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READING HALLTHE DOORS OF WISDOM |
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LIFE OF ALCUINA.D. 724 - 802BYDR. FREDERICK LORENZTRANSLATED FROM THE GERMANBYJANE MARY SLEE.CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
ALCUIN’S RESIDENCE DURING EIGHT YEARS
AT THE COURT OF CHARLEMAGNE. AD 782-790.
CHAPTER III
ALCUIN'S OPINIONS CONCERNING TITHES.
IV.
ESTABLISHMENT OF THE HIGHER AND LOWER
SCOOLS IN THE KINGDOM OF FRANCE
CHAPTER V
Alcuin’s Theological Opinions.
History of the Controversy respecting
Image-worship.
Decision of the Council of Frankfort upon the Doctrine
of the Adoptionists and Image-worship.
Alcuin’s Permanent Settlement in France, and his
Participation in the Complete Suppression of the Doctrine of the Adoption.
CHAPTER VI. ALCUIN AS ABBOT OF TOURS, UNTIL HIS DEATH,
2.—Concerning Charles’ Endeavors to improve the
National Language, and the Academy he is said to have founded.
3.—The Friends and Pupils of Alcuin.
4.—Alcuin as Director of the Monastic School at Tours. 5.—Alcuin’s Philosophical and Historical Works.
6.—Concerning Alcuin’s Poetical Writings.
7 .—Renewal of the Roman Empire in the West.
8.—Dissension between Alcuin and Theodulph. 9.—Death of Alcuin.
Alcuin and the rise of the Christian schools
The schools of Charles the Great and the restoration of education in the ninth century
INTRODUCTION.
The Significance of Alcuin
The position of Alcuin as a Catholic thinker is very
much more significant than is generally recognized by the casual reader of
history. Most people are aware that he kept alight the flickering torch of
Roman learning in Gaul; a smaller number know that by his teaching and his
writings he also exercised a quite remarkably appreciable effect upon at least
the two succeeding centuries and, in a less apparent form, upon a much longer
period. Those who are already acquainted with his singularly modest estimate of
himself might hesitate to consider him the most important figure of his
century; others frankly state that his chief, if not his only claim to
celebrity is his close connection with the Emperor Charles the Great. Most
English history books dismiss him with brief reference as the English tutor of
the sons of Charlemagne; and one has an uneasy suspicion that but for a
nationality that reflects a slight ray of glory on a rather submerged era of
our history, he would have escaped mention in most of them altogether.
Yet the fact is true that when we get a close
combination of a man of action with a man of learning, the interaction of will
and intellect that follows is likely to provide some intensely interesting
results. The task of Charles at the time at which he was connected with Alcuin
was the preservation of the outward unity of Western Europe, sorely threatened
by the tribal conquests of the Northern and Central races. What the Catholic
Church had done and was still doing, by means of her unique spiritual
organization, for the soul of Europe, Charles was engaged in doing for the mass
of mingled races that formed her unwieldy body, by means of the sword. Force
alone could never have accomplished even an outward and hollow form of unity.
Mind and will cannot be bent by sheer weight of conquest, nor the powers of the
soul harnessed to a victor’s chariot. It was here that Alcuin played his part.
On the Hill of Learning, even on its lowest slopes,
all minds are free, though all are bound by the chains of intellectual law. It
was by pointing the road thither, as well as by helping lame and laggard souls
to climb its heights, that Alcuin gave indispensable assistance to Church and
Emperor. He succeeded thereby not only in preserving the international oneness
of Europe at that particular time, but in creating, or rather re-creating, a
system of education that was to prove a strong bond of unity, and a most
effective instrument of civilization through troubled and chaotic ages, long
after his own age had passed away.
At a superficial glance, these things are not
apparent; and those who are content to think that the chief importance of the
task of Alcuin lies in the linking up of the intellectual life of England in
the eighth century with that of the Continent, will tell us that that task
ended with the era of the sons of Charlemagne. Such a view is impossible in
face of the fact that, not only did the system of Alcuin and the textbooks he
wrote become part of the common life of educated Europe, at least till the days
of the Renaissance, but that a far more intangible thing, the spirit of the
Frankish schools, of which he was the actual founder, permeated mediaeval
Europe and modified her whole intellectual history.
It has been said, indeed, that the history of Charles
the Great enters into that of every modern European state, and it is equally
true to say that all that was most permanent in his Empire - not his conquests,
nor his forced conversions, but the high ideal of mental culture in the midst
of a most material world, the ideals of knightly chivalry, of domestic purity,
of national well-being, as well as of true doctrine and practice of religion, that
belong to his era - was inspired by Alcuin, Father in God, Minister of
Education adviser and teacher of the most striking figure of mediaeval
Christendom.
Curious indeed was that alliance - that of a gentle,
self-disciplined English scholar with a gigantic soldier, full of strong
passions and violent impulses, whose undoubted attraction to learning must have
been half superstitious in origin that respect for the unknown and the
mysterious so strong among the Teutons - who, to the end of his days, could
with difficulty tame his sword-hardened hand to the cramping servitude of the
pen, who but for those gleams of intuition that opened up a new and wider
world, might well have been content with his achievement of “creating an army
out of a crowd of men,” and of calling into existence the Second Empire of the
West.
More curious still is the fact that the part of Alcuin
in their joint task of upholding civilization at a critical epoch, and of
laying the foundation of future stability in law and government, education and
morality, was played by a man who had no gift of originality, who shrank from
the idea of innovations, who expressly disclaimed either wish or intention of
tempestuous reform.
There are few more striking examples of the
motive-power of the “still small voice” in an age of violence. The crying need
of that particular epoch was not innovation, nor originality in thought or
action, but a clear call to follow the well-marked paths of doctrine and
learning already trodden by the Catholic Church of Christendom for seven
centuries. In an age of disruption, of sudden violent conquests, of the
mushroom growth of new nations, the one and only bond of peace and union was
loyalty to the authority of the Church and her teaching; and without this even
the outward manifestations of civilization were threatened. And the greatest
fatality which could have happened would have been the domination of the new
races of that age by a master mind of egotistic fanaticism, a Mohammed who
might have drawn all Western Europe after him, posing as the Messenger of God
and His Prophet.
Fortunately for Christendom the actual master-mind of
the time was content to sink his own personality, and to draw men by the cords
of love to the old ways, the well-trod roads of inspired authority and methods
of intellectual activity.
And if, to modern readers, the methods of Alcuin seem
trivial and timid, it should be remembered that during his immediate period of
mind history, the northern and extreme western part of Europe, with which he
had to deal, was at the kindergarten level of psychology, a level liable to be
broken up easily enough by methods of force and daring originality.
Later on, when the foundations had been firmly laid by
his initial efforts, came the need for stronger stuff, which awoke in that same
quarter of the world the intellectual cravings of Scholasticism.
One may, however, question whether those cravings
would ever have arisen - apart from the need of combating Mohammedanism - had
it not been for the quiet work of a schoolmaster genius of the eighth century.
The Moral and Intellectual World of the Eighth Century
Some understanding of the moral and intellectual world
of Alcuin's day is, of course, necessary in order to realize his position when
he landed in Gaul in the year 782. In a succeeding chapter we will take a brief
survey of the history of that remarkable people which was to form the medium
through which his influence was to spread throughout Western Christendom.
At this point, however, it is important to remind
ourselves of the fact that this young and vigorous Frankish race, though
permeated, like all others which had once come into touch with Rome, with the
military traditions, the ideals, and in some part at least with the
civilization of the Empire, tended by the force of its strong racial instincts,
as well as by its mental alienation from the conquered people of Gaul, to break
off into isolation and independence, especially in matters of faith and morals.
In those days the one bond that could draw together a shattered Europe, in her
darkest period of disruption and fierce tribal animosities, was the faith, the
moral influence, and the intellectual culture of the Catholic Church, and the
importance therefore of bringing the Franks into close touch with her could
hardly be over-estimated.
The strength of that bond, however, depended upon the
loyalty, the morality, and also to a very large extent upon the intellectual
equipment of the ministers and exponents of her Faith; and just at a time when
a singularly material-minded race, whose religion had for centuries been the
sword, had, as it were, swung into the forefront of Christendom, the danger was
that an ill-equipped priesthood would be swamped by an altogether illiterate
laity, to the moral and spiritual confusion of both. To realize the position of
the eighth century in this respect, we must take a rapid glance at the history
of the educational world of Europe up to that period, with special reference to
Frankland.
From the first the Catholic Church had made the
question of education, both religious and secular, in a very real sense her
own. From the first she had realised that her ideal
must be a reasoned faith arising out of trained and disciplined methods of
thought, since doctrines imposed upon ignorant minds are apt to degenerate into
meaningless superstitions. The real bone of contention was never the need of
education, but the kind of educational system that would best meet that need;
the result was a veritable Battle of the Books, a battle which, under different
aspects, has lasted down to the present day.
For the modern man, accustomed to accept as a matter
of course Greek methods of thought as the finest vehicle of literary or
scientific expression, it is hard to understand the fierce contest that raged
between the pagan world of education in the last centuries of the Empire, and
the rapidly growing organization of the Christian Church. It is impossible to
judge the contest by the conditions of today. What one has to keep in mind is
the fact that those early centuries saw a constant and absolutely necessary
conflict between Christianity and paganism; and every form of literature or
philosophy that had a pagan origin was as suspect as the writings, some of them
possibly harmless enough, of a modernist of today. Moreover, in dealing with
people only just emerging from pagan beliefs, a clear-cut line was as much a
necessity as that drawn between a modern “convert” and his previous place of
worship. There must be no playing fast and loose with the old beliefs; they
must be rejected once and for all. Later on, when Europe had accepted the
Faith, and when paganism, in its old sense, was dead, the Church, as we shall
see, turned readily enough to the stores of the classic world, “christened”
Aristotle by the hands of Saint Thomas of Aquin, and was among the first to
revive the study of Greek literature. But during the first four centuries of
the Christian era, although the speech, the civilization, even a few details of
the religious rites of pagan Rome were absorbed and turned by her to the
advantage of the Faith, the Church grew steadily more and more antagonistic to
the use of pagan literature in her educational system.
To the minds of Tertullian, of Origen, of Jerome, even
of Augustine, though he could not altogether condemn his earlier love, classic
literature was permeated with evil. “Refrain,” cried the voice of Authority,
“from all the writings of the heathen. For what hast thou to do with strange
discourses, laws, or false prophets, which in truth turn away from the Faith
those that are of weak understanding? Dost thou long for poetry? Thou hast the
Psalms. Or to explore the origin of things? Thou hast the Book of Genesis.”
When this was the opinion of the Christian educators
one can scarcely be surprised at the line taken by the Apostate Emperor Julian,
who bade them cease to use the works of Homer if they only read him in order to
show that his gods were evil spirits, and to leave the schools to pagan teachers
and pagan books, requiring them to confine themselves to the Sacred Books of
their religion and to the children of their own faith.
This may have been the logical course, but one may be
thankful that the Church saw two insuperable obstacles to following it.
In the first place, as Tertullian himself has naively
confessed, the pupil was obliged to use the pagan textbook, “since there are no
others from which he can learn (quia aliter discere non potest).”
In the second, the rapidly developing Church had no
mind to have her limits thus circumscribed. Her mission was to the unconverted,
and she had no intention of being shut out from the schools. With that
remarkable wisdom which had already led her to use so many of the pagan rites
and customs in her ceremonial, she decided not to leave the superlative mental
training afforded by “grammar” and “rhetoric” to the foe, even if it involved a
study of such heathen writers as Cicero, and Horace, and Virgil. As a
fifth-century bishop, Sidonius of Lyons, declared, “We must press pagan science
and philosophy into the service of the Church, and thus attack the enemies of
the Faith with their own weapons.”
Already, a century earlier, Saint Augustine had faced
the situation, revised the opinions of middle life, and written in his
seventy-second year a treatise On Christian Instruction which indicates in the
clearest way the line he felt should be taken by the Church. “Quisquis bonus verusque Christianus est, Domini sui esse intelligat, ubicumque invenerit veritatem”- let
every good and true Christian know that Truth is the truth of his Lord,
wherever found. Let the Christian, escaping from the bondage of paganism, spoil
the Egyptians. Let him appropriate the “liberal disciplines, well suited to the
service of the truth.” Let him take the best of the secular culture of the
ancient world, and use it in the service of his Faith and to the better
understanding of divine truths.
This, then, was the compromise adopted by the early
Church. Let us see what its acceptance amounted to.
In the days when the Empire was still a flourishing
organization, “Grammar,” the first of the liberal arts taught in her schools,
had comprised a close and critical acquaintance with the chief Latin writers of
the classic age. Gradually, however, as the rage for oratory usurped the place
of solid scholarship, grammar had become subservient to “rhetoric” in the
schools, and mental training retired before a craze for ingenious forms of
speech.
The chief use of the classic writers, in consequence,
was as material for memorising long passages, which
could be worked up as declamations; a system which naturally cultivated the
memory at the expense of the reasoning faculties. Even the art of Composition
often became a mere trick - the skillful blending of well-worn phrases and
cliches fantastic and unreal as vehicles of thought.
A reformer who would combine enthusiasm for the Faith
with zeal for a better system of education was a crying need in that early era;
but the Church in her lingering distrust of pagan taints, halfhearted, too, in
her condemnation of the classics, failed to produce the man. Many of her
foremost men, indeed, favoured more or less openly
the empty rhetorical training in which they had themselves been educated.
Sidonius confessed the pleasure he experienced from reading Terence, though he
half suggests that he regards it as a sin of youth. Saint Hilary of Aries,
Felix of Clermont, Saint Remy, all educated in the strictly classic schools set
up by Imperial Rome in Southern Gaul, approved of the old system much as a
modern public school man of the last generation upholds Euclid and the Eton
Latin Grammar against the claims of geometry and the direct method.
The early years of the fifth century, therefore, saw
the work of three educational writers who show the result of an attempt to crystallise this rather chaotic system in textbooks which
must have exercised a strong influence over the education of their own and
succeeding generations, since they became the foundation of those used
throughout Europe during the whole mediaeval period.
One of these, Boethius (481-525), became the link
between the classic literature of Greece and the mediaeval learner, since he
translated, or adapted, versions of Aristotle for use in schools, and thus
furnished the standard textbook on logic for one generation of schoolboys after
another. He ranks among the last of the pagan philosophers rather than as a
Christian writer, though succeeding copyists managed to tinge his works with
Christian hues. His book, De Consolatione Philosophiae, tells the old myths of Greece and Rome
with much grace and charm, and was among those translated by our English
Alfred, as being “one of the most necessary for all men to know,” for use in
his Anglo-Saxon schools. His contemporary, Cassiodorus, was a Roman senator
who, in his old age, became a monk, and gave his whole time, apart from his
religious duties, to writing a Compendium, designed to cover the whole
educational system of that day.
Therein is grammar, adapted from the textbook of the
Roman Donatus; rhetoric, based on Cicero; “dialectics,” borrowed for the most
part from Boethius. These three departments were now definitely labelled as
Arts, and became the Trivium of the mediaeval world.
He also deals with four Disciplines - the Quadrivium,
comprising arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music, the first three
treatises being largely derived from Boethius.
To a century later belongs Isidore, a Spanish bishop
of whom Alcuin speaks with admiration rather beyond his deserts, as lumen Hispaniae.
The Origines of
Isidore form an encyclopaedia of information on every
subject under the sun, much of which is naturally very vague and inaccurate.
His account of the seven liberal arts is borrowed wholesale from Cassiodorus,
but his book is valuable chiefly as a collection - a kind of anthology - of
passages drawn from both classical writers and the Fathers of the Church,
dealing with every department of knowledge.
This scanty store of textbooks represented all of
classic lore and Christian comment thereupon that the Church proposed to teach
her pupils, as far as the secular State schools were concerned, up to the end
of the sixth and during part of the seventh century. Before that time, however,
we find a new influence at work, and the gradual disappearance of the secular
school from the scene, as far as Gaul was concerned. This new influence came
originally from the Eastern Deserts, the dwelling-place of those hermits whose
ascetic ideals had made deep impression on the imagination of one Cassian,
pupil of Saint Chrysostom and friend of Saint Germanus, the missionary of Gaul.
As the founder of the monastery of Saint Victor at
Marseilles, Cassian may claim to have been the founder of monastic discipline
in that country as early as the end of the fourth century, and to have pointed
out the road travelled by the sons of Saint Benedict in later days. His rule of
hard, unremitting toil, the energetic work of his monks as farmers, teachers,
students, made powerful appeal to the active instincts of the as yet but half
civilized Franks, and the walls of several monasteries began to rise throughout
the rapidly extending Frankland. Saint Martin founded his society at Tours and
spread his influence throughout the valley of the Loire. Saint Honorat made his
island monastery at Lerins the centre of religious
life for the valley of the Rhone. So that Southern Gaul, at least, was already
familiar with the monastic ideal when Saint Maur introduced the Benedictine rule
in the latter years of the sixth century.
Now where a monastery was built or a bishopric
founded, there was also a school, monastic or episcopal, in working order; and
the respect shown for these institutions by the ever-advancing Frank assured
their stability in a time of great chaos and confusion.
Before the invaders the old state or municipal school
founded by Imperial Rome in Gaul had fallen to pieces; sometimes because the
city which formerly supported them ceased to do so under the stress of conquest
or loss of trade wealth; sometimes because pupils simply ceased to attend them.
For the Frank in those days, though he approved and absorbed much of the
military organization of the Empire and was but half a Christian in the early
days of his conversion, was yet very much less than half a pagan in the
Church's sense of the word, and neither knew nor cared anything for Roman
culture, even when filtered through Christian channels. But he recognized and
respected the self-denying work of the monks and clergy; and where education
survived at all in that era of darkness covered by the fifth and sixth
centuries, it was to be found in the school of the monastery or the cathedral.
The character of the education given there can be
found in the Rule of Discipline drawn up by Cassian for the monks of the West.
Where the Church of an earlier day had compromised in the matter of teaching
and reading classic literature, the stern rule of Cassian was explicit.
For the children of the school as for the monks of the
choir, there was to be but one aim, one ideal. Study and manual toil alike were
to be used as a preparation for the life to come; work for material advantages,
and love of learning for its own sake, were to be equally discouraged. As a
youth, sitting at the feet of Saint Chrysostom, Cassian himself had soaked his
mind in the incomparable literature of Greece. But in other years, in his
famous Collationes he makes his friend Germanus
deplore the memories of the literature which, he said, dragged his soul from
heavenly contemplation. Consulting the Abbot Nestorius as to the remedy, he was
drily recommended “to read the Sacred Books with the same ardour that thou once didst those of heathen writers - then shalt thou be freed from
their influence.”
From this standpoint it naturally came about that the
system of education laid down by Cassian's rule was extremely limited in
extent. No provision whatever was made for boys who were not destined to become
monks. All learnt to read in order to study the Scriptures and to follow the
Breviary and Missal, to write that they might copy the Psalter, and to sing
that they might do justice to plain chant as interpreted by Saint Ambrose. A
modicum of arithmetic was allowed - based upon the calculations determining the
dates of Easter and the feasts dependent upon it. Of mental training - the
gymnasia of Greece - there was little trace. Yet one is bound to confess that
the men produced by such a system were those to whom the conquering Teutons
looked with awe and deference for their effect of moral force, strong
organization, and social weight. Neither pagan remnant nor Arian heretic,
popular as the latter was elsewhere, attracted the newcomers; and when Clovis,
finding himself conqueror of Gaul, looked round him for a worthy ally, it was
to Saint Remy, the Gaulish bishop, representative of Christian Rome, that he
turned.
At that particular time, then, the monastic and
cathedral schools of Gaul, by their upholding of a striking, though narrow
ideal, fulfilled the particular needs of their own day. The system in itself,
however, possessed elements of weakness too marked for long endurance. Neglect
of the part played by the intellect in soul development weakened the powers of
thought and reasoning; theological learning began to disappear; all but the
most farfetched and fanciful interpretation of the Scriptures ceased;
literature and philosophy alike vanished from the schools. It seemed, indeed,
as though the old gibe of Julian the Apostate, that when men exchanged the
study of the Ancients for that of the Evangelists, they would descend to the
mental level of the slave, was to be fulfilled. Education, in the real sense,
no longer existed; instruction on the most narrow and elementary lines took its
place. The only scope for originality of any kind survived in the rage for
fantastic parallels and curious metaphors by which well-nigh every passage of
the Sacred Books was illustrated.
The condition into which the learning of Gaul, once so
celebrated, had fallen by the end of the sixth century, is described, vividly
enough, though in very bad Latin, by Gregory, Bishop of Tours (544-595), in his Historia Ecclesiastica Francorum. Rightly
enough, he connects its decay with the political condition of the time, a cause
of weakness inevitable in the wild days of the Merovingian dynasty.
“Inasmuch as,” he says, “the cultivation of letters is
disappearing, or, rather, perishing, in the cities of Gaul, while goodness and
evil are committed with equal impunity, and the ferocity of the barbarians and
the passions of kings rage alike unchecked, so that not a single grammarian
skilled in narration can be found to describe the general course of events,
whether in prose or verse. The greater number lament over the state of affairs,
saying: 'Alas, for our age! For the study of letters has perished from our
midst, and the man is no longer to be found who can commit to writing the
events of the time”
“These and like complaints, repeated day by day, have
determined me to hand down to the future the record of the past; and though of
unlettered tongue I have nevertheless been unable to remain silent respecting
either the deeds of the wicked or the life of the good. That which has more
especially impelled me to do this is that I have often heard it said that few
people understand a rhetorician who uses philosophical language, but nearly all
understand one speaking in the vulgar fashion.”
The somewhat peevish complaints of this bishop “of
unlettered tongue” effected no reform, and during the seventh and eighth
centuries a great darkness descended upon the schools of Gaul.
Their guardians were themselves in sorry case. The
monasteries, weakened by the fact that they stood outside episcopal control,
were held in lessening honour and respect as the
power of the bishop increased. And the bishops, once the guardians of both
spiritual and temporal law and discipline, the protectors of their flock, had
unfortunately shaken themselves free, to a large extent, of the jurisdiction of
the Pope, and, unfettered by religious responsibility to a central power,
tended to develop more and more into feudal magnates, or warriors, gaining in
wealth and temporal power what they lost in spiritual prestige.
