Alcuin of York

by G. F. Browne

CHAPTER XII

Alcuin retires to the Abbey and School of Tours.—Sends to York for more advanced books.—Begs for old wine from Orleans.—Karl calls Tours a smoky place.—Fees charged to the students.—History and remains of the Abbey Church of St. Martin.—The tombs of St. Martin and six other Saints.—The Public Library of Tours.—A famous Book of the Gospels.—St. Martin’s secularised.—Martinensian bishops.

As time went on, Alcuin felt that he must withdraw from the varied and heavy work which he was accustomed to do at the court, whether at Aachen or elsewhere, and must retire to work quietly at one of his abbeys. He obtained the king’s leave[181]. In 796 he wrote to inform Karl that he had, in accordance with the king’s wish, opened the school at Tours; that he must send to York for books; and that he hoped the king would order the palace youths to continue to attend the palace school which he had now left.

Ep. 78. A.D. 796.

“I, your Flaccus, in accordance with your desire and good pleasure, am busy with ministering, under the roof of the holy Martin, to some the honey[182] of the holy Scriptures; others I seek to inebriate with the old wine of ancient disciplines; others I shall begin to nourish with the apples of grammatical subtlety; some I purpose to illumine with the order of the stars, as the painter nobly adorns the roof of the house of God. I become very many things to very many men, that I may educate very many to the profit of the holy Church of God and the honour of your imperial realm, that no grace of Almighty God in me be unemployed, and no part of thy bounty be without fruit.

“But I, your poor servant, need some of the more abstruse books of scholastic learning which I had in my own land by the devoted labour of my master[183], and to some extent of myself. I say this to your excellency that you may be pleased to allow me to send some of our young men to pick out what I need, and bring to France the flowers of Britain; that not in York only there may be a garden enclosed[184], but in Tours also the scions of paradise may bear fruit; that the south wind may come and blow through the gardens by the river Loire, and the spices thereof may flow out. I take as a parable of the acquisition of wisdom the exhortation of Isaiah[185], ‘Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money[186] and without price.’ Your most noble mind knows well that there is nothing loftier that can be acquired for a happy life, nothing more joyous as an exercise, nothing stronger against vices, nothing more laudable in all dignity. As the philosophers have told us, there is nothing more necessary for the ruling of a people, no better guide of the life to the very best principles, than the glory of wisdom, the praise of discipline, the efficacy of learning. To the earnest study and daily exercise of wisdom, exhort, O king, the youths of your excellency’s palace, that they may so advance while in the bloom of youth that they may be held worthy to bring to honour their grey hairs, and by wisdom may attain to perpetual happiness. To sow the seeds of wisdom in these parts, I, so far as my poor intellect enables me, shall not be found slack. In the morning of life, in the vigour of study, I sowed in Britain; now, my blood running cold, as in the evening of life, I cease not to sow in France. To me, shattered in body, an expression of the holy Jerome, in his letter to Nepotianus, is a solace: ‘Almost all the powers of the body are changed in old men. Wisdom alone continues to increase; all the rest decrease.’ And a little further on he says, ‘The old age of those that have trained their youth in honourable arts, and have meditated in the law of God day and night, grows more learned with age, more expert with use, more wise with the process of time; it gathers the very sweetest fruits of former studies.’”

The brethren of St. Martin of Tours had not a high character for propriety of conduct. There are many evidences of this. It is interesting to know that the earliest letter of Alcuin to which we can reasonably assign a date is a letter appealing for a lapsed brother of this same abbey of St. Martin of Tours, over which Alcuin was now called to preside as an old man. The abbat to whom Alcuin addressed this letter was Wulfhard, of whom the life of Hadrian I, as printed by Muratori (iii. 1, 184, Rer. Ital. Script.), states that he was sent along with Albinus, that is, Alcuin, to Hadrian, by Karl in 773.[187] The letter was probably written in 774.

Ep. 1. A.D. 774.

“To the pious father Uulfhard the abbat Albinus the humble levite wishes health.

