CHAPTER IX
Alcuin’s letter to all the prelates of England.—To the Bishops of Elmham and Dunwich.—His letters on the election to the archbishopric of York.—To the new archbishop, and the monks whom he sent to advise him.—His urgency that Bishops should read Pope Gregory’s Pastoral Care.
Alcuin, as we have seen, felt himself entitled to write frankly to persons in the most exalted and important positions, though only an abbat. To individual bishops and archbishops he wrote very frankly, though only a deacon. In his correspondence with kings and bishops and other persons in his native land, we get the impression that he felt himself to be in a much larger sphere of operations, able to take a much larger view of affairs, than from the nature of the case they could be or do.
Here is a letter which may be taken as a good illustration of this remark:—
Ep. 61. A.D. 796.
“To the most holy in Christ and in all honour to be by us beloved, the pontiffs of Britain our most sweet native land, the humble levite Alchuin, a son of the holy church of York, greeting in the love of Christ.
“Having great confidence in your goodness, my reverend fathers, and in the acceptableness to God of your prayers, and having a convenient opportunity for commending myself to your charity as a body, I do not neglect the occasion of time and messenger. I offer myself to your holiness, suppliantly praying each one of you to take me as his son for the love and affection of God, and to intercede along with his fellow-warriors for the safety of my soul. For I also, according to the ability of my littleness, am a devoted interceder for your honour and success.
“Let your affection know that the lord Charles the king greatly desires the supplications of your holiness to the Lord, alike for himself and the stability of his realm and for the spread of the Christian name, and for the soul of the most reverend father Adrian the Pope, for faithfulness of friendship towards a dead friend is most highly approved.
“One who intercedes for such a friend no doubt greatly enhances his own merits with God. The aforesaid lord king for the furtherance of this his petition has sent to your holiness some small gifts of blessing.[158] I pray you to accept with gladness what he has sent and to do faithfully what he asks of you; that the faith of your goodness may meet with a great reward from God, and the religion of humbleness may be widely praised among men.
“O my most holy fathers and shepherds, O most clear light of the whole of Britain, feed the flock of Christ, which is with you, by assiduous preaching of the Gospel and good example of holy life. Preach with truth, correct with vigour, exhort with persuasion. Stand with your loins girt in the army of Christ, and your lights burning, that your light may shine before all who are in the house of God, that they may see your good works and glorify our Father which is in Heaven. The time of labour here is exceeding short, the time of reward is the longest eternity. What is happier than to pass from this present misery to eternal bliss. See to it diligently that the land which our ancestors received by the gift of God may by celestial benediction be preserved to our descendants. The increase of the flock is the reward of the shepherd, the safety of the people the praise of the priest. Let all intemperance and injustice be prohibited, all honesty and sobriety be taught, that in every walk of life the God Christ be honoured, and His blessed grace keep you in every part to the praise and glory of His name for ever.
“That you may be sure this comes from us, we have sub-sealed it with our seal.
“The blessing of God the Father in the grace and love of Christ and in the consolation of the Holy Spirit be with you and keep you in all good, my lords most holy, my fathers most worthy of honour, mindful of us for ever. Amen.”
That is a remarkable conclusion to a letter from a deacon in France to the Archbishops and Bishops of all England.
The following letter is written in a slightly humbler style. It was probably written towards the end of his life.
Ep. 230. A.D. 798-804.
“To the most holy and venerable fathers the Bishops Alchard [Elmham, 786-811] and Tifred [Dunwich, 798-816] Alchuin the levite sends greeting.
“I pray your most pious goodness that you take not this letter from so small a man to be presumptuous. It is in reliance on your regard that I have dared to write. Christian humility should despise none, but should receive benignantly all in the pious bosom of love. This love I trust will abundantly show itself forth in you by the Holy Spirit, that, as the Truth saith in the Gospel, out of your belly may be seen to flow rivers of living water, that is, of sacred doctrine.
“It is yours to preach to all the word of God, to all to shine clear in the house of God, that all may recognize through you the light of truth and may be led through the pastures of perpetual beatitude. Your mouth must be the trumpet of the God Christ, for the tongues of your authority are the keys of heaven, having power to open and to shut; to open to the penitent, to shut against those that resist the truth. Wherefore make yourselves by your good lives worthy of such excellence; knowing that assiduity in preaching is the praise of bishops. The episcopal honour is no secular play. The Christian bishop must exercise himself with great diligence in the commands of God, that by example and word together he may educate a Christian people.
