Alcuin

This article is about the scholar Alcuin of York. For the University of York college, see Alcuin College

Flaccus Albinus Alcuinus or Ealhwine (c. 735-May 19, 804) was a scholar and teacher from York, England. He was born in an unknown year in a place close to York—perhaps in the city itself. He was a noble, related to Saint Willibrord whose father founded the monastery of St. Andrew which Alcuin would later inherit.

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

He was brought to the cathedral school of York in the golden age of Egbert and Eadbert. Egbert had been a disciple of the Venerable Bede who urged him to have York raised to an archbishopric. Eadbert was the king and brother to Egbert. These two men oversaw the reenergizing and reorganization of the English church with an emphasis on reforming the clergy and on the tradition of learning begun under Bede. Alcuin thrived under Egbert’s tutelage who loved him especially. It was in York that he 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 center of learning not only in religious matters but in the liberal arts, literature and science named the seven liberal arts. It was here that Alcuin would become a man and from which he most certainly would draw the inspiration for the school he would lead at the Frankish court. While reviving school with such disciplines as the trivium and the quadrivium two codices were written in that instance, the first on the trivium, written by himself, and the second on the quadrivium, by his student, Hraban.

Alcuin graduated from student to teacher sometime in the 750s. His ascendancy to the headship of the York school began after Aelbert became Archbishop of York in 767. It is around this same time that Alcuin became a deacon in the church. Alcuin would not be ordained a priest and there is no real evidence that he became an actual monk, though he lived his life like 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 a new archbishop, Eanbald I. It was then, on his way home, that Alcuin met Charles, king of the Franks.

Alcuin was reluctantly persuaded to join Charles’s court. His love of the church and his intellectual curiosity made the offer one he could not refuse. He was to join an already illustrious group of scholars that Charles had gathered around him like Peter of Pisa, Paulinus, Rado, and Abbot Fulrad. He would later write that “the Lord was calling me to the service of King Charles.”

Alcuin was welcomed at the Palace School of Charlemagne. The school had been founded under the king’s ancestors as a place for educating the royal children, mostly in manners and the ways of the court. King Charles wanted more, he wanted the liberal arts and, most importantly, the study of the religion he held sacred.

Charlemagne was a master of gathering the best men of every nation at his court and becoming more than just the king at the center. It seems that Charlemagne made many of these men his closest friends and counselors. They referred to him as David, a reference to the Biblical king. Alcuin soon found himself on intimate terms with the king and with the other men at court to whom he gave nicknames to be used for work and play. Like many of his learnéd contemporaries, Alcuin was an astrologer. David Berlinski, author of The Secrets of the Vaulted Sky: Astrology and the Art of Prediction (ISBN 0151005273) writes: "The ninth-century philosopher Alcuin, his voyages to the Middle East now abrogated, was an astrological adept, and it is widely claimed that he taught Charlemagne the principles of classical astrology" (pg. 116, 2003).

Alcuin’s friendships also extended to the ladies of the court, especially the queen mother and the daughters of the king. His relationships with these women, however, never reached the intense level of those with the men around him.

From 782 to 790, Alcuin had as pupils the king of the Franks, his kinsmen, the young men sent for their education to the court, and the young clerics attached to the palace chapel; he was the life and soul of the Academy of the palace, and we have still, in the Dialogue of Pepin (son of Charlemagne) and Alcuin, a sample of the intellectual exercises in which they indulged. One surviving tool of the drive to reform education is Charlemagne's circular letter De Litteris Colendis, "On the Study of Letters", which Alcuin wrote.

A sample from the “Dialogue”:

Pepin Albinus (Alcuin) 1. What is writing? The guardian of history. 2. What is speech? The revealer of spirit. 3. What gives birth to speech? The tongue. 4. What is the tongue? The lash of the air. 5. What is air? The guardian of life. 6. What is life? The joy of the blessed, the sorrow of the sad, the looking for death. Later, a riddle:

89. I saw the dead give birth to the living, and the alive consumed unto death by the living’s wrath.

In 790 Alcuin went back to England, to which he had always been greatly attached, and dwelt there for some time; but Charlemagne invited him back to help in the fight against the Adoptionist heresy, which was at that time making great progress in Toledo Spain, the old capital town 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. After this victory he again went back to England, but on account of the disturbances which broke out there, and which led to the death of King Aethelred of Northumbria (796), he left it forever.