“I found this poor lamb wandering through the rough places of neglect. Moved by pity, I brought him by sedulous admonition to the home of our discipline, binding up his wounds, pouring in wine and oil. To your piety, gentlest of fathers, I send him back, beseeching you to receive him for the love of Him who, amid the joy of the angels, has brought back on His own shoulders into the home of His delights all of us, who were wandering among the precipices of sins. Do not in austerity repel from thee one whom Christ has for pity gathered back to Himself, nay, has met penitent, has run to and embraced, has brought back to the house of feasting. And if any envious man advise you to reject him, let such an one fear lest he himself be rejected by Him who has said, ‘With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.’... And though he have sinned ten times, have not we sinned an hundred times; and though he owe an hundred pence, do we not owe ten thousand talents?...”

Alcuin had a high regard for the wines of the Loire, and he particularly liked them old. The best wine of that time would appear to have been grown about the city of Orleans, and to have been kept under the charge of the Bishop of Orleans as the chief owner of the terraced lands on which the vines grew.[188] Here is a frolicsome letter about a present of wine from Orleans. It is full of quotations from the Song of Songs applied to local conditions, for the most part rather obscure. When he comes to his concluding words, there is no obscurity in his request that if wine is coming, good old wine may be sent.

Ep. 153. A.D. 796-800.

“To Theodulf, bishop of Orleans.

“To the great pontiff and father of vineyards, Teodulf[189], Albinus sends greeting.

“We read in the Chronicles[190] that in the time of David, the king most loved of God, Zabdi was over the wine-cellars of the vineyards. Now, by the mercy of God, a second David [Karl] rules over a better people, and under him a nobler Zabdi [Theodulf] is over the wine-cellars of the vineyards. The king has brought him into the house of wine and set over him the banner of love, that students may stay him with flowers and fill him full of the apples of them that languish with love,[191] that is, love of that which maketh glad the heart of man.

“Now even though there be a lack of that which strengthens, namely bread, there is perhaps no lack of that which maketh glad, namely wine, in the cellars of Orleans; for our hope is set on a thriving vineyard and not on a fig-tree dried up. Wherefore Jonathan, the counsellor of David, a man of letters,[192] sends unto Zabdi, saying: Let us get up early: let us see how well the vineyard of Sorech thrives: to them that chant the treaders’ cry therein the streams of the cellarer are dispersed abroad. But now that the storehouse is opened with the key of love, let this verse be sung by the ruler of the vineyard in the towers of Orleans:[193] Eat with me, my friends; drink, and drink abundantly: come ye and take wine and milk without price. My throat is as the best wine meet for the drinking of my beloved, to be tasted by his lips. I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.

“It must not be replied—I have put off my coat, how shall I put it on? I have washed my feet, how shall I defile them?[194] I cannot rise and give to thee.[195] If by chance the three loaves are not at hand, which were lacking in the store-houses of Gibeon,[196] by the blessing of Christ the seven water-pots are full of the best wine, which has been kept till now. Who does not know that some of this wine, according to the command of the Virgin’s Son,[197] is to be borne to the ruler of the feast of the city of Tours? But remember this: You must not put new wine into old skins. No one, having drunk old wine, straightway desireth new; for he saith—The old is better.

“Blessed is he that speaks to an attentive ear.”

Tours was not in Alcuin’s time the bright place which it is now. When Karl endeavoured to persuade Alcuin to accompany him to Rome in 779, Alcuin begged that he might be excused. The journey was long, and he wished to remain at Tours. It is evident that Karl in his reply spoke of the splendours of Rome and contrasted them with “the smoky dwellings” of Tours.

This is what Alcuin had said to the king:—

Ep. 118. A.D. 799.

“Now about that long and laborious undertaking of going to Rome. I cannot in any way think that this poor little body of my frailty—weak and shattered with daily pains—could accomplish the journey. I should have earnestly desired to do it, if I had had the strength. I therefore entreat the most clement benevolence of your paternity that you leave me to aid your journey by the faithful and earnest prayers of myself and of those who with me serve God at St. Martin’s.”

Karl’s answer we have not got. Alcuin’s rejoinder to it contains this passage:—

Ep. 119. A.D. 799.

