CHAPTER XVII
Grammatical questions submitted to Alcuin by Karl.—Alcuin and Eginhart.—Eginhart’s description of Charlemagne.—Alcuin’s interest in missions.—The premature exaction of tithes.—Charlemagne’s elephant Abulabaz.—Figures of elephants in silk stuffs.—Earliest examples of French and German.—Boniface’s Abrenuntiatio Diaboli.—Early Saxon.—The earliest examples of Anglo-Saxon prose and verse.
In many of Alcuin’s letters we find answers or allusions to questions addressed to him by Karl. In Epistle 253 Alcuin writes twelve paragraphs to the emperor in answer to twelve questions. In Epistle 252 he writes to Homer (Angilbert), who has been commanded by the emperor to consult him on the gender of the word rubus and on the difference in meaning of despicere and dispicere. In regard to rubus, he sums up a long list of authorities on both sides by the correct remark that a bramble must not be counted as a tree, and therefore rubus follows the ordinary rule of words ending in us and is masculine. On the difference between despicere and dispicere he has much to write, and in the course of his letter he makes free use of quotations from the Greek. From Epistle 254 we find that Charlemagne had inquired, through Candidus, as to the distinction between aeternum and sempiternum; perpetuum and inmortale; saeculum, aevum, and tempus. In Epistle 240, a very long letter, he writes to the emperor in reply to his inquiry as to the force of a question put by the Greek master—an Athenian sophist—about the price of human salvation.
Considering the large part which the annalist Eginhart played in the administrative work of Charlemagne’s reign, as secretary to the king and emperor, it is remarkable that we find only one reference to him in Alcuin’s letters. This one reference is affectionate in tone, and gives no reason at all for supposing that Alcuin was jealous of the quick and skilful secretary. The reference occurs in Ep. 112, A.D. 799, a letter addressed to Karl by Alcuin. The letter itself is of so interesting a character that the opportunity of giving it in its entirety should not be lost. From its contents we gather that Alcuin had sent to Karl a treatise which he had hastily dictated and had not read over and corrected. Karl had noted errors in the writing and punctuation, and had sent it back to be corrected, a charming piece of discipline which raises Karl higher than ever in our appreciative regard.
Ep. 112. A.D. 799.
“To the most pious and excellent lord king David, Flaccus wounded[259] with the pen of love sends greeting.
“We give thanks to your venerable piety that you have caused to be read to the ears of your wisdom the booklet sent to you in accordance with the injunction of your command; and that you have had errors in it noted, and have sent it back for correction. It would, however, have been better corrected by yourself, because in any work the judgement of another is most frequently of more value than that of the actual author.
“You have done somewhat less than the full office of love demanded, in that you have not in like manner noted opinions not learnedly set forth or catholically worked out. I have a suspicion that your letter indicates that not all which is written in my booklet has your approval. For you have directed a defence of the work to be sent to your excellency, whereas my poor words could have no defender or emender better than yourself. The authority of him who commands should defend the work of him who obeys.
“That the booklet does not run so scholarly in letter and punctuation as the order and rule of the art of grammar demands is no unusual effect of rapidity of thought, while the mind of the reader forestalls the action of the eyes. Wearied with a bad headache I cannot examine the words which flow by a sudden rush from my mouth as I dictate; and one who is not willing to impute to himself the negligence of another should not impute negligence to another.
“The account of the disputation of Felix with a Saracen I have not seen, nor can we find it here; indeed I never heard of it before. But in the course of very diligent inquiry whether any of our people have heard of its existence, I have been told that it might be found with Laidrad the Bishop of Lyon. I have at once sent a messenger to the said bishop in order that if it can be found there it may be sent as quickly as possible to your presence.
“When I went as a young man to Rome, and spent some days in the royal city of Pavia, a certain Jew, Lullus by name, had a disputation with Master Peter, and I heard in the same city that there was a written record of the controversy. This was the same Peter who with such clearness taught grammar in your palace[260]. Perhaps our Homer[261] has heard something about it from him.
