CHAPTER I
The authorship of the anonymous Life of Alcuin.—Alcuin’s Life of his relative Willibrord.—Willibrord at Ripon.—Alchfrith and Wilfrith.—Alcuin’s conversion.—His studies under Ecgbert and Albert at the Cathedral School of York.—Ecgbert’s method of teaching.—Alcuin becomes assistant master of the School.—Is ordained deacon.—Becomes head master.—Joins Karl.
The only Life of Alcuin which we possess, coming from early times, was written by a monk who does not give his name, at the command of an abbat whose name, as also that of his abbey, is not mentioned by the writer. We have, however, this clue, that the writer learned his facts from a favourite disciple and priest of Alcuin himself, by name Sigulf. Sigulf received from Alcuin the pet name of Vetulus, “little old fellow,” in accordance with the custom of the literary and friendly circle of which Alcuin was the centre. Alcuin himself was Flaccus; Karl the King of the Franks, and afterwards Emperor, was David; and so on. We learn further that the abbat who assigned to the anonymous monk the task of writing the Life was himself a disciple of Sigulf. Sigulf succeeded Alcuin as Abbat of Ferrières; and when he retired on account of old age, he was in turn succeeded by two of his pupils whom he had brought up as his sons, Adalbert and Aldric. The Life was written after the death of Benedict of Aniane, that is, after the year 823. Adalbert had before that date been succeeded by Aldric, and Aldric became Archbishop of Sens in the end of 829. The Life was probably written between 823 and 829 by a monk of Ferrières, by order of Aldric. Alcuin had died in 804. The writer of the Life had never even seen Alcuin; he was in all probability not a monk of Tours.
That is the view of the German editor Wattenbach as to the authorship and dedication of the Life. That learned man appears to have given inadequate weight to the writer’s manner of citing Aldric as a witness to the truth of a quaint story told in the Life. This is the story, as nearly as possible in the monk’s words:—
“The man of the Lord [Alcuin himself] had read in his youth the books of the ancient philosophers and the romances[1] of Vergil,[2] but he would not in his old age have them read to him or allow others to read them. The divine poets, he was wont to say, were sufficient for them, they did not need to be polluted with the luxurious flow of Vergil’s verse. Against this precept the little old fellow Sigulf tried to act secretly, and for this he was put to the blush publicly. Calling to him two youths whom he was bringing up as sons, Adalbert and Aldric, he bade them read Vergil with him in complete secrecy, ordering them by no means to let any one know, lest it come to the ears of Father Albinus [Alcuin]. But Albinus called him in an ordinary way to come to him, and then said: ‘Where do you come from, you Vergilian? Why have you planned, contrary to my wish and advice, to read Vergil?’ Sigulf threw himself at his feet, confessed that he had acted most foolishly, and declared himself penitent. The pious father administered a scolding to him, and then accepted the amends he made, warning him never to do such a thing again. Abbat Aldric, a man worthy of God, who still survives, testifies that neither he nor Adalbert had told any one about it; they had been absolutely silent, as Sigulf had enjoined.”
It seems practically impossible to suppose that the monk would have put it in this way, if Aldric had been the abbat to whom he dedicated the Life, or indeed the abbat of his own monastery. It is clear that the Life was written while Aldric was still an abbat, that is between 823 and 829; and it seems most probable that it was written by a monk of some other monastery for his own abbat. Nothing of importance, however, turns upon this discussion. It is a rather curious fact, considering the severity of Alcuin’s objection to Vergil being read in his monastery, that the beautiful copy of Vergil at Berne, of very early ninth-century date, belonged to St. Martin of Tours from Carolingian times, and was written there.[3]
Not unnaturally, the Life, written in and for a French monastery, does not give details of the Northumbrian origin of Alcuin. It makes only the statement usual in such biographies, that he sprang from a noble Anglian family. Curiously enough, we get such further details as we have from a Life of St. Willibrord written by Alcuin himself at the request of Archbishop Beornrad of Sens, who was Abbat of Epternach, a monastery of Willibrord’s, from 777 to 797.