Hence the half-civilised Frankish chiefs who ruled them, often with clash of temper and of sword, saw no
reason why they should not interfere even in religious matters. One of these,
Chilperic I, even proposed to the Church in Gaul a new Confession of Faith, in
which all distinctions between the three Persons of the Blessed Trinity were to
be omitted. Another tried to impose a new alphabet, or, rather, an extended
version of the original - an innovation which would have involved the
destruction, as no longer “up to date,” of all manuscripts before his time.
Even in the days of the Carolingians, and in the time of Charlemagne himself,
such tendencies were by no means uncommon, were indeed inherent in the character
of the Frankish rulers, with their naive egotism and mingled ignorance and
intelligence. It is scarcely necessary to point out the pitfalls thus
threatened, and the dangers of future heresy, dangers which it was in great
part the work of Alcuin to avert.
While Gaul was in this parlous state, the torch of
learning had been rekindled elsewhere in a striking manner. On Monte Cassino,
in the year 528, the first Benedictine monastery had opened its doors; by the
end of the sixth century the sons of Benedict were ready to go forth into the
world and to “instruct all nations.” Study, both as a duty and a privilege,
played a conspicuous part in the Benedictine Rule; and though it made no
explicit mention of the classics of antiquity, there was strong recommendation
of “such expositions of the Holy Scriptures as the most illustrious doctors of
the orthodox faith and the Catholic Fathers had compiled.” This, at any rate,
sent the student to originals instead of to a “Compendium,” in theory, if not
in practice. Moreover, such studies were to be undertaken for the refutation of
errors; which suggests that books containing such “errors,” be they pagan or
more strictly “heretic,” must be read in order to be condemned.
The most important reform, however, lies in the fact
that the high place accorded to study by the Benedictine Rule, raised
education, with its methods, from the mire, and set it among the seats of the
mighty.
Not for many a long day was its benign influence to
touch directly the land of the Franks. Yet many years before the coming of the
Benedictine Alcuin, there had appeared in Frankland a reformer from another
quarter, representing a School that in the future was to affect both
Charlemagne and his tutor in a curious fashion.
This was Saint Columban, who, in the early years of
the seventh century, appeared as a monastic zealot among the Vosges mountains
which bordered the country then known as Austrasia. Columban hailed from
Ulster, famous for the learning of its monasteries and schools, though the source
of its erudition is still something of a mystery, as is the fact that the one
country of Western Europe which never came under the discipline of the Empire,
yet received with joy the Faith as taught by Saint Patrick, and never swerved
from it in spite of storms and stress.
The monastic system of Ireland was a legacy from the
teaching of the fourth-century Cassian, as taught in the school of Saint Martin
at Tours, the future home of Alcuin, and carried thence to the Irish by Saint
Patrick during the fifth century. The Rule in force there closely followed that
laid down by the ascetic Cassian, and as taught by Columban was even more
austere, and still closer to that of the Desert Fathers of the Thebaid.
For the moment the enthusiasm of the Irish Saint bore
good fruit in Gaul, as his flourishing institutions at Luxeuil and Saint Gall bore witness; but the temperament of Northern Gaul was not
suited to great austerity, and the rigid rule of the Celtic monk was quickly
exchanged for that of the sons of Benedict, with its greater elasticity, when
the latter came first into touch with Gaul.
In days to come the school represented by Columban was
to reappear in a curious connection with Alcuin and the Imperial Court, in
connection with a suspicion of unorthodoxy, which seems to have hung about the
skirts of the Church in Ireland in those days, and was, perhaps, a result of
that country's early lack of discipline at the hands of Imperial Rome. Even
during the seventh century Columban himself was summoned before a synod of
Frankish bishops on a charge of heresy with regard to the observance of Easter.
For the Franks, after the conversion of Clovis, were strictly orthodox in
details, and saw in an apparently trivial matter the underlying principle that
was to be so strongly emphasized in England by Saint Wilfrid and the Venerable
Bede. The keeping of Easter at the date appointed by Rome signified a loyal
acceptance of papal authority; and the holding to local traditions in this
matter, even when combined with enthusiastic acceptance of Catholic doctrine as
a whole, weakened the position of the Celtic Church both in Britain and
Ireland, and became a cause of contention and suspicion for many a year.
In the end, good sense and loyalty combined to make
Ireland one of Rome's most faithful daughters; but the position of Columban, as
representing the Irish Church of the seventh century, sufficiently accounts for
the swift passing of his influence in Gaul.
As far as classical education was concerned, the
teaching of the Celtic school was, in some respects, more liberal than that of
the rest of monastic Europe. Saint Patrick and his followers taught the remnant
of classic lore that had survived the schools of Cassian - something of Greek,
a trace, at least, of Aristotle, Cicero, Virgil. They used, too, the textbook
of Martianus Capella of Carthage, speculative and tinged with pagan theories,
though interpreted by Christian teachers and edited by them. The need,
moreover, of justifying their views as to the correct date of Easter by
reference to the stars had made the Irish monks astronomers of a kind, though
the science they practised would more correctly have
been called astrology. Altogether, save for the one point of difference with
Roman discipline, the spirit of Irish learning contrasted most favourably with the dull and ossified system then prevalent
in the schools of Gaul.
Now before this time, the torch of the Faith had been
handed on from Ireland by way of Iona, to England, by Celtic teachers such as
Saint Aidan and Saint Cuthbert, only to be extinguished by the shock of
Anglo-Saxon invasions and conquests, save in Holy Island and among the
mountains of the West. Yet before the day when Columban appeared in Gaul, the
flame had been rekindled in this land, and straight from the central and
undying fire of Christendom.
A few years after the decay of learning among the
Franks had called forth the wail of Gregory of Tours, another Gregory, well
named the Great, had set on foot the work, not only of conversion but also of
education, among the uncivilised and unlettered
settlers in Britain (A.D. 597). With Gregory a new life was infused into
education, all the more important because it was to permeate the system and
Rule of Saint Benedict, which he so ardently upheld, and which was soon to
supersede all the other monastic ideals of Europe.
The character of the education approved by Saint
Gregory will be easily understood if we realize the circumstances of his time.
Given a chief bishop full of enthusiastic zeal for religion, burning with love
of souls, living at an epoch when social disorganisation,
anarchy, and the desolation inseparable from the constant invasion and harrying
of the Lombards, had reduced Italy almost to ruins, it was inevitable that his
aims must be strictly and unswervingly directed towards one end. What did the
art of rhetoric matter when souls were perishing for lack of the Gospel
message? What were the niceties of logic when the lambs of the Church were
starving spiritually and physically in the midst of universal woes?
That Church, then, must be fortified by every means in
her power, as being the one and only weapon of contention against heathendom
and social ruin. Nothing that would aid in the campaign was too trivial to be
neglected. Ritual and music were but stones in the sacred fort, but each must
be well and truly shaped and fitted into place. And as the one safe and speedy
means of training his workmen in the task of conversion, monasteries on the
model of Monte Cassino must be built and established far and wide throughout
Europe, from which missionaries could be sent forth to all quarters of the
Continent.
It is clear that in the early years of the mission of
Saint Gregory and his enthusiastic followers, for men who shrank from no danger
and who carried their lives in their hands, the only study of importance or
value would be the Gospels, or the universal heart-language of the Psalms.
Yet, as the work of conversion progressed, it became
evident that something more of the nature of mental training was necessary if
the teacher were to hold his own. Less than seventy years after Saint Augustine
had landed on British shores, we find Theodore of Tarsus, the Greek, sitting as
seventh Archbishop in the episcopal seat of Canterbury, and introducing the
study of his native language and literature into the Cathedral school. Within a
few years this “Canterbury learning” had become as famous as that of Gaul, and
Ireland, and Rome, and, rapidly spreading, had been welcomed in the school at
York, soon to rank as one of the most famous in England.
And now we can see the beginnings of Alcuin's
spiritual and literary genealogy. Among the renowned schools of the North were
those founded at Wearmouth and Jarrow by Benedict Biscop;
and the pupil of Benedict was Bede, the Venerabilis,
our first annalist, who claims for Saint Gregory the title of “Apostle of the
English.” Bede had among his pupils at Jarrow one Egbert; and this Egbert
became in later days the teacher of the boy Alcuin, in the school of York.
Twenty years after the death of Bede in 735, there perished in a pagan outburst
against the Faith one who was to prepare, in a very special manner, the path of
Alcuin in the land of the Franks. Saint Boniface, the Apostle of Germany, had
gone forth from his Benedictine monastery near Exeter in the early years of the
eighth century, to convert the heathen tribes of that land - an ascetic figure,
with eager voice and burning eyes, urging, persuading, living and dying a
martyr to the Faith.
“In that part of Germany which the Eastern Franks
inhabit,” wrote Rudolf, a century later, “there is a place called Fulda, from
the name of a neighbouring river, which is situated
in a great forest. The holy martyr Boniface, who was sent as an ambassador from
the Holy See into Germany and ordained Bishop of the Church of Mayence, obtained the woodland, inasmuch as it was secluded
and far removed from the goings and comings of men, from Carloman, King of the
Franks, and by authority of Pope Zachary founded a monastery there in the tenth
year before his martyrdom.”
The school connected with this monastery was destined
to be the spiritual and intellectual home of one of Alcuin's most famous
pupils, and to be closely affected by his influence. At the time of its
foundation, however, Boniface was more concerned with the reform of life than
of learning, as far as the Franks were concerned. To him, full of zeal for the
Benedictine rule of loyalty to the Holy See, the condition of the Church in
Gaul at the middle of the eighth century was a scandal and a shame. He wrote to
Pope Zachary imploring him to draw men together by his rule, now there was no
deference paid to canon law, and now matters of practice and doctrine were
neglected owing to there having been no Ecclesiastical Council called for over
eighty years. Bishops were accused of being “drunken, injurious brawlers,
bearing arms in regular battle, and shedding with their own hands the blood of
their fellow men - heathen or Christian.” “The law of God and the religion of
the Church had fallen to pieces.”
Although much of this state of affairs might have been
traced to the demand of the Frankish kings that bishops should shoulder the
feudal burdens and give military service in their own person, if they could not
provide substitutes, the keen eye of the English monk had pierced the surface
and seen the underlying cause to be the lack of responsibility to the Head of
Christendom, the want of correlation with Rome. This, then, was made his
immediate object of reform. At the Council of Saltz, in 742, the Frankish
bishops were induced by him to give in their complete allegiance to the Holy
See; and the Abbey of Fulda, founded by him, was the first monastic institution
among the Teutons to be placed directly under papal jurisdiction. As a direct
result. Church and King made holy alliance. The Frankish chieftain, Pepin,
protected the seat of the Papacy from the rough hand of the Lombard; his own
solemn consecration at Rheims secured for the royal power the whole weight of
the Church.
Before his death as a missionary martyr among the
heathen tribes of Friesland, Boniface had not only succeeded in reforming a
Church and a State. He had roused in the breast of a boy of thirteen an ideal
of civilization, of discipline, and of learning, that was to bear fruit in later
years in the joint work of Alcuin and of this lad, Charles, the young son of
Pepin. It is, perhaps, not too fanciful to think that the reason for the
deliberate choice made by Charles of an English monk, as his future adviser and
minister of education, was his. boyish remembrance and admiration of the strong
and authoritative personality which had then captured his youthful imagination.
For hero-worship belongs to the earliest as well as the most modern days; and
it was the admiring memory of Boniface that led to the call of Alcuin to
Frankland.
The Franks
A Greek proverb which may be freely translated
"You had better have the Frank as your friend than as your
neighbour," was the saying quoted by Eginhard concerning a nation which,
in early days, was the terror of Western Europe, and, in later times, became
the medium by which the torch of learning was to be rekindled within her
borders.
In order to realize the nature of Alcuin's task in
that respect it will be well to take a brief survey of the story of that
warrior people, which, owing mainly to the personality of its rulers, played
for a brief period so important a part in the history of Europe.
Little is known of the origin of the Franks, save that
they were of Teuton race and members of the Sicambrian League of Rhine Germans. Ever since the third century of the Christian era they
had taken a foremost place as a fighting nation, and had made frequent
invasions of Gaul. In the fifth century Clovis, chieftain of the Salians, their
leading tribe, made himself master of the northern province of the kingdom of
Burgundy, and of the southern province of Aquitaine. In the sixth century the
Frankish Empire stretched from the River Inn to the Bay of Biscay, forming by
no means a united kingdom, but a mass of petty States linked up by the dominant
personality of the Merovingian rulers, who, in Gaul, were as kings over a
conquered people, and in Germany as chieftains among lesser chieftains.
The first appearance of the Franks in Gaul had been in
the role of an almost totally uncivilised horde of
savages; but, like all other tribes which came into touch with the Empire, they
had rapidly absorbed all that Rome could teach them of discipline and military
skill, as well as a certain rough kind of primitive civilization. In the days
of Clovis - that is, in the fifth century - we see them not so much as
barbarian raiders as hard bitten, well-trained soldiers serving under a
military genius as their chieftain. Their type of character is reflected in
that of Clovis himself, that strange mixture of savage cruelty and hardly
acquired self-discipline. The History of the Franks, written by Saint Gregory
of Tours in the latter half of the sixth century, gives an apt illustration of
his type of temperament.
The warriors of Clovis had plundered a church and
carried off, among other things, a large and richly wrought bowl. Forthwith the
bishop of that district sent - a message entreating the chieftain to return at
least this one vessel; to which Clovis made reply that he himself must take his
chance with the rest, but that if, when the booty was divided, the bowl fell to
his share, he would return it to the bishop. With a genuine wish to do his best
for the Church, the chieftain only awaited the division of the spoil to make
petition that the bowl should be handed over to him apart from that which fell
to him by lot; upon which his warriors made respectful reply that, since
everything really belonged to the man who had led them into danger and victory,
he must take what he wished. But one surly fellow chose to cavil at this
decision and, raising his battle-axe, he smote the bowl a devastating blow,
saying, "Naught shalt thou have beyond what the lot may give thee."
Amazement fell upon his companions at this behaviour,
but the chieftain said not a word. Taking the hacked and dinted bowl he handed
it to the bishop's messenger, bidding him return it to his master, and
forthwith turned away to brood over the incident for the space of a whole year.
At the end of that time he ordered a parade of his regiment to be made, and
walked among their ranks until he saw the man who had smitten the bowl. “What
weapons are these?” he cried, pointing to the soldier's equipment. “Neither
spear nor hatchet is fit for use.” And snatching the latter he threw it to the
ground. Then, as the fellow stooped to recover it, Clovis buried his own axe
deep in the fellow's skull. “Thus,” said he, “didst thou to that bowl a year
ago.”
The story of this people, apart from their strange
characteristic of mingled savagery and chivalry, is full of romantic incidents.
The marriage of Clovis, however, to the Burgundian princess Clotilda, only a
child but a fervent Catholic, is no mere detail of romance. It was the
immediate cause of a conversion which proved the turning-point of Frankish
history. In days when the tenets of Arianism had captured the greater part of
Europe, it secured the faith of Gaul, and won for the land, one day to be known
as France, the title of Eldest Daughter of the Church. The baptism of Clovis,
moreover, secured for the Franks the alliance of the Catholic Church, and so
proved the foundation stone upon which the future Empire of Charlemagne was to
rise. The day, therefore, upon which Saint Remy, Bishop of Rheims, bade the
fierce warrior, Mitis depone colla Sicamber; adora quod incendisti, incende quod adorasti, and laved him in the waters of baptism, may truly
be called the birthday of the Frankish Church and of the Empire of the Franks.
From that time Clovis was styled “Rex Christianissimus”; and when Rome looked outside her borders
for aid in the long Struggle with Arianism, it was to the Franks that she
appealed. As to the nature of the Frankish conversion and the influence it had
on other nations, that is one of the matters that cannot possibly be judged by
the standards of today. Among half-civilised peoples,
the faith adopted by a strong and successful tribe was bound to win respect and
adherence, even if only partially understood, and it would be futile to
investigate motives of conversion in an age when a man’s religion was symbolised by his sword. To the end of his life Clovis
remained a fierce warrior, whose highest Christian ideal was the extermination
of the enemies of his newly adopted faith, combined with a more or less
respectful attitude towards the God of Clotilda.
The real importance of the matter lay in the formation
of an alliance between the finest fighting people in Europe, needing only the
aid of Rome to make themselves supreme in the western provinces, and the
Catholic Church, hard beset by heretics and barbarian invaders. From that time
we find the half-converted Franks posing as the supporters of the Catholic
Faith and of the civilization of Imperial Rome, and in their mental and
spiritual ill-equipment for their great task lay one of the most insidious
difficulties with which Charlemagne and Alcuin had to deal.
Henceforth, the regular yearly campaigns which formed
the ordinary routine of the nation, were directed openly against the Arians,
either in Gaul or elsewhere. Into the details of that long struggle there is no
need to enter here. It is enough to realize that it was as the adherents of the
Faith and civilization of Rome that the Teuton people gradually made themselves
masters of the West. After a great victory over the Arian Visigoths of Southern
Gaul, we see the palace in Lutetia, in which the Emperors Julian and Gratian
had once dwelt, occupied by Clovis, acting as Roman proconsul, though long
years were yet to pass before Lutetia became Paris, and before she became the
capital even of Western Frankland. There he maintained his supremacy by a
series of bloody deeds and treacherous designs, which cleared all relatives
likely to be rival claimants to the succession from the path of his sons. And thence
he passed in death to the Church of the Holy Apostles, the church which he and
Clotilda had built together in Lutetia to be their final resting-place.
At the time of his death Clovis had not created a new
kingdom in Gaul, although the Franks were sufficiently supreme there to impose
upon the original inhabitants their own code of Frankish law. This law was but
a thinly disguised form of Roman legislation upon which certain national
customs had been grafted, and is only another proof of the fact that, long
before the days of the Teuton invasion of Gaul, the language, the civilization,
and the government of Rome, had profoundly affected the Germanic tribes of
central and northern Europe.
Almost exactly three hundred years elapsed between the
advance of Clovis upon Gaul and the arrival of Alcuin at the Frankish Court.
Throughout that period we may look for and find the same prominent features -
the clash between the desire of the new nations, of which the Franks were now
the leaders, to preserve the institutions of Rome, and the tendency to revert
to the customs of their own barbaric origins. Fortunately for Europe, Roman
administration and organization, military and civil, had been too well absorbed
in Gaul ever to be entirely lost, even when the Western Empire, shaken by
barbaric inroads, appeared to be tottering to her fall. For two mighty and
enduring witnesses to her greatness remained. As the Empire weakened and lost
her tight grip upon her provinces, the Catholic Church had strengthened her
bonds of unity, brought in new nations to the Faith, made her influence felt in
every department of life. It was the conversion of England straight from Rome
in the end of the sixth century that saved our own country when the shock of
the Anglo-Saxon invasion seemed for the moment to have wiped out all traces of
Roman civilization; it was the close connection of Rome and Gaul through the
alliance of Popes with Frankish kings that decided the fate of the future
France.
And although in every case the newcomers retained to
some extent the customs, primitive laws, and memorials of their ancestors, the
actual system under which men were ruled and judged was the civil and
ecclesiastical law of Rome.
Thus, even after the First Empire of the West had
passed away, it was still to Rome that men turned their eyes, and from Rome
that they expected a leader and deliverer during the dark years of the sixth
and seventh centuries. Dark indeed they were, for the civilization of Clovis,
primitive enough in its characteristics, had degenerated almost into barbarism
among his descendants. The fifty years that followed his death were, it is
true, marked by rapid conquests of territory; but with them a period of
bloodshed and savage treachery set in which lasted well into the eighth century.
These were the true Dark Ages of history, and not until the fall of the
Merovingian line of Clovis do we find any sign of light in the gloom. The
condition of the Church and its ministers has already been noted in the
description of Gregory of Tours, and it did not improve in the century that
followed his period. We have seen the fate of education under these conditions
in the last chapter; that it did not altogether die out is probably due to the
fortunate change of dynasty in the year which brought the new line of the
Carolingians into the foreground.
The founders of this dynasty, Pepin of Herstal, and
Charles Martel, his son, Mayors of the Palace in the days of the last
Merovingians, were not content to be merely the nominal rulers of a loosely connected
group of principalities. Their first object was to rule the Franks as monarchs
rather than chieftains; and when this was once attained they were prepared to
use their power outside their own boundaries. It was by his successful attack
upon the Saracens of the southern provinces that Charles Martel prevented an
influx of infidels from northern Spain into Gaul; and it was naturally to him
that Pope Gregory III turned when sore beset by Lombard foes.
From the moment that the Embassy from Rome reached the
Frankish Court dates the connection foreshadowed in the days of Clovis, between
the seat of Empire and the Frankish nation; and it was by the hands of the
successor of Saint Peter that this connection was riveted and made firm.
Acting boldly as an international power, the Holy See
deposed Childeric, last of the line of Clovis to claim the throne, and
appointed in his stead as Rex Francorum another Pepin, son of Charles Martel.
With stern approval the Pranks surveyed the scene, when, after their own ritual
of election had been performed, and the new chieftain had been raised aloft
upon a shield amid the clash of arms, he was crowned with the diadem of Rome
and anointed with the sacred oils by the bishops of the Catholic Church (A.D.
752).
Two years later, after the Lombards had twice been
driven back from Rome by Frankish troops, Pepin was hailed as Patrician and
protector; and he then proceeded to show his goodwill still further by handing
over to the Republic of the Romans the newly conquered cities of Susa and
Pavia, to form the nucleus of the future States of the Church.
With his reign we see the commencement of a new era
for the Franks. For three centuries they had ruled in Gaul, on both sides of
the Rhine, in more or less close contact with the civilization of Rome and the
discipline of the Faith. For a time they had reverted in some degree at least
to their former condition of professional militarism; but after the era of the
Merovingians had passed away, the Frankish people began to show distinct signs
of development. Traces of social comfort and refinement were to be found,
together with an elementary knowledge of art and craftsmanship, and a respect,
if not a love, for the learning as yet almost unattainable in their land. The
incessant military activity of that day was still an obstacle in the way of
anything like intellectual life; but signs of mental activity were not wanting,
together with healthy curiosity as to the unknown.
