[70] Thorpe II. 414.
[71] Sid. Apol. Ep. iv. 3.
[72] Hist. Litt. t. iii. p. 22.
[73] Guizot, Hist. de Civil. vol. ii. lect. 22.
[74] Guizot, Hist. de Civil. vol. ii. lect. 22.
[75] According to Durandus, the circumstances under which Paul the Deacon wrote this hymn were as follows. Having to sing the blessing of the Paschal candle on Holy Saturday, he unfortunately lost his voice from hoarseness, and to recover it, invoked the aid of St. John Baptist, in whose honour he composed this hymn, in which he solicits him to restore him the use of his voice, and reminds him how at his nativity he had procured a like grace for his father Zachary. This anecdote explains the allusion in the opening lines. To avoid the tiresome confusion arising from the similarity of names, I will remind the reader that there were two persons designated as Paul the Deacon; one the contemporary of St. Gregory, and the other his historian; and moreover that he had another historian in the person of John the Deacon, who lived in the ninth century.
[76] The identical copy is still preserved in the Library of Sta. Maria in Vallicella at Rome, and bears on its fly-leaf the following inscription, which many suppose to be the autograph of Alcuin:—
Pro me quisque legas versus, orare memento.
Alcuine dicor; tu, sine fine, vale.
A folio Bible now in the British Museum, and formerly the property of M. de Speyer Passavant, has also its claims to be considered the original copy of Alcuin, though commonly held to have been written in the reign of Charles the Bald.