“There was,” he writes, “in the province of Northumbria, a father of a family, by race Saxon, by name Wilgils, who lived a religious life with his wife and all his house. He had given up the secular life and entered upon the life of a monk; and when spiritual fervour increased in him he lived solitary on the promontory which is girt by the ocean and the river Humber (Spurn Point)[4]. Here he lived long in fasting and prayer in a little oratory dedicated to St. Andrew[5] the Apostle; he worked miracles; his name became celebrated. Crowds of people consulted him; he comforted them with the most sweet admonitions of the Word of God. His fame became known to the king and great men of the realm, and they conferred upon him some small neighbouring properties, so that he might build a church. There he collected a congregation of servants of God, moderate in size, but honourable. There, after long labours, he received his crown from God; and there his body lies buried. His descendants to this day hold the property by the title of his sanctity. Of them I am the least in merit and the last in order. I, who write this book of the history of the most holy father and greatest teacher Willibrord, succeeded to the government of that small cell by legitimate degrees of descent.”
Inasmuch as the book is dedicated to Beornrad by the humble Levite (that is, deacon) Alcuin, we learn the very interesting fact that Alcuin, born in 735, came by hereditary right into possession of the property got together by Wilgils, whose son Willibrord was born in 657. The dates make it practically almost certain that Wilgils was born a pagan. Alcuin informs us that he only entered upon marriage because it was fated that he should be the father of one who should be for the profit of many peoples. If Willibrord was, as Alcuin’s words mean, the only child of Wilgils, we must suppose that Alcuin was the great-great-great-nephew of Wilgils, allowing twenty-five years for a generation in those short-lived times.
Alcuin three times insists on the lawful hereditary descent of the ownership and government of a monastery. A second case is in his preface to this Life of Willibrord. The body of the saint, he says, “rests in a certain small maritime cell, over which I, though unworthy, preside by God’s gift in lawful succession.” A third case occurs also in this Life. “There is,” he says, “in the city of Trèves a monastery[6] of nuns, which in the times of the blessed Willibrord was visited by a very severe plague. Many of the handmaids of the Lord were dying of it; others were lying on their beds enfeebled by a long attack; the rest were in a state of terror, as fearing the presence of death. Now there is near that same city the monastery of that holy man, which is called Aefternac,[7] in which up to this day the saint rests in the body, while his descendants are known to hold the monastery by legitimate paternal descent, and by the piety of most pious kings. When the women of the above-named monastery heard that he was coming to this monastery of his, they sent messengers begging him to hasten to them.” He went, as the blessed Peter went to raise Tabitha; celebrated a mass for the sick; blessed water, and had the houses sprinkled with it; and sent it to the sick sisters to drink. Needless to say, they all recovered.
In two of these cases, the two in which Alcuin speaks of his own property, he uses the word succession, “by legitimate succession” in the one case, legitima successione, “through legitimate successions” in the other case, per legitimas successiones, the former no doubt referring to the succession from his immediate predecessor, the latter referring to the four, or five, steps in the descent from Wilgils to Alcuin. In the case of the monastery of Epternach he defines it from the other end, “from the legitimate handing-down,” traditione ex legitima, the piety of the most pious kings being called in to confirm the handing-down.
It is remarkable that Alcuin should thus go out of his way to insist upon the lawfulness of the hereditary descent of monasteries, when he knew well that his venerated predecessor Bede, following the positive principle of the founder of Anglian monasticism in Northumbria, Benedict Biscop, attributed great evils to such hereditary succession to the property and governance of monasteries. We shall see something of this when we come to the consideration of Bede’s famous letter to Ecgbert, written in or about the year of Alcuin’s birth.
It is probably not necessary to suppose that Alcuin intends to draw a distinction between the constitutional practice in Northumbria and that in the lands ruled by Karl, though it is a marked fact that he mentions the intervention of kings in the latter case and twice does not mention it in the former. Bede says so much about the bribes—or fees—paid to Northumbrian kings and bishops for ratification of first grants by their signatures, that we can hardly suppose there were no fees to pay on succession. We cannot press such a point as this in Alcuin’s Life of Willibrord, for he tells Beornrad in his Preface that he has been busy with other things all day long, and has only been able to dictate this book in the retirement of the night; and he urges that the work should be mercifully judged because he has not had leisure to polish it. The grammar of this dictated work needs a certain amount of correction; Alcuin did not always remember with what construction he had begun a sentence. In these days of dictated letters he has the sympathy of many in this respect.