All these germs of mental life must have been
quickened by the coming of Saint Boniface, newly arrived from a land that had
kept its reputation for learning. And the Frankish sense of loyalty to Rome
served meantime as his chief support in his zealous work of conversion among
the German tribes subdued by the Frankish king.
It was, moreover, from the hands of Saint Boniface,
the representative of English learning and civilization, that Pepin received
his crown; and, as we have already seen, it was the love and veneration stirred
by the missionary saint in the breast of a thirteen-year-old boy, Charles, son
of Pepin, that first shaped the idea of a Renaissance of learning in the Court
of the future Emperor of the West.
Such is the story, in outline, of the race which was
to form the material of Alcuin's work. And if it seems out of place in a book
dealing with the
Thinker himself rather than with the history of his
time, it must be remembered that, in days so remote from the present, it is
necessary to know in some detail the circumstances with which he had to deal,
since these are bound to modify profoundly the form and presentment of his
thoughts.
Alcuin at York
Meantime, while these various forces were converging
upon his unconscious personality, Alcuin was born, somewhere about the year
735, of noble parents, in the neighbourhood of York.
Of his actual childhood we know nothing directly, but a reference in one of his
letters shows that, as a very young boy, in accordance with the pious custom of
the time, he was dedicated to the Church and put under the charge of the
household of a bishop or of a monastery. In this letter he thanks the
"Brotherhood of York," which, he says, "had watched over the
tender years of childhood with a mother's love, borne with pious patience the
thoughtlessness of boyhood, and, with fatherly chastisement, had brought him to
man's estate."
The Cathedral School of York, to which he evidently
refers, was, at that period, second only to Canterbury in importance, as far as
English schools were concerned. There, through the zeal of Paulinus, first
bishop of the city, the Rule of Saint Benedict, the high ideals of Saint
Gregory, the discipline approved by Saint Augustine had been introduced, and
had been developed by learned and pious ecclesiastics. For a time there had
been a danger that the loyalty of the northern diocese to the See of Rome might
be affected by the influence of the Celtic Church, once so strong in the North.
But this danger had been removed once and for all by the energy of Wilfrid and
the wisdom of Theodore of Canterbury. From elsewhere than Iona another
influence had been brought to bear upon the School of York during the eighth
century. The latter years of the seventh century had seen Benedict Biscop founding the twin monasteries of Wearmouth and
Jarrow, and, in his zeal for these children of his heart and brain, ransacking
Gaul and Rome for builders and glass workers, for carvings and wall-paintings,
that his people might learn, through eye as well as ear, the mysteries of their
Faith. Books and teachers were an even more pressing necessity, and for them he
went to the Schools of Ireland, to Lerins in Gaul, to Canterbury, and, of
course, to Rome. Hence it came to pass that Bede, his most famous pupil, educated
by him and by his successor Ceolfrith from the age of
seven, reaped the advantage of the widest culture of his day. Learned Irish
scholars, passing as missionaries through England to the Continent, would
sojourn for a while at the northern monasteries and give from their abundance
to the eager young scholar. Benedict himself was soaked in the atmosphere of
Rome and ever ready to share his knowledge with his pupil. Canterbury, through
Archbishop Theodore, had handed on a priceless legacy of discipline and organization.
Lerins and other Gallic monasteries had provided some of the rare books of that
day.
“All my life,” wrote Bede of Jarrow, “I spent in that
same monastery, giving my whole attention to meditating on the Scriptures; and
in the interval, between the observance of regular discipline and the daily
duty of singing in the church, I made it my delight either to be learning, or
teaching, or writing.”
Here, then, we find the source of the atmosphere in
which Alcuin was brought up; for the close friend and literary partner of Bede
was Albinus, and his favourite pupil was Egbert, both
of whom were to be the future masters of the school of York.
Life in that school, in days when Egbert was
archbishop and director of studies, has been described by his pupil in a
graphic way. All the morning he taught his pupils, instructing them in Latin
literature, in Greek, in Roman law, astronomy, and music, but most of all in
theology. At noon he celebrated the chief Mass of the day, which was followed
by dinner and recreation. The latter was enlivened by the discussion and debate
of various literary questions arising out of the morning studies. Some form of
physical exercise followed, and then came study of a lighter kind, such as
"the nature of man, of cattle, birds, and beasts," and of the
"properties of numbers." This was followed by Vespers, after which
the students knelt to receive the blessing of the archbishop at the close of
the day.
The actual teaching at York during Alcuin's boyhood
appears to have been shared between Archbishop Egbert and Elbert, the former
expounding the New Testament, the latter giving instruction in rhetoric,
grammar, jurisprudence, poetry, astronomy, a kind of physics, and the Old
Testament. In the really delightful verses in which he describes his life
there, Alcuin says that Elbert knew well how to "rejoice their thirsty
minds with the waters of doctrine and the dew of heavenly learning. That he
made grammar clear, poured forth copious streams of rhetoric," made some
rehearse the rules of jurisprudence, others recite verse, or "on swift
lyric feet" mount the slopes of Parnassus as embryo poets. As to the
lighter subjects of the course, he "turns their eyes to view the sun and
moon and sky with planets seven, expounding the cause of storms, of earthquake
shocks, and the distinctions between man and beast and bird." He expressly
mentions the "study of numbers as a means of fixing the date of
Easter," no small arithmetical task, into the depths and mysteries of
which he guides their youthful minds.
This list seems to exclude two very ordinary subjects
- music and geometry. But music is hinted at in a line referring to the
"cadence sweet of Castalia's flutes"; and geometry, or measurement of
the earth, probably included the natural history and geography already
mentioned.
Evidently this Elbert was a born teacher, attracting
boys of "distinguished talent, attaching them to himself by his teaching,
his affectionate, his fatherly care."
Indolis egregiac iuvenes quoscumque videbat
Hos sibi coniunxit, docuit, nutrivit, amavit.
So says his pupil Alcuin, one of those very “lads of
distinguished talent,” who, with his friend Eanbald, requited his affection for
them by a devout hero-worship that found expression in One of the poems of the
former, written in his old age. In this he tells how Egbert's love of new ideas
in education and literature sent him on many occasions to the monasteries of
the Continent in search of books and information from other sources, and there
is little doubt that the famous library of York was the fruit of his passion
for knowledge.
In later years, when Alcuin, the student, had become.
Alcuin the Master of the Palace School and Minister of Education to the most renowned
prince of Christendom, he writes begging for leave to send youths to England
who may obtain there necessary books and so bring into France the Flowers of
Britain, “that the Garden of Paradise be no more confined to York.” And in this
poem of his later years he gives a description of its contents, most valuable
as a source of information as the contents of an eighth-century library. It
must be remembered, however, that in this respect York was exceptional. A
scholarly writer of our day says, indeed, that the library of York at this
period far surpassed any possessed by either England or France in the twelfth
century, whether that of Christ Church, Canterbury, of Saint Victor at Paris,
or of Bee in Normandy.
For as yet the heavy hand of the Northman had not
fallen upon England, and the days of Alcuin were those of which Alfred the
Great was to write wistfully in his Preface to Saint Gregory's Cura Pastoralis a century later, “reminding you, my bishops, how
in former times foreigners sought wisdom and learning in this land, though we
should have to seek it abroad now if we wanted to have it.”
The list of books mentioned by Alcuin in his poems is
remarkably eclectic in scope. It includes the works of the "ancient
fathers" of the classic days of Greece and Rome - Aristotle, Cicero,
Virgil, Lucan - or at least some portions of these writings. The fathers of the
Church, - Jerome, Ambrose, Hilary, Athanasius, Augustine, Orosius, Leo, Gregory
the Great, and Chrysostom - are there, with modern historians, such as Bede and Aidhelm, and grammarians such as Donatus, Probus,
Phocas.
The poem reads, indeed, as though the precious books,
inscribed on sheepskin and enclosed between richly ornamented boards, were
actually catalogued by the writer according to their positions on the shelves
or recesses of the library. For we get first the group of Catholic Fathers from
Jerome to Fulgentius; then a shelf of historians - the two modern historians,
Bede and Aldhelm, and next to them a group of ancient history writers, represented
by Boethius and Pliny. Next comes the shelf of logicians and rhetoricians,
Aristotle and Cicero, with lesser lights such as Sedulius and Juvencus, Clement, Prosper, Lactantius.
Then we get back to pure literature in Virgil,
Statius, Lucan, followed by a group of books dealing with the art of grammar
and literary style - Probus, Donatus, Priscian.
The verses conclude with an assurance to his readers
that “many more books would be found there, masters of art and speech and clear
style in prose; but that their names would weary the pen of the writer to
declare.”
This catalogue is not only interesting in itself, it
also shows pretty plainly the stage which education had reached in England, as
well as in the more enlightened parts of the Continent, in the eighth century.
The books named include some few Greek writers, and though it is possible the
latter may have been read in a Latin translation, the impetus already given to
the study of Greek by Theodore of Canterbury, and the undoubted knowledge of
that language in the Irish Schools of that day, suggest the probability that it
was not unfamiliar in the School of York.
As regards the "pagan" classics, the
prejudice of earlier days had evidently been transformed by a compromise that
accepted Aristotle and Cicero, Virgil, Statius and Lucan, Donatus and Priscian;
though these were studied in close connection with their great opponents,
Augustine, Jerome, Gregory the Great. For purposes of general education the
compendiums of Boethius, Cassiodorus, and Bede, no doubt held the field,
together with the work of Isidore, which Alcuin does not name, probably because
it was too well known to need mention, being the most popular textbook of that
day.
When Archbishop Egbert died, he was succeeded in his
office by Elbert, whose place as scholasticus,
or Master of the School, was then taken by Alcuin, newly ordained to the
diaconate. Fourteen years later, when Elbert passed away, the latter became
Curator of the Cathedral Library (780). Already the hot breath of the coming
tempest, when the arts of peace were first threatened and then destroyed by uncivilised hordes from the North, was making itself felt;
and there was sore need of enthusiastic book-lovers in England as well as
across the Channel. “My master, Egbert,” wrote Alcuin in later days, “used
often to tell me that the arts were discovered by the wisest of men, and it
would be deep and lasting shame if we allowed them to perish for want of zeal.
But many are now so faint-hearted as not to care about knowing the reason of
things.”
It was this keenness of questioning, the eternal “why,”
that gives us, in a nutshell, the secret of Alcuin's success as a
school-master, both at York and across the seas. For the fact must be faced
that most of the textbooks used by him, apart, of course, from the Catholic
Fathers and the "classics," were hopelessly, intolerably dull. Even
the luminous reasoning of Aristotle had been obscured by the interpretation of
lesser men, and by its presentation in a meagre abridgment such as was that of
Cassiodorus; and the wide outlook of literature, science, and theology, had
suffered most cramping condensation in the encyclopaedic and inaccurate work of Isidore.
Only a teacher of real genius could make such dry
bones live. But if it be true, as some men say, that in training the mind it
matters very little what subject is taught, and very much how it is taught, the
debt of mediaeval education, and even that of later days, to Alcuin and his
teachers is very great. For lifeless textbooks in the hands of a dull teacher
produce a degree of boredom and mental dyspepsia that destroys the very hope of
knowledge. Therefore, when we read in those days of scholars flocking from the
Continent, as well as from all parts of Britain, to sit at the feet of Alcuin,
we may rightly conclude that his method for finding the "reasons of
things" was not only original but attractive, and that his own keen
enthusiasm for knowledge had proved infectious to the younger generation.
Those of his pupils whose names have been preserved
are all men of note in one way or another. Luidger,
one of the many who hastened from overseas to York, became Bishop of the
new-made See of Munster in Saxony. Eanbald, one of his favourite English pupils, became in later days Archbishop of York. Witzo,
Fredegis, and Sigulf, loved him with so deep an
affection that they gave up hopes of preferment in their native land to be with
him in the unknown Frankland. Another, Osulf, who was one of the same group, was
to prove the Judas of the little band and to call forth pathetic letters full
of fatherly grief from his former master.
Not that his whole time was spent in their actual
instruction. Difficult as was the travelling of those days, the strong
international current that pulsed from the heart of Rome through the arteries
of Christendom, made journeys to that city a matter of course for most men of
letters and affairs. And to educationists international communication was a
sheer necessity, a necessity to whose urgency the world of today is only
beginning to awake. So when we find the “scholasticus”
Elbert travelling to Rome through the land of the Franks, accompanied by his favourite pupil, then perhaps twenty years of age, we may
imagine him pointing out to the interested Alcuin the comparative rudeness and
ignorance of its inhabitants. That the young man probably showed unusual
interest in them may be conjectured from the dying words of Elbert, fourteen
years later. He speaks of his desire that Alcuin should fetch from the Pope the
pallium for Eanbald, his successor, and adds: “I want that you, on your return
from Rome, should revisit the Frankland; for I know there is much for you to do
there.”
Two years after that first journey, supposing it took
place, as seems likely, in 766, Charles the Great, Alcuin's future friend and
pupil, had become King of the Franks. Whether they had actually met face to
face in the interval between his accession and Alcuin’s journey to Rome for the
pallium, is doubtful. The anonymous biographer of the latter says Charles had
“known him” before this last occasion of meeting; if so, the young king, though
far too busy at that time to take any steps for the reform of education among
the Franks, may have begun to lay his plans for the future.
The amazing part of the story is that a king who had
been incessantly engaged, since the beginning of his reign, in successfully
fighting Lombards, Saxons, and Saracens, should not only formulate, but
actually cause to materialise, an ideal of mental
culture that was probably suggested to him first of all by his admiration for
Saint Boniface. He himself had had small chance of education. As a lad he had
followed the usual routine of hunting, riding, swimming, and the use of
weapons; but so far had literary education fallen into disuse that this Prince
of the House of Pepin had not even learnt to hold a pen. Latin he knew, as a
spoken language, the changing Low Latin of Gaul, debased and ungrammatical as
judged by classical standards; but mental training on literary and scientific
lines must have been a highly respected, yet apparently impossible, ideal.
Yet, rough soldier as he was, Charles had ever an eye
for a scholar; and if, as may be the case, he came across Alcuin on a second
visit of the latter to Rome, in the year of his own accession, there were
probably other reasons of attraction towards him. Even in those days it must
have been possible for the young King to get a glimpse of the pleasant wit and
warm human sympathy that were the marked characteristics of the English scholar
in later years; and from that time it is probable that the King marked him down
for further acquaintance.
Six years after his accession Charles paid his first
visit to Rome, and was received in a manner that foreshadowed future events.
Not only as the first King of the Franks to enter the city was he honoured, but as the Defender of the Faith of Christendom,
the Conqueror of the Lombards, those persistent foes of Rome, and the prince
who had brought in the heathen Saxons, vanquished by his arms, to the Church.
Crowned with the famous Iron Crown of Lombardy, and hailed as "Dux"
of Rome, he gave to the Church in return for these marks of honour the conquered “exarchate,” certain cities and provinces of Lombardy, and prepared
to return to Frankland. But that his visit was not entirely removed from
practical affairs appears from the fact that he brought back with him a certain
Paul known as the Deacon, a scholar of Lombardy, who should be the instructor
of a new, or revived, royal college of Aachen. Some say that Peter of Pisa also
accompanied him. Others think that Peter dwelt at the Court of Pepin, and had
there taught grammar to the prince in his youthful days. This is difficult to
reconcile with the testimony of Charles himself to the effect that “the study
of letters had been well-nigh extinguished by the neglect of his ancestors,”
and with his own undoubted difficulties in composing an ordinary letter.
It is true, however, that Einhard, the contemporary
biographer of Charles, states clearly that Peter “taught the King grammar”; so
that we may conjecture that, after the Court school for his young sons and
those of his nobles had been set up under the charge of Paul and Peter, Charles
seized opportunities arising out of the brief intervals between his campaigns
to seek some tuition for himself.
The want of success of this preliminary effort at
setting up a “Model School” was due, no doubt, to his choice of instructors.
Peter of Pisa seems to have proved inefficient either through age or
ineptitude. Paul the Lombard, however able and learned, could not be persona
grata to nobles who despised the races they had conquered, and he himself could
scarcely be expected to act in zealous support of one whom his nation regarded
as a half-civilised tyrant. He probably succeeded in
teaching Charles to understand a little Greek, and some of his clerical pupils
to read it to some extent. But his real interest lay in his task of correcting
the faulty and imperfect breviaries of Frankland, rather than in the education
of an unwilling and probably openly hostile Court; and it must have been with
relief that he retired, in 787, after thirteen years of uncongenial toil,
within the gates of Monte Cassino, where he wrote that History of the Lombards
which has made his name more famous than his unwilling sojourn among the
Franks.
Six years before Paul withdrew from the world, and
probably about the time he ceased actually to teach, Charles and Alcuin had met
again. We have seen how, in 781, Alcuin had travelled to Rome to obtain from
Pope Adrian the pallium for Eanbald, his friend and fellow-pupil of former days
in the School of York. On his return he happened to linger at Parma, then
preparing to receive the famous King of the Franks, who had just left Rome
after witnessing the coronation of his young son, Pepin, as King of Italy.
Possibly the contrast between the culture of the Papal Court and that of his
own rough surroundings had stirred Charles anew to deal with the difficulty of
introducing some degree of mental training for the latter - a difficulty far
greater than that of conquering Lombards or converting German tribes at the
point of the sword. The meeting with Alcuin seemed a solution. Here was a man
of fit age - he was six years older than the King, then in his forty-first year
- noted for his learning, born of a race akin in origin to the Franks; of a
race, moreover, that with the exception of the Irish, had alone maintained its
hold on learning in troubled days. It is probable, also, that there was a
strong personal attraction between the burly, blue-eyed prince and the
middle-aged Deacon of York that counted for more than respect for learning. If
one might hazard a conjecture based upon the character of Charles as shown both
in his actions and conversation, it was the recognition of a gift of humour, the quick smile of the well-controlled mouth, the
gleam in the shrewd eyes, the keen knife of wit cutting through the ponderous
speeches of courtiers and bishops, that, at Parma, drew Charlemagne to Alcuin.
And in his turn, the scholar of Northumbria, a province more than once aided in
earlier days by the Franks, would look with friendly gaze upon the prince of
that people, would also as an Englishman be mindful of the work of Saint Boniface
in their land, and would be very willing to follow in his footsteps.
During that meeting at Parma, no doubt, the proposal
was made and urged that Alcuin should become Master of the Palace School at
Aachen. He himself was ready to agree if he could get the permission of his
King and Archbishop. That his superiors were reluctant enough to lose him is
shown by the stipulation of Archbishop Eanbald that his departure was not to be
considered final.
In the year 782, then, Alcuin, with some of his pupils
as assistants, sailed once more across the narrow seas, and hastened to take up
his duties at the Court of Charles the Great.
The Palace School
The Palace "School," which had probably
existed in a rudimentary form some years before the coming of Alcuin, was a
class composed originally of the sons of the chief nobles, of the young members
of the royal family, and, whenever his duties allowed it, numbered the King
himself among its pupils. It would be rash to say that under Alcuin it became
the germ of a University; for it made no wide appeal at that time to Europe,
and the instruction given was necessarily elementary and restricted. But it did
develop into a kind of model school, a centre from
which learning was to spread itself abroad, and a school, moreover, that
prepared for many different avocations of life.
It differed from the Monastery schools both in its
more varied class of pupil and in its wider curriculum. The latter, as we have
seen, based closely upon the Gregorian tradition, aimed solely at preparing the
future ecclesiastic or monk for the religious life, and taught little but plain
chant, enough Latin to read the Divine office, and enough arithmetic to
calculate the date of Easter.
At the Palace School, though some of the pupils might
be future bishops or abbots, the majority were destined to be statesmen,
soldiers, men of affairs; and some were actually filling those offices when,
following the example of their King, they came to sit at Alcuin's feet. Let us,
before going further, get a picture of this "school" and of its
pupils, all of whom were destined, in some degree, to influence the history of
mediaeval thought by means of the teaching they received there.
The most striking figure is, of course, the King
himself, who, during the eight winter months that usually formed an interlude
between his annual campaigns, was a regular and enthusiastic attendant. Of him
we get a minute description from the pen of Einhard, his constant companion.
“He was stout and strong of body, of a lofty stature,
yet not beyond just proportions; for his height was certainly not more than
seven times the length of his feet. His head was well rounded, his eyes large
and piercing, his nose rather long, his luxurious hair of a flaxen hue, and his
face bright and pleasant to look upon. His whole person, whether he stood or
sat, was marked by grandeur and dignity; and though his neck was full and
short, and his body stout, he was otherwise so well proportioned that these
defects passed unnoticed. He was firm in gait, and his appearance was extremely
manly, but his refined voice was not entirely in keeping with his figure.”
Next him would sit Leutgarde, best and most faithfully
loved of the many wives of Charlemagne, some of whom were bound to him in
lawful wedlock, and some were not. "My daughter Leutgarde," Alcuin
affectionately calls her; and in a contemporary account of his school by his
friend. Bishop Theodulphus of Orleans, we get a
charming sketch of her.
“Among his pupils sits the fair lady Leutgarde, bright
of intellect and pious of heart. Simple and noble alike confess her fair in her
accomplishments, and fairer yet in her virtues. Her hand is generous, her
disposition gentle, and her speech most sweet. She is a blessing to all, a bane
to none. Ardently pursuing the best studies, she stores the liberal arts in the
retentive repository of her mind.”
At various times Alcuin would also teach in the Palace
School the six royal children, offspring of an earlier wife, Hildegarde. These
would comprise the three young princes - Charles, King of Burgundy, the favourite son of his father, though by no means the most
satisfactory of Alcuin's pupils; Pepin, the youthful King of Italy; and Louis,
King of Aquitaine, and the most worthy successor of Charlemagne, always dearly
beloved by his instructor, who held him up as a model to the rest.
A story told by Alcuin's unknown biographer
illustrates his attitude towards this youngest son. On one occasion Charles, coming
with his three boys to visit his former instructor at Tours, asked him: “Master,
which of my sons do you think should succeed me in the dignity which God has
granted me?”. Alcuin looked at Louis, the youngest, but the most remarkable for
humility, on which account he was considered despicable by many, and said:
"Thou wouldst have a magnificent successor in the humble Louis."