“With regard to that with which it is your will to upbraid me, that I prefer the houses of Tours, sordid with smoke, to the gilded citadels of the Romans, I know that your prudence has read that elogium of Solomon’s, ‘it is better to dwell in a corner of the house-top, than with a brawling woman in a wide house’.[198]

“And, if I may be pardoned for saying it, the sword hurts the eyes more than smoke does. For Tours, content in its smoky houses, by the gift of God through the providence of your goodness dwells in peace. But Rome, which is given up to fraternal strife, ceases not to hold the implanted venom of dissension, and now compels the power of your venerated dignity to hasten from the sweet dwellings of Germany to restrain this pernicious plague.”

From the foundation of the School of Tours, the students paid fees. The great endowments of the abbey, much enlarged by Karl in 774 when he granted to Abbat Wulfhard a large amount of property in the neighbourhood of Pavia, do not appear to have been applied to the maintenance of the School. A change was made about forty years after Alcuin, and then the education of the school was given free. We learn that after Alcuin’s death the school continued to flourish under Abbats Wulfhard II, Fridugisus, and Adalard, the masters of the school receiving stipends from the fees of the students. This “mercantile” arrangement was hateful to Abbat Adalard, and the change came in his time, and by his order; but it was not financed from the regular income of the abbey. The master at the time was Amalric, who afterwards became Archbishop of Tours, dying in 855. He gave to the abbey from his own private property certain funds for the payment of the teachers, and in August, 841, it was decreed that the schooling should be free. Amalric had many students under his tuition who rose to important positions, of whom Paul the Archbishop of Rouen, and Joseph the Chancellor of Aquitaine, are specially mentioned. He was a good example of the “school master bishops” with whom the Church of England was well stocked a generation ago.

Plate I

The Abbey Church of St. Martin of Tours, before the pillage. To face p. 210.

Plate II

St. Martin’s, Tours; the Horloge. To face p. 211.

The church of St. Martin, so magnificent in the times of the historian Archbishop Gregory of Tours (573-94), became more and more magnificent after several destructions by fire. It had reached its greatest splendour when it was pillaged by the Huguenots. Tours claims to have originated the name of those destructive people, who in the beginning used to steal out for secret meetings at night beyond the walls of the city, flitting about like the local bogey le roi Hugon.[199] And Tours possesses to this day in the name of one of its streets a reminiscence of the early hunting down of the Huguenots as a highly enjoyable form of the chasse aux renards. When their time came, they wreaked a savage revenge, and practically destroyed the noble Abbey Church. A reproduction of its appearance in the perfection of symmetry has been prepared from plans and drawings, and is shown in [Plate I]. The only remains left by the Revolution and by the necessity for new streets are the south-west tower, called of St. Martin,[200] or of the Horloge, and a tower of the north transept, called of Charlemagne.[201] They are of 12th-century foundation, but the latter has a capital of earlier date still clinging to it. Louis XI had surrounded the shrine of St. Martin with a rich and very massive gallery of solid silver, but his needy successor Francis was beforehand with the Huguenots and coined it into crown pieces.

The tombs of St. Martin and the Saints who lay near him were destroyed by the Huguenots, and their relics were burned. Portions were saved, and in the new basilica of St. Martin, close to the site of the old basilica, there is a noble crypt with a reproduction of the massive tomb of St. Martin.[202] On the wall is an inscription to the following effect:

Nomina corporum sanctorum quæ hic sepulta erant circa tumulum Beati Martini.

SS. Briccius, Spanus, Perpetuus, Gregorius Tur., Eustochius, Eufronius, quorum venerabiles reliquiæ in capsis existentes ab hæreticis impiissime in dicta ecclesia fuerunt combustæ anno 1562.

Eustochius		Briccius
Perpetuus	MARTINUS	Spanus martyr
Gregorius		Eufronius

Sic erant corpora horum in ecclesia B. Martini Tur. ordinata.

The Rue des Halles runs right through the site of the old basilica. The new basilica lies at right angles to the old one, its axis lying north and south, an arrangement which places the modern confessio, with its reproduction of the old tomb, practically on the site of the old confessio.

