CHAPTER XVIII
Alcuin’s latest days.—His letters mention his ill health.—His appeals for the prayers of friends, and of strangers.—An affectionate letter to Charlemagne.—The death scene.
Ep. 147. June 26, 800.
Alcuin’s health began to break in the later part of the year 800, or early in 801. In June, 800, he wrote a letter to Arno of Salzburg which shows that he had in the first days of the month travelled with Karl from Tours to Aix by way of Orleans and Paris, and after a debate with Felix the Adoptionist had returned to Tours. We do not find in this long letter any mention of failing health. Indeed, he overflows with affectionateness, a feeling always displayed in his letters to Arno. “I am sending to your dearness three little gifts; a tent to protect your venerated head from the rain[283], a bed-cover to keep warm your sacred breast, and a glass in which your bread may be dipped at table, that whenever they are used they may bring to your sanctity a recollection of my name.”
In this letter he describes his debate with Felix.
“I have had a great dispute with the heretic Felix in presence of the lord king and holy fathers. He was obdurate; would recognize the authority of no one who took an opposite view; held himself to be wiser than all in this, that he was more foolish than all. But the divine clemency touched his heart; he confessed that he had of late been carried away by a false opinion; he professed that he held firmly the Catholic faith. We could not see into his mind, and we left the cause to the Judge of secret things. We handed him over to Laidrad [the Bishop of Lyon (798-814)] our dearest son, who is to keep him and see whether it is true that he believes, and whether he will write letters condemning the heresy which he has preached. The king had intended to send him to Archbishop Riculf [of Maintz] to be kept and chastised; and his presbyter, who is worse than his master, was to be sent to you and your providence. But now that they say they are converted to the Catholic faith, they have been handed over to Laidrad, who is to test their sincerity.”
Ep. 189. May, 802.
On May 24, 801, Alcuin received a letter from Arno, Archbishop of Salzburg, at nine o’clock in the morning, and the messenger told him he must leave again at three in the afternoon. In the course of the six hours he dictated fourteen paragraphs in reply. One of these concerned his health. “My Candidus has been able to tell you all about my weakness. It is therefore superfluous to write on the subject, except to say that all bodily fitness has left me, and pleasures of the world have fled far away.”
The interesting remark in this letter that the messenger from Salzburg to Tours, a distance of some six hundred miles, must go back in six hours is not the only interesting detail. We learn, also, that many letters were lost in the difficulties of the journey. The eyes of the Sassenach of to-day, who rides some forty miles in a Scottish mail-cart in Sutherland, and sees the letters shied out into kailyards and steadings, are opened to the possibilities of loss in primitive methods of letter-carrying. The admirable arrangements of the early Roman empire, for conveyance of men and things, had been thrown into chaos long before Alcuin’s time, and special messengers, or “runners”, were used by important people for the transmission of letters.
Ep. 189. May, 802.
“To Arno. My devotedness is greatly grieved by the unfaithfulness of those whom I have trusted with letters to you. Last year I sent to you on your return from Italy two letters, and I also sent to you other two to meet you on your arrival at the palace [Aachen]. I do not know that any of them reached your presence.”
Ep. 193.
Alcuin wrote to the Emperor Charles in 802, or possibly in 803, begging that he might be allowed to stay quietly at St. Martin’s, Tours. “I am so very weak in body that I am unequal to any more travelling or labour. To speak truth, all the fitness and strength of my body has left me; it has gone, and day by day will be further away; I fear it will never come back to me in this world.”
Ep. 194.
Again, writing to Arno in 802 or 803, he tells him how he longs to see him at St. Martin’s, “not for the sake of your black hair, but for your most sweet eyes and lovable talk.” Though bidden to the palace, where he would have met him, his poor little body was too weak for the journey: he could not go.
Ep. 196. A.D. 802-3.
Ep. 198. A.D. 802-3.
In another letter to Arno he writes: “I have been summoned to my lord David [Charlemagne], but my bodily weakness prevented my going: the will of God detained me.” We have his letter of excuse to the emperor. He begins with the simile of the aged soldier, unable not only to bear the weight of armour, but even to support his own body. Then he proceeds: “To speak simply, let not the mind of my lord be inflamed against me for my delay; I am not strong enough to come. A more favourable opportunity may occur.”
