

Author: G. F. Browne

Release date: October 18, 2023 [eBook #71904]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Society for Promoting Christian


Knowledge, 1908

Credits: MWS and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at


https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from
images generously made available by The Internet
Archive/American Libraries.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALCUIN OF


YORK ***
ALCUIN OF YORK
LECTURES DELIVERED IN THE CATHEDRAL
CHURCH OF BRISTOL IN 1907 AND 1908

BY THE
RIGHT REV. G. F. BROWNE
D.D., D.C.L., F.S.A.
BISHOP OF BRISTOL
FORMERLY DISNEY PROFESSOR OF ART AND ARCHAEOLOGY
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

PUBLISHED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE TRACT COMMITTEE.

LONDON:
SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE.
NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, W.C.; 43, QUEEN VICTORIA STREET, E.C.
BRIGHTON: 129, North Street.
New York: E. S. Gorham.
1908
PREFACE
No attempt has been made to correct the various forms of many of
the proper names so as to make the spelling uniform. It is true to the
period to leave the curious variations as Alcuin and others wrote
them. In the case of Pope Hadrian, the name has been written
Hadrian and Adrian indiscriminately in the text.
While Alcuin’s style is lucid, his habit of dictating letters hurriedly,
and sending them off without revision if he had a headache, has left
its mark on the letters as we have them. It has seemed better to
leave the difficulties in the English as he left them in the Latin.
The edition used, and the numbering of the Epistles adopted, is
that of Wattenbach and Dümmler, Monumenta Alcuiniana, Berlin
1873, being the sixth volume of the Bibliotheca Rerum
Germanicarum.
CONTENTS
PAGE