The connexion of St. Martin with Tours came about in this way. He was born about 316, a native of Lower Hungary; had a taste for the monastic life; was compelled by edict to become a soldier; served for three years up to the age of eighteen; went to visit Hilary at Poitiers; after some years came again to Hilary, and founded the monastery of Lugugé, near Poitiers, said to have been the first monastic institution in Gaul. His reputation stood so high that in 371 he was elected by the populace to the bishopric of Tours, much against his will. He built the monastery of Marmoutier, Maius Monasterium, about two miles to the north-east of the walls of Tours, where a large number of students received an education in such learning as then was known. His time was mostly spent in conversion of the pagans in his diocese. At the age of eighty, in 396, he was called to Condate to settle an ecclesiastical dispute, was seized with fever, and died. It was just at that time that his great admirer, Ninian, was finishing his stone church at Whithern, in Galloway, and to Martin he dedicated it. From that time, and owing to the connexion between Britain and Gaul, dedications to St. Martin were frequent, as is instanced by the old British church of St. Martin at Canterbury.

Plate III

St. Martin’s, Tours; the Tour Charlemagne, with the dome of the new St. Martin’s on the left. To face p. 212.

Plate IV

The modern reproduction of the Tomb of St. Martin. To face p. 213.

When Martin died, the people of Poitiers flocked to Condate to claim the body of their former abbat. But the people of Tours asserted their better claim, and carried him off in a ship to Tours. The body of the saint was landed from the ship on the south bank of the Loire, and deposited in a small oratory; the spot was called the Station of the Body of St. Martin. It was moved thence to a more central spot, and miracles began to be wrought at its new abode. Briccius, his successor in the bishopric, built a church over it in the eleventh year after the Saint’s death. Perpetuus removed this church and built a more magnificent structure. The rich gifts of kings and others made the church of Perpetuus very beautiful. St. Odo, in a sermon on its destruction by fire, described it as lined with various coloured marbles; in one place the walls were red with Protonis marble, in another white with Parian, in another green with Prasine. This church was burned by Willicharius. Chlotaire I rebuilt it. The Normans burned it again in 853 and 903, and soon after the year 1000 it was rebuilt by Hervey the Treasurer in the form in which it existed to the time of the Revolution. The Calvinists pillaged it, as has been said above. At the destruction in the time of the Revolution the various parts of the church were sold to speculators, and under the First Empire all disappeared except the two towers which now remain. The Cathedral church in the old Roman city, the eastern part of the present city, was burned in the wars between Louis VII of France and our Henry II, who was Lord of Tours and Count of Anjou.

In 1861 a rock-hewn tomb was found under a house which was known to stand on the site of the high altar of the Abbey church. A subterranean chapel was built over the tomb, and adorned with red granite. This is now the Confessio of the new basilica of St. Martin.

There had only been two bishops of Tours before Martin. The first, Gatian, died in 301. He had officiated secretly[203] in the remarkable cave, across the front of which the ancient church of St. Radegonde now stands, with its inscriptions.

Sca Radegundis Gemma Galliæ Pretiosissima, Ora pro nobis. S. R. Regina Galliæ. Scus Gatianus Turonum Primus Episcopus huius Parochiæ Fundator Primo Sæculo.

Lidorius succeeded Gatian after a lapse of thirty-seven years, and built a small basilica for his bishop’s stool.

Martin had, during his bishopric, brought from St. Maurice, in the valley of the Rhone, some relics of that saint, which he deposited in a chapel built by Lidorius, to which also he removed from the cemetery the remains of Gatian. This was the origin of the Cathedral church of Tours, and we are thus enabled to see why its primary dedication was to St. Maurice, and its second and permanent dedication is to St. Gatian.

The public library at Tours, which is now on the quay facing the Loire, and not at the place, as indicated by the guide-books, where the Mairie stands, has a remarkably interesting collection of manuscripts. Two of the finest of them are undoubtedly of Charlemagne’s time. One of these, Tours No. 22 (St. Martin No. 247) is a beautiful Book of the Gospels, written all in gold on very white parchment, in remarkably perfect condition. The gold employed must have been singularly pure. There are 277 leaves each with double columns of 25 lines, and in all 289 leaves; the size is 12⅖ by 9⅕ inches. The initial letters are quite simple, and in exceedingly good taste. The other, Tours No. 23 (St. Martin No. 174), is also a Book of the Gospels, with 193 leaves, 11⅗ by 9⅕ inches. It has so-called Hibernian initial letters, purple, with interlacements, and birds’ heads with the characteristic eyes and beaks. It is much more probably Anglian than Hibernian, and we may attribute it to the scriptorium of the school of York, or to that of St. Martin of Tours as a copy from a York manuscript. The present librarian assigns it to the writing school of Marmoutier, across the Loire, which he thinks was the chief writing school of Tours in Alcuin’s time. That opinion is founded on a remark in connexion with the first establishment of Marmoutier, to which reference will be made below;[204] the English student may well attribute the MS. to St. Martin’s itself, produced, as a copy, under Alcuin’s own eye, especially as it has always appeared in the catalogue of St. Martin’s and not in that of Marmoutier, and is now classed as a St. Martin’s MS.