Ep. 230.
He became more than ever pressing in his entreaties that his friends would pray for him. In seeking for the prayers of others we find him turning to a part of England of which we do not appear to have any other mention in his letters, namely, Norfolk and Suffolk, called then the dioceses of Elmham and Dunwich (see [page 159]). In like manner, and for a like purpose, he wrote to the brethren of Candida Casa, i. e. Whithorn in Galloway, the following letter:—
Ep. 271. A.D. 804.
“I pray the unanimity of your piety to have my name in memory. Deign to intercede for my littleness in the church of your most holy father Nynia the bishop.
“He shone bright with many virtues, as has recently been related to me by a skilful poem which our faithful disciples the scholars of the church of York have sent. In that poem I have discerned in that which I have read there both the skill of the writer and the holiness of him who wrought the miracles. Wherefore, I pray you, by your holy intercessions to commend me to his prayers, that by the most holy prayers of the same your father, and by the assiduous intercessions of your love, I may receive pardon for my sins, by the mercy of the God Christ, and may come to the communion of saints who have bravely conquered the labours of the world, and have received the crown of perpetual praise.
“I send to the body of our holy father Nyniga (sic) a robe of whole silk, that my name may be remembered, and that I may merit to have always the pious intercession both of him and of you.
“May Christ’s right hand protect and rule you, brothers.”
Here is a very touching letter, which sets clearly before our eyes the dear affectionate old man—old as men then counted age—beaten at last by bodily weakness, while his heart was as loving as ever. It is addressed to “the most longed for lord David, most worthy of all honour.”
Ep. 170. A.D. 801, early autumn.
“Day by day, with hungry intentness of heart, my ears hanging on the words of messengers, I wondered anxiously what they could tell me of my most sweet lord David: when he would come home; when he would return to his own land. At last, though late, the wished-for voice sounded in the ears of my desire: ‘He will soon come. He has already crossed the Alps, he whose presence thou hast desired, O Albinus, with such fervour of mind.’ And then I cried over and over again with tearful voice: ‘O Lord Jesu, why dost thou not give me the wings of an eagle? Why dost thou not grant me the translation of the prophet Abacuc[284] for one day, or even one hour, that I might embrace and kiss the steps of him my dearest one, and—above all that can be loved in this world—see the most clear eyes of my sweetest one, and hear his most joyous words. And why dost thou, mine enemy of fever, oppress me at this inopportune time, and not permit me to have my wonted alacrity of body, so that, though tardily, that might be accomplished which promptly it cannot do.’”
The dates and the story of his final illness and his death are found, as we have seen (Ch. II), in the life written about twenty years later by a pupil of Alcuin’s favourite priest Sigulf, and more concisely in the Annals of Pettau, a monastery not far from Salzburg, and therefore likely to be well-informed. Some of the touching facts should be repeated here.
Early in 804 he was evidently failing. He prayed earnestly that he might die on the day on which the Holy Spirit came upon the Apostles in tongues of fire. All through Lent he was able to move about, night after night, to the several basilicas of saints which were included in the monastery of St. Martin, cleansing himself from his sins with much groaning. He kept the solemnity of the Lord’s Resurrection; but on the night of the Ascension he fell upon his couch, oppressed by languor even unto death, and unable to speak. The Annals of Pettau tell us that this was a paralytic stroke, and that it fell on Thursday, May 8, in the evening, after sunset. On the third day before his death he recovered the power of speech, and with a voice of exultation sang through his favourite antiphon, O clavis David, based upon Isaiah xxii. 22: “The key of the house of David I will lay upon his shoulder; so he shall open and none shall shut, he shall shut and none shall open.” Then he repeated a number of verses from several psalms: “Like as the hart desireth the waterbrooks.” “O how amiable are Thy dwellings, Thou Lord of hosts; blessed are they that dwell in Thy house.” “Unto Thee do I lift up mine eyes.” “One thing I have desired of the Lord.” “Unto Thee, O Lord, will I lift up my soul.” And others of like kind. On the day of Pentecost, matins having been said, at full dawn, just at the hour at which he was wont to enter the church for Mass, the holy soul of Alcuin was released from the flesh. He had prayed months before that he might die on Whit Sunday; on Whit Sunday he died.