“I have sent to your excellency some modes of expression, supported by examples or verses from venerable fathers, and also some figures of arithmetical subtlety for your amusement, on the blank part of the paper which you have sent to us; in order that what offered itself to our eye naked may come back to you clothed. It seemed right that paper which came to us ennobled by your seal should receive honour from our letters. And if any of the said forms of expression are inadequately supported by examples, Beselel[262] your familiar—yea and ours too—will be able to add others. He can also make out the arithmetical puzzles.
“The major and minor distinctions of punctuation add greatly to the beauty of sentences; but the use of them has been almost lost by the rusticity of our scribes. Now that the beauty of all wisdom and the ornament of salutary learning is beginning to be renewed by the exertions of your nobility, so there is good hope that the use of punctuation is to be restored in the hands of scribes.
“I for my part, though little proficient, fight daily against rusticity at Tours. Let your authority teach the palace youths to produce in the most elegant manner whatsoever your most lucid eloquence shall have dictated, that documents which circulate in the name of the king may bear on their face the nobility of the royal wisdom.”
That appears to be the only case in which Eginhart is spoken of by Alcuin. Curiously enough, it appears that Alcuin is only once spoken of by Eginhart. We might have expected some mention of Alcuin in Eginhart’s statement of Karl’s fondness for foreigners[263]. The remarkable passage in which Eginhart mentions Alcuin forms chapter 25 of the Vita Caroli Magni, coming in the course of this fine description of a man clearly worthy to be called Great:—
“In eloquence he was copious and exuberant; whatever he wished to express he could express in the clearest manner. Nor was he content to speak only in his native tongue; he worked hard at learning foreign tongues. Latin he had learned so well that he was wont to pray in that tongue equally with his own. Greek he understood better than he spoke. He was so able in speech that he appeared as a teacher. He cultivated most studiously the liberal arts, and exceedingly respected and greatly honoured those who taught them. In learning grammar he heard the aged Peter of Pisa, a deacon. In other studies he had as his preceptor Albinus, whose cognomen was Alcuin, also a deacon, of the Saxon race, from Britain, a man most learned. With him he spent much time and labour on rhetoric and dialectic, and especially on the study of astronomy. He learned the art of computation, and with much sagacity he scrutinized most closely the courses of the stars. He made efforts, too, to become a scribe, for which purpose he used to have tablets and specimens carried about under the pillows of his bed, that he might practise his hand in writing when he had any spare time; but he did not make much way with a task begun so late in his life.”
Ep. 13. A.D. 789.
It would have been strange if Alcuin had not taken special interest in the spread of Christianity among the pagan races on the eastern borders of the kingdom of Karl. Our West-Saxon Boniface had made such a mark, by himself and by his Malmesbury monks Lull and Burchardt and others, and his Wimborne nuns and magistrae, that Alcuin found familiar names in many parts of the eastern and north-eastern fringe, and made many inquiries about the progress of the work. In one of the earliest of his letters which have been preserved, he addresses an abbat who had gone to visit the Bishop of Bremen. “Salute a thousand times my best loved bishop Uilhaed. It sorely grieves me that I have parted from him. Would that I could see him.” This was our own Northumbrian Angle Willehad, born in 730, five years before Alcuin, and no doubt his school-fellow. He had narrowly escaped martyrdom, and had bent before the storm; but he returned to the scene of his dangerous labours, and Karl caused him to be consecrated at Worms first bishop of Bremen on July 13, 787. He built his cathedral church at Bremen, and consecrated it on November 1, 789; on November 8 he died of fever at Blexen, close by. In this letter Alcuin charges the abbat—
“Inform me by letter how far the Saxons fall in with your preaching, and if there is any hope of the conversion of the Danes, and if the Wilts and Vionuds[264], whom the king has recently[265] acquired, accept the faith of Christ, and what is going on in those parts, and what the lord king intends to do about the Huns[266].”