Charles listened in silence, but afterwards "when he beheld those kings
(Charles and Pepin) enter the Church of Saint Stephen with a haughty step, and
Louis with humble deportment, for the purpose of prayer, he said to the
bystanders: 'Do you see Louis, who is more humble than his brothers?
Verily, ye shall behold him the illustrious successor
of his father. Afterwards, when Alcuin was administering to them the communion
of the Body and Blood of Christ, the humble Louis bowed before the holy father
and kissed his hand. Whereupon the man of God said to Sigulf,
who stood beside him: 'Whosoever exalteth himself
shall be abased, and whososever humbleth himself shall be exalted. Verily, I say unto thee, France will joyfully recognise this man as Emperor after his father.'"
Near the three princes we find an eager group of
student princesses - Rotrude, and Bertha, the future
wife of one who was, in later days, to become Saint Angilbert, and Gisela, who
would have been a motherless babe of two years old at Alcuin's first arrival at
the Court. Another Gisela was there, the young Abbess of Chelles,
sister of Charles, whom love of learning had drawn from her cloister that she
might learn theology at Alcuin's feet; and with her was probably her close
friend and companion Richtrud, or Columba. For these
two, in later days, Alcuin wrote his Commentary on Saint John's Gospel, a work
which they so eagerly and impatiently looked for, that he "was compelled
to send it to them piece by piece."
Then came a group of royal relatives - Angilbert, the
future son-in-law of the King, a gay young noble, too much devoted to
theatrical joys and to “declamations” to be highly approved by his teacher, but
destined in future years to be the saintly Abbot of Saint Riquier; and Adelhard
and Wala, the King's cousins, with their sisters Theodora and Gundrada; Risulfus, the future Bishop of Mayence. Fredegis,and Witzo, and Sigulf, the youths who had accompanied Alcuin from York,
were also there; and Einhard, the quietly observant biographer of future days,
to whose pen we owe most of our knowledge of the Palace School.
Others came later, drawn, no doubt, by various motives,
and inspired by the energetic example of their ruler.
“I knew,” wrote Alcuin to Charles on one occasion, “how
strong was the attraction you felt towards knowledge, and how greatly you loved
it. I knew that you were urging everyone to become acquainted with it, and were
offering rewards and honours to its friends in order
to induce them to come from all parts of the world to aid in your noble
efforts.”
Thus at one time or another practically all the future
bishops and abbots, and other ecclesiastical dignitaries of Frankland, came
under Alcuin's tuition. There was Anno, the Eagle youth (Aquila), "borne
as on eagle's wings above the common interests of life," who, as
Archbishop of Salzburg, carried out to the full the ideals of emperor and
teacher, and did not omit, in his newly founded library, to place a copy of the
complete works of his former master.
Adelhard, already mentioned as the King's cousin, as
Abbot of Corbey, and Prime Minister in later days to King Pepin, had ample and
well-used opportunity for repressing clerical abuses and maintaining the
standard of learning. He wrote a book on The Order and Management of the
Royal Household and the whole French Monarchy under Pepin and Charlemagne,
of which, unfortunately, only a brief abstract remains.
Another pupil, Riculf,
afterwards Archbishop of Metz, became also a notable promoter of education; and
at the Council of Metz, at which he presided in 813, was one of those who
insisted upon it being the duty of the clergy not only to provide schools for
lay pupils, but to see that they attended them regularly. Others there were,
most of whom played their part manfully in handing on the torch enkindled by
Alcuin in the School of the Palace.
As for the local surroundings of that school, these
probably varied according as the King was in residence at Ingelheim on the
Rhine, or Aachen, between the Rhine and the Meuse. The latter became the seat
of Empire, and so probably the most permanent home of Alcuin during these
earlier years. Already it showed the influence of the civilization of Rome upon
a rough and warlike race. The palace was renowned for its architecture, its
gardens, its baths; close to it stood the stately basilica decorated with mosaics
and treasures taken from the palace of the conquered Theodoric at Ravenna.
Thither rich presents, including a deed of gift, symbolised by a key of the Holy Sepulchre, were dispatched to
Charlemagne by Haroun-al-Raschid, the renowned
Emperor of the Mohammedan world; and keys of the Holy Places were also sent by
the Patriarch of Jerusalem. No doubt such significant happenings proved
fruitful topics of discussion in the school, though by that time Alcuin had
left it for another sphere of work.
That the members of that little society worked
together in a very free and happy atmosphere may be gathered from the fact that
pupils and master were known by affectionate and often jesting nicknames. Thus
Charles was familiarly known as David, and occasionally, when he had acquitted
himself particularly well, as Solomon. Alcuin himself was known as Flaccus and
Albinus, the latter being the Latin version of his name, the former,
apparently, suggested by his love for that Horatius Flaccus of classic days,
whose lyric verse he imitated, and whose works seem to have been exempted from
that dread of "pagan writings" which beset him in later days.
Einhard, skilled as an architect, was known as Beseleel,
after the Hebrew artificer mentioned in the Book of Exodus; Richtrud,
the gentle friend of Gisela, was Columba, the dove-maid.
Attractive as was the personality of many of Alcuin's
pupils, his position was not without its difficulties, especially with regard
to the man who was to rule the Second Empire of the West. He had, for example,
to keep in mind the necessity of educating morally as well as intellectually a
King whose unbroken success had made him the spoilt darling of Fate, eager to
grasp his desire without thought for right or wrong, ready to dash with
violence from his path any obstacle to his will. Thus, in the very same year
that Alcuin arrived in Gaul, the latter would have heard of the massacre of
four thousand Saxons who had revolted against the rule of Charles; and who,
after being forcibly baptised in the waters of the
river Aller, were thereupon cut down and cast into the stream, by the command
of a King who happened to have lost his temper with them. Year after year this
kind of thing was repeated, so that the King who sat on his stool of learning
more often than not showed merciless hands red with the blood of helpless
captives. He was also the so-called husband, at one time or another, of nine
wives, some bound to him by the sacraments of the Church, and some not. One, at
least, of the former, the beautiful and unfortunate Himiltrude, was ruthlessly
put away by him in order to marry a princess of Lombardy, who, in her turn, was
repudiated for Hildegarde, to whom he was married with the sanction and
blessing of the Church, and who became the mother of his six lawful children,
before her death left him free to marry Leutgarde.
Not only the King's private passions, but the public
morals of the State and the laxity of the Frankish Court had to be dealt with
by a counsellor worthy of his post. The way in which Alcuin handled these
difficult matters can be best gathered from his letters to his renowned pupil.
With regard, for example, to the conquered Saxons, though he approved the
King's wish to bring them into the Church, he entirely condemned the force
which he employed to carry out his designs. He realised fully that the great obstacle to the acceptance of the true Faith by the Saxon
nobles was not so much the loss of their gods as the loss of rank and political
influence belonging to the priestly offices held by them. So he strongly
advised Charles to soften this genuine hardship of a change of religion by
refraining from the imposition of taxes, and by so setting forth the more
joyous and happy aspects of the Faith that, when it should become dear to the
new converts, they would willingly accept any burdens it might carry with it.
Most sensibly he urged the King to send to them missionaries full of zeal for
souls, whose character might inspire admiration and a will to follow where they
led. Had Charles followed his counsel, many a long year of futile conflict and
terrible oppression might have been avoided. With Louis, his favourite prince and pupil, he was more successful, for
when the King had taken a great band of prisoners in a campaign against the
Avari, Alcuin persuaded the Prince to support him in an urgent request to
Charles that they might be held to ransom, a request which was at once granted.
The moral education of the impetuous King was a long
and tedious matter, but in this Alcuin's chief aid was the interest roused by
him in intellectual problems, and in the general atmosphere that a scheme of
liberal education produced in a Court formerly given up to sensual pleasure.
Einhard's picture of domestic life during his sojourn there breathes an air of discipline
and simplicity.
“Whilst the sons perfected themselves in corporeal
exercises, rode with their father to the chase, or accompanied him to battle,
that they might acquire under his own eye that proficiency so necessary to a
Frank, the daughters remained at home occupied in weaving or spinning. At
dinner the whole family assembled at the same table. When travelling he rode
between his sons, and his daughters followed likewise on horseback.”
The royal morals were not the only difficulties with
which Alcuin had to deal. When we consider the "curriculum" of the
Palace School, it will be very evident that, simple as may have been the mental
outlook of Charlemagne, it was impossible to educate him in the same way as a
group of young boys and girls. The King was a man of experience, forced to
think rapidly and effectively in matters of State, trained therefore mentally
as well as physically, even if his hand were more used to a sword than a pen,
and his actual book-learning very rudimentary.
Then both Charles and the men who had fought by his
side were characterised by a faculty, priceless in
education, though not without its drawbacks under certain conditions - the
faculty of curiosity, or, as we may prefer to call it, a consummate interest in
all things in heaven and earth. There have been periods, not so very remote, in
the history of education, when this condition of mind was snubbed and quenched
by the preceptor, who strove, though generally in vain, to drive the unwilling
human mind along dry and pathless tracks of knowledge of which he himself,
presumably, but not his pupils, knew the end and aim. Even nowadays we are only
beginning to realize the futility of such a course, and to see that only that
which is literally "comprehended" - i.e. seized by the intellect
because of the interest roused by it - is retained and digested for future use.
There is very little doubt that Alcuin appreciated
this state of mind to the full, and, as we shall see, he made use of it in
every phase of his method of education. But it must be remembered that he had
to represent in his single person the attainments of a whole staff of
professors, and to pose as an encyclopaedia of
knowledge in the very varied subjects which aroused the interest of his pupils.
He himself was a specialist in orthography, and yet he had to deal with these
pupils, royal and otherwise, bringing an immeasurable stock of curiosity to
their class, propounding questions on every topic under the sun, discussing,
disputing, misunderstanding, admiring, conjecturing, suggesting.
It is clear that the work of the teacher of such
scholars was as full of difficulty as of delight. There is no doubt that his
authority was supreme, his wisdom undoubted, his learning revered; but
incessant activity, skillful tact, keen enthusiasm, were all needed to cope
with these roving minds, undisciplined save by the exigencies of the
battlefield or the demands of practical life, and very impatient under the
necessity for repetition and assimilation.
Sometimes it seems that the younger pupils, after the
manner of boys in all ages, were inclined to treat his instruction as a joke,
to cavil, and break their wit at his expense. Alcuin mentions this, in reproof
of their levity, in a letter to the King, though he implies, by using the image
of himself as an old pugilist pitted against a young beginner in the art of
boxing, that he could take good care of his own dignity. That sympathy with
youthful hatred of dryness and love of fun was not wanting, is clear from one
of his poems, in which he describes himself as leaping at dawn from his couch,
and running straightway to the fields of the ancients, to pluck flowers of
correct speech and scatter them in sport before his boys.
Charles himself seems to have possessed a faculty for
"posers," put in a way not invariably courteous or considerate.
One of Alcuin's biographers suggests that his Dialogue
on Grammar, maintained between imaginary Frank and Saxon youths, was designed
to show the kind of heckling to which he himself was often subjected. In no age
has such treatment been welcomed by professors, though, as a method of rousing
a class to interest, it has its points. But Alcuin disarms the attack by his
own delightful frankness and wit in acknowledging his failings as an encyclopaedia. "The horse," he says, "which
has four legs, often stumbles; how much more must man, who has but one tongue,
often trip in speech." Moreover, he not seldom succeeded in turning the
tables neatly on his royal heckler. Like most men of middle age, Charles found
it difficult to memorise, and was easily beaten on
this point by the younger pupils. Somewhat peevishly he begins to question the
practical advantages of the study of Cicero. "Does he, for example,
suggest a means of strengthening the memory?" To which Alcuin replies by
quoting Cicero's recommendations of regular practice in speaking, writing, and
reflecting; and then, mindful of the special temptations that beset the King,
he goes on to improve the occasion by pointing out his insistence upon the
avoiding of intemperance, that destroyer of physical health and mental
soundness. Even in ordinary life, he adds, the orator must use expressions
chaste, simple, clear, distinctly pronounced, unspoilt by immoderate laughter or rudeness of tone.
Before we consider the development of the ordinary
curriculum in the Palace School, we must say a word or two about Alcuin's
method as a teacher; for it was, as we have already said, the spirit which he
introduced into education, rather than what he taught, which forms the basis
for his claim to influence Catholic thought.
It has been said of him that he failed as a great
teacher because he was less of a philosopher than a grammarian. To say that he
succeeded as a great educator because he possessed the insight and sympathy
which alone could divine the intellectual needs of his age, would be nearer the
mark. It is certain that philosophy, in the sense in which it was used by the
Scholastics, would have been entirely out of place among the Franks of the
eighth and ninth centuries. It is equally certain that his teaching of so-called
"Grammar" involved intellectual tests and principles of clear
thought, such as were not only necessary for the untaught portion of Western
Europe, but were to form the basis of the Scholastic philosophy of the future.
It has also been said that Alcuin shows no originality
of mind and contributed nothing to the world of thought. The same may probably
be said with truth of all the great educators. The work of the teacher is not
to invent fresh things, but to think freshly about what is old and trite; not
to display original ideas, but to present tried, and proved, and often
well-worn matter in a new and attractive light. The man who at that critical
period, when love and understanding of the things of the mind were largely
stifled by material considerations, had insisted upon a startling scheme of
"New thought," and had forced his pupils along paths untrodden by
former generations, would either have extinguished the flickering spark of
intellectual life altogether, or have seen his followers emerge into the sick
and evil heresies bred from mental confusions. The mark of a genius in
education was rather to revive interest in a well-nigh forgotten tradition and
to present thought as old as the hills in a fresh and attractive way. This
Alcuin did, with conspicuous success, and by so doing cemented the loyalty of a
nation, hitherto bound to Rome only by political considerations, to the faith
of Christendom.
In Alcuin's introduction to his Dialogue on Grammar we
get a hint of his own ideal of education.
“Most learned master,” says one of his characters, “we
have often heard you say that Philosophy is the instrument of all the virtues,
and, alone of all earthly possessions, never made its possessors miserable. We
confess that you have incited us by such words to pursue after this supreme
happiness, and we desire to know what is the summit to which we are to climb
and by what steps we may ascend thereto. Our age is yet too tender and too weak
to rise without the help of your hand. We know that the strength of the mind is
in the heart as the strength of the eyes is in the head. Now our eyes, whenever
they are flooded by the splendour of the sun, or by
reason of the presence of any light, are able to discern what is presented to
their gaze, but without the access of light must remain in darkness. So also
the mind is able to receive wisdom if there be anyone to enlighten it.”
With the insight of the born teacher, Alcuin
recognized from the first that this process of enlightenment must be suited to
the "tender age" as well as to the childlike stage of mental
development of his older pupils. The textbooks at his disposal were, as we have
seen, dry and tedious in method, and difficult to be obtained. The obvious
thing to do was to write his own - more modern teachers have been impelled to
follow his example for an identical reason. So he had recourse to the ever new
and immeasurably old device of throwing his subject-matter into the form of a
kind of story, or, at any rate, of a dialogue, and enlivened the tedious details
of Latin grammatical forms by the conversation, and questions, and disputes of
a typical young Saxon and a typical young Frank, boys of fifteen or sixteen
years of age. The younger questions the elder, who is supposed to have the
advantage in actual knowledge, but who suffers at times under the witty
onslaught of his opponent. Pedantic as much of it is, it is relieved by flashes
of humour and personality that actually succeed in
breathing life into dead bones.
From its pages we get a good idea of the scope of the
curriculum of the Palace School. It is, of course, clear that Alcuin was still
in the bonds of Saint Gregory, under the spell, that is, of an antagonism
towards I all that savoured of paganism. Yet, as we
should expect from one whose library at York had boasted of some of the chief
writers of classic days, he admits under the head of Grammar, "fables, and
histories, and poetry," without dwelling unduly upon their
"pagan" aspect.
When, in a dialogue between pupils and teacher of the
same book, the former ask to be taught the "lighter branches of learning
and to behold the seven degrees of doctrine," they are told, of course,
that these consist of Grammar, Rhetoric, Dialectic, Arithmetic, Geometry,
Music, and Astrology. The first three of these, the Trivium, are classified as
Ethics; the last four, the Quadrivium, as Physics. Both are only useful, he
says, as preparing the way for Theology, the Science of God; and the object of
all is to form and strengthen the mind for the understanding of the true Faith
and to protect it against the errors of heresy.
It is, however, when we glance at his textbook on
Orthography that the real enthusiasm of the teacher for his favourite subject - apart from Theology, which is the end of all - makes itself felt. It
would seem hard, at first sight, to find interest in a treatise on spelling,
until we realize that in it we have a courageous and successful attempt to
protect Latin literature from its most insidious foe. During these years of
transition and invasion the spoken Latin of Romanised Gaul had quite naturally changed its form; not that it became
"corrupt," as some writers put it, but it had developed and altered,
according to certain sound laws, until it had become the foundation of a new
language, the "French" of later days. The object of Alcuin was to
prevent written Latin from following the same course, which would soon have
rendered the classical language quite unintelligible. Even had he done nothing
more for education, for this posterity would have owed him a vast debt of
gratitude. The complete degradation of the written Latin language would have
involved a break, not only with the glorious past, but also with the continuity
of Christendom. For Latin was then, as ever, the official language of the Church,
and the chief outward mark of her Catholicity in days when the swift rise and
fall of alien nations might well have resulted in a Babel of confusion.
Religion, law, literature, were all equally affected; and the man whose
treatise on spelling became the universal textbook for Western Christendom may
in truth be said to have done much to save the religious, social, and
intellectual life of Europe from disintegration.
One feature of Alcuin's teaching, found as frequently
in his lessons on arithmetic or geometry as in his lectures on theology, has
been greatly misunderstood by Protestant writers. These frequently indulge in
mild scoffing at what they call his "superstitious mysticism," his
habit of interpreting facts, ideas, numbers, and so on, in what seems to them a
purely fanciful manner, by a constant reference to supernatural analogies.
It is, of course, quite true that the days of Alcuin
were not the days of science, and that unverified hypotheses, often of a very
quaint nature, more often than not take the place of even an elementary kind of
investigation. But allowing for this, there yet remain quite good reasons for
the employment of this usual method of exposition. The age was one whose crying
need was the turning of the mind of man from the grossly material to the
supernatural world; and Alcuin, like Saint Gregory and all other lovers of the
souls of men, felt strongly that all he taught was of little worth unless it
led immediately to supernatural goals. It is possible that in a period of greater
complexity this method of illustrating facts and expressions by "divine
analogies" might have resulted in spiritual boredom and intellectual
revolt. But in those days, when men were finely simple and direct, it is
conceivable that such a treatment of ordinary phenomena would have a
fascination of its own, and that the more fanciful the analogy, the more
interesting it would become. There is real ingenuity, moreover, for example, in
the answer to the question of Singulphus, who,
studying the Book of Genesis, asked "Why animals that live on land are
more accursed than those that live in water?" To which Alcuin replies that
it is because the former consume more of the fruits of the earth, which are
accursed; and for the same reason, Christ, after His resurrection, ate fish
rather than flesh.
That this mystical interpretation of nature coloured the whole of mediaeval theology is clear enough
when we read the works of those who lived after the days of Alcuin. The very
fact that it held its ground so long shows that it met a human need, and that
the explanation of natural things in a supernatural sense was no bad
alternative to the gross materialism of an age that came to reject it.
It might be added that many of these quaint analogies,
upon which modern writers place so heavy a foot, were accounted for by that
sense of humour that gleams so readily across the
pages of Alcuin's writings. A certain modern writer gravely holds him up to
scorn because he tells the Emperor Charles that the reason for the reappearance
of the planet Mars in the sign of Leo, after a disappearance of some months, is
that the Sun feared the Nemean lion too much to detain him longer! But surely
the shocked commentator failed to see the twinkle in the eye of the propounder of this theory, and to hear the hearty laugh
with which his questioner received it.
We cannot refrain from noting, in this context, the
poetical and imaginative character of some of these analogies, for definitions
they cannot, of course, be called. In a dialogue written for his pupil Pepin,
then sixteen years of age, known as "The Disputation of Pepin the most
Noble and Royal Youth with Albinus the Scholastic," we find the following
queries and replies:
"What is Language?
"The Betrayer of the Soul."
"What generates language?
"The tongue."
"What is the tongue?
"The Whip of the Air."
"What is Air?
"The Guardian of Life."
"What is Life?
"The joy of the happy; the expectation of
Death."
"What is Death?
"An inevitable event; an uncertain journey; tears
for the living; the proving of wills; the Stealer of men."
"What is Man?
"The Slave of Death; a passing Traveller; a Stranger in his place."
The Wider Influence of Alcuin
The success of the Model School of the Palace, under
such a teacher as Alcuin, was assured. The next step was to extend the
influence of that centre throughout a wider sphere.
For the Gallic civilization, often rightly identified with education, had
suffered dire things under the early Frankish rule. Victories there had been in
plenty, but of peace and order scarcely a trace. A rule of plunder and lynch
law had undermined the ideals of Gallo- Roman days, and an utter lack of
sympathy with the conquered or of adaptation to their ways and manners cut at
the root of progress.
It had been the honest desire of Charles, long before
he fitted on the imperial crown, to amend these things; but it seems to have
been the influence of Alcuin that set the ideal of reform into practical
working.
With true insight, the Minister of Education, as we
may now call him, convinced the King that the only effective means of restoring
an old and creating a new civilization in the Frankish world was the Catholic
Church. Yet the Church, as represented by the Frankish bishops and clergy, was
at that time at its lowest ebb, scarcely, indeed, emerged from that melancholy
condition of affairs described by Gregory of Tours two centuries earlier. The
reason was evident. Two hundred years of devastation had almost submerged the
light of learning in the land. The Gallo-Roman Schools had vanished, those of
the monasteries were few and feeble. When the gate of the mental world was
closed, the spirit I of Gaul flagged, morals died for lack of root and
sustenance, men became little else than brutes. As for the dignitaries of the
Church, they suffered not only from lack of knowledge, but also from the action
of the Carolingians in imposing military service upon them. When bishops were
appointed for their prowess in the battlefield, the spiritual fabric wore very thin.