CHAPTER I
The authorship of the anonymous Life of Alcuin.—Alcuin’s
Life of his relative Willibrord.—Willibrord at Ripon.—
Alchfrith and Wilfrith.—Alcuin’s conversion.—His studies
under Ecgbert and Albert at the Cathedral School of
York.—Ecgbert’s method of teaching.—Alcuin becomes
assistant master of the School.—Is ordained deacon.—
Becomes head master.—Joins Karl 1
CHAPTER II
Alcuin finally leaves England.—The Adoptionist heresy.—
Alcuin’s retirement to Tours.—His knowledge of secrets.
—Karl and the three kings his sons.—Fire at St. Martin’s,
Tours.—References to the life of St. Martin.—Alcuin’s
writings.—His interview with the devil.—His last days 23
CHAPTER III
The large bulk of Alcuin’s letters and other writings.—The
main dates of his life.—Bede’s advice to Ecgbert.—
Careless lives of bishops.—No parochial system.—
Inadequacy of the bishops’ oversight.—Great
monasteries to be used as sees for new bishoprics, and
evil monasteries to be suppressed.—Election of abbats
and hereditary descent.—Evils of pilgrimages.—Daily
Eucharists 51
CHAPTER IV
The school of York.—Alcuin’s poem on the Bishops and 68
Saints of the Church of York.—The destruction of the
Britons by the Saxons.—Description of Wilfrith II,
Ecgbert, Albert, of York.—Balther and Eata.—Church
building in York.—The Library of York
CHAPTER V
The affairs of Mercia.—Tripartite division of England.—The
creation of a third archbishopric, at Lichfield.—Offa and
Karl.—Alcuin’s letter to Athelhard of Canterbury; to
Beornwin of Mercia.—Karl’s letter to Offa, a commercial
treaty.—Alcuin’s letter to Offa.—Offa’s death 87
CHAPTER VI
Grant to Malmesbury by Ecgfrith of Mercia.—Alcuin’s letters
to Mercia.—Kenulf and Leo III restore Canterbury to its
primatial position.—Gifts of money to the Pope.—
Alcuin’s letters to the restored archbishop.—His letter to
Karl on the archbishop’s proposed visit.—Letters of Karl
to Offa (on a question of discipline) and Athelhard (in
favour of Mercian exiles) 106
CHAPTER VII
List of the ten kings of Northumbria of Alcuin’s time.—
Destruction of Lindisfarne, Wearmouth, and Jarrow, by
the Danes.—Letters of Alcuin on the subject to King
Ethelred, the Bishop and monks of Lindisfarne, and the
monks of Wearmouth and Jarrow.—His letter to the
Bishop and monks of Hexham 122
CHAPTER VIII
Alcuin’s letters to King Eardulf and the banished intruder
Osbald.—His letters to King Ethelred and Ethelred’s
mother.—The Irish claim that Alcuin studied at
Clonmacnoise.—Mayo of the Saxons 140
CHAPTER IX
Alcuin’s letter to all the prelates of England.—To the Bishops 157
of Elmham and Dunwich.—His letters on the election to
the archbishopric of York.—To the new archbishop, and
the monks whom he sent to advise him.—His urgency
that bishops should read Pope Gregory’s Pastoral Care
CHAPTER X
Summary of Alcuin’s work in France.—Adoptionism, Alcuin’s
seven books against Felix and three against Elipandus.
—Alcuin’s advice that a treatise of Felix be sent to the
Pope and three others.—Alcuin’s name dragged into the
controversy on Transubstantiation.—Image-worship.—
The four Libri Carolini and the Council of Frankfurt.—The
bearing of the Libri Carolini on the doctrine of
Transubstantiation 172
CHAPTER XI
Karl and Rome.—His visits to that city.—The offences and
troubles of Leo III.—The coronation of Charlemagne.—
The Pope’s adoration of the Emperor.—Alcuin’s famous
letter to Karl prior to his coronation.—Two great Roman
forgeries, the Donation of Constantine and the Letter of
St. Peter to the Franks 186
CHAPTER XII
Alcuin retires to the Abbey and School of Tours.—Sends to
York for more advanced books.—Begs for old wine from
Orleans.—Karl calls Tours a smoky place.—Fees
charged to the students.—History and remains of the
Abbey Church of St. Martin.—The tombs of St. Martin
and six other Saints.—The Public Library of Tours.—A
famous Book of the Gospels.—St. Martin’s secularised.
—Martinensian bishops 202
CHAPTER XIII
Further details of the Public Library of Tours.—Marmoutier.— 219
The Royal Abbey of Cormery.—Licence of Hadrian I to
St. Martin’s to elect bishops.—Details of the Chapter of
the Cathedral Church of Tours
CHAPTER XIV
Great dispute on right of sanctuary.—Letters of Alcuin on the
subject to his representatives at court and to a bishop.—
The emperor’s severe letter to St. Martin’s.—Alcuin’s
reply.—Verses of the bishop of Orleans on Charlemagne,
Luitgard, and Alcuin 231
CHAPTER XV
Alcuin’s letters to Charlemagne’s sons.—Recension of the
Bible.—The “Alcuin Bible” at the British Museum.—Other
supposed “Alcuin Bibles.”—Anglo-Saxon Forms of
Coronation used at the coronations of French kings 246
CHAPTER XVI
Examples of Alcuin’s style in his letters, allusive, jocose,
playful.—The perils of the Alps.—The vision of
Drithelme.—Letters to Arno.—Bacchus and Cupid 264
CHAPTER XVII
Grammatical questions submitted to Alcuin by Karl.—Alcuin
and Eginhart.—Eginhart’s description of Charlemagne.—
Alcuin’s interest in missions.—The premature exaction of
tithes.—Charlemagne’s elephant Abulabaz.—Figures of
elephants in silk stuffs.—Earliest examples of French
and German.—Boniface’s Abrenuntiatio Diaboli.—Early
Saxon.—The earliest examples of Anglo-Saxon prose
and verse 280
CHAPTER XVIII
Alcuin’s latest days.—His letters mention his ill health.—His
appeals for the prayers of friends, and of strangers.—An
affectionate letter to Charlemagne.—The death scene 298
APPENDICES
A. A letter of Alcuin to Fulda 305
B. The report of the papal legates, George and Theophylact,
on their mission to England 310
C. The original Latin of Alcuin’s suggestion that a treatise by
Felix should be sent to the Pope and three others 319
D. The Donation of Constantine 320
E. Harun Al Raschid and Charlemagne 324
Index 325
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Plate I. St. Martin’s, Tours, before the pillage To face page 210
Plate II. The Tour St. Martin 211
Plate III. The Tour Charlemagne 212
Plate IV. The Tomb of St. Martin 213
Plate V. Some remains of Marmoutier 222
Plate VI. Early capital at Cormery 227
Plate VII. Elephant from robes in the tomb of
Charlemagne 290
Plate VIII. Inscription worked into the above robe 291
Plate IX. Silk stuff of the seventh or eighth
century 292
Plate X. Archbishop Boniface’s form for
renouncing the devil 295
Plate XI. The earliest piece of English prose 296
Plate XII. The earliest piece of English verse 297
ALCUIN OF YORK.
CHAPTER I
The authorship of the anonymous Life of Alcuin.—Alcuin’s Life of his relative
Willibrord.—Willibrord at Ripon.—Alchfrith and Wilfrith.—Alcuin’s conversion.—His
studies under Ecgbert and Albert at the Cathedral School of York.—Ecgbert’s
method of teaching.—Alcuin becomes assistant master of the School.—Is
ordained deacon.—Becomes head master.—Joins Karl.

