| “ALCUIN was my name: learning I loved.” That was the epitaph he wrote for himself in one of his Latin poems. Learning, he told his pupils, must be treasured more highly than wealth or position, and valued “For the sake of God, for knowledge and for purity of heart, for understanding the truth, yea, and for itself.”
The syllabus he taught comprised the Bible, the Church Fathers, classical Greek and Roman authors, and elements of Aristotle’s “liberal arts”: grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. These seven later became the Trivium and the Quadrivium of the medieval schools and universities.
At the palace school at Aachen, he employed the catechetical (question-and-answer) method of teaching he had developed at York. He would sit in dialogue with his pupils, to whom he gave fanciful names: Charlemagne he called David, after the biblical king; the queen, “mea filia Liutgard”, he named Ava; Pepin, one of the princes, he called Julius.
By his own infectious enthusiasm, by flattery, by familiarity, by patience, he civilised his raw Frankish disciples. In addition to the numerous members of the extended royal family, he taught the future archbishops of Mainz, Salzburg, and Orléans.
Charlemagne, concerned about the ignorance and laxity of the clergy, ordered Alcuin to draw up an educational programme for his empire — a vast territory comprising most of Western and Central Europe, except Italy and Spain. Cathedrals and abbeys were to become centres of learning again. Clergy discipline was restored. The liturgy and the church calendar were reformed. In all these measures of ecclesiastical revival, it was the king, advised by Alcuin, who took the initiative, not Rome.
Only intermittent glimpses of Alcuin the man shine through the mist. His letters reveal modesty, but also tenacity. His position as head of the school at York and his administrative skills placed him well for high office, but he declined ordination to the priesthood.
Two of his predecessors at the school of York had become archbishops, but he remained “a humble Levite”, which was how he described the office of deacon. He composed Latin verse, not then a rare accomplishment, as he would have been quick to point out — after all, were not the nuns of Barking known for their hexameters? As stylist, he wryly deprecated his lack of polish (“rusticitas”).
His love of learning was that of an enthusiast, ever striving “to bring forth out of his treasure things new and old”. That he brought out more things old than new should not be held against him. His generation lived against a backdrop of gathering paganism and Christian retreat. It was a time for consolidating the tradition.
At Tours, in his old age, they brought him news of the destruction of Lindisfarne, a fate shared by Wearmouth, Jarrow, and York 60 years after his death. Of the Minster he had known, and its school, nothing remained. On the Continent, Charlemagne’s empire did not long outlive its founder.
But ideas are stronger than books, knowledge more enduring than kingdoms. The principles of godliness and good learning that Alcuin had so loyally served were not destroyed. They emerged again in England under King Alfred 80 years after his death, when once again learning was valued.
The Revd Adrian Leak is Priest-in-Charge of Withyham in the diocese of Chichester. |
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