Alcuin’s young relative Willibrord was sent away to Ripon, as soon as he was weaned, to the charge of the brethren there. Alchfrith, the sub-King of Deira under his father Oswy, had driven out the Irish monks whom he had at one time patronised at Ripon, and had given their possessions to Wilfrith. Under the influence of that remarkable man the little child came, still, in Alcuin’s phrase, only an infantulus. His father’s purpose in sending him to Ripon was twofold. He was to be educated in religious study and sacred letters, in a place where his tender age might be strengthened by vigorous discipline, where he would see nothing that was not honourable, hear nothing that was not holy. At Ripon he remained till he was twenty years of age, and then he passed across to Ireland, to complete his studies under Ecgbert, the great creator of missionaries. With Ecgbert he spent twelve years.
Now in the thirty-two years covered by that short narration, from 657 to 689, events of the utmost moment had occurred in Northumbria, and had mainly centered round Ripon. At the most critical juncture of these events Bede becomes suddenly silent. Alfred’s Anglo-Saxon version of Bede goes further, and omits the bulk of what Bede does say. A few words from Alcuin would have been of priceless value, and he, writing in France to a Frank, could have no national or ecclesiastical reason for silence on points which Bede and Alfred let alone. The whole of the variance between Oswy and his son and sub-King Alchfrith, on which Bede is determinedly silent, the only hint of which is preserved to us solely by the noble runes on the Bewcastle Cross, erected in 670 and still standing, which bid men pray for the “high sin” of Alchfrith’s soul[8]; the whole secret of the variance between Oswy and Wilfrith; of Oswy’s refusal to recognize Wilfrith’s consecration at Paris—with unrivalled magnificence of pomp—to the episcopal See of York; all this, and more, is included in the first thirteen years of Willibrord’s life at Ripon, and Ripon was the pivot of it all. Alcuin has no scintilla of a hint of anything unusual, not even when he mentions Ecgbert, the Northumbrian teacher, dwelling in Ireland, of whom we know from another source that he fled from Northumbria to safety in Ireland when Alchfrith and Wilfrith lost their power, and Alchfrith presumably lost his life. It is quite possible that if the head of the Bewcastle Cross were ever found[9] the runes on it might tell us just what we want to know. The illustration of this portion of the Cross given in Gough’s edition of Camden’s Britannia[10] was drawn in 1607, at which time English scholars could not read runic letters, and naturally could not copy them with perfect accuracy. Still, it is evident that the runes stand for rikaes dryhtnaes, apparently meaning ‘of the kingdom’s lord’, the copyist having failed to notice the mark of modification in the rune for u, which turned it into y.
Turning now to Alcuin himself, a remarkable story is told in the Life, evidently and avowedly on his authority. When he was still a small boy, parvulus, he was regular in attendance at church at the canonical hours of the day, but very seldom appeared there at night. What the monastery was in which he passed his earliest years we are not told; but inasmuch as no break or change is mentioned between the story to which we now turn and the description of his more advanced studies, which certainly indicates the Archiepiscopal School of York, we must understand that York was the scene of this occurrence.
“When he was eleven years of age, it happened one night that he and a tonsured rustic, one of the menial monks, that is, were sleeping on separate pallets in one cell. The rustic did not like being alone in the night, and as none of the rustics could accommodate him, he had begged that one of the young students might be sent to sleep in the cell. The boy Albinus was sent, who was fonder of Vergil than of Psalms. At cock-crow the warden struck the bell for nocturns, and the brethren got up for the appointed service. This rustic, however, only turned round onto his other side, as careless of such matters, and went on snoring. At the moment when the invitatory psalm was as usual being sung, with the antiphon, the rustic’s cell was suddenly filled with horrid spirits, who surrounded his bed, and said to him, ‘You sleep well, brother.’ That roused him, and they asked, ‘Why are you snoring here by yourself, while the brethren are keeping watch in the church?’ He then received a useful flogging, so that by his amendment a warning might be given to all, and they might sing, ‘I will remember the years of the right hand of the Most Highest,’[11] while their eyes prevented the night watches. During the flogging of the rustic, the noble boy trembled lest the same should happen to him; and, as he related afterwards, cried from the very bottom of his heart, ‘O Lord Jesus, if Thou dost now deliver me from the cruel hands of these evil spirits, and I do not hereafter prove to be eager for the night watches of Thy Church and the ministry of praise, and if I any longer love Vergil more than the chanting of psalms, may I receive a flogging such as this. Only, I earnestly pray, deliver me, O Lord, now.’ That the lesson might be the more deeply impressed upon his mind, as soon as by the Lord’s command the flogging of the rustic ceased, the evil spirits cast their eyes about here and there, and saw the body and head of the boy most carefully wrapped up in the bedclothes, scarce taking breath. The leader of the spirits asked, ‘Who is this other asleep in the cell?’ ‘It is the boy Albinus,’ they told him, ‘hid away in his bed.’ When the boy found that he was discovered, he burst into showers of tears; and the more he had suppressed his cries before, the louder he cried now. They had all the will to deal unmercifully with him, but they had not the power. They discussed what they should do with him; but the sentence of the Lord compelled them to help him to keep the vow which he had made in his terror. Accordingly they said, imprudently for their purpose, but prudently for the purpose of the Lord, ‘We will not chastise this one with severe blows, because he is young; we will only punish him by cutting with a knife the hard part of his feet.’ They took the covering off his feet. Albinus instantly protected himself with the sign of the Cross. Then he chanted with all intentness the twelfth psalm, ‘In the Lord put I my trust’; and then the rustic, half dead, the boy going before him with agile step, fled into the basilica to the protection of the saints.”