In 796 Alcuin was in his sixties. He hoped to be free from court duties and was given the chance when Abbot Itherius of Tours died. King Charles gave the abbey to Alcuin with the understanding that he should be available if the king ever needed his counsel.

He made the abbey school into a model of excellence, and many students flocked to it; he had many manuscripts copied, the calligraphy of which is of outstanding beauty. He wrote many letters to his friends in England, 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 further form a mine of information as to the literary and social conditions of the time, and are the most reliable authority for the history of humanism in the Carolingian age. He also 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 the central place; in the second, Alcuin and the Anglo-Saxons are dominant; in the third, which begins in 804, the influence of the Visigoth Theodulf is preponderant.

We owe to him, too, some manuals used in his educational work; a grammar and works on rhetoric and dialectics. They are written in the form of dialogues, and in the two last the interlocutors are Charlemagne and Alcuin. He also 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 England. We still have a number of his works. His letters have already been mentioned; his poetry is equally interesting. Besides some graceful epistles in the style of Fortunatus, he wrote some long poems, and notably a whole history in verse of the church at York: Versus de patribus, regibus et sanctis Eboracensis ecclesiae.

Among the most interesting extant writing of Alcuin is his poetry. Recent scholarship suggests that Alcuin may have been homosexually inclined if not in actions that certainly emotionally. He and his circle of men and boys looked to the classical for inspiration. They traded in classically allusive and affectionate nicknames for each other as well as trading what can only be classified as love poetry in some instances. They copied such poets as Virgil and his Eclogues which famously focused on the bond of male friendship and celebrated the beauty of the young male.

A tradition reemerged at this time that celebrated male bonds of love. Medieval ideas of male friendship as on a higher plane than the relationship between a man and his wife reached back to church fathers like Augustine and Aquinas. And, it cannot be assumed that all poetry of this sort written at the time was written by homosexuals. Abelard, famously heterosexual, wrote of the love between men.

Thomas Stehling wrote that, “to receive and education and to learn to read and write in the middle ages meant entering the church and living in a community of men who had forsaken the idea of marriage, though not necessarily all sexual activity.” These men formed strong emotional bonds of love and friendship on all levels which they expressed through letters and poems.

We must be clear to not put too much of a 20th century conception of homosexuality onto medieval lives. There was no such distinction. There were homosexual acts—the sin of engaging in sodomy. However, a man who loved another man, whether or not they engaged in the sex act, would not have been condemned. We cannot know if Alcuin ever had sex with another man, but his poetry makes certain that it is a distinct possibility. Late in life he would seek redemption for certain acts of his past that he would not name but that he felt certain were well-known and about which he thought he might be punished.

The following is one such poem. As stated above, we can never know what happened between the author, Alcuin, and the recipient. Yet, it is clearly a statement of love, homosexual love, deep love.

Alcuin, To Arno of Salzburg Love has penetrated my heart with its flame, And is ever rekindled with new warmth. Neither sea nor land, hills nor forest, nor even Alps, Can stand in its way or hinder it From always licking at your inmost parts, good father, Or from bathing your heart, my beloved, with tears. Sweet love, why do you inspire bitter tears, Why do bitter draughts flow from devotion’s honey? If now your sweetness, world, is mixed with bitterness, All prosperity will alternate rapidly with misfortune All joys be changed to sad lamentation; Nothing lasts, anything can perish. Therefore, world, let us flee from you with all our hearts, As you, ready even now to perish, flee from us. Let us seek the delights and ever-enduring realms Of heaven with our whole heart, mind, and hand. The blessed hall of heaven never separates friends; A heart warmed by love will never be estranged. Look with joy and with a gladdening heart, I pray, At these little offerings which great love sends you, For our gentle Master praised the two copper coins The needy widow put into the temple’s treasury. Sacred love is better than any gift, And so is steadfast faithfulness which flourishes and endures. May divine gifts follow you, dearest father, And at the same time precede you. Always and Everywhere farewell.

Alcuin died on 19 May 804, some ten years before the emperor. He was buried at St. Martin’s church under an epitaph that party read: Dust, worms, and ashes now … Alcuin my name, wisdom I always loved, Pray, reader, for my soul.

Alcuin College, part of the University of York, is named after him.

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