Alcuin of York

by G. F. Browne

Inasmuch as the book is dedicated to Beornrad by the humble Levite (that is, deacon) Alcuin, we learn the very interesting fact that Alcuin, born in 735, came by hereditary right into possession of the property got together by Wilgils, whose son Willibrord was born in 657. The dates make it practically almost certain that Wilgils was born a pagan. Alcuin informs us that he only entered upon marriage because it was fated that he should be the father of one who should be for the profit of many peoples. If Willibrord was, as Alcuin’s words mean, the only child of Wilgils, we must suppose that Alcuin was the great-great-great-nephew of Wilgils, allowing twenty-five years for a generation in those short-lived times.

Alcuin three times insists on the lawful hereditary descent of the ownership and government of a monastery. A second case is in his preface to this Life of Willibrord. The body of the saint, he says, “rests in a certain small maritime cell, over which I, though unworthy, preside by God’s gift in lawful succession.” A third case occurs also in this Life. “There is,” he says, “in the city of Trèves a monastery[6] of nuns, which in the times of the blessed Willibrord was visited by a very severe plague. Many of the handmaids of the Lord were dying of it; others were lying on their beds enfeebled by a long attack; the rest were in a state of terror, as fearing the presence of death. Now there is near that same city the monastery of that holy man, which is called Aefternac,[7] in which up to this day the saint rests in the body, while his descendants are known to hold the monastery by legitimate paternal descent, and by the piety of most pious kings. When the women of the above-named monastery heard that he was coming to this monastery of his, they sent messengers begging him to hasten to them.” He went, as the blessed Peter went to raise Tabitha; celebrated a mass for the sick; blessed water, and had the houses sprinkled with it; and sent it to the sick sisters to drink. Needless to say, they all recovered.

In two of these cases, the two in which Alcuin speaks of his own property, he uses the word succession, “by legitimate succession” in the one case, legitima successione, “through legitimate successions” in the other case, per legitimas successiones, the former no doubt referring to the succession from his immediate predecessor, the latter referring to the four, or five, steps in the descent from Wilgils to Alcuin. In the case of the monastery of Epternach he defines it from the other end, “from the legitimate handing-down,” traditione ex legitima, the piety of the most pious kings being called in to confirm the handing-down.

It is remarkable that Alcuin should thus go out of his way to insist upon the lawfulness of the hereditary descent of monasteries, when he knew well that his venerated predecessor Bede, following the positive principle of the founder of Anglian monasticism in Northumbria, Benedict Biscop, attributed great evils to such hereditary succession to the property and governance of monasteries. We shall see something of this when we come to the consideration of Bede’s famous letter to Ecgbert, written in or about the year of Alcuin’s birth.

It is probably not necessary to suppose that Alcuin intends to draw a distinction between the constitutional practice in Northumbria and that in the lands ruled by Karl, though it is a marked fact that he mentions the intervention of kings in the latter case and twice does not mention it in the former. Bede says so much about the bribes—or fees—paid to Northumbrian kings and bishops for ratification of first grants by their signatures, that we can hardly suppose there were no fees to pay on succession. We cannot press such a point as this in Alcuin’s Life of Willibrord, for he tells Beornrad in his Preface that he has been busy with other things all day long, and has only been able to dictate this book in the retirement of the night; and he urges that the work should be mercifully judged because he has not had leisure to polish it. The grammar of this dictated work needs a certain amount of correction; Alcuin did not always remember with what construction he had begun a sentence. In these days of dictated letters he has the sympathy of many in this respect.

Alcuin’s young relative Willibrord was sent away to Ripon, as soon as he was weaned, to the charge of the brethren there. Alchfrith, the sub-King of Deira under his father Oswy, had driven out the Irish monks whom he had at one time patronised at Ripon, and had given their possessions to Wilfrith. Under the influence of that remarkable man the little child came, still, in Alcuin’s phrase, only an infantulus. His father’s purpose in sending him to Ripon was twofold. He was to be educated in religious study and sacred letters, in a place where his tender age might be strengthened by vigorous discipline, where he would see nothing that was not honourable, hear nothing that was not holy. At Ripon he remained till he was twenty years of age, and then he passed across to Ireland, to complete his studies under Ecgbert, the great creator of missionaries. With Ecgbert he spent twelve years.