The only Life of Alcuin which we possess, coming from early


times, was written by a monk who does not give his name, at the
command of an abbat whose name, as also that of his abbey, is not
mentioned by the writer. We have, however, this clue, that the writer
learned his facts from a favourite disciple and priest of Alcuin
himself, by name Sigulf. Sigulf received from Alcuin the pet name of
Vetulus, “little old fellow,” in accordance with the custom of the
literary and friendly circle of which Alcuin was the centre. Alcuin
himself was Flaccus; Karl the King of the Franks, and afterwards
Emperor, was David; and so on. We learn further that the abbat who
assigned to the anonymous monk the task of writing the Life was
himself a disciple of Sigulf. Sigulf succeeded Alcuin as Abbat of
Ferrières; and when he retired on account of old age, he was in turn
succeeded by two of his pupils whom he had brought up as his sons,
Adalbert and Aldric. The Life was written after the death of Benedict
of Aniane, that is, after the year 823. Adalbert had before that date
been succeeded by Aldric, and Aldric became Archbishop of Sens in
the end of 829. The Life was probably written between 823 and 829
by a monk of Ferrières, by order of Aldric. Alcuin had died in 804.
The writer of the Life had never even seen Alcuin; he was in all
probability not a monk of Tours.
That is the view of the German editor Wattenbach as to the
authorship and dedication of the Life. That learned man appears to
have given inadequate weight to the writer’s manner of citing Aldric
as a witness to the truth of a quaint story told in the Life. This is the
story, as nearly as possible in the monk’s words:—
“The man of the Lord [Alcuin himself] had read in his youth the
books of the ancient philosophers and the romances[1] of Vergil,[2]
but he would not in his old age have them read to him or allow others
to read them. The divine poets, he was wont to say, were sufficient
for them, they did not need to be polluted with the luxurious flow of
Vergil’s verse. Against this precept the little old fellow Sigulf tried to
act secretly, and for this he was put to the blush publicly. Calling to
him two youths whom he was bringing up as sons, Adalbert and
Aldric, he bade them read Vergil with him in complete secrecy,
ordering them by no means to let any one know, lest it come to the
ears of Father Albinus [Alcuin]. But Albinus called him in an ordinary
way to come to him, and then said: ‘Where do you come from, you
Vergilian? Why have you planned, contrary to my wish and advice, to
read Vergil?’ Sigulf threw himself at his feet, confessed that he had
acted most foolishly, and declared himself penitent. The pious father
administered a scolding to him, and then accepted the amends he
made, warning him never to do such a thing again. Abbat Aldric, a
man worthy of God, who still survives, testifies that neither he nor
Adalbert had told any one about it; they had been absolutely silent,
as Sigulf had enjoined.”
It seems practically impossible to suppose that the monk would
have put it in this way, if Aldric had been the abbat to whom he
dedicated the Life, or indeed the abbat of his own monastery. It is
clear that the Life was written while Aldric was still an abbat, that is
between 823 and 829; and it seems most probable that it was written
by a monk of some other monastery for his own abbat. Nothing of
importance, however, turns upon this discussion. It is a rather
curious fact, considering the severity of Alcuin’s objection to Vergil
being read in his monastery, that the beautiful copy of Vergil at
Berne, of very early ninth-century date, belonged to St. Martin of
Tours from Carolingian times, and was written there.[3]
Not unnaturally, the Life, written in and for a French monastery,
does not give details of the Northumbrian origin of Alcuin. It makes
only the statement usual in such biographies, that he sprang from a
noble Anglian family. Curiously enough, we get such further details
as we have from a Life of St. Willibrord written by Alcuin himself at
the request of Archbishop Beornrad of Sens, who was Abbat of
Epternach, a monastery of Willibrord’s, from 777 to 797.
“There was,” he writes, “in the province of Northumbria, a father of
a family, by race Saxon, by name Wilgils, who lived a religious life
with his wife and all his house. He had given up the secular life and
entered upon the life of a monk; and when spiritual fervour increased
in him he lived solitary on the promontory which is girt by the ocean
and the river Humber (Spurn Point)[4]. Here he lived long in fasting
and prayer in a little oratory dedicated to St. Andrew[5] the Apostle;
he worked miracles; his name became celebrated. Crowds of people
consulted him; he comforted them with the most sweet admonitions
of the Word of God. His fame became known to the king and great
men of the realm, and they conferred upon him some small
neighbouring properties, so that he might build a church. There he
collected a congregation of servants of God, moderate in size, but
honourable. There, after long labours, he received his crown from
God; and there his body lies buried. His descendants to this day hold
the property by the title of his sanctity. Of them I am the least in merit
