“But I, your poor servant, need some of the more abstruse books of scholastic learning which I had in my own land by the devoted labour of my master[183], and to some extent of myself. I say this to your excellency that you may be pleased to allow me to send some of our young men to pick out what I need, and bring to France the flowers of Britain; that not in York only there may be a garden enclosed[184], but in Tours also the scions of paradise may bear fruit; that the south wind may come and blow through the gardens by the river Loire, and the spices thereof may flow out. I take as a parable of the acquisition of wisdom the exhortation of Isaiah[185], ‘Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money[186] and without price.’ Your most noble mind knows well that there is nothing loftier that can be acquired for a happy life, nothing more joyous as an exercise, nothing stronger against vices, nothing more laudable in all dignity. As the philosophers have told us, there is nothing more necessary for the ruling of a people, no better guide of the life to the very best principles, than the glory of wisdom, the praise of discipline, the efficacy of learning. To the earnest study and daily exercise of wisdom, exhort, O king, the youths of your excellency’s palace, that they may so advance while in the bloom of youth that they may be held worthy to bring to honour their grey hairs, and by wisdom may attain to perpetual happiness. To sow the seeds of wisdom in these parts, I, so far as my poor intellect enables me, shall not be found slack. In the morning of life, in the vigour of study, I sowed in Britain; now, my blood running cold, as in the evening of life, I cease not to sow in France. To me, shattered in body, an expression of the holy Jerome, in his letter to Nepotianus, is a solace: ‘Almost all the powers of the body are changed in old men. Wisdom alone continues to increase; all the rest decrease.’ And a little further on he says, ‘The old age of those that have trained their youth in honourable arts, and have meditated in the law of God day and night, grows more learned with age, more expert with use, more wise with the process of time; it gathers the very sweetest fruits of former studies.’”
The brethren of St. Martin of Tours had not a high character for propriety of conduct. There are many evidences of this. It is interesting to know that the earliest letter of Alcuin to which we can reasonably assign a date is a letter appealing for a lapsed brother of this same abbey of St. Martin of Tours, over which Alcuin was now called to preside as an old man. The abbat to whom Alcuin addressed this letter was Wulfhard, of whom the life of Hadrian I, as printed by Muratori (iii. 1, 184, Rer. Ital. Script.), states that he was sent along with Albinus, that is, Alcuin, to Hadrian, by Karl in 773.[187] The letter was probably written in 774.
Ep. 1. A.D. 774.
“To the pious father Uulfhard the abbat Albinus the humble levite wishes health.
“I found this poor lamb wandering through the rough places of neglect. Moved by pity, I brought him by sedulous admonition to the home of our discipline, binding up his wounds, pouring in wine and oil. To your piety, gentlest of fathers, I send him back, beseeching you to receive him for the love of Him who, amid the joy of the angels, has brought back on His own shoulders into the home of His delights all of us, who were wandering among the precipices of sins. Do not in austerity repel from thee one whom Christ has for pity gathered back to Himself, nay, has met penitent, has run to and embraced, has brought back to the house of feasting. And if any envious man advise you to reject him, let such an one fear lest he himself be rejected by Him who has said, ‘With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.’... And though he have sinned ten times, have not we sinned an hundred times; and though he owe an hundred pence, do we not owe ten thousand talents?...”
Alcuin had a high regard for the wines of the Loire, and he particularly liked them old. The best wine of that time would appear to have been grown about the city of Orleans, and to have been kept under the charge of the Bishop of Orleans as the chief owner of the terraced lands on which the vines grew.[188] Here is a frolicsome letter about a present of wine from Orleans. It is full of quotations from the Song of Songs applied to local conditions, for the most part rather obscure. When he comes to his concluding words, there is no obscurity in his request that if wine is coming, good old wine may be sent.
Ep. 153. A.D. 796-800.
“To Theodulf, bishop of Orleans.
“To the great pontiff and father of vineyards, Teodulf[189], Albinus sends greeting.
“We read in the Chronicles[190] that in the time of David, the king most loved of God, Zabdi was over the wine-cellars of the vineyards. Now, by the mercy of God, a second David [Karl] rules over a better people, and under him a nobler Zabdi [Theodulf] is over the wine-cellars of the vineyards. The king has brought him into the house of wine and set over him the banner of love, that students may stay him with flowers and fill him full of the apples of them that languish with love,[191] that is, love of that which maketh glad the heart of man.