Now in the thirty-two years covered by that short narration, from 657 to 689, events of the utmost moment had occurred in Northumbria, and had mainly centered round Ripon. At the most critical juncture of these events Bede becomes suddenly silent. Alfred’s Anglo-Saxon version of Bede goes further, and omits the bulk of what Bede does say. A few words from Alcuin would have been of priceless value, and he, writing in France to a Frank, could have no national or ecclesiastical reason for silence on points which Bede and Alfred let alone. The whole of the variance between Oswy and his son and sub-King Alchfrith, on which Bede is determinedly silent, the only hint of which is preserved to us solely by the noble runes on the Bewcastle Cross, erected in 670 and still standing, which bid men pray for the “high sin” of Alchfrith’s soul[8]; the whole secret of the variance between Oswy and Wilfrith; of Oswy’s refusal to recognize Wilfrith’s consecration at Paris—with unrivalled magnificence of pomp—to the episcopal See of York; all this, and more, is included in the first thirteen years of Willibrord’s life at Ripon, and Ripon was the pivot of it all. Alcuin has no scintilla of a hint of anything unusual, not even when he mentions Ecgbert, the Northumbrian teacher, dwelling in Ireland, of whom we know from another source that he fled from Northumbria to safety in Ireland when Alchfrith and Wilfrith lost their power, and Alchfrith presumably lost his life. It is quite possible that if the head of the Bewcastle Cross were ever found[9] the runes on it might tell us just what we want to know. The illustration of this portion of the Cross given in Gough’s edition of Camden’s Britannia[10] was drawn in 1607, at which time English scholars could not read runic letters, and naturally could not copy them with perfect accuracy. Still, it is evident that the runes stand for rikaes dryhtnaes, apparently meaning ‘of the kingdom’s lord’, the copyist having failed to notice the mark of modification in the rune for u, which turned it into y.

Turning now to Alcuin himself, a remarkable story is told in the Life, evidently and avowedly on his authority. When he was still a small boy, parvulus, he was regular in attendance at church at the canonical hours of the day, but very seldom appeared there at night. What the monastery was in which he passed his earliest years we are not told; but inasmuch as no break or change is mentioned between the story to which we now turn and the description of his more advanced studies, which certainly indicates the Archiepiscopal School of York, we must understand that York was the scene of this occurrence.

“When he was eleven years of age, it happened one night that he and a tonsured rustic, one of the menial monks, that is, were sleeping on separate pallets in one cell. The rustic did not like being alone in the night, and as none of the rustics could accommodate him, he had begged that one of the young students might be sent to sleep in the cell. The boy Albinus was sent, who was fonder of Vergil than of Psalms. At cock-crow the warden struck the bell for nocturns, and the brethren got up for the appointed service. This rustic, however, only turned round onto his other side, as careless of such matters, and went on snoring. At the moment when the invitatory psalm was as usual being sung, with the antiphon, the rustic’s cell was suddenly filled with horrid spirits, who surrounded his bed, and said to him, ‘You sleep well, brother.’ That roused him, and they asked, ‘Why are you snoring here by yourself, while the brethren are keeping watch in the church?’ He then received a useful flogging, so that by his amendment a warning might be given to all, and they might sing, ‘I will remember the years of the right hand of the Most Highest,’[11] while their eyes prevented the night watches. During the flogging of the rustic, the noble boy trembled lest the same should happen to him; and, as he related afterwards, cried from the very bottom of his heart, ‘O Lord Jesus, if Thou dost now deliver me from the cruel hands of these evil spirits, and I do not hereafter prove to be eager for the night watches of Thy Church and the ministry of praise, and if I any longer love Vergil more than the chanting of psalms, may I receive a flogging such as this. Only, I earnestly pray, deliver me, O Lord, now.’ That the lesson might be the more deeply impressed upon his mind, as soon as by the Lord’s command the flogging of the rustic ceased, the evil spirits cast their eyes about here and there, and saw the body and head of the boy most carefully wrapped up in the bedclothes, scarce taking breath. The leader of the spirits asked, ‘Who is this other asleep in the cell?’ ‘It is the boy Albinus,’ they told him, ‘hid away in his bed.’ When the boy found that he was discovered, he burst into showers of tears; and the more he had suppressed his cries before, the louder he cried now. They had all the will to deal unmercifully with him, but they had not the power. They discussed what they should do with him; but the sentence of the Lord compelled them to help him to keep the vow which he had made in his terror. Accordingly they said, imprudently for their purpose, but prudently for the purpose of the Lord, ‘We will not chastise this one with severe blows, because he is young; we will only punish him by cutting with a knife the hard part of his feet.’ They took the covering off his feet. Albinus instantly protected himself with the sign of the Cross. Then he chanted with all intentness the twelfth psalm, ‘In the Lord put I my trust’; and then the rustic, half dead, the boy going before him with agile step, fled into the basilica to the protection of the saints.”