Alcuin of York

by G. F. Browne

A ridiculous document was produced by the Popes, probably about the middle of this eighth century, with which we are dealing. It was called the Imperial Edict of Donation. Its alleged author was Constantine the Great. It professed to give to Silvester, the Bishop of Rome in Constantine’s time, and to his successors, the Imperial Palace (that is, the Lateran) and the City of Rome; all the provinces, districts, and cities of the whole of Italy; and, in the Latin copy of the forgery, all islands. The islands are absent from the Greek copy of the forgery. It was on the strength of this forged donation of islands that a later Hadrian, the one English Pope, Hadrian IV, professed to be the owner of Ireland, and gave it to our king Henry II just four centuries after the time with which we are dealing. Muratori was of opinion that this audacious forgery was concocted between 755 and 766, that is, when Alcuin was from twenty to thirty years of age, and while Offa was king of Mercia. In 774, when Karl had conquered the Lombards, he went to Rome, as we have seen; ratified the donation of his father Pepin, of which we must next speak, and laid the deed of donation on the altar or on the tomb of St. Peter in the ancient basilica of St. Peter. The original deed of Karl’s donation has, so far as is known, long since perished; its terms are at best only vaguely known. It is said to have comprehended the whole of Italy, the exarchate of Ravenna, from Istria to the frontiers of Naples, and the island of Corsica. Karl, then, ratified the forged Donation of Constantine, at that time a quite recent forgery. The whole story, however, is very vague, and historians differ considerably in the deductions which they draw from the inadequate records. They differ almost more widely as to the date at which the document was first brought forward, the dates ranging from 760 to 1105. Of the fact of the forgery there is no question; it cannot be denied, and so far as I know no one of the Romans now is bold enough to deny that it is a forgery. There is one point in the forgery which has an important bearing on a very important question, namely, the true basis of the reputation of the city of Rome as the chief ecclesiastical centre of the Church of the West. Constantine is made to declare, in this forged donation, that it was by the merits of St. Peter and St. Paul that he emerged from the font at baptism cleansed of his sins. More than that, he is made to declare that he makes this enormous donation to the blessed chiefs of the Apostles, Peter and Paul, and through them to Silvester, the Bishop of Rome. Either, then, at the time of the forgery it was completely recognized as a fact that the Popes claimed their sovereignty on the twin authority, in the twin name, by the twin princeship, of Peter and Paul; or it was completely recognized at the time of the forgery that in the earliest times, and notably in the time of Constantine the Great, whose baptism took place in the year 337, Rome did base its claims to pre-eminence on its possession of the relics of St. Peter and St. Paul, and on the twin supremacy of those two princes of the Apostles, and, therefore, that it might stand the test of the touchstone of history, it was essential to use the twin names of Peter and Paul; if it had been Peter alone, it would have been detected as a forgery. See [Appendix D].

When we come to the document which was produced for the purpose of influencing Pepin, Karl’s father, we pass out of the atmosphere of vagueness, and find ourselves face to face with a scandalous, an impious, fact. Pope Stephen II[178], who held the Papacy from 752 to 757, was reduced to extremities by the arms of the Lombard kings of North Italy. He went in person to Pepin, king of the Franks, to entreat him to come over and succour the city of Rome and the domain of St. Peter. To show how difficult it is to be sure about facts of history when the chroniclers have a partisan bias, it may be mentioned that the Italian chronicler states that Pepin went to meet Stephen, and on meeting him dismounted from his horse, prostrated himself on the ground before the Pope, and then walked to the royal residence by the side of the Pope’s palfrey. The Frankish chroniclers say that the Pope and his clergy, with ashes on their heads and sackcloth on their bodies, prostrated themselves as suppliants at the feet of Pepin, and would not rise till he had promised his aid against the Lombards.