Amongst many other such instances, we read of one Gwielieb being appointed bishop in his father's stead "for the alleviation of his
filial grief," when the latter had been killed in battle. The son avenged
his father in the ensuing campaign by slaying his murderer in single combat,
and was forthwith deposed by the influence of Saint Boniface; but his was by no
means a solitary instance.
Reform of life and restoration of discipline, though
not the abnegation of feudal rights, was the aim of Charles, and Alcuin was in
this his adviser and director. Such a reform must come slowly, flowing from a
central source; in other words, the School of the Palace must train the bishops
who were to carry out in their dioceses the ideals in which they had been
educated; and a new spirit must be kindled in the monastic schoolrooms of the
country. Not that it was actually new, but as old as Christianity, just as the
civilization that was to come was no new Teutonic ideal, but the Latin
civilization known and tested by the Gallic race in former days, and now to be
restored through the influence of a Frankish king and an English scholar, in a
form to suit more modern needs.
For five years they waited, pondering, planning, and
all the while preparing the ground by long days of learning and teaching in the
Palace. Then, in 787, the first and most famous Capitulary of Charles was
issued, as the initial step towards stirring up the monastic schools. This
"Charter of Modern Thought," as it has well been called, was destined
profoundly to influence the Middle Ages and, after them, the future
intellectual course of Europe. There is little doubt that it sprang from the
brain of Alcuin, as it certainly was shaped into form by him, and we can easily recognise his sentiments in passages dealing with the
connection between thought and language, the use of illustration in teaching,
the need of zealous instructors and real vocations for the profession - all, it
may be noted, topics of present-day interest and discussion.
“Care should be taken,” says the Capitulary, “in the
bishoprics and monasteries that there should not only be a regular manner of
life and one conformable to holy religion, but also the study of letters, so
that each may learn and then teach them according to his ability and the Divine
assistance.”
“For even as due observance of the rule of the house
tends to good morals, so zeal on the part of the teacher and the taught imparts
grace and order to sentences; and those who seek to please God by living
aright, should also not neglect to please Him by right speaking. . . . And,
although right doing be preferable to right speaking, yet must the knowledge of
what is right precede right action. Everyone, therefore, should strive to
understand what it is that he would fain accomplish; and then right
understanding will be the sooner gained as the utterances of the tongue are
free from error.”
“We exhort you, therefore, not only not to neglect the
study of letters, but to apply yourselves thereto with perseverance and
humility. . . so that you may be able to penetrate with greater ease and
certainty the mysteries of the Holy Scriptures. For as these contain images,
tropes, and similar figures, it is impossible to doubt that the reader will
arrive more readily at the spiritual sense as he is the better instructed in
learning.”
“Let there be chosen for this work men who are both
able and willing to learn, and also desirous of instructing others.”
“It is our wish that you may be what it behoves the soldiers of the Church to be - religious in
heart, learned in discourse, pure in act, eloquent in speech”. .
Such was the manifesto of the greatest soldier of the
Middle Ages, a manifesto inspired by his Minister of Education, and issued just
after the submission of the chieftains Witikind and
Tassilo had left him for the moment at peace.
A year earlier, no doubt at Alcuin's suggestion, he
had obtained from Rome the service of teachers of grammar, arithmetic, and
singing, who had already begun to journey from one monastery to another as
peripatetic professors of these arts. Music was especially emphasized in the
second Capitulary of 789, after the Council of Aachen had been held.
“Let the monks make themselves thorough masters of the
Roman method of chanting, and observe this method in the services, according to
the decree of our father Pepin, who abolished the Gallic method in order that
he might place himself in agreement with the Apostolic See and promote concord
in God's Church.”
So by means of this mediaeval version of the "Motu
proprio" did Alcuin bring in a fresh weapon against heathendom, a new cord
of love to draw a nation, still largely heathen at heart, into the happy bonds
of Christendom. The songs of a nation are the truest expression of her temper,
and Charles, left to himself, would probably have leaned to a national poesy,
literature, and language, expressed in those ballads of warfare and sagas of
heroes of which he actually began to make a collection.
Interesting as these would have been from a literary
standpoint, the acceptance of them as the national voice, at that time, would
have set up a very tangible barrier against an identification with Catholic
Christendom absolutely necessary for national civilization and spiritual
progress. So Frankish youths sang plain song according to the Gregorian method
in place of their own rude melodies, as far as divine minstrelsy was concerned,
though the latter survived as folk songs for many a day.
In 789, a third Capitulary, still more obviously
inspired by Alcuin, urged the raising of the moral standard of the clergy, and
gave a significant recommendation that candidates for the priesthood be sought
not only from the servile class, but also among the sons of freemen. Then once
more the necessity for the spread of education was urged.
“Let every monastery and every abbey have its school,
where boys may be taught the Psalms, the system of musical notation, singing,
arithmetic, and grammar; and let the books that are given them be free from
faults; and let care be taken that the boys do not spoil them either when
reading or writing”
Some of the results of this vigorous action on the
part of Charlemagne and his adviser may be seen even in the period that
immediately followed. Eight years after the publication of the last-mentioned
Capitulary, an order based upon it, which expressly refers to the influence of
Alcuin as "Father of the Vineyards," was issued by his friend Theodulphus, Bishop of Orleans. This stated explicitly that
schools were to be opened in every town and village of the diocese, and these
were to receive "the children of the faithful for instruction without fee,
unless they wish to make an offering."
Here we have the earliest example in mediaeval Gaul of
free education for the people. Before the death of Alcuin a regular system of
education was flourishing, showing three distinct grades of schools, designed
to meet the needs of both Church and State. The first and highest grade, the
type of which was that of Saint Martin at Tours, founded later by Alcuin
himself, was attached to the monastery, and was intended primarily for the
education of the clergy, though others were free to attend. In one of his
letters to Charles, Alcuin describes the curriculum, which shows a considerable
amount of scope.
“I, your Flaccus, in accordance with your admonitions
and wishes, endeavour to administer to some in the
house of Saint Martin, the honey of the Holy Scriptures; others I would fain
intoxicate with the pure wine of ancient wisdom; others I begin to nourish with
the fruits of grammatical subtleties; many I seek to enlighten by the order of
the stars. But above all things, I strive to train them up to be useful to the
Holy Church of God, and an ornament to your kingdom, that the unmerited mercy
shown to me by Almighty God, and your liberal kindness, may not be altogether
fruitless.”
The School of the Palace and perhaps that of Tours may
have been exceptional, and were, no doubt, the model institutions for the whole
of Frankland. But from a petition made by the bishops of the Council of Paris
in 829, that Louis the Pious would establish at least three "public
schools" in the most convenient parts of his domain "so as not to
suffer the efforts made by Charlemagne for the increase of knowledge to fail
from neglect," it seems that at least a few of the Cathedral or Monastery
schools were established on the same basis during the days of Alcuin. That they
evidently gave a wider education than those of the ordinary monastery is clear
from the fact that the latter were numerous during the time of Louis; but the
exact locality of the higher is unknown. Perhaps the most important
qualification they possessed was a library; and it may have been for their
benefit that Alcuin makes petition for youths to visit York and bring thence
the "flowers of Britain, that the garden of Paradise be no more confined
to York."
The second class of school seems to have given its
chief, if not its whole, attention to the teaching of Church music and singing.
Of these Metz and Soissons were the best known and for a long time the only
ones to teach these subjects with authority. They had been established
originally by two singers, Theodore and Benedict, sent specially from the Papal
Court by Adrian I, in order to introduce the Roman method of Plainsong. Thither
resorted, as to a National Academy of Music, all who wished to be teachers of
singing or members of choirs. So far, we have only considered schools for
prelates and statesmen, and for specialist musicians. The third and most
important class, the true "public" school, was attached to the
monasteries, and was open to everyone without fee. Reading, writing,
arithmetic, and singing are the subjects actually mentioned, but the first and
second would involve instruction in the universal language of the Church. These
were the schools that lay nearest to the heart of Charles and Alcuin, and the
former is said to have personally visited them, talked to the pupils, urged
them to diligence, and seen that the arrangements for their well-being were
carried out.
According to the reminiscence of a monk of later days,
Charles, on one occasion at least, examined the pupils himself, and soon
discovered that the sons of the nobility, "confiding in their rank and
riches," failed to come up to the mark, while the poorer lads worked hard
and "obtained by their own exertions what fortune had denied them."
Sharp rebuke of the former, and reminder that only talent, not birth, was the
passport to royal favour, were followed by promises
of high office and honourable stations as the reward
of labour and perseverance. The social effect of this
kind of thing upon a young and plastic nation must have been very marked.
In was in the year 790 that Alcuin appeared in a new
role - that of intermediary between his royal master and a Mercian chieftain.
His intention, apparently, had been to return, in his private capacity, to the
Monastery of York, which always held the first place in his heart; or perhaps
to retire from his really very arduous labours in
Frankland to rest in his own little abbey on Humber banks, left to him by his
relative Willibrord. But, as he crossed the Channel with this intent, came
sudden news that all intercourse between England and the land of the Franks had
been suspended.
It seemed that King Offa of Mercia had taken very ill
the fact that Charles had received at his Court the refugee Egbert, who had
been driven from his kingdom of Wessex by Brihtric,
Offa's son-in-law.
The offence was repeated later when Eadwulf of
Northumbria, the victim of Ethelred, another of his sons-in-law, followed in
Egbert's steps. A hasty attempt of Offa to secure the Frankish alliance and the
expulsion of the refugees by a marriage between his son and one of the Frankish
princesses had been haughtily refused by Charlemagne; and there were rumours that he was gathering his forces for a raid on
Mercia, or Wessex, or both.
That a disastrous Franco-Anglian war was averted seems
to have been mainly due to the practical sense and tact of Alcuin, who knew
both lands so well, and whose personality had earned the respect of their
rulers on each side of the Channel.
When this affair had been settled, Alcuin might well
have hoped for the repose he needed, in a scholarly atmosphere and amid the
surroundings of his younger days. But this was not to be found in the England
of that period. In 793, we learn from the chronicles that "the ravaging of
heathen men lamentably destroyed God's Church at Lindisfarne," and things
were not much better three years earlier. "The most venerated places in Britain
are given over to the pagan people," laments Alcuin. Had he been a younger
man he might have chosen to remain in the midst of desolation, and, as next
Archbishop of York, to help to keep the flag of civilized learning afloat in
northern England. As it was, he sickened at the sight of the atrocities of
revenge by which the chieftain Ethelred celebrated his return from exile, and
thought with longing of the more stable government of Charles. Moreover, a new
call was sounding in his ears from overseas - a call to defend the Church of
Christ, and the Church in Frankland in particular, from the attacks of an
insidious heresy.
Alcuin as Defender of the Faith
The summons which had hastened Alcuin's return to the
Frankish kingdom was occasioned by two clouds of heresy which at that time hung
over Western Christendom and threatened the welfare of the Church. The stirring
up of the dry bones of bygone controversies is dusty work, and the tale need
only be told in outline here; but the importance of the matter in those days was
great, both in the religious and political world. The influence of Alcuin on
both was marked, and his victory in each case marks a distinct crisis both in
Church and State.
The Adoptionist heresy had
travelled into Frankland by way of Spain, where it had taken root amid the
surroundings of a scoffing Mohammedanism, and been encouraged to flourish by an
unlearned Archbishop, Elipandus of Toledo, and a
weak-willed Bishop, Felix of Urgel. Elipandus was distrustful of his own judgment, though
sorely shaken by the scoffs of unbelievers as to the dual nature of the Son of
God. He appealed therefore to Felix, who had already won a name for virtue and
learning in an unlearned Spain, and who had roused the interest of Alcuin
sufficiently for the latter to propose a correspondence with him. His reply to Elipandus, however, made his position only too clear.
"He not only replied," says a contemporary, "most imprudently,
thoughtlessly, and in opposition to the doctrines of the Catholic Church, that
Christ was the adopted Son of God, but in some books written to the aforesaid
Archbishop, endeavoured most obstinately to defend
the wickedness of his opinion." Elipandus fell
an easy prey to specious arguments, and forthwith not only taught heresy but
did his best to persecute those who stood firm.
However neatly they had covered up their doctrines in
silken wrappings, this heresy was connected with that dealt with by the first
General Council, held at Nicaea in 325. On that occasion the Church had clearly
set forth her faith in the Divinity of Christ; but when the storm of Arianism
which had threatened to submerge her passed away, it still left certain traces
of wrack that threatened the peace of Christendom. Fifth-century Nestorianism
claimed that the two natures of Christ were but morally, not personally,
united, and called forth the Council of Chalcedon (451) to define the Catholic
doctrine of the one person and two natures. Over this article of faith the East
still argued and contended; but Western Christendom, absorbed in warfare, loyal
also to its newly adopted Church, accepted and adored. But heresy is
contagious, and flourishes on a soil uncultivated and choked with ignorance.
Doubt as to the Godhead of Christ travelled to Spain with Eastern heretics and
quickly took root among the isolated and unlearned bishops, though some would
have no traffic with it and prepared for strong opposition. Felix of Urgel, unfortunately, was reported learned, and was
certainly popular, and his adhesion to the views adopted by the Archbishop of
Toledo was a triumph for the unorthodox camp. The infection spread to the
Pyrenees and beyond, and raged in the southern province of Frankland; and a
provincial synod, held at Narbonne in 788, seems to have felt itself quite
unable to cope with it on the theological side. But a liberty to believe what
one pleased, though natural enough in a country ruled by Saracens, was by no
means according to the mind of a Catholic ruler such as Charles.
During Alcuin’s absence in England he had summoned a
synod at Ratisbon, in 792, before which Felix of Urgel was cited to appear in defence or justification of
his opinions. The step was marked by the characteristic caution of Charles.
Violent repression might well have sent his Spanish subjects into the arms of
the Saracens, and the respect due to learning which always stamped the King,
also counselled mild measures. But when confronted with the Frankish bishops,
some of whom, at least, must have profited by Alcuin's tuition, the vaunted
wisdom of Felix was found without foundation. He wilted before his opponents,
and, accepting their decision that his doctrines were heretical, set off
forthwith, in charge of Angilbert, the pupil of Alcuin, to Rome. There, in the
presence of Pope Adrian I, he solemnly recanted his errors and declared with a
solemn oath that he believed our Lord Jesus Christ to be the only and actual
Son of God. Yet, before the end of that year, 792, the weak-kneed bishop,
harassed by the reproaches of his Spanish followers, and swayed by the
entreaties of Elipandus, who had no wish to pose as
leader of the heretics, lapsed and returned to the paths of unorthodoxy.
No doubt he justified himself to Charles by a series of
cloudy theological arguments, obscuring the main points but impressive by
virtue of their incomprehensibility. Perhaps a little scorn for the mental
equipment of his adversaries at Ratisbon was manifested. At any rate, Charles
determined to play a strong hand. One man, at least, in Frankland could claim
respect and reverence for his theological learning; so, from his monastery at
York, Alcuin must be summoned to deal with the Spanish recalcitrant.
There was another, and still more pressing reason, for
summoning a Council to consider the spread of heresy. This also came from the
East, with important political consequences, though the doctrinal aspect was
far less fundamental.
We have already seen how the Church, in her wisdom,
had incorporated certain rites of paganism into Christian worship, thus making
the transition of faith easier for the pagan mind, and preventing too jarring a
wrench from old and harmless practices. Thus the love of the people of ancient
Rome for the statues of their gods and goddesses was permitted gradually to
merge into reverence for the image of their Redeemer in the Crucifix and for
representations of saints, especially that of Our Blessed Lady. Such pictures,
statues, and images appealed strongly to the highly-coloured imagination of the Eastern Empire, and the Byzantine world began to exaggerate
a perfectly legitimate aid to devotion into a heresy. The doctrine of the
Church was clear, but had never been formulated. Adoration - latria - might
only be paid to God; reverence and devotion, a quite different idea, were
permissible to images. The more learned Greeks, it is true, distinguished
between worship of the heart and prostration of the body, but the ignorant
laity had ceased to observe the distinction. As so often happens in the history
of the Church, the heresy was a blessing in disguise, leading as it did to the
right emphasis being laid on a half-forgotten or misunderstood doctrine. But in
the meantime it had led to certain remarkable political events.
Early in the eighth century, the Emperor of the East,
Leo the Isaurian, "stung by the Mohammedan taunt of idolatry," had
determined to put down Image Worship with a strong hand. The result in
Byzantium was tumult, which developed in Southern Italy into actual revolt;
while the Pope, reluctant as he might well be to cut himself off from a ruler
to whom he had looked for protection against the robber chiefs of Lombardy, was
bound to excommunicate one who had gone so far as to remove all images of
saints, angels, and martyrs from the churches. The result was that a sharp line
was drawn henceforth between the Papacy and the Empire of the East, a cleavage
which sent Pope Gregory II to the Franks for their assistance. For Luidfrand, King of the Lombards, was quick to throw in his lot
with the Image Worshippers as an excuse to attack Rome - an attack which
became, as we have seen, the cause of the alliance of the Papacy with the
Frankish Empire in the days of Charles Martel.
Other dramatic events were to follow. The controversy
between the Iconoclasts and the Worshippers had rent the Eastern Empire, and
the two parties had become political factions, fighting on the side of
Constantine, son of Leo, an "Iconoclast," or Image Breaker, or of Artabacus, his brotherin-law,
rivals for the throne. The triumph of the former led to fresh decrees against
images, but to no General Council, since the Pope was not represented. In 754,
however, Constantine summoned a Council at Constantinople at which all the
bishops of the Eastern Empire rejected Image Worship with anathemas many and
loud. The Pope, of course, ignored the decrees, and only cemented more strongly
his alliance with the Franks against the Lombards and the East.
Constantine saw the public worship of images abolished
before his death, but a perfectly natural instinct could not so easily be
deleted from the hearts of his subjects. The monks were on the side of the
Image Worshippers, realizing, as they did, the need of feeding the flame of
veneration among a childlike race by outward and concrete symbols. With them
there now appeared Irene, wife of Constantine's successor, and after his death
guardian of his young son, a woman of distinct personality.
The aim of the Empress Irene was to restore the unity
of Christendom by bringing her subjects into line with the teaching of Rome on
this matter. The Patriarch Paul, who had joined Leo in opposing images, was
dead, and the new Patriarch was ready to support her, subject to the views of a
General Council. The synod, however, when summoned was neither representative
nor brought to a legitimate conclusion.
For at its first session (August 7, 786) in the Church
of the Twelve Apostles at Constantinople, the forces of the Iconoclasts broke
up the meeting, refusing to allow the Patriarch to speak. When the Court party
had dispersed, the Iconoclasts, who remained in possession, confirmed all the
decrees against images.
The Empress, however, was not to be thwarted. By her
efforts a synod was summoned at Nicaea in the following year, which was attended
by representatives of the Pope and was to rank as the Seventh General Council.
On this occasion the Church defined her doctrine, and declared that images
should receive veneration but not the adoration due to God alone.
Thus, through the energetic action of the Empress of
the East, a principle long obscure and ill-defined, was laid clearly down for
East and West alike. But now the real difficulty began to appear.
For some time past, relations between the Byzantine
and the Frankish Court had been getting more and more strained. It was well
known that the Franks had little liking for religious customs to which they had
never been used. For in the days when the Roman citizen of the East had been
proud to offer gifts, incense, and even prayers to the statue of the Emperor,
and had readily transferred such usage to the image of his patron saint, the
rough Frankish soldier had boasted of his independence, and had scarce brought
himself to salute even the chieftain he served. Moreover, Charles himself had
little love for an Empress who had lately broken off the marriage contract
between her son Constantine and Rotrude, the Frankish
princess, and had allied herself with the foes of the Franks in Lombardy. Thus,
when the decrees of a General Council, of which he apparently knew nothing,
were made known to him by the Pope, the impetuous King was moved to reject them
wholesale. Most unfortunately the decrees appear to have been badly translated
and were certainly misunderstood by Charles, who received them during the
absence of Alcuin in England.
What part the latter took in the controversy that
followed is very obscure. Roger of Hoveden, an early
chronicler, says that Charles sent to Britain the "book of the synod
direct from Constantinople in which many things contrary to the faith were
found," especially the decree which ordered "that images be adored,
which is execrated by the whole Church of God."
Unless this shows blank confusion with the previous
Council, which had decreed exactly the opposite of this, it can only refer to
the confirmation of the Council of Nicaea at Constantinople. But the wording
shows still worse confusion, since the Council had particularly insisted that
images should not be adored, but only venerated. Roger goes on to say that
Alcuin at once composed a treatise against this adoration, as well he might,
and that he obtained for this the assent of the English bishops and chieftains.
If so, he was evidently refuting a doctrine that had never been promulgated. It
is, however, impossible to believe that Alcuin, who had never swerved an inch
from his staunch loyalty to the Holy See, and who would be especially cautious
in dealing with a General Council to which he knew the King was hostile for
political reasons, would do or write anything that would appear to condemn
where Rome had approved.
This, then, was the position of affairs at the Council
of Frankfort summoned by the King in 794. At this, which ranks as a General
Council of the West, were present not only representatives of the Church in
Rome, Lombardy, the Germanic States, and Frankland, but also of Britain,
through the influence, no doubt, of Alcuin. To it Frankfort may owe the origins
of its future prosperity as a great centre of trade,
for from the time that the newly- built little city saw its streets thronged
with bishops, abbots, and laymen from all parts of Western Europe, its position
was undoubtedly recognized and developed.
The heresy of the Adoptionists was the first subject dealt with at this Council, and here the leading part was
played by Alcuin, recommended to the Assembly by Charles himself. His
refutation of Felix, who was not present, seems to have been based on this
occasion almost entirely on the opinions of the Fathers of the Church. It was
followed, without any attempt at opposition, by a universal sentence of
condemnation, a sentence which was conveyed to Archbishop Elipandus in the shape of an urgent exhortation to forsake the paths of heresy and thus
escape the fate of excommunication from the Catholic Church.
The further story of Felix, the actual villain of the
piece, whose submission as a French bishop to the decree of a General Council
seems to have been prematurely taken for granted, may be told here.