The Evangeliarium first mentioned, in gold letters on white parchment, is a book of historic fame. It is the book on which the kings of France down to Louis XIV, in 1650, took their oath of fidelity and protection to St. Martin of Tours, when admitted as abbat and first canon of the collegiate church. The book was bound with great magnificence of gold and gems; and when the Huguenots, under the Prince of Condé, sacked the place, they carried off the rich binding, but fortunately left the manuscript itself quite uninjured. The oath of the kings is written on the reverse of folio 277, in a style closely copied from the manuscript itself, probably in the eleventh or twelfth century, all in small gold capital letters, with a point after every word. The entry runs as follows;—

Hoc est iuramentum regis Francie quod facere tenetur dum primo recipitur in abbatem et canonicum huius ecclesie beati Martini Turonensis.

Ego N. annuente Domino Francorum rex Abbas et canonicus huius ecclesie Beati Martini Turonensis iuro Deo et Beato Martino me de cetero protectorem et defensorem fore huius Ecclesie in omnibus necessitatibus et utilitatibus suis custodiendo et conservando possessiones honores iura privilegia libertates franchisias et immunitates eiusdem Ecclesie quantum divino fultus adiutorio secundum posse meum recta et pura fide sic me Deus adiuvet et hec sancta verba.

The first king who held the secular abbacy of St. Martin of Tours was Charles the Bald, Charlemagne’s grandson, who became king of France (Neustria) in 843, about thirty years after Charlemagne’s death. There were ecclesiastical abbats till the year 845, when the Count Vivian became the first lay abbat. After Charles the Bald it is probable that the kings held the abbacy. Hugh Capet (987-996) united the title of Abbat of St. Martin to that of King of France. The fifteen kings from Louis VII in 1137 to Louis XIV in 1630 took the oath on this book on admission to the abbacy.

The status of the abbat and of the brethren of St. Martin was long in uncertainty. Charlemagne refers to the vague status of the brethren in his letter of rebuke to them, which is given on p. 237; they called themselves canons, or monks, as best suited the necessities of an occasion. Probably there had been a time when the monastery included both secular and regular inmates. It is uncertain also whether the brethren elected the bishop (or archbishop) of Tours, and, indeed, whether they had not a bishop of their own. Hadrian I, addressing the abbat Itherius, who was the first founder of Cormery as a place of residence for regular monks of St. Benedict, writes thus[205] of St. Martin’s—“we decree that it be lawful to have a bishop there as has been from ancient times up to now, by whose preaching the people who come from various parts with devoted mind to the holy thresholds of the said confessor of Christ may receive remedial help from the Creator of souls.” Urban II, in 1096, at the Council of Tours, recognized this, and “united the Martinensian bishopric to the Apostolic See”, a very honourable extinction. We have the names of eight abbats before Itherius. The seventh of them, Wicterbus, was bishop and abbat; the eighth, the immediate predecessor of Itherius, Wulfhard I, was abbat only. It is supposed that the appointment of Alcuin, one of the secular clergy and in deacon’s orders, was a decided step in the secularization of the Abbey, and that his policy was in the same direction. It may be suggested that already in the time of Itherius that abbat was conscious of a secularizing tendency, and on that account founded Cormery; and that Alcuin found the existence of the regular abbey at Cormery a convenient outlet for the remnant of regular brethren at St. Martin’s, and handed St. Martin’s over to his successor, Wulfhard II, as a purely secular foundation. The step to a lay abbacy was then not a long one.