Alcuin

Rabanus Maurus (left), supported by Alcuin (middle), presents his work to Otgar of Mainz

Alcuin of York (Latin: Alcuinus) or Ealhwine, nicknamed Albinus or Flaccus (730s or 740s – May 19, 804) was a scholar, ecclesiastic, poet and teacher from York, Northumbria. He was born around 735 and became the student of Archbishop Ecgbert at York. At the invitation of Charlemagne, he became a leading scholar and teacher at the Carolingian court, where he remained a figure in the 780s and 790s. He wrote many theological and dogmatic treatises, as well as a few grammatical works and a number of poems. He was made Abbot of Saint Martin's at Tours in 796, where he remained until his death. He is considered among the most important architects of the Carolingian Renaissance. Among his pupils were many of the dominant intellectuals of the Carolingian era.

Contents

Biography

Alcuin of York had a long career as a teacher and scholar, first at the school at York founded in AD 627 (now known as St Peter's School, York) and later as Charlemagne's leading advisor on ecclesiastical and educational matters. From 796 until his death he was Abbot of the great monastery of St. Martin of Tours.

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

Background

Alcuin was born in Northumbria, presumably sometime in the 740s.[1] Virtually nothing is known of his parents, family background or origin.[1] In common hagiographical fashion, the Vita Alcuini asserts that Alcuin was 'of noble English stock' and this statement has usually been accepted by scholars. Alcuin's own work only mentions such collateral kinsmen as Wilgils, father of the missionary saint Willibrord and Beornred, abbot of Echternach and bishop of Sens, who was more distantly related. In his Life of St Willibrord, Alcuin writes that Wilgils, called a paterfamilias, had founded an oratory and church at the mouth of the Humber, which had fallen into Alcuin's possession by inheritance. Because in early Anglo-Latin writing, paterfamilias ("head of a family, householder") usually referred to a ceorl, Donald A. Bullough suggests that Alcuin's family was of cierlisc status, i.e. free but subordinate to a noble lord, and that Alcuin and other members of his family rose to prominence through beneficial connections with the aristocracy.[2][3] If so, Alcuin's origins may lie in the southern part of what was formerly known as Deira.[4]

York

The young Alcuin came to the cathedral church of York during the golden age of Archbishop Ecgbert and Northumbrian King Eadberht. Egbert had been a disciple of the Venerable Bede, who urged him to raise York to an archbishopric. King Eadbert and his brother Egbert oversaw the re-energising and re-organisation of the English church, with an emphasis on reforming the clergy and on the tradition of learning that Bede had begun. Egbert was devoted to Alcuin, who thrived under his tutelage. It was in York that Alcuin formed his love of classical poetry, though he was sometimes troubled by the fact that it was written by non-Christians.

The York school was renowned as a centre of learning, in the liberal arts, literature and science as well as in religious matters.[5] It was from here that Alcuin drew inspiration for the school he would lead at the Frankish court. He revived the school with the trivium and quadrivium disciplines. He wrote a codex on the trivium and his student Hraban wrote one on the quadrivium.[5]

Alcuin graduated to become a teacher during the 750s. His ascendancy to the headship of the York school, the ancestor of St Peter's School, began after Aelbert became Archbishop of York in 767. Around the same time Alcuin became a deacon in the church. He was never ordained as a priest and there is no real evidence that he became an actual monk, but he lived his life as one.

In 781, King Elfwald sent Alcuin to Rome to petition the Pope for official confirmation of York’s status as an archbishopric and to confirm the election of the new archbishop, Eanbald I. On his way home he again met Charlemagne, this time in the Italian city of Parma.

Charlemagne

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

He was welcomed at the Palace School of Charlemagne in Aachen (Urbs Regale) in 782. It had been founded by the king’s ancestors as a place for the education of the royal children (mostly in manners and the ways of the court). However, Charlemagne wanted to include the liberal arts and, most importantly, the study of the religion that he held sacred. From 782-790, Alcuin taught Charlemagne himself, his sons Pepin and Louis, the young men sent to be educated at court and the young clerics attached to the palace chapel. Bringing with him from York his assistants Pyttel, Sigewulf and Joseph, Alcuin revolutionized the educational standards of the Palace School, introducing Charlemagne to the liberal arts and creating a personalised atmosphere of scholarship and learning, to the extent that the institution came to be known as the 'school of Master Albinus'.

In this role as adviser, he tackled the emperor over his policy of forcing pagans to be baptised on pain of death, arguing, "Faith is a free act of the will, not a forced act. We must appeal to the conscience, not compel it by violence. You can force people to be baptised, but you cannot force them to believe." His arguments seem to have prevailed - Charlemagne abolished the death penalty for paganism in 797.[6]

Charlemagne was a master at gathering the best men of every land in his court. He himself became far more than just the king at the centre. It seems that he made many of these men his closest friends and counsellors. They referred to him as 'David', a reference to the Biblical king David. Alcuin soon found himself on intimate terms with Charlemagne and the other men at court, to whom he gave nicknames to be used for work and play. Alcuin himself was known as 'Albinus' or 'Flaccus'.