A cynical reader might suggest that the disciplinary officers of the School of York resorted in those early times to unusual methods of making an impression on a careless boy.
The Life proceeds to inform us that Alcuin was trained under the prelate Hechbert, whom we know as Ecgbert, Bishop and later Archbishop of York, 732 to 766. That learned man was a disciple of Bede. He had under his tuition a flock of the sons of nobles, some of whom studied grammar, others the liberal arts, others the divine scriptures.[12] They studied the doctrine set forth by “the holy apostle of the English, Gregory; by Augustine, his disciple; by holy Benedict[13]; also by Cuthbert and Theodore, who followed in all things [14]] of their first father and apostle[15]; and by the man most loved of the Lord, Bede the presbyter, Hechbert’s own preceptor.”
Then follows a very lifelike description of an ordinary day’s work, when no inevitable expedition came in the way, nor any high solemnity or great festival of the saints. “From dawn of day to the sixth hour, and very often to the ninth hour, Ecgbert lay on his couch and opened to his disciples such of the secrets of scripture as suited each. Then he rose, and betook himself to most secret prayer, offering first to the Lord fat burnt-offerings with the incense of rams, and afterward, following the example of the blessed Job, lest by chance his sons should slip into the pit of benediction,[16] offering the Body of Christ and the Blood for all. By this time the vesper hour was coming near, and, except in Lent, all through the year, winter and summer, he took with his disciples a meal, slight but fittingly prepared, not sparing the tongue of the reader, that both kinds of food might bring refreshment. Then you might see the youths piercing one another with shafts prepared, discussing in private what afterwards they are to shoot forth in proper order in public. Does it not seem to you that of this too it might be said,[17] “As an eagle provoketh her young ones to fly, fluttereth over them, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings”?
“Twice in the day did this father of the poor, this great lover and helper of Christ, pour out most secret prayer, watered from the most pure fountain of tears, both knees bent on the ground, hands long raised to heaven in the form of the Cross; once, namely, before taking food, and again before celebrating Compline with all his flock. Which ended, no one of his disciples ever dared commit his limbs to his bed without the master’s blessing laid upon his head.
“He loved all his disciples, but of all he loved Alcuin the most, for Alcuin more closely than any of them followed his example in act and deed. There were two special virtues in Alcuin—one, that he never did anything which he was not quite clear that his master’s approval covered; the other, that whatever devices and temptations the enemy brought to his mind, he told them all straight out to his master without any sense of shame. Thus it came to pass that any stimulus of lust which he ever felt was most gloriously conquered by this wonderful method, dashing the children of Babylon against the stones, bruising the head of the serpent with the heel. He was careful that against him the words of Christ should not be spoken—‘Every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved’; but rather that his lot should be with them of whom it is added—‘But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest that they are wrought in God.’ O true monk without the monk’s vow! how very seldom is thy example followed by one whose vow binds him to it[18].”
In the chapter from which these details are taken the author three times uses the name “Albinus” for his hero, in place of “Alchuinus” with which he began the chapter. Throughout the Life he much more often calls him Albin than Alcuin. We must probably understand that he was known from his boyhood by both names; and it is evident that Albin would be more easy to pronounce than Alcuin, and would not unnaturally be more generally used. On the other hand, it is quite possible that he himself elected to call himself Albin.