“The venerable brother the abbat Lull[159] has spoken to me in praise of your good conversation. It is on this account that I have cared to commend myself as a suppliant to your sanctity, that you may order some slight memorial of my name to be made throughout your churches. Not for my own merits but for the love of Christ I have presumed to make this earnest request. Pray grant it, as I trust in your good piety.
“May the Lord God increase you by the grace of merits, and make you to advance in all holiness and in preaching the word of God, my most dear and longed-for fathers.”
We saw in the previous chapter something of the anxiety which Alcuin felt when he marked the misdeeds of Northumbrian kings. There was another source of anxiety which troubled him in his thoughts of his native land, in the year 795. The old Archbishop of York, Eanbald I (780-796) could evidently not last much longer, and Alcuin feared that the general decadence had reached the ecclesiastics of York, and that some improper appointment might be secured by simoniacal methods.
To the old Archbishop himself he wrote an affectionate letter, as follows:—
Ep. 36. A.D. 795.
“To my lord best loved of all health eternal in Christ.
“I confess myself greatly rejoiced to hear from Eanbald[160], of your household, of the soundness of your prosperity, so greatly desired by me. The love and faith which began long ago to dwell in my breast will never be able to leave me. The nearer the time of heavenly reward comes, the more careful should he be who is the first to leave the world that he has left in the world a friend. The sharpness of fever, and the delay of the king [Karl] in Saxony, has prevented my coming to you as I have desired to do. May the divine clemency grant to me to see thy face in joy before I die. If I come, I earnestly hope that I shall find you still in that honourable place of dignity in which you were when I left. And if some other dignity has been preferred by you,[161] I hope that you will not by any means allow violence to be done to the Church of Christ, and that the brethren may be left free to elect as your successor the best man, in the fear and by the grace of God most high. For in the sacred canons a terrible anathema is uttered against those who do any violence to the Church of Christ. You have always loved our [ecclesiastical] family of York and have done them very many kindnesses. We now need your help more than ever; and when our time of eternal rest has come, you will have us as perpetual intercessors in your behalf.
“May the divine clemency grant to thee prosperous and happy days in this life, and glory eternal with His saints, my dearest lord and father.”
Eanbald contemplated abdication in the end of 795, and Alcuin wrote the following anxious letter to the brethren of York, on whom the choice of a new archbishop would fall:—
Ep. 37. A.D. 795.
“To my best-loved friends, greeting.
“I beg of you, by the faith of love, that you act faithfully and wisely in the election of a pontiff, if the election must take place before I come. Again and again I call upon you, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you by no means allow any one to obtain the bishopric by the heresy of simony; for if that takes place, it is the complete perdition of the race. This simoniacal heresy is that worst of heresies which the holy Peter condemned with an eternal anathema [Acts viii. 14, 20, seq.]. He who sells a bishopric gains gold and loses the kingdom of God.
“Up to this time, the holy Church of York has remained untainted in its elections. See that it be not tainted in your day. If, which be far distant, it loses its ecclesiastical reputation, I fear that you will lose the eternal kingdom. Judas sold the spouse, that is, Christ. And he that sells Christ’s spouse, that is, the Church, is guilty of the same crime; for Christ and the Church are one body, as saith the Apostle[162]. He who sells the Church must of necessity be outside the Church; and he who is outside the Church, where will he be but with the devil in eternal destruction. Fear not, hate not, him who speaks to you the truth; for to this which I say, the books sent forth by the Holy Spirit testify. My desire is that you be without stain in the sight of God; that you reign felicitously in this present world, and rejoice for ever with Christ. Live and be strong and happy in Christ.”
Eanbald I did not abdicate. He died on August 10, 796, and the electors immediately proceeded to the election, their choice falling upon Eanbald II. The election was so hasty that Eanbald II was consecrated five days after the Archbishop’s death.
This is Alcuin’s letter to the new Archbishop:—
Ep. 72. A.D. 796.
“To his best-loved son in Christ, Eanbald the Archbishop, his in all things devoted father Albinus sends greeting.