The reply of Felix to the exhortation of Alcuin came
in the form of a book supporting his opinions and addressed, not to the
Englishman, but to the King himself. It was a direct challenge to Alcuin, and
as such Charles bade him reply to it. But he, very wisely, conscious of the
fact that Felix was trying to make the matter a personal contest, urged the
King to put it into other hands. It looks rather as if Charles himself was
becoming characteristically weary of a subject that had ceased to interest him,
for Alcuin's letter ends on a stirring note.
“Arise, thou Champion of Christ, chosen by God
himself, and defend the Bride of thy Lord. Thou oughtest to avenge with all thy might, the injury and reproach cast upon the Son of God,
thy Redeemer, thy Protector, the Dispenser of all thy blessings. Come forth
valiantly in the defence of Her whom the Church has
entrusted to thy protection, in order that temporal power may assist thee in
acquiring the treasures of spiritual glory.”
Meantime, he nominated as suitable supporters the Pope
and the Patriarch Paul of Aquileia, the first of whom declared his mind on the
matter through a Synod of Italian clergy at Rome. Strengthened by this, Charles
summoned a meeting of bishops and theologians at Aachen in 799, at which Felix
was forced to appear.
For a week Alcuin was pitted against his adversary,
and we may judge very fairly as to the line taken by him in argument. For in
later days he published seven books Against the Heresy of Felix, which no doubt
furnished him with his subject-matter on this occasion. They are based mainly
upon the Scripture, upon the interpretations of the Fathers of the Church, and
upon the inconsistency of the doctrine itself; but he has also a telling hit
here and there at the presumption that would strive to explain the
incomprehensible and thus make himself the equal of God.
“Could God create from the flesh of a Virgin a real
son or no? If He could not, He is not omnipotent. If He could, and would not,
you must give a reason why He did not choose to do so. But if you can give such
a reason, you claim that the Will of God is comprehensible by the human mind,
and the statement of the Apostle, that God is incomprehensible, is false.”
The whole argument is that of a clear-headed thinker
as well as a learned theologian, and before it Felix was at length compelled to
recant for the second time. He was deprived of his bishopric, and, retiring to
a monastery, spent his last years in composing and publishing his Confession of
Faith, which does not, however, seem to have been very convincing to his
contemporaries. Elipandus, indeed, secure in his
Spanish diocese, not only refused to consider Alcuin's courteous attempts to
draw him back to orthodox paths, but wrote an offensive epistle in reply, in
which he expressed a hope for his eternal damnation. This drew forth four books
Against Elipandus, not so much in order to refute an
obstinate old man, but, as Alcuin himself says in the preface, "that the
minds of any may not be led astray by the perusal of that letter, for we have
heard that it has fallen into the hands of others before it reached us to whom
it was addressed."
Thus the good and permanent effect of this outburst of
heresy was to emphasise and enlarge upon a most
important doctrine of the Church at a time when newly converted nations,
through sheer ignorance of the matter, might have been tempted to fall from
orthodoxy.
The settlement of the Adoptionist heresy was not completed till the last years of the eighth century.
Meantime the controversy concerning Image Worship had
had a curious sequel. The Council of Frankfort, when the matter came up for
consideration, was labouring under two disadvantages,
both fatal to calm and considered judgment. Charles could neither forgive nor
forget the fact that the Council which had condemned the Image Breakers had
been summoned under the auspices of an Eastern Power, and of a woman in
particular, who had declared open hostility to him. Moreover, the decrees of
that Council, as laid before the Frankish magnates, were badly translated and
utterly misleading, implying as they did that the adoration of images was
commanded, in place of being proscribed. How this could have happened it is
difficult to see, for Roman legates were present, who must have understood the
actual decrees, and who yet seem to have kept silence. It has been suggested that
Charles purposely misrepresented the matter in order to stir up feeling against
the East and its Empress; but that explanation scarcely accounts for the
sequel. This took the form of a document, famous more for its energy of style
and for the light it throws upon the sentiments of Charlemagne and his
contemporaries towards the Papal See, than for its arguments against a heresy
already refuted. The Carlovingian papers, as they are
known, do, it is true, devote a good deal of space to what was probably a summary
of Alcuin's arguments against adoration of images, and so far were simply
flogging a dead horse. But, far from showing a spirit of opposition to the Holy
See, which had approved the much misunderstood decrees of the Council of
Nicaea, they emphasized in every possible way the obligation of reverence and
submission to Rome.
“From the commencement of my reign,” says the
supposedly royal author, “I have striven to form the Churches on this side of
the Alps upon the model of Rome, and to establish a perfect unanimity with that
Church to the Head of which the keys of Heaven have been committed.”
For himself and his realm, therefore, there could be
no appeal from the Papacy, and he proceeds to emphasise the fact that it is not the veneration of images, but their adoration that he
cannot approve, a position for which he rightly claims the support of Pope
Gregory the Great. The chief sting of the documents, therefore, lies in their
uncompromising hostility to the Byzantines and to their rulers, who are
accused, not only of idolatry, but of every petty and foolish motive that could
make them, and especially their Empress, appear ridiculous in the eyes of
Western Europe.
Neither the style nor the spirit of this portion of
the document would lead us to claim Alcuin for its author, though it has been
freely ascribed to him by modern biographers. Its political aims are made clear
by the fact that it was sent by the hand of Abbot Angilbert to Pope Adrian,
with an imperative suggestion that its perusal should be followed by the
condemnation of both the young Emperor Constantine and his mother, the Empress.
The action of the Pope in reply to this singularly
wrong-headed though able document was characteristic of the Father of his
people. After allowing the hot-headed Frank to cool down, he prevailed upon him
to consider the Church's declaration as to the right and wrong use of images;
and then, when Charles had discovered that they both met on the common ground
of the teaching of Gregory the Great, that images were but the "books of
the ignorant," "channels through which the Saints were approached,"
the means of learning what must be adored and what merely venerated, the whole
controversy collapsed. Constantinople was left unharassed by denunciations, and when her troubles broke forth anew in later years Charles
played no part as an Iconoclast.
Once more wisdom had been justified of her children.
The Adoptionist heresy bore fruit in Alcuin's Book of
the Holy Trinity, written in seclusion at Tours, and sent to his royal master
for the clearing and strengthening of the faith of Frankland. And the uproar as
to Image-Worship procured the definition of the doctrine of the Church by a
General Council, in a decree accepted henceforth by Catholic Christendom.
The School at Tours
For the first three years after the Council of
Frankfort, Alcuin seems to have sat loosely in the Palace School, in the
expectation of a settlement at York in the near future. But from Britain came
disquieting news of Northern pirates, raids and rapines which rose to a climax
in 793, when Lindisfarne, with all its holy associations with the north
country, was devastated and profaned, and its inmates murdered or forced to
serve as slaves. To Alcuin, as an historian, the situation seemed the darker
because he could compare it with the attacks of Angles and Saxons or the Britons
more than three centuries earlier. He saw in it, too, a judgment on the slack
morals of the time, and wrote in deep anxiety to the Archbishop of York:
“Our ancestors, although heathens, acquired
possession, with God's assistance, of that country. What a reproach it would be
to lose as Christians what they gained as heathens! I refer to the scourge
which has lately visited those territories. . . . In the book of Gildas, wisest
of the Britons, we read that these same Britons lost their country in consequence
of the rapacity and avarice of their princes, the corruption and injustice of
the judges, the carelessness and indolence in preaching of the bishops, and the
immorality of the people. Let us take heed that these crimes prevail not in our
times, that the blessing of God may preserve our country in prosperity.”
The troubles of his countrymen gave him no rest, and a
year or two later he wrote to King Ethelred of Northumbria, warning him and his
subjects, again by the example of history, of the need of justice, loyalty, and
obedience, if they would hold their land. But the internal woes of the country
were beyond the reach of exhortation by letters, and, finding this, Alcuin
determined again to risk the discomfort and possible failure of a personal mission.
Just as he was about to set out for England came the news of the murder of the
Northumbrian King. This turned the scale against his return to his native land,
"for I know not," he wrote to King Offa, "what I should do among
those who know neither how to profit by good counsel nor to afford any kind of
security." Within a few months, the death of Eanbald was the occasion of a
definite invitation on the part of the Cathedral Chapter to come and take part
in the election of a successor. He knew what this meant, and that he himself
would be raised to the position of Archbishop of York; but personal ambition
had never formed any part of his character. Had he felt capable of playing a
strong and leading part in the affairs of his troubled country his sense of duty
might have forced him into the post; but he knew that this was impossible to
one of his years and feeble health, one too who was ever a man of thought
rather than of action. So he wrote excusing himself on the plea of sickness,
pleading also that Charlemagne's consent could not be obtained, since he was
absent in Saxony; and with a solemn warning as to their choice, and as to
avoiding the sin of simony, he took his leave of England as an active
participant in her affairs. But that he still took a strong personal interest
in these cannot be doubted, especially as the new Archbishop proved to be his
old pupil, another Eanbald, a personage very ready and able to carry on his
tradition in the School of York.
Meantime his own circumstances were undergoing change.
The bounding vitality and insistent curiosity of his young Franks must have
become, by this time, a pressing burden to the old scholar; and the lively
existence of the Court was growing less and less to his taste. In his humility
he besought Charles to allow him to retire to Saint Boniface's monastery at
Fulda, there to lead in peace and solitude the life of a simple monk. But this
his royal master would not allow. There was still most important work for
Alcuin, a work of reform which could only be effected by a man of wisdom and
learning. The Abbot of the Monastery of Saint Martin at Tours had lately died,
leaving a community slack and ill-disciplined behind him; and none but Alcuin
could succeed where he had failed. "For the purpose of blotting out your
ill report," wrote Charles to the monks, "we have invited from far-
off provinces and selected for you a master and ruler most suitable for you,
who in his words and admonitions will instruct you in the right path, and also,
because he is full of religion (religiosus), will
teach you also by the good example shown in his conversation."
The Abbey of Tours, beautifully set upon the banks of
the river Loire, and including a magnificent cathedral, was the centre of religious life for all Central France. Its abbot
was the ruler of vast lands, twenty thousand slaves owned him as master, and
his influence upon the population, both spiritual and material, was unbounded.
His special care and devotion were, however, for the actual members of the
Order, and especially for the young monks whose education now took the place of
his former pupils in the Palace School. Into this he now threw himself with a vigour that did not preclude his responding to the frequent
call of the King for advice in educational and ecclesiastical matters
elsewhere. He was content to be "Minister of Education" and Reformer
of Abuses; but he would not again be drawn into the petty controversies of the
Court. Half humorously he replies to a tiresome list of queries from the latter, marvelling that "his dearest David should wish
to involve him once more in those old questions of the Palace School, and to
summon back to the contending camps and to the task of quieting the minds of
the mutinous soldiery the veteran who had served his time; especially as he had
by him the tomes both of secular learning and of the wisdom of the Church,
whence he might find the answer to all his queries."
The charge that was brought against the monks of Tours
in a letter of the King, that they had behaved sometimes as monks, sometimes as
canons, sometimes as neither, is rather vague, but very soon after the arrival
of Abbot Alcuin all such aspersions disappear. Always filled with zeal for the
conversion of souls, and burning with love for the younger members of his flock,
Alcuin's spirit quickly vitalised the monastery and
restored it to the grand position it had held in former days. As we should
expect, a right education was made the foundation of reform, and that it should
be upon more strictly theological lines than the Palace School was natural
enough. In his own words he tells us that he has no objection to the elder
monks "gladdening their hearts with the vintage of the ancient
learning," but the younger were to be strictly limited to the "honey
of the sacred writings and the apples of grammatical subtlety."
One of Alcuin's first cares was the founding of a good
library, and it was for this purpose that we find him petitioning Charles to
allow him to send some of the younger monks to England "that they may bring
back the flowers of Britain and that these may diffuse their fragrance and
display their colours at Tours as well as at
York."
"In the morning of my days," says he,
"I sowed in Britain; now in the evening of my life, when my blood is
already growing chill, I cease not to sow in France. And I pray with all my
heart that, by God's grace, the seed may grow in both lands. As for myself I am
consoled by the thought of Saint Jerome, that though all else departs, wisdom
remains and increases in strength."
His combined zeal and experience in education quickly
made Tours the most famous educational centre in the
land of the Franks, at least during his own lifetime. Crowds of pupils of all
nationalities thronged its gates, and among them, as was but natural, were many
from his own native land. But these were not always personae gratae to the Neustrian monks
of Saint Martin's and the inhabitants of the Loire district, who eyed them
askance and with suspicion. On one occasion when a "presbyter
Engel-Saxo" craved admission at the portal, four of these young clerics
were heard by him to say: "Here is another Briton or Irishman, come to see
the Briton inside. The Lord deliver this monastery from these Britons! They
swarm like bees to their hive." The reference was ill-conditioned enough,
since all Frankland owed its growing reputation for learning to Alcuin, and its
hitherto most famous monastery, Luxeuil, to the Irish
monk Columban, who came from Ulster to found it among the heights of the Vosges
mountains before the days of Saint Augustine of Canterbury. However Columban
had left in the Frankland the seeds of a disaffection that accounted for many
of Alcuin's anxieties in later days. It will be remembered that the Irishman
had been summoned before a synod of Frankish bishops to answer for a point of
heresy as to the date on which Easter should be kept - a minor matter in
itself, but important as a token of disobedience to Rome. Something of the same
spirit had shown itself elsewhere among the members of the Irish Schools. They
persisted in preferring the writings of the Greek Fathers to those of the
Latin, which may have been only a token of their better scholarship, but in
those days led to a suspicion of a leaning towards the East rather than the
West. There was also in their own theological treatises a certain speculative
tone, not in itself dangerous, though a source of danger in a period when the
foundations of the Faith of newly converted races were not yet tested by the
wear and tear of time.
To Alcuin, keenly alive to the difficulties of the
nation and of the age in which he worked, anything that was tinged, even in the
slightest degree, with what are now known as "liberal opinions" was
anathema. It was perhaps a case of the specialist who, regarding alcohol as the
cause of all modern ills, sees damnation in a glass of ale. But to men who did
not understand the principles of self-control such a thing is poison; and to
converts still but partially won from heathendom the smallest deviation from clear-cut
doctrines might easily wreck their faith.
We can understand, then, the doubt and dismay with
which Alcuin received the news that a certain Clement of Ireland had been
appointed by the novelty-loving Charles to his own former post as Director of
the Palace School. Hitherto the work had been carried on by two of his own
pupils, Witzo and Fredegis, on lines laid down by
him. It was not in human nature - even the most disciplined - not to resent the
intrusion of the unsound but brilliant Irishman into his own special province;
and the annoyance became acute when Charles, ever eager in astronomical
learning, obtained from Clement certain information which he forwarded to his
old master, apparently with the idea of correcting the discrepancies in the latter's
explanation of the phenomena examined.
The reply shows the attitude of Alcuin clearly enough.
“Little did I dream that the school of the Egyptians
had gained an entry into David's palace. When I went away I left the Latins
there; I know not who introduced the Egyptians. It is not so much that I have
been ignorant of the Memphian methods of calculation as attached to the Roman
customs. For I long ago entered the Land of Promise and left the Egyptian
darkness behind.”
This attitude of Alcuin to the Irish school of thought
is echoed, as we should expect, by other theologians who had looked to his
influence as their lodestar. Thus Theodulphus of
Orleans writes bitter lines against the "Scotellus,"
or Irishman, "who, though versed in many subjects, knows nothing for
certain or true, and even in subjects of which he is ignorant, fancies himself
omniscient."
Charles, on the other hand, seems to have taken a
mischievous delight in drawing out the opinions of the adversaries, and even
tried to get Alcuin to enter into a personal "disputation" with
Clement. But the old man refused to leave his cloister for such a reason.
"These silly little questions," he wrote, "beset my ears like
the insects that swarm at the windows in summer." And he goes on to warn the
King against the thin end of the wedge of heresy which he feared these
Modernists might insert to the destruction of both Church and Kingdom.
There are those nowadays who would see in his attitude
little but the timidity of a conservative thinker. But it was that very quality
of conservatism which was so sorely needed in the Europe of the eighth and
ninth centuries. Roots had been torn up, an ancient civilization threatened by
new and vigorous nations, delighting in speculation and novelty. Had this been
encouraged by the foremost man of letters of the day, chaos, mental and
spiritual, would almost certainly have ruled in mediaeval Europe. There was,
moreover, at that particular time, a very special reason why Charlemagne, the
idol of his people, should in no respect be tainted with anything that smacked
of disloyalty to the doctrines taught by Rome. For the great central event of
the Middle Ages was at hand, and the man who was to represent the temporal, as
the Pope represented the spiritual power of Christendom, must be free from fear
or reproach.
The Second Empire of the West
The idea of reviving the Western Empire, which, since
the year 476, had been merged in that of the East, must have been in the minds
of both Pope and King long before the stirring events of the year A.D. 800. And
that Alcuin, as adviser both in temporal and spiritual affairs to the Frankish
Court, was well aware of the intended project may be taken for granted. From
one of his letters we get a curious indication that he may have given at least
a very good guess at the actual date when this event would take place, though
it seems to have come as a surprise to Charles himself. For that same Christmas
that was to see such momentous happenings at Rome, Charles received as a gift from
his Minister and Counsellor a beautifully adorned and carefully corrected copy
of the Scriptures inscribed with these words:
Ad splendorem imperialis potentiae.
To those who would explain the words as a "mere
magniloquent flourish," one can but reply that it would be utterly
incredible to say that the coronation of Charles, as a solution of the many
difficulties of the political Europe of that day, was absent from the mind of
an onlooker and thinker such as Alcuin. Already, in one of his many letters to
the King, he had impressed him with the fact that as among earthly potentates
the first place must be given to the spiritual, the second to the secular
power; so among secular rulers, the imperial power stood higher than the regal
dignity.
The conditions of the time were all such as to add
weight to Alcuin's suggestion. Within the last century Mohammedanism had
assumed alarming proportions, and now possessed a religion and Empire united
under the rule of the Commander of the Faithful. But the Christian
Commonwealth, apart from its spiritual Head, could claim no leader, since
Charles was merely the "Protector" and Patrician of Rome; and the
Byzantine Emperors, her natural leaders, were not only weak in themselves, but
openly hostile to the Pope. Moreover, of recent years, the East had remained
Imperial only in name, tending to sever itself more and more from Western
Christendom and to cut itself off from Rome. In order to maintain the idea of
the Christian State, as well as to oppose the Mohammedan, the Roman Empire, the
true Empire of the West, must be revived.
One man alone at that time was fitted to be its
temporal head. "The Frank has always been faithful to Rome: his baptism
was the enlistment of a new barbarian auxiliary." He had by his wars
against Arian, and Lombard, and Saracen earned the title of Champion of the
Faith and Defender of the Holy See. As Lord of Western Europe he held the
Celtic, Teutonic, and Romo- Gallic nations in his hand; above all, his loyalty
to the Holy See had never been in doubt. Already in 796, Pope Leo III, the
successor of Adrian, had sent to him the banner of Rome and the keys of the
Confession of Saint Peler, Rome's holiest shrine. Two
years later, as the Holy Father fled, wounded and helpless from the hands of
Roman assassins, it was to Charles's camp at Paderborn that he made his way,
and under the Frankish protection that he returned to the Papal city.
All the details of this stirring episode had been of
the most intense interest to Alcuin. It was said that the Pontiff, whom his
enemies had deprived of sight, had recovered by a miracle; and when Charles,
inclined to be sceptical as to the miraculous side of
the affair, consulted his adviser, Alcuin replied with warmth that “Every
Christian must rejoice in the divine protection which had been extended to His
Holiness, and praise God's Holy Name, who had frustrated the designs of the
wicked.” He then proceeded to urge the King most strongly to fulfill his duty
as the Defender of the Church, to avenge the wrongs and to strengthen the
position of the Pope by every means in his power.
Presently it would seem that the enemies and
detractors of Leo, trying to excuse their own foul deeds, gained the ear of the
Court, for Archbishop Arno wrote to Alcuin deploring the crimes of which the
Pope was accused. But Alcuin, strong in his belief that Leo was innocent, urged
Arno "not to deliver up the shepherd of the flock to the prey of
wolves," but to prevent any infringement of the rights of the Pope and any
violation of the authority of the Holy See.
Possibly the suggestion of a judicial inquiry into
these accusations came from Charles himself. That it was vehemently opposed by
Alcuin was a natural outcome of his unshaken belief that the Apostolic See,
being supreme, could not bow to the will of any lesser tribunal. Even if Leo
had erred, who should be his judges? "Were I in the King's place," he
writes to Arno, "I would reply, 'He that is without sin among you, let him
cast the first stone.'"
But here Charles stood firm in a position which a
visit to Alcuin at Tours in the June of that year left unshaken. On that visit
he had apparently been accompanied by his wife Leutgarde, who fell ill there
and died, no doubt receiving much comfort and help from her well-loved tutor of
former days. She was buried in the Cathedral at Tours, and thus formed a fresh
link between King and Abbot, when the royal mourner sadly betook himself to
Metz, to consider his future policy with regard to Rome. Alcuin's opinion he
knew well, though he would have wished to have him at his right hand, and he
urged him affectionately to "exchange for a time the smoky roofs of Tours
for the golden palaces of the Papal city"; but this the old man declined
on plea of ill-health. Yet there is considerable vigour in the way in which he urged the King not to hesitate for a moment to "reinstate
that pious spiritual shepherd who had been snatched from the hands of his
enemies by the interposition of God, so firmly on his throne that he would
henceforth be able to serve God without molestation."
So, in the latter weeks of the last year of the eighth
century, Charles led his Franks to Rome; and there, in full Synod, after due
hearing of the cause, he, as Patrician, pronounced the innocence of Pope Leo
and the condemnation of his accusers. The scene that followed some three weeks
later thrilled all Christendom. On Christmas Day the "chieftain of the
barbarians," as they were still called at Rome, clad in the sandals and
chlamys, or brooched cloak of a Roman citizen, was
hearing Mass at the High Altar of Saint Peter's, when the Pope, descending from
the pontifical Chair that stood high above the tiers of ecclesiastics, high
above the worshipping multitudes, approached the kneeling Charlemagne and,
placing upon his brow the diadem of the Caesars, knelt and touched his garment
with the hand he had first placed upon his own lips. A great shout rose from
the watching crowd: “Long life and victory to Charles, the divinely crowned
Augustus, the Emperor who brings peace.”
