Alcuin could be exceedingly outspoken in his letters, as we have seen. But he could also be very cautious, even—perhaps we should say especially—in a matter on which he felt deeply. In a letter to the Irish teacher Colcu he remarks that he did not know what he might have to do next. The reason was that something of a dissension, diabolically inflamed, had arisen between Karl and Offa, the Mercian king, and had gone so far that each forbade entry to the other’s merchants. “Some tell me,” he says, “that I am to be sent to those parts to make peace.”
The reason for the quarrel was a curious one. Karl had proposed that his son Charles should marry one of Offa’s daughters. Offa had made a supplementary proposal that his son Ecgfrith should marry Karl’s daughter Bertha. This is said to have been considered presumptuous by Karl, and he showed his annoyance by breaking off the friendly relations which had existed between them.
It would appear that Alcuin’s attitude was suspected by the Mercian king to be unfavourable to the English view of the quarrel, and the presbyter Beornwin, to whom Alcuin had written a letter not known to have survived, was set to write to him a fishing letter, in which it would seem that he suggested unfriendliness on Alcuin’s part. Alcuin’s reply is a non-committal document.
Ep. 15. A.D. 790.
“I have received the sweet letters of your love...
“Would that I were worthy to preach peace, not to sow discord; to carry the standard of Christ, not the arms of the devil. I should never have written to you if I had been unwilling to be at peace with you and to remain firm as we began in Christ.
“Of a truth I have never been unfaithful to King Offa, or to the Anglian nation. As to the utmost of my power I shall faithfully keep the friends whom God has given me in France, so I shall those whom I have left in my own country....
“As time or opportunity affords, my very dear brother, urge ever the will of God upon all persons: on the king, persuasively; on the bishops, with due honour; on the chief men, with confidence; on all, with truth. It is ours to sow; it is God’s to fructify.
“And let no suspicion of any dissension between us remain. Let us not be of those of whom it is said: I am not come to send peace but a sword. Let us be of those to whom it is said: My peace I give unto you, My peace I leave with you.
“I have written a very short letter, for a few words to a wise man suffice.”