“Laud and honour to the Lord God omnipotent who hath preserved my days in prosperity, so that I can rejoice in the exaltation of my dearest son; and have been allowed, though the lowliest servant of the Church, to train up one of my pupils to be regarded as worthy to become a dispenser of the mysteries of Christ and to labour in my stead in the Church where I was nourished and instructed; and to preside over those treasures of wisdom of which my beloved master Helbrecht left me his heir. I must pray with all intentness the divine clemency that he may be my survivor in this life as he was my solace alway in the time of his obedience; not that I wish for my own death but that I desire that his life should be prolonged. For not sons to fathers but fathers to sons should leave an heritage.[163]
“See, my dearest son, by God’s favour you have all that man could hope for, and more than all that our small desert dared hope for. Now, then, act as a man and a strong man. The work of God which is put into your hands do to the full, for the profit of your own soul and the welfare of many souls. Let not your tongue cease from preaching; nor your foot from going about among the flock committed to you; nor your hand from labouring that alms be given and the holy Church of God be everywhere exalted. Be the outward expression of the well-being of all. In thee let there be the example of most holy manner of life; in thee let there be the solace of the miserable; in thee the strengthening of the doubting; in thee the rigour of discipline; in thee the confidence of truth; in thee the hope of every good. Let not the pomp of the world lift thee up; nor luxury of food enervate thee; nor the vanity of vestures make thee soft; nor the tongues of flatterers deceive thee; nor the gainsaying of detractors disturb thee; nor troubles break thee; nor joys lift thee up. Be not a reed shaken by the wind; be not a flower falling with the gale; be not a tottering wall; be not a house built upon the sand; but be the temple of the living God, built on the firm rock, whose indweller be the very Spirit, the Paraclete.
“How many days do you suppose you have to live? Put it in your mind at fifty years. Even that has its end; and you cannot expect to live so long as that. Let the weakness of your body make you strong in soul; be with the Apostle,—‘when I am weak, then am I strong.’ Let the affliction of your body be the gain of your soul. Show yourself gentle and humble to the better; hard and rigid to the proud; all things to all men that you may gain all. Have in your hands honey and wormwood; let each man eat which he chooses. Let him who would live on pious preaching have the honey; let him who needs hard invective drink of the wormwood, but so that he may hope for the honey of pardon to follow, if the blush and confusion of penitence go before.”
Alcuin would have been an excellent man to have as preacher at the consecration of a bishop.
In a letter which quickly followed, Alcuin begged Eanbald to read frequently the above letter, and expressed the hope that if there was anything in it which could be regarded as less than quite affectionate, the Archbishop would feel sure that it was unintentional. One thing, and only one, he wished to add:—
Ep. 73. A.D. 796.
“Do not allow the nobleness of mind which I so well know to be in you, and the integrity of faithfulness which is your wont to all, by any advice of friends, by any ambition of secular desires, to be corrupted or changed. Not every friend is fit to be an adviser; the Scripture[164] says, Let thy friends be many, thine adviser one only. Do not allow your goodness to be clouded by the wickedness of others.”
In yet another letter he finds a good deal to add:—
Ep. 74. A.D. 796.
“If there is joy over a rise, there is fear for a fall: the loftier the position, the more dangerous the fall. According to your appellation be the chief overseer not only of the flock committed unto thee, but also of thyself, that in a few days of labour you may earn a great reward of bliss.
“These are dangerous times in Britain. The death of kings[165] is a signal of misery. Discord is the road to prison. The things which you have very often heard our master Archbishop Albert predict are hastening to come true.
“Be not covetous of gold and of silver but of gain of souls. Me remember daily in prayers and alms, thyself always in keeping of the commandments of God. If storms threaten on every side, steer manfully the ship of Christ, that in time you may arrive with your sailors at the port of prosperity. Let your tongue never be silent from the word of holy preaching, your hand never be benumbed from good work.
“Let not your mind become soft in adulation of princes or slow in correction of those under you. Let not the flatteries of the world deceive you, the transient honours uplift, the favour of the people subvert you. Be a very firm pillar in the house of God, not a reed shaken with the wind. Be a candle set on a candlestick, not hid under a bushel. Be to all a way of salvation, not an artery of perdition, that by thee very many may be corrected and saved, and with thee may attain unto eternal life.
“Wherever you go, let the Pastoral treatise of the blessed Gregory go with you. Read it, re-read it, very often, and see in it yourself and your work, that you may always have before your eyes how you ought to live, how you ought to teach. It is a mirror of a bishop’s life, and a specific against all the wounds of the devil’s fraud.”
Ep. 173. A.D. 801.