If Alcuin took the name Albinus from any English source, the source is not far to seek. The English nation owes to the original Albinus the first suggestion to Bede that he should write the Church History of the English race. Bede tells us this in the Preface to his great work; and we have it still more directly expressed in a letter from him to Albinus in which he speaks of the History as ad quam me scribendam iamdudum instigaveras, and of Albinus as semper amantissimus in Christo pater optimus. He was Abbat of St. Peter and St. Paul, Canterbury, a pupil of Theodore and Hadrian, the latter of whom he succeeded. He greatly helped Bede by sending him full details of the conversion of Kent, “as he had learned the same from written records and from the oral tradition of his predecessors.” Bede sent to him the completed copy of the History, that he might have it transcribed, and informs us that Albinus had no small knowledge of Greek, and knew Latin as well as his native tongue, English. Alcuin may well have taken his name of Albinus from one with whom he had so much in common, who died only two or three years before Alcuin’s birth.
If, on the other hand, Alcuin took the name from some foreign source, again we have not far to seek. In Karl’s first year as King of the Franks he gave a confirmatory charter to “the Monastery of St. Albinus, which is built near to the walls of Angers”. The Tour St. Aubin and the Rue St. Aubin are still to be found at Angers, at the extreme south-east corner of the ancient city. Little is known of this martyr Albinus, and in consequence the Acts of our St. Alban have been transferred to him. At Angers, as at Alcuin’s own Tours, there are remains of a great church of St. Martin; and, as was in early times the case at Tours, the Cathedral is dedicated to St. Maurice. It is possible that Alcuin took his name of Albinus from this local source, but it does not seem at all probable.
Alcuin’s supremacy in wisdom and other virtues caused jealousy among his fellow disciples. This went so far that they could not look at him with unclouded eye or address him with pleasant words. He consulted his master, who by this time was Elcbert (Archbishop of York, 767-78), known to Alcuin as Aelbert, and to us as Albert. The master advised him to try the effect of heaping coals of fire on their heads. He followed this advice, taking care that they should never hear from him a contrary word, and very often yielding to them when their arguments were unsound. This course of conduct he pursued until a complete change took place, and they all rejoiced to acknowledge in him the second master of their studies, next under Albert.
The Life relates at this point an interesting episode, in the description of which we may seem to hear Alcuin himself speaking to us:—
“Alcuin was reading the Gospel of St. John before the master, in company of his fellow disciples. He came to a part of the Gospel which only the pure in heart can comprehend—that part, namely, from where John says that he lay on the Lord’s breast, down to the point at which he relates that Jesus went with His disciples across the brook Cedron.[19] Inebriated with the mystical reading of the Gospel, suddenly, as he sat before the master’s couch, his spirit was carried away in ecstasy, and by those same who once in a ray of sunlight showed before the eyes of the most holy father Benedict the whole world, collected as it were in an enclosure, the whole world was now set before the eyes of Alcuin. And as he looked intently at what he saw, he saw the whole of the enclosure surrounded by a circle of blood. While he was held by this marvellous vision, his fellow disciples gazed at him in wonder, for the blood seemed to have left his face. They tried to rouse him, as one asleep; the noise they made attracted the attention of Albert, who looked at him for some time in silence, and then said, ‘Go on reading, my sons, do not disturb him; if he rests awhile he will be able to follow me more effectively when I expound the passage.’ When the reading was completed, and Albin came to himself again, the father told them all to go except Alcuin. When they were gone, he said, ‘What hast thou seen? I beg thee, do not hide it.’ Alcuin wished to keep secret what he had seen, fearing to fall into the pitfall of elation; so he said, ‘Why, my lord father?’ The blessed man said again, ‘Do not, my son, do not hide it from me. It is not from vain curiosity that I require this of you, but for your own good.’ Alcuin saw that he could not keep it secret, and he told, humbly, how he had seen the whole world. Then the father said to him, ‘See, my son, see that thou tellest not this vision to any but that one whom after my decease thou shalt hold to be the most faithful to thy person. And charge him to keep it secret up to the time of thy death.’ Acting on this counsel, he told it only to Sigulf[20] during his lifetime. If any one desires to know how the whole world could be seen in one enclosure, he may turn to the book of Dialogues of the holy Gregory[21]; and in the meantime he may know that it was not the heaven and the earth that were contracted into a small space, but the mind of the seer that was dilated, so that when rapt in the Lord he could without difficulty see everything that was under God. Perhaps some one inquiring further may ask why under this figure of an enclosure, or why surrounded by blood? He may know that the Blood of Christ surrounds the fold of the holy Church, so that from the rising of the sun to the setting thereof those who are redeemed by His Passion can say the words which, without doubt, dominated the mind of Albin when he read before the master: ‘O give thanks unto the Lord, for He is gracious, and His mercy endureth for ever.’[22] The whole world, then, is seen in one enclosure surrounded by the Blood of Christ; for all that the holy fathers have done and have written figuratively since the beginning of the world is unlocked by the Passion of Christ alone, who is the lion of the tribe of Juda, the root of David. But if by the encircled enclosure any should wish to be understood the life of his own carnal crimes surrounded by blood, thus shown to him that it may be trodden under foot by him, let that interpretation be left to his own judgement.”