and the last in order. I, who write this book of the history of the most
holy father and greatest teacher Willibrord, succeeded to the
government of that small cell by legitimate degrees of descent.”
Inasmuch as the book is dedicated to Beornrad by the humble
Levite (that is, deacon) Alcuin, we learn the very interesting fact that
Alcuin, born in 735, came by hereditary right into possession of the
property got together by Wilgils, whose son Willibrord was born in
657. The dates make it practically almost certain that Wilgils was
born a pagan. Alcuin informs us that he only entered upon marriage
because it was fated that he should be the father of one who should
be for the profit of many peoples. If Willibrord was, as Alcuin’s words
mean, the only child of Wilgils, we must suppose that Alcuin was the
great-great-great-nephew of Wilgils, allowing twenty-five years for a
generation in those short-lived times.
Alcuin three times insists on the lawful hereditary descent of the
ownership and government of a monastery. A second case is in his
preface to this Life of Willibrord. The body of the saint, he says,
“rests in a certain small maritime cell, over which I, though unworthy,
preside by God’s gift in lawful succession.” A third case occurs also
in this Life. “There is,” he says, “in the city of Trèves a monastery[6]
of nuns, which in the times of the blessed Willibrord was visited by a
very severe plague. Many of the handmaids of the Lord were dying
of it; others were lying on their beds enfeebled by a long attack; the
rest were in a state of terror, as fearing the presence of death. Now
there is near that same city the monastery of that holy man, which is
called Aefternac,[7] in which up to this day the saint rests in the body,
while his descendants are known to hold the monastery by legitimate
paternal descent, and by the piety of most pious kings. When the
women of the above-named monastery heard that he was coming to
this monastery of his, they sent messengers begging him to hasten
to them.” He went, as the blessed Peter went to raise Tabitha;
celebrated a mass for the sick; blessed water, and had the houses
sprinkled with it; and sent it to the sick sisters to drink. Needless to
say, they all recovered.
In two of these cases, the two in which Alcuin speaks of his own
property, he uses the word succession, “by legitimate succession” in
the one case, legitima successione, “through legitimate successions”
in the other case, per legitimas successiones, the former no doubt
referring to the succession from his immediate predecessor, the
latter referring to the four, or five, steps in the descent from Wilgils to
Alcuin. In the case of the monastery of Epternach he defines it from
the other end, “from the legitimate handing-down,” traditione ex
legitima, the piety of the most pious kings being called in to confirm
the handing-down.
It is remarkable that Alcuin should thus go out of his way to insist
upon the lawfulness of the hereditary descent of monasteries, when
he knew well that his venerated predecessor Bede, following the
positive principle of the founder of Anglian monasticism in
Northumbria, Benedict Biscop, attributed great evils to such
hereditary succession to the property and governance of
monasteries. We shall see something of this when we come to the
consideration of Bede’s famous letter to Ecgbert, written in or about
the year of Alcuin’s birth.
It is probably not necessary to suppose that Alcuin intends to draw
a distinction between the constitutional practice in Northumbria and
that in the lands ruled by Karl, though it is a marked fact that he
mentions the intervention of kings in the latter case and twice does
not mention it in the former. Bede says so much about the bribes—or
fees—paid to Northumbrian kings and bishops for ratification of first
grants by their signatures, that we can hardly suppose there were no
fees to pay on succession. We cannot press such a point as this in
Alcuin’s Life of Willibrord, for he tells Beornrad in his Preface that he
has been busy with other things all day long, and has only been able
to dictate this book in the retirement of the night; and he urges that
the work should be mercifully judged because he has not had leisure
to polish it. The grammar of this dictated work needs a certain
amount of correction; Alcuin did not always remember with what
construction he had begun a sentence. In these days of dictated
letters he has the sympathy of many in this respect.
Alcuin’s young relative Willibrord was sent away to Ripon, as soon
as he was weaned, to the charge of the brethren there. Alchfrith, the
sub-King of Deira under his father Oswy, had driven out the Irish
monks whom he had at one time patronised at Ripon, and had given
their possessions to Wilfrith. Under the influence of that remarkable
man the little child came, still, in Alcuin’s phrase, only an infantulus.
His father’s purpose in sending him to Ripon was twofold. He was to
be educated in religious study and sacred letters, in a place where
his tender age might be strengthened by vigorous discipline, where
he would see nothing that was not honourable, hear nothing that was
not holy. At Ripon he remained till he was twenty years of age, and
then he passed across to Ireland, to complete his studies under