In a letter to Colcu[267], in the beginning of the next year, he says:—
Ep. 14. A.D. 790.
“Let your dilection know that by the mercy of God the holy Church in the parts of Europe has peace, advances, grows. The Old Saxons and the Frisians have been converted to the faith of Christ at the instance of Karl, some by rewards, some by threats. Last year the said king with a great host attacked the Sclaves, whom we called Vionuds, and brought them into subjection.
“Further, the dukes and tribunes of the same most Christian king have taken from the Saracens a large part of Spain, with a coast line three hundred miles in length. But—ah the grief!—those same accursed Saracens are dominant over the whole of Africa and the greatest part of Asia.”
To Higbald of Lindisfarne, in the letter given at page 132, he writes:—
Ep. 24. A.D. 793.
“Almost the whole of Europe was destroyed by the fire and the sword of the Goths or the Huns. But now, by the mercy of God, as the sky shines bright with stars so Europe shines with the ornament of churches, and in them the offices of the Christian religion flourish and increase.”
Writing to his most intimate friend Arno, Archbishop of Salzburg, who was about to accompany an army against the Avars, Alcuin warns him against the premature imposition of tithes:—
Ep. 64. post Mai. 796.
“Be a preacher of piety, not an exactor of tithes; for the freshly converted soul is to be fed with the milk of apostolical piety until it grows, strengthens, and becomes strong enough to receive solid food. Tithes, it is said, have subverted the faith of the Saxons. Why should we place on the neck of the ignorant a yoke which neither we nor our brethren have been able to bear?”
Again, writing to Karl after the subjugation of the Huns, Alcuin says this:—
Ep. 67. post Aug. 796.
“Now let your most wise and God-pleasing piety provide for the new people pious preachers, of honest life, learned in sacred science, imbued with evangelical precepts, intent in their preaching on the examples of the holy Apostles, who were wont to minister milk—that is, gentle precepts—to their hearers who were beginners in the faith....
“These things being thus considered, let your most holy piety take into wise consideration whether it is well to impose upon an ignorant race, at the beginning of the faith, the yoke of tithes, so that they shall be fully exacted from house to house. It is worth considering whether the Apostles, taught by the God Christ Himself, and sent to preach to the world, required the exaction of tithes or anywhere demanded them. We know that the tithing of our substance is a very good thing; but it is better to sacrifice the tithe than to lose the faith. And indeed we, born and brought up and taught in the Catholic faith, scarce consent to tithe to the full our substance; how much does feeble faith not consent to the gift of tithe, and the infant will, and the covetous mind. But when faith has become strong, and the practice of Christianity is confirmed, then, as to perfect men, may stronger precepts be given, from which the mind, become solid in the Christian religion, may not recoil.”
He then proceeds to urge that the adults of the conquered Huns shall not be baptized until they have first been carefully taught, “lest the ablution of sacred baptism of the body profit nothing.” On this subject of the baptism of the Huns a long report is found in a tenth-century collection of Alcuin’s letters, written by Paulinus the Patriarch of Aquileia, describing a discussion which took place at a meeting of bishops, or in the College of Bishops, summoned by King Pippin in the summer of this year 796.
Ep. 69.
In the autumn of 796, Alcuin again writes on the subject of tithes, this time addressing his friend[268] Megenfrid, the treasurer of the palace, and dealing not with the Huns, but with the Saxons. Alcuin writes to him as to one of the principal advisers of Karl, enters fully into the oft repeated argument about milk and strong meat, and arrives thus at his point.
“If the yoke easy and the burden light of Christ had been preached to this most hard race, the Saxons, as carefully as the rendering of tithes was required, and the legal penalties for the very smallest faults, it may be that they would not have abhorred the sacraments of baptism. As to those who are sent to teach them, sint praedicatores non praedatores, let them preach, not prey.”
Ep. 71.
