5. Now there was at the king’s court a certain [pg 66] mean and humble clerk, very deficient also in a knowledge of letters. The most pious Charles pitied his poverty, and, though everyone hated him and tried to drive him from the court, he could never be persuaded to turn him away or dismiss him therefrom. Now it happened that, on the eve of Saint Martin, the death of a certain bishop was announced to the emperor. He summoned one of his clerks, a man of high birth and great learning, and gave him the bishopric. The new bishop, thereupon, bursting with joy, invited to his house many of the palace attendants, and also received with great pomp many who came from the diocese to greet him: and to all he gave a superb banquet.
It happened then that, loaded with food, drenched with liquor and buried in wine, he failed to go to the evening service on that most solemn eve. Now it was the custom for the chief of the choir to assign the day before to everyone the responsory or responsories which they were to chant at night. The response: Lord, if still I am useful to Thy people,[57] had fallen to the lot of this man, who had the bishopric, as it were, in his grasp. Well, he was absent; and after the lesson a long pause followed, and each man urged his neighbour to take up the responsory, and each man answered that he was bound to chant only what had [pg 67] been assigned to him. At last the emperor said: “Come, one of you must chant it.” Then this mean clerk, strengthened by some divine inspiration, and encouraged by the command, took upon himself the responsory. The kindly king thinking that he would not be able to chant the whole of it ordered the others to help him and all began at once to chant. But from none of them could the poor creature learn the words, and, when the response was finished, he began to chant the Lord’s Prayer with the proper intonation. Then everyone wished to stop him; but the most wise Charles wanted to see where he would get to, and forbade anyone to interfere with him. He finished with Thy Kingdom come and the rest, willy-nilly, had to take it up and say Thy will be done.
When the early lauds were finished, the king went back to his palace, or rather to his bedroom, to warm himself and dress for the coming festal ceremony. He ordered that miserable servant and unpractised chanter to come into his presence. “Who told you to chant that responsory?” he asked. “Sire, you ordered someone to sing,” said the other. “Well,” said the king (the emperor was called king at first), “who told you to begin in that particular responsory?” Then the poor creature, inspired as it is thought by [pg 68] God, spoke as follows, in the fashion which inferiors then used to superiors, whether for honour, appeal, or flattery:—“Blessed lord, and blessing-bestowing king, as I could not find out the right verse from anyone, I said to myself that I should incur the anger of your majesty if I introduced anything strange. So I determined to intone something the latter part of which usually came at the end of the responsories.”
The kindly emperor smiled gently upon him and thus spoke before all his nobles. “That proud man, who neither feared nor honoured God or his king who had befriended him, enough to refrain one night from dissipation and be in his place to chant the response which I am told fell to his share, is by God’s decree and mine deprived of his bishopric. You shall take it, for God gives it you, and I allow it; and be sure to administer it according to canonical and apostolic rules.”
6. When another prince of the Church died, the emperor appointed a young man in his place. When the bishop designate came out of the palace to take his departure, his servants, with all the decorum that was due to a bishop, brought forward a horse and steps to mount it: but he took it amiss that they should treat him as though he were decrepit; and leaped from the ground on to the horse’s back with such violence that [pg 69] he nearly fell off on the other side. The king looked on from the steps of the palace and had him summoned and thus addressed him: “My good sir, you are nimble and quick, agile and headstrong. You know yourself that the calm of our empire is disturbed on all sides by the tempests of many wars. Wherefore I want a priest like you at my court. Remain therefore as an associate in my labours as long as you can mount your horse with such agility.”
7. While I was speaking about the arrangement of the responses I forgot to speak about the rules for reading and I must devote a few words to that subject here. In the palace of the most learned Charles there was no one to apportion to each reader the passages that were to be read; no one put a seal at the end of the passage or made ever such a little mark with his finger-nail. But all had to make themselves so well acquainted with the passage, which was set down for reading, that if they were suddenly called on to read they could perform their duty without incurring his censure. He indicated whom he wished to read by pointing his finger or his staff, or by sending some one of those who were sitting close by him to those at a distance. He marked the end of the reading by a guttural sound. And all watched so intently for this mark that whether it came at the end of a sentence [pg 70] or in the middle of a clause or a sub-clause, none dared go on for an instant, however strange the beginning or the end might seem. And thus it came to pass that all in the palace were excellent readers, even if they did not understand what they read. No foreigner and no celebrity dared enter his choir unless he could read and chant.
8. When Charles one day came in his journeyings to a certain palace, a certain clerk from among the wandering monks entered the choir and being completely ignorant of these rules was soon forced to remain stupid and silent among the singers. Thereupon the choirmaster raised his wand and threatened to strike him unless he went on singing. Then the poor clerk, not knowing what to do or where to turn, and not daring to go out, twisted his neck into the shape of a bow and with open mouth and distended cheeks did his utmost to imitate the appearance of a singer. All the rest could not restrain their laughter, but the most valiant emperor, whose mind was never shaken from its firm base even by great events, seemed not to notice his mockery of singing and waited in due order until the end of the mass. But then he called the poor wretch before him and pitying his struggles and his anxiety soothed his fears with these words:—“Many thanks, good clerk, for your singing and your [pg 71] efforts.” Then he ordered a pound of silver to be given him to relieve his poverty.
9. But I must not seem to forget or to neglect Alcuin; and will therefore make this true statement about his energy and his deserts: all his pupils without exception distinguished themselves by becoming either holy abbots or bishops. My master Grimald[58] studied the literal arts under him, first in Gaul and then in Italy. But those who are learned in these matters may charge me with falsehood for saying “all his pupils without exception”; when the fact is that there were in his schools two young men, sons of a miller in the service of the monastery of Saint Columban, who did not seem fit and proper persons for promotion to the command of bishoprics or monasteries; but even these men were, by the influence probably of their teacher, advanced one after the other to the office of minister in the monastery of Bobbio, in which they displayed the greatest energy.
So the most glorious Charles saw the study of letters flourishing throughout his whole realm, but still he was grieved to find that it did not reach the ripeness of the earlier fathers; and so, after superhuman labours, he broke out one day with this expression of his sorrow: “Would that I had twelve clerks so learned in all wisdom and so perfectly trained [pg 72] as were Jerome and Augustine.” Then the learned Alcuin, feeling himself ignorant indeed in comparison with these great names, rose to a height of daring, that no man else attained to in the presence of the terrible Charles, and said, with deep indignation in his mind but none in his countenance, “The Maker of heaven and earth has not many like to those men and do you expect to have twelve?”
10. Here I must report something which the men of our time will find it difficult to believe; for I myself who write it could hardly believe it, so great is the difference between our method of chanting and the Roman, were it not that we must trust rather the accuracy of our fathers than the false suggestions of modern sloth. Well then, Charles, that never-wearied lover of the service of God, when he could congratulate himself that all possible progress had been made in the knowledge of letters, was grieved to observe how widely the different provinces—nay, not the provinces only but districts and cities—differed in the praise of God, that is to say in their method of chanting. He therefore asked of Pope Stephen[59] of blessed memory—the same who, after Hilderich King of the Franks had been deposed and tonsured, had anointed Charles to be ruler of the kingdom after the ancestral custom of the people—he asked [pg 73] of Pope Stephen, I say, that he should provide him with twelve clerks deeply learned in divine song. The Pope yielded assent to his virtuous wish and his divinely inspired design and sent to him in Frankland from the apostolic see clerks skilled in divine song, and twelve in number, according to the number of the twelve apostles.