Ecgbert, the great creator of missionaries. With Ecgbert he spent
twelve years.
Now in the thirty-two years covered by that short narration, from
657 to 689, events of the utmost moment had occurred in
Northumbria, and had mainly centered round Ripon. At the most
critical juncture of these events Bede becomes suddenly silent.
Alfred’s Anglo-Saxon version of Bede goes further, and omits the
bulk of what Bede does say. A few words from Alcuin would have
been of priceless value, and he, writing in France to a Frank, could
have no national or ecclesiastical reason for silence on points which
Bede and Alfred let alone. The whole of the variance between Oswy
and his son and sub-King Alchfrith, on which Bede is determinedly
silent, the only hint of which is preserved to us solely by the noble
runes on the Bewcastle Cross, erected in 670 and still standing,
which bid men pray for the “high sin” of Alchfrith’s soul[8]; the whole
secret of the variance between Oswy and Wilfrith; of Oswy’s refusal
to recognize Wilfrith’s consecration at Paris—with unrivalled
magnificence of pomp—to the episcopal See of York; all this, and
more, is included in the first thirteen years of Willibrord’s life at
Ripon, and Ripon was the pivot of it all. Alcuin has no scintilla of a
hint of anything unusual, not even when he mentions Ecgbert, the
Northumbrian teacher, dwelling in Ireland, of whom we know from
another source that he fled from Northumbria to safety in Ireland
when Alchfrith and Wilfrith lost their power, and Alchfrith presumably
lost his life. It is quite possible that if the head of the Bewcastle
Cross were ever found[9] the runes on it might tell us just what we
want to know. The illustration of this portion of the Cross given in
Gough’s edition of Camden’s Britannia[10] was drawn in 1607, at
which time English scholars could not read runic letters, and
naturally could not copy them with perfect accuracy. Still, it is evident
that the runes stand for rikaes dryhtnaes, apparently meaning ‘of
the kingdom’s lord’, the copyist having failed to notice the mark of
modification in the rune for u, which turned it into y.
Turning now to Alcuin himself, a remarkable story is told in the
Life, evidently and avowedly on his authority. When he was still a
small boy, parvulus, he was regular in attendance at church at the
canonical hours of the day, but very seldom appeared there at night.
What the monastery was in which he passed his earliest years we
are not told; but inasmuch as no break or change is mentioned
between the story to which we now turn and the description of his
more advanced studies, which certainly indicates the Archiepiscopal
School of York, we must understand that York was the scene of this
occurrence.
“When he was eleven years of age, it happened one night that he
and a tonsured rustic, one of the menial monks, that is, were
sleeping on separate pallets in one cell. The rustic did not like being
alone in the night, and as none of the rustics could accommodate
him, he had begged that one of the young students might be sent to
sleep in the cell. The boy Albinus was sent, who was fonder of Vergil
than of Psalms. At cock-crow the warden struck the bell for nocturns,
and the brethren got up for the appointed service. This rustic,
however, only turned round onto his other side, as careless of such
matters, and went on snoring. At the moment when the invitatory
psalm was as usual being sung, with the antiphon, the rustic’s cell
was suddenly filled with horrid spirits, who surrounded his bed, and
said to him, ‘You sleep well, brother.’ That roused him, and they
asked, ‘Why are you snoring here by yourself, while the brethren are
keeping watch in the church?’ He then received a useful flogging, so
that by his amendment a warning might be given to all, and they
might sing, ‘I will remember the years of the right hand of the Most
Highest,’[11] while their eyes prevented the night watches. During the
flogging of the rustic, the noble boy trembled lest the same should
happen to him; and, as he related afterwards, cried from the very
bottom of his heart, ‘O Lord Jesus, if Thou dost now deliver me from
the cruel hands of these evil spirits, and I do not hereafter prove to
be eager for the night watches of Thy Church and the ministry of
praise, and if I any longer love Vergil more than the chanting of
psalms, may I receive a flogging such as this. Only, I earnestly pray,
deliver me, O Lord, now.’ That the lesson might be the more deeply
impressed upon his mind, as soon as by the Lord’s command the
flogging of the rustic ceased, the evil spirits cast their eyes about
here and there, and saw the body and head of the boy most carefully
wrapped up in the bedclothes, scarce taking breath. The leader of
the spirits asked, ‘Who is this other asleep in the cell?’ ‘It is the boy
Albinus,’ they told him, ‘hid away in his bed.’ When the boy found
that he was discovered, he burst into showers of tears; and the more
he had suppressed his cries before, the louder he cried now. They
had all the will to deal unmercifully with him, but they had not the
power. They discussed what they should do with him; but the
sentence of the Lord compelled them to help him to keep the vow

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