In another letter of that autumn, he sends full advice to Arno, the bishop of Salzburg, as to the manner of teaching the faith to the Huns. In the course of this letter he reminds Arno that the wretched race of the Saxons has repeatedly lost the sacrament of baptism, because it never had in heart the foundation of the faith.
In the year 801 the news reached Charlemagne that one Isaac the Jew, whom he had sent four years before to the King of Persia, was returning, bringing with him an elephant and many other presents. He had got as far as Fez. Special arrangements were made for bringing the elephant across the sea, and he arrived at Spezzia in October, wintering at Vercelli because the Alps were already covered with snow. Eginhart thought the arrival of the elephant at Aix-la-Chapelle to be of sufficient importance to have the precise day named, the only event thus honoured in a year rather full of events. It was the twentieth of July; and the elephant’s name was Abulabaz. Under the year 810, another year full of important events, Eginhart records that Charlemagne heard of a sudden and successful raid of Northmen upon the Frisians; he set off in great haste, summoned all his forces from all parts, crossed the Rhine at Lippenheim, and waited there a few days for the troops to assemble. He had taken his favourite animal with him. While he was waiting, the elephant died suddenly. See [Appendix E].
The strange form of an elephant made it a frequent subject for the ornamentation of silk and woollen robes. We hear of silk pallia thus adorned in Charlemagne’s lifetime, and it is probable that in a stuff of this kind his body was clothed in the grave at Aachen. Alcuin’s great predecessor in learning, Aldhelm, had a chasuble of scarlet silk, wrought with black scrolls containing the representations of peacocks,[269] and this chasuble was preserved at Malmesbury in the time of William of Malmesbury, about 1140. The silk robes in which the body of St. Cuthbert was wrapped were ornamented with large circular spaces containing men on horseback with hawk and hound, and an island with trees, fishes, and eider ducks.
Plate VII
Elephant from the tomb of Charlemagne. To face p. 290
Plate VIII
The fringe of the robe from the Tomb of Charlemagne. To face p. 291.
[Plate VII] shows one medallion of a piece of silk found on the body of Charlemagne when the grave was opened in the time of the present German Emperor. It is certainly not of Charlemagne’s time. But it seems a fairly safe guess to suppose that his well-known regard for his favourite beast Abulabaz, who died only four years before him, caused his son to have the body wrapped in one of the robes decorated with elephants which we know that he possessed; and that either in the year 1000, when Otho III opened the tomb, or in 1166, under Barbarossa, when Charlemagne was canonized, this piece of silk replaced the decayed robe originally buried there. We know of the two elephant-robes referred to from Anastasius[270], who gives an enormous list of the art works in gold and silver and silk and cloth of gold which were wrought for Leo III, Charlemagne’s contemporary. One item is “two robes of Syrian purple, with borders of cloth of gold wrought with elephants”. These robes Leo gave to Charlemagne.
We can all but give the exact date of this remarkable Byzantine beast. The inscription breaks off exactly where the date came. The Greek inscription worked in the stuff ([Plate VIII]) sets forth that it was made “under Michael the great chamberlain and controller of the privy purse of the emperor, when Peter was the manager of Zeuxippos”, i. e. the Byzantine court factory in Negropont. Then comes the tantalizing Indictionos (? B), and the date is lost.
Dreger, in his Europäische Weberei und Stickerei,[271] gives some early examples of elephants in art. His Figure 37b shows an archaic silver relief of an elephant with a castle containing armed men. His Figure 37a shows a silk stuff of the seventh or eighth century, of Asiatic manufacture, with circular medallions containing elephants, griffins and winged horses, hippogryffs; and he remarks that “the elephant is one of the most holy beasts of Buddhism”. This silk stuff is shown in our [Plate IX] from a photograph of the original. A comparison of these elephants with the elephant shown in [Plate VIII] makes it fairly clear that the Charlemagne stuff is later than the other, while in all of the details of the beast itself, ears, three toes, eye, trunk, they are exactly the same. Each has a tree behind the elephant; but while the Charlemagne tree is a piece of stiff conventional work, the other is a natural tree with leaves and fruit, much resembling the vegetable ornamentation of some early Egyptian stuffs. Another feature pointing in the same direction is the thirty-two conventional patterns on the circular enclosing border. These in the earlier piece are twenty-eight plain disks.
