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- This article is about the scholar Alcuin of York. For the University of York college, see Alcuin College
Flaccus Albinus Alcuinus or
Ealhwine was a scholar and teacher from
York, England. He was born around 735 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 and later 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.
Alcuin came 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 also in the liberal arts, literature and science named
the seven liberal arts. It was from here that Alcuin drew inspiration for the school he would lead at the
Frankish court. He revived the school with disciplines such as the trivium and the quadrivium. Two codices were written, by himself on the trivium, and by his student
Hraban.e quadrivium.
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. 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 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 that 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. However, King
Charles wanted more than this - he wanted to include the
liberal arts and, most importantly, the study of the religion that he held sacred. From 782 to 790, Alcuin had as pupils the Charlemagne himself, his sons Pepin and Louis, the young men sent for their education to the court, and the young clerics attached to the palace chapel. Bringing with him from York his assistants Pyttel, Sigewulf and Joseph, Alcuin revolutionised the educational standards of the Palace School, introducing Charlemagne to the liberal arts and creating a personalised atmosphere of scholarship and learning to the extent that the institution came to be known as the 'school of Master Albinus'.
Charlemagne was master at gathering the best men of every nation in his court. He himself become far 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. Alcuin himself was known as 'Albinus' or 'Flaccus', and Charlemage as 'David'. 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 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" .
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.
In 790 Alcuin went back to England, 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
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. Having failed during his stay in England to influence King Aethelraed of Northumbria in the conduct of his reign, Alcuin never returned to live in England. Alcuin was back at Charlemagne's court by at least mid 792, writing a series of letters to Aethelraed of Northumbria, to Hygbald, Bishop of Lindisfarne, and Aethelheard, Archbishop of Canterbury in the succeeding months, which deal with the attack on Lindisfarne by Viking raideres 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.
In 796 Alcuin was in his sixties. He hoped to be free from court duties and was given the chance when Abbot Itherius of Saint Martin at
Tours died. King
Charles gave the abbey into Alcuin's care 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 then 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 and also in what can only be called love poetry. 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 being on a higher plane than the relationship between a man and his wife reached back to church fathers like Augustine and
Aquinas. It cannot be assumed that all poetry of this type was written by homosexuals.
Abelard, famously heterosexual, wrote of the love between men. see Stehling or Boswell below.
Thomas Stehling wrote that, “to receive an 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.
Alcuin died on 19 May 804, some ten years before the emperor. He 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.
Alcuin College, part of the
University of York, is named after him.
Further reading
- Alcuin of York, his life and letters, Stephen Allot ISBN 0 900657 21 9
- Alcuin: achievement and reputation, Donald Bullough, 2004
- Alcuin and the Rise of the Christian Schools by Andrew Fleming West ISBN 0-8371-1635-X
- Alcuin, Friend of Charlemagne, Eleanor Shipley Duckett, 1951
- Carolingian Portraits, Eleanor Shipley Duckett, 1962
- The Carolingians and the Frankish Monarchy, F. L. Ganshof, ISBN 0-582-48227-5
- Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, John Boswell, ISBN 0-226-06710-6
- Friendship, and Community: The Monastic Experience, Brian P. McGuire, ISBN 0-87907-895-2
- Medieval Latin Love Poems of Male Love and Friendship, Thomas Stehling
- Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance, Peter Godman, ISBN 0-7156-1768-0
References
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