"In that shout, echoed by the Franks without, was
pronounced the union, so long in preparation, so mighty in its consequences, of
the Roman and the Teuton, of the memories and civilization of the South with
the fresh energy of the North; and from that moment modern history
begins."
In dwelling upon this central fact of the mediaeval
world, the coronation of Charlemagne as Emperor of the West, we may seem to
have travelled far from Abbot Alcuin in his cell at Tours. The connection,
however, is by no means remote. Nothing can be clearer than the aim of Alcuin
from the very commencement of his mission to the Franks. Loyalty to the Church,
allegiance to its spiritual ruler, unity of faith and doctrine in an age
peculiarly open to schismatic and heretical influences were to be emphasized in
every possible manner. In no way could this be done better than by the act that
made their natural king and chieftain, the object of their deepest loyalty and
affection, stand before the Christian and heathen world as the divinely
appointed ruler of an Empire which, on its temporal side, almost exactly
corresponded with the kingdom of God on earth. Britain stood apart, and
northwest Spain, though Einhard, Charlemagne's biographer, claims the
allegiance of the latter to his master; but the rest of Western Europe was by
this time so completely in the hands of Charles that his new title made little
actual difference, if any, to his position. The spiritual influence of the
return of the Empire, however, and of the open adherence of the Teuton to the
Roman civilization, was unbounded. And apart from its effect upon individual
tribes and nations, it accomplished the high ideal which the English scholar
had not only formulated, but impressed upon his royal pupil in every possible
way - the splendour and the freedom of the Papacy.
From Tours he wrote with eager anticipation of the
event, longing to congratulate personally the new-made Emperor. That he had
been hindered only by sickness from being present at the ceremony, is clear,
for he writes impatiently:
“With a heart filled with anxiety and an ear which
devoured every word that fell from the lips of those who arrived, have I daily
waited for some tidings of my lord and dearest friend David, to learn when he
will return to his native land. At length the welcome sound of a gathering
multitude rings in my longing ear. Soon, soon he will arrive; already has he,
whom thou, Alcuin, hast so ardently desired to behold, already has he crossed
the Alps. Many times have I exclaimed impatiently, 'O Lord, wherefore hast Thou
not given to me the wings of an eagle? Wherefore hast Thou not granted me to be
transported like the prophet, for one day or even for one hour, that I might
embrace and kiss the feet of my dearest friend, that I might behold the
brightness of his eyes and hear a word of affection from his lips, who is
dearer and more precious to me than all that is precious in the world beside?'
O, wherefore, envious fever, dost thou hold me captive at so unseasonable a
time? Why dost thou not permit me to move, even with my usual activity, that I
might at least be able to accomplish that which cannot happen as speedily as I
desire?”
A visit from the Emperor followed his return from
Rome, the main object of which seems to have been to seek advice as to his
chief difficulty, his future relations with the Eastern Empire. If so, it must
have been by Alcuin's counsel that he sought to make a close alliance with the
latter by a marriage with the Empress Irene, then ruling in place of the son she
had deposed. Had this actually taken place, interesting developments would have
followed, and the course of history would have been strangely altered. Irene,
possibly with this idea in mind, at this time sent ambassadors to Charles with
tentative offers of co-operation; to which the Emperor replied by messengers
who bore an offer of marriage. But the influence of the eunuch Altius, one of
those strange, abnormal personalities that only the East could produce, was
dead against a power that would completely overwhelm his own. Before the eyes
of the Western ambassador a revolution took place which hurled Irene from her
throne and shattered the plans of Charles. Not until the year 811 did the
Emperor of the East acknowledge Charlemagne as Lord of the Western World and
Emperor of Rome.
The Last Tears of Alcuin
The four years that were to elapse between the
coronation of the Emperor and the death of Alcuin were marked not only by
strenuous educational work and constant correspondence, but by a curious and
unhappy incident that left the last days of the old scholar by no means
unclouded.
The visit of Charles after his coronation seems to
have been the last personal meeting between the two men, although the Emperor
not only urged him to come to the Court, but maintained his custom of asking
his counsel in every critical matter of State. On one of these occasions, at
least, Alcuin must have been intimately concerned. The Emperor was meditating
an attack in force upon Beneventum, whose young duke, Grimoald, aided by the
Greeks, had lately declared his independence. This Grimoald was a Lombard who,
as a boyish hostage, had been sent to the Court of Charlemagne and in all
probability had been one of Alcuin's pupils at the Palace School. There he had
won, not only the warm affection of his master, but also that of Charlemagne,
who made him Duke of Beneventum, and was all the more furious when his
generosity was repaid by ingratitude and disloyalty.
But when he consulted Alcuin, the old man was all on
the side of peaceful negotiations with the lad whom he still held in tender
remembrance, and would have persuaded even the fierce Charlemagne, had not
Grimoald's obstinacy precipitated a war that was to last till the peace made
with Constantinople in 811.
Many letters belong to this period, although Alcuin
himself declares that henceforth he intends to assist the Emperor by his
prayers alone. Thus, when Charles renewed his efforts to spread Christian
learning throughout the land, he writes:
“If only there were many who would follow the
illustrious desire of your intent, perchance a new, nay, a more excellent
Athens might be founded in Frankland. For our Athens, being ennobled by the
mastership of Christ the Lord, would surpass all the wisdom of the studies of
the Academy. That was instructed only in the Platonic discipline, and had fame
for its culture in the seven Arts; but ours, being enriched beyond them with
the sevenfold plenitude of the Holy Spirit, would excel all the dignity of
secular learning.”
His own immediate interests absorbed much of his time;
for not only was the reform of discipline to be brought about at Tours, but the
monastery under his care was to be made famous for its theological learning
and, as a means towards that end, for the accurate copying of books. Rare books
had been obtained, as we have seen, from England and elsewhere, but,, in the
transcription of them by careless scribes, many a slip might be made. The King
himself had apparently never overcome a difficulty in punctuation, for some
short time before his coronation as Emperor Alcuin sent him a tactful letter
saying that he had copied on some parchment sent by the King a short treatise
on correct diction, with examples from Bede, and another “containing figures of
arithmetical subtlety compiled for amusement.”
“Although the distinctions and sub-distinctions of
punctuation give a fairer aspect to written sentences, yet, from the rusticity
of scribes, their employment has almost disappeared. But even as the glory of
all learning and the ornament of wholesome erudition begin to be seen again by
reason of your noble exertion, so also it seems most fitting that the use of
punctuation should also be resumed by scribes. Accordingly, though I accomplish
but little, I contend daily with the rusticity of Tours. Let your authority so
instruct the youths at the Palace that they may be able to write with perfect
precision whatever the clear eloquence of your thought may dictate, so that
wheresoever the parchment bearing the royal name shall go, it may display the
excellence of the royal learning.”
At the entrance of the Scriptorium at Tours, the room
in which Abbot Alcuin personally presided over the worthy task of conserving
sound learning, he had affixed certain Latin verses of his own composition.
“Here let the scribes sit who copy out the words of
the Divine Law, and likewise the hallowed sayings of holy Fathers. Let them
beware of interspersing their own frivolities in the words they copy, nor let a
trifler's hand make mistakes through haste. Let them earnestly seek for
themselves correctly written books to transcribe, that the flying pen may speed
along the right path. Let them distinguish the proper sense by colons and
commas, and set the points each one in its due place, and let not him who reads
the words to them either read falsely or pause suddenly. It is a noble work to
write out holy books, nor shall the scribe fail of his due reward. Writing
books is better than planting vines, for he who plants a vine serves his body,
but he who writes a book serves his soul.”
Not only punctuation became his care: he was the first
to introduce the new "script," a method of writing that forms a link
between the old uncial letters and those of the modern alphabet, thus marking a
most interesting milestone in the development of the craft of the pen.
If the zeal of Alcuin for the preservation of
literature was keen, his interest in the mental and spiritual development of
his young monks was keener still. It was small wonder that, like Saint Paul, he
regarded all things as worthless dross save such as would best fit them for the
prize of their high calling. When they turned their eyes longingly to the
pleasant pages of the classic poets they were promptly recalled. "What
need have you to dim your minds with the rank luxuriance of Virgil?" he
cries. "Surely the sacred poets are sufficient for you!" When his favourite Sigulf and two of his
companions ventured to study Virgil in secret, they were summoned to the
presence of the omniscient abbot and sharply reprimanded. "How is this,
Virgilian, that unknown to me and against my express command, thou hast begun
to study the pagan poet?" His care for their intellects was extended to
their physical needs. When his pupil Raganard tried
to mortify his body with excessive vigils and fastings,
he went too far and brought on a violent fever.
“So when Father Alcuin came to visit him,” says his
biographer, “he commanded all save Sigulf to leave
the apartment, and then began: 'Why hast thou, without asking counsel of
anyone, attempted to practise such extreme austerity?
Perceiving that thou hadst an inclination to do so, I caused thee to sleep in
the same chamber with myself, but as soon as thou supposedst that all were asleep, thou didst kindle a light in thy lantern and watch the
whole night.' Those things which he had done most secretly, which God only
could know, Alcuin discovered to him and added: 'When thou camest to me, and I bade thee drink wine, thou didst cunningly reply, "Father, I
have already drunk enough at my uncle's. When thou didst visit thy uncle, and
he likewise bade thee drink, thou didst say thou hadst already drunk with me.
Thou didst intend to impose upon us and hast deceived thyself. Beware, when
thou art cured of this fever, that thou act not so imprudently.”
“When Raganard heard this,
he was ashamed and frightened at having been detected; and finding that he
could conceal nothing from Alcuin, he asked him, in astonishment, how he had
become acquainted with this. Even to the present day, he solemnly protests that
no man knew it but himself. He repented of his foolish attempt, and never
afterwards acted without Alcuin's counsel or command.”
Not only his monks, but those of his pupils who became
secular priests and teachers in other schools were the objects of his care and
interest. We find him entreating and finally prevailing on Charlemagne to allow
him to distribute among such of those as lacked this world's goods the wealth
belonging to him as Abbot of Tours.
These last years of Alcuin were, however, to be
clouded by a serious disagreement with his former friend Theodulphus,
Bishop of Orleans, a matter that brought down the wrath of the Emperor, not
upon his old master, but upon the monastery he ruled. It happened that a
certain cleric in the diocese of Orleans having been sentenced by the bishop to
imprisonment, escaped from prison and took sanctuary at Saint Martin of Tours.
On this the angry bishop obtained a warrant from the Emperor demanding the
restitution of the fugitive, and threatening force if he were not given up. The
abbot took no notice, and forthwith Theodulph, at the
head of an armed band, appeared at the gates of the monastery and, without
parley with Alcuin or the fraternity, rushed into the church. Naturally enough
the indignant monks hastened to defend the sanctity of their abode, and called
upon the townspeople to come to their aid. Upon this, a great crowd of those
who knew of the generosity and charity of the inmates, ran to their rescue, and
would have torn the armed men to pieces had not the monks themselves rescued
them and given them shelter within their walls.
It seems that Alcuin at the time knew nothing of these
things, either because of illness or absence, or more likely because of the
rapidity with which it all happened. But when the bishop had departed in great
wrath to lay the affair before the Emperor, he took a strong line, and
determined to stand by his monks and to defend the sanctuary of Saint Martin to
the last. Wisely, however, he sent a plain and simple statement of the facts to
his old pupils, Witzo and Fredegis, then living at
the Court, that they might contradict whatever exaggerated reports might reach
the Emperor.
"I beseech you, my dearest sons," he says,
"to throw yourselves at the feet of my lord David, justest and noblest of Emperors, and demand, if the bishop should appear, to debate the
matter with him, whether it is proper that a man who has been accused of a
fault should be dragged by force from the sanctuary to the punishment from which
he had escaped? Whether it is just that he who has appealed to Caesar should
not be brought before Caesar? Whether it is proper that one who repents of his
error should be deprived of all that he possesses, even of his personal
liberty, and whether the word of the Lord is to be regarded when He says Mercy rejoiceth against Judgment? If you submit all this to the
consideration of my lord the Christian Emperor, whom no advantage can allure
from the paths of truth and justice, I know that he will not annul the
resolutions and decrees of the holy fathers."
But the matter involved a stiff fight. The Emperor
sent Count Theobert to Tours to inquire into the circumstances, and the count
took such a haughty and severe tone towards the townsmen and monks that Alcuin
would have none of him. The bishop retorted by a mandate from the Emperor to
surrender the fugitive to his diocese; and Alcuin refused to obey it on the
ground that the accused had appealed to Charlemagne and could be judged only by
him. The result was a crushing communication from the Emperor, in which he
roundly scolds the whole fraternity for Alcuin's action, disregards the fact
that the abbot had assumed the whole responsibility, and takes the disregard of
his mandate as a clear token that the monks are living in "disposition to
rebellion and disregard of Christian charity."
"For yourselves know how often your conduct has
been evil spoken of by many, and not without reason. Hence, anxious for your
welfare and wishing to obliterate the memory of your past misdeeds, we
appointed you a skillful teacher and superintendent; we summoned him from a
distant land, that he might instruct you by precept and exhortation, and that
the example of a pious man might teach you to live holy lives. But alas! we have
been grievously disappointed; the devil has found in you an instrument to sow
discord among those whom it least becomes, even among the teachers and doctors
of the Church. . . . You, however, who have despised our commands, you monks or
canons, by whichever name you call yourselves, know that you are arraigned
before our tribunal; and should you attempt, even by sending a letter here, to
excuse your former resistance, you shall nevertheless appear, and make due
reparation for your past fault."
The quarrel recalls a struggle of days to come, when
Henry II and Archbishop Thomas of Canterbury fought over a similar question;
and as in those days, the Church held by her right. A strong letter from Alcuin
defended the conduct of his monks, and meantime the fugitive was dismissed to
safe quarters and vanished from the pages of history. No doubt the Emperor was
thankful to let the matter drop.
The worry had, however, preyed upon the delicate
constitution of the old man, and before many months had passed Alcuin knew his
end was near. Eight years earlier, on the eve of his going to Tours, he had
written wistfully to his old friends at York:
"My fathers and brethren, dearer than all else in
the world, pray do not forget me, for alike in life or death I shall ever be
yours. And peradventure God, in His mercy, may grant that you, who nursed my
infancy, may bury me in old age. But if some other place shall be appointed for
my body, yet I believe that my soul may be granted repose among you through
your holy intercession in prayer."
The touching words suggest whither the weary old abbot
was turning his eyes in those last days; yet it was but fitting that his mortal
part should rest in the land to which he had given the best of his life. He had
always hoped that he might die upon his favourite feast, the Feast of Pentecost; and on that day, the 19th of May, 804, just as
dawn broke and the chant of Prime was heard in the Cathedral hard by, he passed
away.
The epitaph, composed by himself, that commemorates his
resting-place at Tours, breathes the humility of this "Lover of
Wisdom" as well as his sense of the transitory nature of earthly fame.
"O thou who passest by,
halt here a while, I pray, and write my words upon thy heart, that thou mayst
learn thy fate from knowing mine. What thou art, once I was, a wayfarer not
unknown in this world; what I am now, thou soon shalt be. Once was I wont to
pluck earthly joys with eager hand; and now I am dust and ashes, the food of
worms. Be mindful then to cherish thy soul rather than thy body, since the one
is immortal, the other perishes. Why dost thou make to thyself pleasant abodes?
See in how small a house I take my rest, as thou shalt do one day. Why wrap thy
limbs in Tyrian purple, so soon to be the food of dusty worms? As the flowers
perish before the threatening blast, so shall it be with thy mortal part and
worldly fame.
"O thou who readest,
grant me in return for this warning, one small boon and say:
'Give pardon, dear Christ, to thy servant who lies
below.'
May no hand violate the sacred law of the grave until
the archangel's trump shall sound from heaven.
Then may he who lies in this tomb rise from the dusty
earth to meet the Great Judge with his countless hosts of light.
Alcuin, ever a lover of Wisdom, was my name; pray for
my soul, all ye who read these words."
After Years: Educational Influence
The old English scholar had passed from the land of
his adoption, but, being dead, he yet spoke, and with no uncertain voice.
Seldom has one who never claimed to be an original thinker left a more
impressive mark upon his age. We have seen how he had preserved and taught
knowledge that had been in sore danger of perishing throughout a great empire,
an empire, moreover, that had no natural bent for literature or intellectual labour. Once more, too, we may remind ourselves that what
that particular period needed was not the heady drink of original and possibly
heretical conjecture, acceptable as that would have been to the minds of a race
who, like the Athenians of old, were ever on the look-out for some new thing.
What the Franks were in need of was the sound and tried learning of the days of
Europe's greatness as a whole, ways of thought that led into the broad
highroads of Roman civilization, the old truths that had stood the test of
centuries. So we find Alcuin stating clearly, in reference to the teaching of
the Fathers of the Early Church, Saint Augustine, Saint Ambrose, and Saint
Gregory:
"I have preferred to employ their very thoughts
and words rather than to venture anything of my own audacity, even if the
curiosity of my readers were to approve of it; and by a most cautious manner of
writing, I have made it my care, by the help of God, not to set down anything
contrary to the thought of the Fathers."
To Theodulphus, his
successor in the Palace School, he urges the teaching of the liberal arts, but
on the old lines. Speculation must be avoided, and so he warns him against the
specious attractions of the "new teaching" of the Irish School of
thought.
To the monks of the Irish monasteries themselves he
writes:
"Exhort your boys, most holy fathers, to learn
the traditions of the Catholic doctors, for the times are evil, and many false
teachers arise. . . . Notwithstanding this the study of secular letters is not
to be set aside. Let Grammar stand as the fundamental study for the tender
years of infancy, and the other disciplines of philosophical subtlety be
regarded as the several ascents of learning by which scholars may mount to the
very summit of evangelical perfection. Thus, with increase of years, shall come
increase of the riches of wisdom."
Further light upon the influence of his ideals is
thrown not only by the contents of his educational treatise but by many of his
letters. Thus, his tender interest in his old school at York is shown in an
epistle to Eanbald, his former pupil, the Archbishop of York, who had written
to consult him about the organization of his classes.
"Praise and glory to the Lord God Almighty, that
I, the least of the servants of the Church, was spared to instruct among my
sons one who should be held worthy to become a steward of the mysteries of
Christ, labouring in my place in the Church wherein I
was nursed and instructed, and presiding over the treasures of learning to which
my beloved master. Archbishop Elbert, left me his heir. . . . Provide masters
both for your boys and for the grown clerics. Separate into classes those who
are to study in books, those who are to practise Church music, and those who are to be engaged in transcription. Have a separate
master for every class, that the boys may not run about in idleness, nor occupy
themselves in foolish games, or be given over to other follies. Consider these
things most carefully, my dearest son, to the end that the fountain of all
wholesome erudition may still be found flowing in the chief city of our
nation."
It is, however, when we turn to his educational
treatises that we are most struck with the sound philosophy and almost modern
psychology of his teaching. He is never the mere crammer, but always the true
teacher.
"We need," he makes his pupils say, in the
introduction to his Treatise on Grammar," to be instructed slowly, with
many a pause and hesitation, and like the weak and feeble, to be led by slow
steps until our strength shall grow. The flint naturally contains in itself the
fire that will come forth when the flint is struck. Even so there is in the
human mind the light of knowledge, that will remain hidden like the spark in
the flint unless it be brought forth by the repeated efforts of a
teacher."
He goes on to state his philosophy of education,
showing that since eternal happiness is the real aim of every rational being,
he is concerned with the things that are proper and peculiar to the soul that
is to live for ever rather than with those that are alien to it.
"That which is sought from without is alien to
the soul, for example, the gathering together of riches; but that which is
proper to the soul is what is within, that is to say, the graces of wisdom.
Therefore, O man, if thou art master of thyself, thou shalt have what thou
shalt never have to grieve at losing, and what no calamity shall be able to
take away."
"Wisdom is the chief adornment of the soul, and
therefore I urge you to seek this above all things. It is an inseparable
property of the soul and therefore immortal."
In his insistence upon the right order of mental
advance he anticipates the teaching of Froebel by eleven centuries.
"Progress must be gradual. Men should be led by the steps of erudition
from lower to higher things (from the simple to the complex). . . . Until your
wings grow stronger by degrees, so that you may mount on them to view the
loftier visions of the pure ether, i.e. general notions."
"Master," his pupils cry, "raise us
from earth by your hand, and set our foot upon the steps of wisdom." To
which he replies, "Wisdom is built upon the seven pillars of the liberal
arts, and it can in no wise afford us access to any perfect knowledge unless it
be set upon these seven pillars or ascents," a reference to the Book of
Proverbs, which says, "Wisdom hath builded her
house; she hath hewn out her seven columns." Asked to name them, he
replies, "Grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, arithmetic, geometry, music, and
astronomy. On these the philosophers bestowed their leisure and their study;
and by reason of these philosophers the Catholic teachers and defenders of our
faith have proved themselves superior to all the chief heretics in public
controversy. Therefore let your youthful steps, my dearest sons, run daily
along these paths until a riper age and a stronger mind shall bring you to the
heights of Holy Scripture."
The second Dialogue on Grammar has been derided with
undue haste and energy, because of its definition of the subject as the
"Science of written sounds, the guardian of correct speaking and
writing." Those, however, who contrast this with the wider conception of
Imperial Rome, which included the study of the great poets and orators,
overlook a most important and characteristic fact of Alcuin's days. It was a
time when, owing to the influx of barbarian speech and letters, there was
imminent danger that the Latin tongue would be completely submerged, both as
regards speech and literature. If this loss occurred the study of ancient
poetry and oratory would obviously be possible only to a very few advanced
scholars, much as Hebrew is today. This threat accounts for Alcuin's meticulous
insistence upon correct grammar, in the strict sense, and careful
transcriptions of classic writers. He did not save the speech of Gaul, which
developed as inevitably as the civilization of her people; but he did preserve
that very literature which he has been accused of ignoring. This, too, was the
motive of his treatise on Orthography, used, no doubt, in the Scriptorium at
Tours, with its motto:
“Let him who would fain utter forth the traditional
language, read me, for he who follows me not, is fain but to speak at random.”