There is an example of sculptured elephants something like this one, but much more like the real beast, especially about the feet. The elephants are the legs of the ivory chair[272] of Urso, at Canossa; he was Bishop of Bari and Canossa 1078-89.
Something should be said about the language spoken by the people of France and Germany in the times with which we are dealing, the reference to a rustic tongue being not infrequent.
In the Council convened by Charlemagne at Tours in the year 813, equally representing Eastern France and Western France, Austrasia and Neustria, Germany and the Galliae, the bishops in the Transalpine Empire were enjoined to be diligent in preaching, and to take care that their discourses should be rendered either into Romana Rustica or into Theotisc or Deutsch, that all might understand. It may be of interest to give the earliest specimens we have of these native languages. Philologically, these examples are of the very highest importance.
Plate IX
Silk stuff of the seventh or eighth century. To face p. 292.
In 841, after the dreadful battle of Fontenai near Vézelay in Burgundy, where Charles-le-Chauve and Louis-le-Germanique combined against their brother Lothar and their nephew Pepin and defeated them, they held a Congress at Strassburg to confirm their alliance.
Louis and Charles each made announcement in Latin of the purpose of their agreement, and of their intention to take in public an oath each to other. That done, Louis, as the elder, first took the oath. Being the ruler of the German portion of the empire, he took the oath in the language of the Franks, the Romance tongue, Rustica Romana, in order that the adherents of Charles might hear and understand his undertaking. These were the words of his oath, probably read by a chancellor, for the Latin account[273] says haec se servaturum testatus est:—
“Pro Deo amur et pro christian poblo et nostro commun salvament, dist di[274] in avant, in quant Deus savir et podir me dunat[275], si salvarai eo cist meon fradre Karlo, et in aiudha et in cadhuna[276] cosa, si cum om[277] per dreit[278] son fradra salvar dist, in o quid il mi altresi fazet[279]; et ab Ludher nul plaid numquam prindrai, qui meon vol[280] cist meon fradre Karle in damno sit.”
Then Charles said the same in the language of the Germans, the Teudisc or Deutsch tongue. The Latin account uses a different phrase here, haec eadem verba testatus est.
“In Godes minna ind in thes christianes folches ind unser bedhero gehaltnissi, fon thesemo dage frammordes, so fram so mir Got geuuizci indi mahd furgibit, so haldi thesan minan bruodher, soso man mit rehtu sinan bruodher scal, in thiu, thaz er mig so sama duo; indi mit Ludheren in nohheiniu thing ne gegango, the minan uuillon imo ce scadhen uuerdhen.”
The peoples then swore an oath, each in their own, not the other’s, tongue. The Frank people swore in the Romance language:—
“Si Lodhuvigs sagrament, que son fradre Karlo iurat, conservat, et Karlus meos sendra de suo part non los tanit, si io returnar non l’int pois: ne io ne neuls, cui eo returnar int pois, in nulla aiudha contra Lodhuuuig nun li iv er.”
The others then swore in the Teudisc language:—
“Oba Karl then eid, then er sinemo bruodher Ludhuuuige gesuor, geleistit, indi Ludhuuuige min herro then er imo gesuor forbrihchit, ob ih inan es iruuenden ne mag: noh ih no thero nohhein, then ih es iruuenden mag, uuidhar Karle imo ce follusti ne uuirdhit.”
Plate X
The abrenuntiatio diaboli of Archbishop Boniface. To face p. 295.