The king lodged Stephen in the monastery of St. Denys for the winter, and well on into the next summer. There Stephen was attacked by an illness so dangerous that his recovery was regarded as a miracle, due to the intercessions of St. Dionys, St. Peter, and St. Paul; where again we notice the twinship of St. Peter and St. Paul as regards the protection of the Pope, with the local saint added. After the return of the Pope to Rome, he was besieged by the Lombard king, who vowed not to leave him a scrap of territory the size of the palm of his hand. The Pope sent to Pepin a letter of entreaty and threat. The king, he said, hazarded eternal condemnation. He had vowed to secure to St. Peter the vast donation to which reference has been made, and St. Peter had promised to him eternal life. If the king was not faithful to his word, the Saint kept firmly the donation, as it were the sign manual of the king, and this he would produce against him at the day of judgement.[179] The envoys came late in the year, and the king could not conduct an army into Italy in the winter. In February, 755, or a little earlier, Stephen wrote another letter, with a literally awe-full account of the horrors of the siege, which had then lasted fifty-five days. He conjured Pepin to come and help, “by God and his holy Mother, by the powers of the heavens, by the apostles Peter and Paul, and by the last day.” The collocation and the order of these adjurations is significant. Still Pepin did not come. The Pope then resorted to the blasphemous proceeding which it has seemed necessary to describe. We may suppose that the Pope’s metaphorical statement—that St. Peter had Pepin’s sign manual to a document which would be produced against him at the day of judgement—had suggested to the harassed mind of the Pope the idea that an immediate letter from St. Peter himself would be more effective than the threat to produce signatures at the day of judgement; and that if the letter was addressed to the Franks at large, and not as the former letter to Pepin and his sons, the whole nation would be terrified into prompt action. However that may have been, a letter[180] was written with the heading: “Peter, called to be an Apostle by Jesus Christ the Son of the living God ... and [after a long paragraph] Stephen the prelate of the catholic and apostolic Roman Church, ... to the most excellent kings Pepin, Charles, and Carloman, with all the bishops, abbats, priests, and all monks; all judges, dukes, counts, military officers, and the whole people of the Franks.” The letter begins with the words “Ego Petrus Apostolus”, I, Peter the Apostle. In it St. Peter adjures those whom he addresses to rescue Rome from the Lombards, making a special appeal that his own body, which suffered torture for the Lord Jesus Christ, may be preserved from desecration. “With me,” he proceeds, “the Mother of God likewise adjures you, and admonishes and commands you, she as well as the thrones and dominions and all the host of heaven, to save the beloved city of Rome from the detested Lombards. If ye hasten, I, Peter the Apostle, promise you my protection in this life and the next; I will prepare for you the most glorious mansions in heaven; I will bestow upon you the everlasting joys of paradise. Make common cause with my people of Rome, and I will grant whatsoever ye may pray for. I conjure you not to yield up this city to be lacerated and tormented by the Lombards, lest your own souls be lacerated and tormented in hell with the devil and his pestilential angels. Of all nations under heaven, the Franks are highest in the esteem of St. Peter; to me you owe all your victories. Obey, and obey speedily, and, by my suffrage, our Lord Jesus Christ will give you in this life length of days, security, victory; in the life to come, will multiply His blessings upon you, among His saints and angels.” That little summary is only about a twelfth part of the length of the letter itself.

The letter brought Pepin with a great host; he overcame the Lombard king; and he bestowed on the Pope as a donation, by right—it would appear—of conquest, not only what are called the States of the Church, but also—and that in the teeth of the ambassador of Constantine Copronymus, the Emperor of Constantinople, who demanded its restoration to the Eastern Empire—the whole exarchate of Ravenna. Thus it was that the Pope became a temporal sovereign over vast portions of Italy. St. Peter’s letter was probably the most important letter never written.

CHAPTER XII

Alcuin retires to the Abbey and School of Tours.—Sends to York for more advanced books.—Begs for old wine from Orleans.—Karl calls Tours a smoky place.—Fees charged to the students.—History and remains of the Abbey Church of St. Martin.—The tombs of St. Martin and six other Saints.—The Public Library of Tours.—A famous Book of the Gospels.—St. Martin’s secularised.—Martinensian bishops.

As time went on, Alcuin felt that he must withdraw from the varied and heavy work which he was accustomed to do at the court, whether at Aachen or elsewhere, and must retire to work quietly at one of his abbeys. He obtained the king’s leave[181]. In 796 he wrote to inform Karl that he had, in accordance with the king’s wish, opened the school at Tours; that he must send to York for books; and that he hoped the king would order the palace youths to continue to attend the palace school which he had now left.

Ep. 78. A.D. 796.

“I, your Flaccus, in accordance with your desire and good pleasure, am busy with ministering, under the roof of the holy Martin, to some the honey[182] of the holy Scriptures; others I seek to inebriate with the old wine of ancient disciplines; others I shall begin to nourish with the apples of grammatical subtlety; some I purpose to illumine with the order of the stars, as the painter nobly adorns the roof of the house of God. I become very many things to very many men, that I may educate very many to the profit of the holy Church of God and the honour of your imperial realm, that no grace of Almighty God in me be unemployed, and no part of thy bounty be without fruit.