Alcuin of York

by G. F. Browne

Summary of Alcuin’s work in France.—Adoptionism, Alcuin’s seven books against Felix and three against Elipandus.—Alcuin’s advice that a treatise of Felix be sent to the Pope and three others.—Alcuin’s name dragged into the controversy on Transubstantiation.—Image-worship.—The four Libri Carolini and the Council of Frankfurt.—The bearing of the Libri Carolini on the doctrine of Transubstantiation.

Having seen something in detail of the earnestness and faithfulness of Alcuin’s exhortations to the kings and bishops of his native land of England, and having learned from them to how sad a state things had fallen, especially in Northumbria once the nursery of saints, we must now turn to Alcuin’s work on the continent of Europe.

It may be well to state again the leading dates.

Ethelbert, or Albert, master of the School of York and afterwards archbishop, took Alcuin with him as a tonsured youth on one of his visits to France and Rome, and on that occasion he appears to have studied for a short time in French monasteries. The first letter of his that has come down to us is a letter to the abbat of St. Martin at Tours, where he was destined to spend the latest years of his life, about a fugitive monk whom he had rescued; it was written some eight years before he first settled in France. On his return from this journey he was ordained deacon by Albert, probably in 768, when he would be about thirty-five years of age. He was sent again to Italy by Albert, on a mission to Karl, the king of the Franks, and it would appear that Karl noticed him favourably. All this time he was working hard as master of the School of York. In 780 the new archbishop of York sent him late in the year to Rome for the pallium, and on his way back he again met Karl, at Parma, and Karl asked him to settle in France. He obtained leave of absence from York, and joined Karl in 782. His definite work was to govern the school at which the youths at the court of Karl, including Karl’s own sons, were taught; the king himself often being present as a learner. He then planned for Karl a number of schools in various parts of the country, all based on the model of the Palace school, which he had organized on the plan of the School of York. Then he took in hand the correction of the service-books, which had become seriously debased by ignorant copyists; his liturgical work produced such an effect that the service-books of the Middle Ages owed more to Gallican than to Roman influences. Tradition tells us that Alcuin himself wrote the Office for Trinity Sunday, at that time not fixed as now to a particular day. He found that the Holy Scriptures themselves had become debased by the same process of ignorant copying of manuscripts, and in his later years he was set by Karl to take seriously in hand the revision of the Scriptures. From 790 to 792 he had lived in Northumbria; but the aggression of heresy in Karl’s dominions had called him away again, and he had never returned. He was about fifty-eight years old when he finally left England, and he died in 804, at the age of sixty-nine.

The tendency towards attempting to define and explain the method in which Almighty power conducts its operations was a marked tendency of Alcuin’s time. He combated it, on sound principles. The whole matter, for example, of the union of the two natures in Christ, he reminded his readers, was supernatural; therefore, it could not be fitly measured by human analogies. To deny the perfect union of the two perfect natures in one Person was to impugn the Divine omnipotence; to claim to understand and to define the method and manner of the union was to impugn the infiniteness of the mystery.

It was to this tendency to inquire into and seek to fathom divine mysteries that the controversy about transubstantiation was due. That controversy came into being a full generation after the death of Alcuin; and one of the most prominent opponents of any approach to a materialistic view of the manner of the Real Presence was a pupil of Alcuin’s, Rabanus Maurus, Archbishop of Mainz.

The heresy which reached such dimensions as to call Alcuin back from England to France was the heresy known as Adoptionism. It became prominent in the same manner, from the same tendency to pry into the divine secrets of operation, as did the theory of transubstantiation. The point was, how exactly did the human nature of the Son come into union with the divine nature? The answer given by Felix, Bishop of Urgel in Catalonia, was this—by adoption. Hence he and his followers were called Adoptionists.

The term Adoption had been applied to the Incarnation by some early Fathers, and indeed in the Spanish Liturgy, which Felix naturally used. It was used probably as equivalent to assumption—He took upon Him—that is, assumed—our flesh. This use of the word Adoption in their liturgy led Felix and his followers to take a large step beyond the equivalence to assumption. They carried it to its full meaning in ordinary affairs, and declared that the divine nature of the Second Person of the Trinity adopted the human nature into sonship, as Son. The so-called Athanasian Creed has in our English form, “by taking the manhood into God.” In the original Latin the word “assumption” is used, assumptione humanitatis in Deum.[167]

Catalonia was at that time a part of Karl’s dominions, and therefore he could operate upon Felix. But Elipandus, who supported Felix, was bishop of Toledo and primate of Spain under the Mohammedan dominion, and thus was beyond the reach of Karl. He was a man who, in his letters at least, used very abusive language.