Alcuin had been tonsured in early years. He was ordained deacon at York on the day of the Purification of the holy Mary, in or about the year 768. Elcbert, who had been for some time in bad health, felt that his death was drawing nigh, and he gave to Alcuin a sketch of the course of life which he wished him to pursue. The writer gives us a report of his actual words, stating that “they are now known”; this means, presumably, that here also Alcuin had communicated them to Sigulf, to be made public only after his death. They run thus:—“My will is that you go to Rome, and on the way back visit France.[23] For I know that you will do much good there. Christ will be the leader of your journey, guiding you and controlling you on your arrival, that you may demolish that most nefarious heresy which will attempt to set forth Christ as adoptive man, and that you may be the firmest defender and the clearest preacher of the faith in the Holy Trinity.[24] You will persevere in the land of your peregrination, illumining the souls of many.”
The holy father, Bishop Elcbert, after blessing him with the benedictions of his predecessor above named, migrated to God on the eighth day of November, 780. “The pious Albinus mourned with tears, as for his mother, and would not take comfort. Endowed in hereditary right with the holy benedictions of the fathers,[25] he took pains to multiply exceedingly the talent of his lord.[26] He taught many in Britain, and not few later in France. It was now that he associated with him a man dear to God, remarkable for the nobility of mind and of body, Sigulf, the presbyter, Warden of the Church of the City of York, to remain with him perpetually.[27] Sigulf had gone as a boy to France with his uncle Autbert the presbyter, and by him had been taken to Rome to learn the ecclesiastical order; he had then been sent to the city of Metz to learn chanting. There he worked hard for some time, in great poverty, but with much profit. After the holy man, his uncle, migrated to the Lord, he came back to his own land.” We can almost see and hear Sigulf getting these little facts about himself and his uncle incorporated in the Life of Alcuin.
“When the Almighty God willed to glorify France with spiritual riches, as already with earthly riches, granting to the land a King after His own heart, a man of faith, fortitude, love of wisdom, and ineffable beauty of body, namely Karl, most illustrious in these respects, He put it into the mind of Albinus that he should fulfil the counsel and command of his father Albert, by going to Rome and then visiting France.
“By the command of Eanbald I, the Archbishop of York, the successor of Elcbert, he went to Rome to obtain the pallium for the archbishop from the Apostolic—that is, Hadrian I. On his way back with the pallium he met King Karl in the city of Parma.[28] The king addressed him with great persuasiveness and many prayers, begging that after completing his embassage he would come and join him in France. The king had become acquainted with him some years before, for Alcuin had been sent on a legation to him by the archbishop of the time.”
We may interrupt our author’s narrative at this point to state that the fact and the date of this former visit to Karl are recorded in the Life of Hadrian I, as also the further fact, not here hinted at, that Karl on that occasion sent Alcuin on to Rome. “In the year 773 Karl sent to Hadrian an embassy, consisting of the most holy bishop George,[29] the religious abbat Uulfhard,[30] and the king’s favourite counsellor Albinus.”
We may now return to the author of the Life. He tells us, to quote his own words, that when Karl begged Alcuin to come to him, Alcuin desired to do what would be useful, and therefore asked permission of his own king, Alfwald, and of his archbishop, Eanbald I, to leave his mastership of the School of York. He obtained permission, but on condition that he should in time come back to them. Under Christ’s guidance he came to Karl. Karl embraced him as his father,[31] by whom he had been introduced to the liberal arts, in the study of which he could be somewhat cooled, but in his fervour he could never be too completely saturated with them. After Alcuin had spent some little time with him, he gave him two monasteries, that of Bethlehem, otherwise called Ferrières,[32] and that of St. Lupus[33] of Troyes.