“Let not your mind become soft in adulation of princes or slow in correction of those under you. Let not the flatteries of the world deceive you, the transient honours uplift, the favour of the people subvert you. Be a very firm pillar in the house of God, not a reed shaken with the wind. Be a candle set on a candlestick, not hid under a bushel. Be to all a way of salvation, not an artery of perdition, that by thee very many may be corrected and saved, and with thee may attain unto eternal life.
“Wherever you go, let the Pastoral treatise of the blessed Gregory go with you. Read it, re-read it, very often, and see in it yourself and your work, that you may always have before your eyes how you ought to live, how you ought to teach. It is a mirror of a bishop’s life, and a specific against all the wounds of the devil’s fraud.”
Ep. 173. A.D. 801.
Late in Alcuin’s life, he became very anxious about the conduct of this favourite pupil, Archbishop Eanbald II. Five years after the election he wrote two letters on the subject, one direct to the Archbishop, and one to two monks whom he sent to visit and advise him. To Eanbald he writes as to one in tribulation, the king Eardulf being set against him. “But”, he says, “I think that a part of your tribulation arises from yourself. It may be that you shelter the enemies of the king, or protect their possessions. If you suffer justly, why be troubled? If unjustly, why not call to mind the Saints? As the apostle James says[166]—‘Ye have heard of the tribulations of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord.’”
In this letter he goes no further into detail, remarking at its close that the Cuckoo will say more. The Cuckoo was one of his messengers, Cuculus, whom he calls in his playful way the bird of spring, the name being the Latin word for a cuckoo. To the Cuckoo, then, and the presbyter Calvin, he sends a letter of instructions.
Ep. 174. A.D. 801.
“I have heard of the tribulations of my dearest son Simeon [that is, Eanbald]. You are to exhort him to act faithfully and be not pusillanimous in trials. His predecessors suffered such; and not they only but all the Saints. John Baptist, we read, was slain for testifying to the truth. Let the archbishop see to it that there is in him no cause of trial other than his preaching the truth. I fear that he is suffering for his acquisitions of lands, or his support of the enemies of the king. Let what he has suffice him; let him not grasp at what belongs to others, which often turns out to be very dangerous.
“And why is there in his following such a large number of soldiers? He appears to keep them from pity for their condition. But it is harmful to the inhabitants of the monasteries which receive him and his. He has, as I hear, far more than his predecessors had. And his soldiers have under them far more of a lower class than is necessary. My master [Archbishop Albert] allowed none of his followers to have more than one such under him, except the rulers of his household, and they were only allowed two. It is imprudent charity to help a few, and they perhaps criminals, and to harm many and they good men. Let him not blame me for suggesting this, but amend his conduct.”
Ep. 149.
Alcuin had in the previous year, 800, written a letter to the Cuckoo’s colleague, Calvinus, in which he was very urgent that Eanbald II should have the best spiritual advice. He entreats Calvinus to warn him of perils, and to strengthen him in all good ways. In giving advice to the archbishop, he bids Calvinus “consider sagaciously time, place, and person; at what time, in what place, to what person, what should be said by the archbishop; all which can be best learned in the book of the blessed Gregory on the Pastoral Care”.