An example of language nearly a hundred years earlier than this is found in the renunciation of the devil and the declaration of belief in God which our own Boniface required of his converts from paganism. The form is found attached to the decrees of a Council[281] held by Boniface, probably in the year 743. It exists in a Vatican manuscript (Vat. Palat, nro. 577, fol. 6, 7), which Pertz and other scholars believe to be of contemporary date. The form is of such extreme interest that I have had that part of it which is at the foot of folio 6 photographed, by the kind help of a friend in the Vatican Library; see figure 10, the four lowest lines.
This is the form:—
“Forsachistu diobolae? Ec forsacho diabolae.
End allum diobolgelde? End ec forsacho allum diobolgeldae.
End allum dioboles uuercum? End ec forsacho allum dioboles uuercum and uuordum thunaer ende uuoden ende saxnote ende allum them unholdum the hira genotas sint.
Gelobistu in Got alamehtigen fadaer? Ec gelobo in Got alamechtigen fadaer.
Gelobistu in Crist Godes suno? Ec gelobo in Crist Godes suno.
Gelobistu in halogen Gast? Ec gelobo in halogen Gast.”
An isolated piece of early “Saxon” is found in one of the letters contained in vol. iii of the Epistolae of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, the volume containing Epistolae Meròwingici et Karolini Aevi (Berlin, 1892). The letter is No. 146 of the “letters of Boniface and Lull”. It is written by a poor and humble monk to a personage described as reverentissimus atque sanctissimus, who would appear to have had the reputation of not carrying out his purposes. The proverb looks like the eighth century; Brandl thinks that it is pre-Christian. The dialect is probably Northumbrian, varied by a West-Saxon or a German scribe.
“I hear of thee that thou proposest to make a journey: I exhort thee not to fail. Do what thou hast begun. Remember the Saxon saying
Oft daedlata dôme foreldit
Sigisitha gahuem suuyltit thi âna”.
That is, Often the tardy man (deed-late) loses glory, some victory; thus he dies solitary.
The suggested date of the letter is A.D. 757-786.
Mention was made on [page 57] of the inscriptions which exist on the great shaft of a cross in the churchyard of Bewcastle in Cumberland. These inscriptions are the earliest extant pieces of English prose. They give the names of the King of Mercia, Wulfhere, his queen and her sister, with the date “first year of Ecgfrith King of this realm”, that is, A.D. 670. We have another inscription dated in Ecgfrith’s reign, that, namely, on the dedication stone of the basilica of St. Paul at Jarrow, “in the 15th year of King Ecgfrith and the fourth year of Abbat Ceolfrid”, so that the manner of dating the Bewcastle cross was that usual at the time; the Jarrow inscription is in Latin[282]. [Plate XI] shows a facsimile of all except the two top lines (which were beyond my reach) of the main inscription on the Bewcastle cross, a copy of which is given in . The runes on Plate XI begin with the gar of Wothgar, the second of the three persons who “set up this slender token of victory in memory of Alchfrith once King and son of Oswy”, the half-brother of King Ecgfrith; mention has been made of him on [page 9].
Plate XI
Runes incised on the Bewcastle Cross. To face p. 296.
Plate XII
Runes incised on the Ruthwell Cross. To face p. 297.
The earliest pieces of English verse in existence in their original form are found on the Cross at Ruthwell in Dumfriesshire, a monument of equal magnificence with the Bewcastle Cross, and probably about fourteen years later. King Ecgfrith was slain by the Picts in 685, and the Angles were never dominant in the south-west of Scotland after his death. [Plate XII] shows a portion of the many runes on this great monument, which is described at pages 235-254 of my little book on Theodore and Wilfrith. Reading across the top and down the right side the runes are as follows:—
Krist wæs on rodi hwethræ ther fusæ fearran kwomu æththilæ til anum ic thæt al bih[eald]. Christ was on the cross, and there hastening from far came they to the noble prince. I that all beh[eld].
Beginning at the top again and reading down the left side, we have:—
Mith strelum giwundad alegdun hiæ hinæ limwoerignæ gistoddun him (æt his licæs heafdum). With missiles wounded, they laid Him down limb-weary, they stood at His body’s head.