Late in Alcuin’s life, he became very anxious about the conduct of this favourite pupil, Archbishop Eanbald II. Five years after the election he wrote two letters on the subject, one direct to the Archbishop, and one to two monks whom he sent to visit and advise him. To Eanbald he writes as to one in tribulation, the king Eardulf being set against him. “But”, he says, “I think that a part of your tribulation arises from yourself. It may be that you shelter the enemies of the king, or protect their possessions. If you suffer justly, why be troubled? If unjustly, why not call to mind the Saints? As the apostle James says[166]—‘Ye have heard of the tribulations of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord.’”
In this letter he goes no further into detail, remarking at its close that the Cuckoo will say more. The Cuckoo was one of his messengers, Cuculus, whom he calls in his playful way the bird of spring, the name being the Latin word for a cuckoo. To the Cuckoo, then, and the presbyter Calvin, he sends a letter of instructions.
Ep. 174. A.D. 801.
“I have heard of the tribulations of my dearest son Simeon [that is, Eanbald]. You are to exhort him to act faithfully and be not pusillanimous in trials. His predecessors suffered such; and not they only but all the Saints. John Baptist, we read, was slain for testifying to the truth. Let the archbishop see to it that there is in him no cause of trial other than his preaching the truth. I fear that he is suffering for his acquisitions of lands, or his support of the enemies of the king. Let what he has suffice him; let him not grasp at what belongs to others, which often turns out to be very dangerous.
“And why is there in his following such a large number of soldiers? He appears to keep them from pity for their condition. But it is harmful to the inhabitants of the monasteries which receive him and his. He has, as I hear, far more than his predecessors had. And his soldiers have under them far more of a lower class than is necessary. My master [Archbishop Albert] allowed none of his followers to have more than one such under him, except the rulers of his household, and they were only allowed two. It is imprudent charity to help a few, and they perhaps criminals, and to harm many and they good men. Let him not blame me for suggesting this, but amend his conduct.”
Ep. 149.
Alcuin had in the previous year, 800, written a letter to the Cuckoo’s colleague, Calvinus, in which he was very urgent that Eanbald II should have the best spiritual advice. He entreats Calvinus to warn him of perils, and to strengthen him in all good ways. In giving advice to the archbishop, he bids Calvinus “consider sagaciously time, place, and person; at what time, in what place, to what person, what should be said by the archbishop; all which can be best learned in the book of the blessed Gregory on the Pastoral Care”.
Alcuin frequently presses upon his correspondents the value of a careful study of Pope Gregory’s treatise on Pastoral Care. It was this book that King Alfred selected to have translated into English for the benefit of the clergy of England. Inasmuch as Alfred was born only fifty years after the death of Alcuin, there is no great improbability in the idea that Alcuin’s influence in regard of this book survived to Alfred’s time. The fact that it is chiefly on English bishops that he urges its frequent study may point in this direction. It was, however, not always the English bishops who received this advice.
Ep. 71. A.D. 796.
To Arno, Bishop of Salzburg, Alcuin wrote a long and very valuable letter of advice as to the manner in which the Huns whom Karl was conquering should be brought to the faith. He speaks strongly of the necessity of adapting the teaching and discipline to the character of each individual, as also of each race.
“There be some infirmities which are better treated by sweet potions than by bitter; others better by bitter than by sweet. Whence a teacher of the people of God, while he ought to shine clear with all the lights of virtues in the house of God, should specially excel in the utmost sagacity of discretion. He should know what treatment best suits the sex, the age, the aim, even the occasion, of each person. All which the blessed Gregory, the most lucid doctor, in his book on the Pastoral Care has most diligently investigated, has adapted to various persons, has driven home by examples, has made sure by the authority of the divine scriptures. To the study of which book I refer you, most holy prelate; beseeching you to have it very frequently in your hands as a manual, to keep it in your heart.”
To Higbald of Lindisfarne he writes:—
Ep. 81. A.D. 797.
“Read very often, I beseech you, the book of the blessed Gregory, who brought the Gospel to us, on the Pastoral Care, that in it you may learn the peril of the episcopal office and may not forget the reward of him who serves the office well. Let that book be very often in your hands, let its points be firmly fixed in your memory, that you may know how a man should attain to the office of a bishop, and, having attained, with what circumspection he should guide himself, how exemplary his life should be, how earnest his preaching. The author of the book has also given the most discreet advice as to the different ways of dealing with persons of different characters.”