Alcuin’s friendships also extended to the ladies of the court, especially the queen mother and the king's daughters. His relationships with these women never reached the intense level of those of the men around him. Modern commentators [7], have identified the homo-erotic tone of some of Alcuin's poetry, emphasising the spiritual and idealistic aspects of his love for his friends and his pupils[8]. While at Aachen, his pupils were given pet names, derived from classical allusions (mainly from Virgil's Eclogues).

Return to Northumbria and back to Francia

In 790 Alcuin returned from the court of Charlemagne to his own country, to which he had always been greatly attached. He dwelt there for some time, but Charlemagne then invited him back to help in the fight against the Adoptionist heresy which was at that time making great progress in Toledo, the old capital of the Visigoths and still a major city for the Christians under Islamic rule in Spain. He is believed to have had contacts with Beatus of Liébana, from the Kingdom of Asturias, who fought against Adoptionism. At the Council of Frankfurt in 794, Alcuin upheld the orthodox doctrine and obtained the condemnation of the heresiarch Felix of Urgel. Having failed during his stay in Northumbria to influence King Æthelred in the conduct of his reign, Alcuin never returned home. He was back at Charlemagne's court by at least mid 792, writing a series of letters to Æthelred, to Hygbald, Bishop of Lindisfarne, and Æthelhard, Archbishop of Canterbury in the succeeding months, which dealt with the Viking attack on Lindisfarne in July 792. These letters and Alcuin's poem on the subject De clade Lindisfarnensis monasterii provide the only significant contemporary account of these events.

Tours and death

In 796 Alcuin was in his sixties. He hoped to be free from court duties and was given the chance upon the death of Abbot Itherius of Saint Martin at Tours, when Charlemagne put Marmoutier Abbey into Alcuin's care, with the understanding that he should be available if the king ever needed his counsel.

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

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

Carolingian Renaissance figure and legacy

Literary influence

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

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

We owe to him, too, manuals used in his educational work - a grammar and works on rhetoric and dialectics. They are written in the form of dialogues and in two of them the interlocutors are Charlemagne and Alcuin. He wrote several theological treatises: a De fide Trinitatis, commentaries on the Bible, etc.

Alcuin transmitted to the Franks the knowledge of Latin culture which had existed in Ango-Saxon England. A number of his works still exist. His letters and his poetry are equally interesting. Besides some graceful epistles in the style of Venantius Fortunatus, he wrote some long poems and notably he is the author of a history (in verse) of the church at York, Versus de patribus, regibus et sanctis Eboracensis ecclesiae.

Alcuin as a mathematician

The textbook Propositiones ad acuendos juvenes[9] is usually attributed to Alcuin.[10][11] It contains about 53 mathematical word problems (with solutions), in no particular pedagogical order. Among the most famous of these problems are: four that involve river crossings, including the problem of three jealous husbands, each of whom can't let another man be alone with his wife[12] (Problem 17); the problem of the wolf, goat, and cabbage (Problem 18); and the problem of "the two adults and two children where the children weigh half as much as the adults" (Problem 19).

Alcuin's feast day on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church (USA) is April 20.

Alcuin College, one of the colleges of the University of York, England, is named after him.

Quotations

Selected works

The following list is partially based on an overview by Robert Levine and Whitney Bolton

Poetry
Epistolae (Letters)

Of Alcuin's letters, just over 310 have survived.

Didactic works
Hagiography

Notes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Bullough, Alcuin, p. 164.
  2. ↑ Bullough, Alcuin, pp. 146-7, 165.
  3. ↑ Bullough, "Alcuin."
  4. ↑ Bullough, Alcuin, p. 165.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 "A cure for the educational crisis: Learn from the extraordinary educational heritage of the West". RenewAmerica analyst. http://www.renewamerica.us/analyses/060601hutchison.htm. Retrieved 2006-06-02. 
  6. ↑ Needham, Dr. N.R., Two Thousand Years of Christ’s Power, Part Two: The Middle Ages, Grace Publications, 2000, page 52.
  7. ↑ John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality
  8. ↑ David Bromell in Who's who in Gay and Lesbian History, London, 2000 (Ed. Wotherspoon and Aldrich)
  9. ↑ The first few problems of Alcuin's on original Latin (English: Problems to sharpen the young, proper title Propositiones Alcuini Doctoris Caroli Magni Imperatoris ad Acuendes Juvenes—English: Propositions of Alcuin, A Teacher of Emperor Charlemagne, for Sharpening Youths)
  10. ↑ Ivars Peterson's MathTrek Nov 21, 2005
  11. ↑ Atkinson, L. 2005. 'When the Pope was a mathematician'. College Mathematics Journal 36 (November): 354-362
  12. ↑ Animation of the problem of the three jealous husbands (German)

Secondary sources

Further reading

External links