In this treatise we find an energetic effort to get
rid of the barbaric elements in contemporary Latin at the stage when it was
about to develop into French. "If you mean a berry, write bacca, with a b;
but if you mean a cow, write vacca,
with a v. By no means consider beneficus,
a man of good deeds, the same as veneficus, a
poisoner. Do not mix up bibo and vivo."
Another side of his character as an educator is seen
in the gleams of fun and wit that show his understanding of the natural
merriment of child nature, as well as of his child-like pupils, the burly
warriors, men of the battlefields and the camp. In his "Propositions"
he speaks of "studying the fair forms of numbers" with Charles, and
sets forth a series of arithmetical puzzles for "whetting the wit of
youths." We can hear the shout of laughter that would follow on the answer
to the question, "After an ox has ploughed all day, how many steps does he
show in the last furrow?" The catch lies, of course, in the fact that the
furrow covers up all traces whatsoever. Another tries to crack the famous nut
which gives a ladder with one hundred steps - one dove on the first step, two
on the second, and so on. How many doves on the ladder? This is worked out, on
no principle, but with enormous labour, to show that
on the first and ninety-ninth steps together there are loo doves, and the same
on the second and ninety-eighth, and so on, till a total of 5,050 doves is
arrived at.
Another deals with the gathering of an army in
geometrical progression through thirty towns, and amounts to a total of over a
thousand million, all counted, it will be remembered, in Roman numerals, with
immense patience and toil.
Sometimes the pupils are teased thus: "Let 300
pigs be killed in three batches on successive days, an odd number to be killed
each day." But as the odd numbers cannot add up to an even sum, this is an
impossible proposition, and the master cries, with a laugh, "Ecce fabula!
There is no solution. This is only to torment boys."
Again we find in his letters, not only his tender care
for individual pupils, but also a pretty turn of wit, a playful vein of fancy
that must have appealed strongly to young readers.
"Let Christ be on your lips and in your heart, my
dearest son," he writes to a pupil who was inclined too much to love of
the theatre and of declamation. "Act not childishly, and follow not boyish
whims, but be perfect in all uprightness and continence and moderation, that
God be glorified in your works and that the father who bore you may not be ashamed.
Be temperate in food and drink; it is better to please God than to please
actors, to look after the poor than to go after buffoons. Be old in morals
though young in years."
To the young princes, he writes, in their father's
absence, from Tours:
"To my dearest sons in Christ, their father
wishes eternal welfare. I would write you a great deal if only I had a dove or
a raven to carry my letter on its faithful pinions. Nevertheless I have given
this little sheet to the winds, that it may come to you by some favouring breeze, unless perchance the gentle zephyr change
to an Eastern blast. But arise, O South, or North, or any wind, and bear this
little parchment to be your greeting and to announce our prosperity and our
great desire to see you well and whole, even as a father should desire his sons
to be. O, how happy was that day when amid our labours we played at the sports of letters! But now, all is changed. The old man has
been left to beget other sons, and weeps for his former children, who are
gone."
In the note to Count Wido there is a good example of
his pithy thought. "He who would be always with God ought frequently to
pray, and frequently to read. For when we pray we are speaking to God, and when
we read, God is speaking to us."
One is tempted to dwell on this human side of the old
monk, an aspect, moreover, that as much as anything else kept his memory green
in Frankland. But the pen of Alcuin was busy in other ways besides
correspondence and educational treatises.
The Gospel of Saint John, that wonderful treatise
which deals with spiritual vitality in all its aspects, had a special appeal
for one who, hampered though he might be by physical weakness, yet knew the
secret of abundant intellectual and spiritual life. His method of dealing with
it was his own, or, rather, that of the age to which he belonged, a method
which interpreted details in a mystical fashion that at once lighted up the
natural world with the rays of the supernatural, without swerving a hair's
breadth from the literal interpretation of the doctrines laid down therein.
Thus, to give one brief example, in describing the miracle of the changing
water into wine at Cana of Galilee, he begins by stating that this signifies
the purification and strengthening of the Law at the coming of Christ. Then
turning to the details of the event, he sees in the six vessels which held the
water the holiness of the Saints of the Old Testament, who during six revolving
ages held up an ideal of purity of life to the ancient world. The vessels are of
Stone, he says, to signify the strength of their hearts, strong in their love
for that stone which Daniel saw "torn without hands from a mountain, and
which became so great a mountain that it filled the whole earth." He
connects this also with the seven "disciplines" or divisions of
knowledge, since it was upon the "One Stone" that Zachariah beheld
"seven eyes"; and with the saying of Saint Peter, "Ye also as
lively stones are built up a spiritual house."
Other commentaries appeared from time to time from the
pen of the indefatigable Abbot of Tours. He had already written during his
years at the Court School a kind of Catechism on the Book of Genesis, and a
"Short explanation of the Ten Commandments." Now, in his greater
leisure, he wrote an Exposition of some of the Psalms, full of poetical
thoughts and mystical interpretations, and a Commentary on the Song of Solomon
that gave full scope for his delight in explaining the signification of numbers
in a spiritual sense. Again, for the benefit of those pupils "who had
flown from the nest of his paternal care into the open firmament of worldly
occupations" to the Court of Charlemagne, he wrote a Commentary on the
Book of Ecclesiastes, taken largely from Saint Jerome, but marked by his own
pithy thought and practical piety.
The fact that all these were written for the laity,
especially for his own pupils in the world, is a remarkable answer to those who
accuse the mediaeval Church of closing the Bible to all but the religious, in
the technical sense of the word. The Commentary on Saint John's Gospel, for
example, was written for Gisela, the sister of Charlemagne, and for her friend Richtrud, his "little dove," who looked for it
with such impatience that he was obliged to send it to them bit by bit. There
is also an interesting letter of this period, anent the query of a soldier in
Charlemagne's army, who asks for a reconciliation between the words of Our
Blessed Lord in bidding His disciples buy swords, "selling all that they
had" in order to do so, when elsewhere He warned His followers that all
they that take the sword shall perish by the sword. In dealing with this,
Alcuin points out the distinction between the sword of the Word of God and the
weapon of earthly revenge, and adds his expression of pleasure that the laity
had begun to interest themselves in points of Gospel study, wishing that
Charlemagne had many more such soldiers as the man who had thus confided his
difficulties to him.
These works were followed by a treatise on Saint
Paul's Epistles to Titus, Philemon, and the Hebrews, and by brief commentaries
on some sayings of Saint Paul and upon the Apocalypse. Less original though
even of greater value liturgically are his Book of the Sacraments, Office for
the Dead, and Treatise on the Ceremonies of Baptism, rearranged and set in
order from older liturgies.
Then we get a tiny group of philosophical treatises,
that On Virtues and Vices, dedicated to Count Wido; On the Nature of the Soul,
dedicated to Gundrada; and On Simony, addressed to the monks of Saint Martin;
and these again were followed by four lives of saints - Saint Martin of Tours,
"as in private duty bound," Saint Vedast, Saint Riquier, and Saint
Willibrord, his own relative and benefactor. A Life of Charlemagne is mentioned
by Einhard, the biographer of the Emperor, among Alcuin's works, but of this no
trace can be found. It must, in any case, have been incomplete, since Charles
survived him by ten years.
All the writings mentioned here were received by the
literary world of that day with the greatest interest and enthusiasm. Learned
abbots wrote to beg that he would honour their
libraries with a manuscript dealing with the life of the founders of their orders,
and the Emperor himself waited eagerly for each new book, and not seldom begged
that these might be written especially for his instruction and pleasure. One
other aspect of his literary work is more than commonly interesting. With the
return of the classic writers came also the rage for versification upon their
models, and Alcuin was no exception to this. His turn of mind, indeed, was
essentially poetical, possessing as he did the power of vision, the poet's
fancy, and the poet's dream. Hence, in lines that often overstep the
limitations of classical metre and sometimes
experiment in the new medium of rhymed verse, the old monk gives us prayers,
inscriptions for books, for churches and altars, addresses to friends,
epitaphs, epigrams, and riddles. He wrote also a long poem on the Saints of the
Church at York, based, of course, upon Bede's Ecclesiastical History, which is
interesting for personal reasons, containing as it does the inventory of the
books found in his time in the York library; and if this belongs to earlier
years, this is not the case with his poem. On the Mutability of all Human
Affairs, called forth by the sack of Lindisfarne by the heathen Danes.
His dogmatic treatise On the Trinity, dedicated to
Charles and written at Tours during the last years of his life, as well as that
On the Procession of the Holy Spirit, were both echoes of the heresy
promulgated by Felix and Elipandus in former years,
and bear witness to the loving care of Alcuin for the orthodoxy of the land of
his adoption. Useful as was his pen, however, in those years at Tours, the
influence exerted by him over certain pupils of marked personality, destined to
carry on his work in yet wider circles, is still more important, and deserves a
chapter to itself. Enough has perhaps been said to justify the comment of
Laforet, "His erudition comprises both the worlds of secular and of sacred
learning. He brings before us the most familiar philosophy, history, and poets
of Greece and Rome; and on the other hand he exhibits a knowledge of the whole
of ecclesiastical history and Church doctrine."
The Legacy of Alcuin to Europe
The ten years that elapsed between the death of Alcuin
and that of Charlemagne in 814 were a time of consolidation for the work of
both. Reforms in Church and State were still necessary, and the effect of the
teaching of the master of the Palace School was directly seen in the fact that
Charles spent his last days in correcting the Vulgate translation of the
Gospels. To the Emperor an admiring world has also ascribed the authorship of
one of our greatest Catholic hymns, the Veni Creator, but though this dates
from his age it was in all probability the composition of another of Alcuin's
pupils, a greater scholar if not so great a personality.
It is by the work of this man, Rabanus Maurus, as well
as by that of the schools founded in the years after Alcuin's death, that we
can measure best the intellectual and educational mark left by the English
scholar upon the Europe of the ninth and tenth centuries. Let us first take a
brief glance at the condition of education in general during the first half of
the ninth century.
The immediate successor of Charlemagne, Louis the
Pious, shows to a high degree the influence of his former master, though in his
reaction against the ancient classics he outdoes Alcuin. The pagan poetical
songs which he had learnt in youth he would have nothing to do with, and wished
not to read, hear, nor learn them, says a contemporary biographer. In his days,
however, a great advance was made in the educational scheme of things. At his
Council of Aachen in 817, acts said to be "among the boldest and most
comprehensive ever submitted to a great national assembly" were put into
force, under the influence of Benedict of Aniane, one
of Alcuin's most intimate friends. As these included a tightening of discipline
under the Benedictine Rule, one result was to cause a dual system of education.
Monastic schools were to be for monks alone, or rather for oblates, those who
were hoping to become monks in the future. The lay schools were connected with
a cathedral, and were under the general supervision of the bishop. Here such
boys as intended to become priests were under the charge of one of the canons,
known as the Scholasticus, as in the days when Alcuin filled the post at York.
The education of these Cathedral schools was as
careful and thorough as that of the monasteries, though more general in its
scope. Perhaps its inferiority lay in the difficulty of obtaining books, since
these still gravitated to the monastic libraries.
"We may picture to ourselves," says Bass Mullinger in his Schools of Charles the Great, "a
group of lads seated on the floor, which was strewn with clean straw, their
waxen tablets in their hands, and busily engaged in noting down the words read
by the Scholasticus from his manuscript volume. So rarely did the pupil in
those days gain access to a book that 'to read' (legere)
became synonymous with 'to teach.'
"The scholars traced the words on their tablets,
and afterwards, when their notes had been corrected by the master, transferred
them to a little parchment volume, the treasured depository of nearly all the
learning they managed to acquire in life."
The last statement needs qualification. In modern days
we are so accustomed to regard education as book-learning only that we are apt
to forget, not only the large field of knowledge that lies outside the library,
but also the fact that our bookless forefathers carried their libraries, to a
very large extent, "in their heads." The memory was trained to an
amazing extent, and though this, on the whole, is apt to hinder rather than aid
the power of reasoning, it did provide the material for such intellectual
effort and rendered the use of books far less necessary.
The reforms made by Louis, in accordance with the
ideals of Alcuin, aimed directly at the "advancement of the State in holy
learning and holy life." Every boy who wished to attain any kind of post
connected with the Church - and clerici, who were not
priests, were very numerous - had not only to attend school, but to equip
himself to become a teacher. The poorer scholars were to be provided for by the
richer. At a meeting of bishops at Paris in 823 it was expressly enforced that
"each bishop should henceforth exercise greater diligence in instituting
schools and in training and educating soldiers for the service of Christ's
Church."
Six years later the bishops beseech the Emperor to
promise three large "public schools" in the three most suitable
places of the Empire, in order that his father's efforts and his own might not
fall into decay.
How far these schools ranked as the
"Universities" of that period it is difficult to judge, seeing that
they were so soon to be overwhelmed by the tempests that followed the
disruption of the Empire in 841, after the death of Louis. But the very fact
that such a scheme of general education was afoot in ninth-century Frankland
speaks volumes for the influence of Alcuin, especially when we remember that
our own English system of primary education is barely fifty years old.
The effect of Alcuin’s work is, however, seen still
more clearly in the monastic schools carried on by those who had sat at his
feet as pupils, either at Aachen or at Tours.
At the famous school of Corbey, near Amiens, Adelhard
and Wala, cousins of Charlemagne, maintained the standard of sound learning, in
spite of much interference and many political earthquakes, until the onrush of
the Northmen swept away their abbey in the middle of the ninth century, and
caused a new foundation, of the same name, to be made in Saxony.
This is but one instance of the spread of education,
owing to what seemed on the surface to be its greatest foe. Another touches
England closely, for, from Saint Bertin, another monastic school under the
influence of Alcuin, came Grimbald, King Alfred’s “mass-priest” and Minister of
Education in the end of the ninth century. But by far the most important
example of the influence of Alcuin's system is seen in the work of Rabanus
Maurus, at Fulda, in a school which took the place of Saint Martin's at Tours
in days when the successor of the Englishman had allowed the latter to fall
into decay. The cause of the fall of Saint Martin's from grace is significant.
It began to demand fees from its scholars and received “externes,”
the sons of wealthy laymen who wished for an exclusive and aristocratic
establishment. From that time until it became, for its wealth, a mark for the
plundering instincts of the Northmen in the middle of the ninth century, Saint
Martin's declined in reputation, and Fulda took its place as the first “School”
in Frankland.
Rabanus, the young monk whom Alcuin had affectionately
named Maurus, after Saint Maur, the favourite disciple of Saint Benedict, had spent but a year in study at Tours; but in that
time he had absorbed so many of the ideals of his master that henceforth
Alcuin's influence was to permeate the School of Fulda to which he returned.
The difficulties of Rabanus in carrying on his scholastic reforms were many.
His abbot, Ratgar, had a passion for building rather
than for learning, and snatched books from the hands of his monks, bidding them
go and lay bricks. Some of them actually died of overwork, but there was no
redress. For the archbishop, to whom, on his approach to dedicate the church,
the monks appealed, showed himself on the side of the manual labour. Not only did he consecrate a building raised
literally out of the “blood and bones” of the builders, but he encouraged the
creation of another new church some few miles away. The unhappy monks, who had
petitioned in vain for a few books, “lest the instruction we have received
should fade from memory,” and probably at the instigation of Rabanus, appealed
to the Emperor. Before their deputation could arrive, Ratgar rushed to forestall them at Court, and it was with great difficulty that an
inquiry of bishops was brought about. These drew up a formal agreement as to
hours of work and study, but as they remained to consecrate the last new-built
church, Ratgar was encouraged to begin the building
of a “cell,” that is a daughter monastery on a small scale, some distance away.
This was the last straw, and a justly indignant community expelled Ratgar, who, in later days, returned and lived the life of
a humble penitent within its walls for thirteen years.
It was some few years after Ratgar’s fall that Rabanus became Abbot of Fulda, and set to work to fulfill his aim of
making that School the most famous of its day.
In his book, De Institutione Clericorum, we get strong proof of the influence
of Alcuin, as well as much interesting light on the opinion of the time as to
the worth and importance of education. In his discussion of the practical use
of learning to the clergy, Rabanus, as becomes an apt pupil, goes beyond his
master. He would have his scholars, in dealing with pagan philosophy, “spoil
the Egyptians” by baptising those doctrines that harmonise with the Christian faith, as Saint Thomas Aquinas
was to do four centuries later. He adds a practical suggestion.
“Preachers must see that they are within the
comprehension of their audience, must consider the needs of the multitude
rather than those of the cultured few. Dialectics must be known that the clergy
may be able accurately to discern the craftiness of unbelievers, and to confute
their assertions by the 'magical conclusions' of the syllogism.”
His method of dealing with the superstitions of his
age, though scientifically inexact, is too enlightened not to quote, all the
more because it throws a flood of light upon the kind of people with whom
Alcuin and his followers had to deal.
The moon was in eclipse, and the inhabitants of the neighbourhood of the abbey would “fain renew help.”
“Some days ago,” says Rabanus, “when I was thinking
over in the evening, within my house, something that should be to your
spiritual good, I heard outside an outcry that seemed as though it would reach
the sky. On inquiring the cause of this alarm, I was told it was intended to
aid the waning moon. Horns were blown as though to raise the neighbourhood to battle; some imitated the grunting of
swine; others flung darts of fire in the direction of the moon, which they said
a monster was tearing in pieces and would certainly devour did they not come to
the rescue. Some even cut down the hedges of their gardens and smashed all the
crockery in their houses, in order to scare away the monster. My brethren, all
this is but a fancy. God’s hand is over all His works to protect them, and man
is far too feeble to render Him aid. This appearance of the moon has a simple
natural cause. For it is evident that when the moon, whose orbit is the less,
comes between, the sun cannot pour his light upon our eyes, and this happens
during the time of his rising; and in like manner, the moon, which is lightened
by the sun, becomes obscured by the shadow of the earth at full moon. No need
is there then to seek to give her help. God has thus ordered it and He knows
right well how to manage all His creatures.”
There is extant an interesting testimony to this
worthy pupil of a great teacher. Einhard, the biographer of Charles, had sent
his young son to be educated by Rabanus at Fulda, and writing to the boy he
bids him: “Strive to follow the example of the good and on no account incur the
displeasure of him whom I have exhorted you to take for your model; but,
mindful of your vow, seek to profit by his teaching with the utmost degree of
application that he would approve. For, thus instructed, and reducing what you
have learnt to practice, you will be wanting in nothing that relates to the
knowledge of life. And even as I exhorted you by word of mouth, be zealous in
study and fail not to grasp at whatever of noble learning you may be able to
get from the most lucid and fertile genius of this great orator.”
Through the pupils of this man the influence of Alcuin
was spread far and wide. “Wherever in Church or State,” says one of the
biographers of Rabanus, “a prominent actor appeared at the period, we may
predict that he will prove to have been a scholar of this notable teacher.”
When it is realised,
moreover, that he was the founder or the director of twenty-two monasteries and
convents, from which both Celtic and Latin scholars drew their stores of
learning, “a poet and the inspirer of poets” also, Rabanus Maurus may well be
said to have been the “finest fruit of Alcuin's seed-planting.”
From him was handed down an unbroken tradition of
educational method and subject-matter that stood even the shocks of the
invasion of the Northmen, terrible as were the effects of these upon learning
as a whole. Where in England all such traditions vanished, and had to be
painfully built up again by Alfred and his successors, they can be traced
unmistakably in France up to the very foundation of the University of Paris in
the twelfth century.
For Lupus Servatus, the pupil of Rabanus, and
afterwards Abbot of Ferrières, brought back to some extent the classical
literature on which Alcuin in his later years had looked but coldly; and he and
Rabanus together educated the mind of Eric, tutor to Lothair, the son of
Charles the Bald, and close intimate of the King. Eric’s school of Auxerre
became, after Fulda, the chief centre of learning for
Frankland, and among his pupils was Remy of Auxerre, a famous scholar who
taught both at Rheims and at Paris. At Paris one of his most notable pupils was
Odo of Cluny, a saintly and austere young monk from Saint Martin of Tours. At
Cluny, Odo not only brought about great reforms in education, but also revived
the strict observance of the Benedictine Rule. It was his pupils who upheld the
standard of education throughout the tenth century, and brought their influence
to bear upon the Canons of Sainte. Genevieve at Paris, and upon their Cathedral
School.
When Paris became the headquarters of the Capets in the eleventh century, pupils flocked there from
Tours, Chartres, and from the growing foundation of Le Bee; and in the early
years of the twelfth century William of Champeaux opened his School of Logic, the
germ of the future University.
Strong, however, as was the influence of Alcuin upon
the educational tradition of the mediaeval world, it is not to this alone that
he owes his title to greatness as a Catholic thinker. It is rather that he was
one of the first to see with extraordinary clearness the needs of the age in
which he lived, and to foresee those of the succeeding periods.
To a young vigorous nation, that knew no discipline
save that of the battlefield, must be given the ideals of Law and Order that
could come only by recognition of an authority supreme over temporal princes.
And so it came about that the chief task of Alcuin was the strengthening of the
bond between Church and State and, above all, the definite acknowledgment of
the Papal supremacy.
This was safeguarded most by all that could best
develop the Latin civilization, which even in the days of Charlemagne had more
than once been threatened by waves of Teuton barbarism. Had this threat materialised, Western Europe would have become purely
Frankish in character, “wiping away that form of civilization which for nearly
six centuries Rome had evolved by standing as a buffer between Gaul and German,
combining with her own fine material the mysticism of the one and the fierce
combativeness of the other.”
It has been said of this period that the “Franks
formed a hinge of ancient and modern civilization nearest in arms, in
settlement, and in law to the vanguard and outposts of Rome,” and this is
certainly due to a very large extent to the influence of the English scholar.
But this influence was exercised not only upon Charlemagne, but upon the chief
men of his age, and through them upon succeeding periods. Together they brought
back order and mental culture, “fusing the West into a compact whole.” Together
they prepared the way for the new intellectual forces of scholasticism that
were to oppose the thrusts of the Mohammedans in the years to come. For the
seed of mental effort must be sown in darkness, and it is more than likely that
Aquinas would never have given his thoughts to the world had not Alcuin's quiet
but persistent efforts prepared the way in earlier years by conserving ancient
learning, the mind to learn and the methods that regulate valid thought.
Ethel Mary Wilmot-Buxton
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