Alcuin of York

by G. F. Browne

Ep. 62.

“I cannot in bodily presence address by word of mouth your most sweet affection, because we live so far apart. I therefore do by the ministry of a letter that which is denied to my tongue. With all the power of my heart, I desire that you go forward in every good thing, most dear mother, and be made worthy to be counted in the number of them of whom, in the gospel, our Lord Jesus Christ made answer, ‘Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my mother and my brother.’[150] How ‘mother,’ unless He is daily generated by holy love in the bowels of a perfect heart? See what a Son a pious mother can have—that same God, King, Redeemer, in all tribulations Consoler.

“Many are the tribulations of the just, but more are the consolations of Christ. By what event of secular misery should one be beaten who possesses in his breast the source of all consolation, that is, Christ indwelling. Nay, rather should such an one rejoice in tribulations, because of the hope of eternal beatitude, as the Apostle says, ‘By much tribulation we must enter into the kingdom of God,’ and, ‘The Lord chasteneth every son whom He receiveth’; and of the Apostles He saith, ‘They departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for His name.’

“Let your love know that your spiritual Son the Lord Jesus is not mortal. He lives, He lives, on the right hand of God He lives and reigns.

“Be not broken down by the death of your son after the flesh, the departure of his body, but labour every hour, every moment, that his soul may live in happiness with Christ. Let the hope of His goodness be your consolation, for many are the mercies of God. He has left thee thy son’s survivor that through thy intercessions and alms He may have mercy on him too. It may be that he died in his sins, but in the divine pity it may be wrought that he live; for the robber who in his wickedness hanged with Christ was saved in the mercy of Christ. Mourn not for him whom you can not recall. If he is with God, mourn him not as lost, but be glad that he has gone before you into rest. If there are two friends, the death of the first to die is happier than the death of the other, for he has one to intercede for him daily with brotherly love, and to wash with tears the errors of his earlier life. And doubt not that the care of pious solicitude which you have for his soul is profitable. It profits thee and him. Thee, that thou dost it in faith and love; him, that either his pain is lightened or his bliss is increased. Great and inestimable is the pity of our Lord Jesus Christ, who would have all men be saved and none perish.”

Our next episode takes us back to York, where one of Alcuin’s own pupils was elected to the archbishopric. It may be well to mention here, and to dispose of, a curious question which has been raised in connexion with Alcuin’s studies in the time of his youth, pursued as we believe only at York.

Ep. 14. A.D. 790.

Alcuin is claimed by the Irish as one of the many English youths who were brought up in Irish monasteries, and they name Clonmacnoise as the place of study. Dr. John Healy, the learned Roman Bishop of Clonfert, writes thus[151]:—“There is fortunately a letter of his still preserved, which shows quite clearly that he was a student of Clonmacnoise, and a pupil of Colgu, and which also exhibits the affectionate veneration that he retained through life for his Alma Mater at Clonmacnoise.” But the letter does not bear that interpretation, and, indeed, the learned bishop has to read Hibernia instead of Britannia in the only place where the island of Colgu’s home is named, or to understand an implied contrast between Britain and Ireland which would be too obscure in a perfectly simple matter. “I have sent to your love”, Alcuin says, “some oil, which now scarcely exists in Britain, that you may supply it where the bishops need it, for the furtherance of the honour of God.[152] I have sent also to the brethren, of the alms of King Karl[153]—I beseech you, pray for him—fifty sicles[154], and of my own alms fifty sicles; to the brethren of Baldhuninga to the south, thirty sicles of the alms of the king and thirty of my own alms, and twenty sicles of the alms of the father of the family of Areida and twenty of my own alms; and to each of the anchorites three sicles of pure gold, that they may pray for me and for the lord King Charles.”

There is nothing here that points to Ireland except the name of the person to whom the letter is addressed, Colcu, whom Alcuin speaks of as “the blessed master and pious father”. The name Baldhuninga is very Northumbrian, the home of the family of Baldhun. The mention of anchorites has been supposed to look like Ireland, but we must remember that Alcuin himself, in singing the praises of the saints of the Church of York, tells of the life of only two persons of his own time other than kings and archbishops, and they were anchorites.[155] The gift of money from the father-of-the-family of Areida clearly comes from some one in Gaul who is very closely associated with Alcuin himself. It so happens that the Abbey of Tours had a small cell dedicated to St. Aredius, and the suggestion may be hazarded that the little family of monks there sent through their prior the twenty sicles which Alcuin doubled. It is evident that Colcu had conferred benefits on those in whom Alcuin was specially interested, and we may suppose that on some visit to Alcuin he had delivered a course of lectures by which the monks of St. Aredius had profited. He was probably a professor (his actual title was lector, a name still kept up for a public lecturer at the University of Cambridge) at the School of York. There was a famous Reader in Theology of the same name, or as much the same as any one can expect in early Erse, Colgan or Colgu, who lived and lectured at Clonmacnoise and died there in 794, four years after Alcuin wrote this letter at the beginning of the year 790. It is of course tempting to suppose that this famous Irishman, the first Ferlegind or Lector recorded in the Irish Annals, was the Colcu to whom Alcuin wrote, the Colcu of whom Alcuin in a letter written at the end of this same year 790 said that he was with him and was well. That letter was addressed to one of Alcuin’s pupils, Joseph, whose master the letter says Colcu had been. On the whole, we must take it that our Colcu was too closely associated with Alcuin’s teaching and with Northumbria to be the Colgu of whom Bishop Healy says that though he was a Munster-man by birth he seems to have lived and died at Clonmacnoise. But it is another puzzling coincidence that Simeon of Durham records the death of Colcu, evidently as of one who had worked in the parts of which he was commissioned to write, in the year of the death of Colgu of Clonmacnoise, 794: “Colcu, presbyter and lector, migrated from this light to the Lord.”

Ep. 217. A.D. 792-804.