Alcuin of York

by G. F. Browne

Alcuin had strong opinions as to the best manner of singing the services. In a letter to Eanbald II, he writes thus, for the benefit of the Church of York:—“Let the clergy chant with moderated voice, striving to please God rather than men. An immoderate exaltation of voice is a sign of boastfulness. And let them not be above learning the Roman Orders of Service, that they may have eternal benediction from the blessed Peter, chief of the Apostles, whom Our Lord Jesus Christ made the head of His elect flock.”

Alcuin was versed in secular music also. We learn from Ep. 100 that Karl had asked him to write peaceful and soothing songs, both words and music, for soldiers to sing when engaged in the horrors of war, and that he complied with the request.

We have some very interesting evidences of the borrowing of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts for use in France, and of the influence of Anglo-Saxon forms on French services. There are two Anglo-Saxon forms for the coronation of a king. One of these is found in the Pontifical of Ecgbert, the Bishop and later the Archbishop of York, to which a date of about 745 may be given. It is merely the supplement to the Mass on the occasion of a coronation, and accordingly it does not give the details of the ceremony. The other is a later form, and it gives at length the details of the ceremony, one of the longest prayers describing the king as raised to the royal throne of the Angles and Saxons. But, curiously enough, we learn the most interesting parts of the ceremony of crowning an Anglo-Saxon king, not from this manuscript, but from three manuscripts of the form for the coronation of a king of the French. The first of these to be mentioned is a manuscript form of an Abbat of Corbie. In it we find the prayer for “This thy servant whom with suppliant devotion we elect equally to the kingdom of the whole of Albion, that is to say, of the Franks ... That he may nourish and teach the Church of the whole of Albion, with the peoples committed to his charge”. Here it would appear that a marginal note had been added to the Anglo-Saxon form at the first mention of “Albion”, “that is to say, of the Franks,” and has afterwards been incorporated in one place and not in the other. The “elect equally” indicates that the form was used for an Anglo-Saxon king who claimed to be king of the whole land, while yet the old division into three main nations was fresh in mind.[235] It is a further evidence in favour of this being an Anglo-Saxon form, that the only saint mentioned besides the Blessed Virgin and St. Peter is “Holy Gregory, Apostolic of the Angles”. In the preparation of the Sens Order, to be mentioned later, this flaw had been discovered, and St. Denys and St. Remy put in the place of St. Gregory.

In a manuscript in the National Library of Paris, we have a second Order for the Coronation of a King of the Franks, which is indubitably an Anglo-Saxon Order. The following phrases occur: “This thy servant whom with suppliant devotion we elect equally ... That the sceptre desert not the royal throne, that is to say, of the Saxons, Mercians, and Northumbrians (Nordanchimbrorum) ... That supported by the due subjection of both of these peoples...”

In a third Order for the Coronation of French Kings, from the Pontifical of the illustrious Church of Sens, we find the prayer “that the sceptre desert not the royal throne, that is to say, of the Saxons, Mercians, and Northumbrians (Nordan Cymbrorum)”, and “that the king, supported by the due subjection of both these peoples....”

It may be added that the French Benedictional of Archbishop Robert, now at Rouen, has the form “Angles and Saxons”. So late as 1364 Charles V of France was crowned with a form which named the throne as that of the Saxons, Mercians, and Northchimbrians; while at the same time the peers of Guienne swore to protect him against the king of England, his people, and allies.[236]

CHAPTER XVI

Examples of Alcuin’s style in his letters, allusive, jocose, playful.—The perils of the Alps.—The vision of Drithelme.—Letters to Arno.—Bacchus and Cupid.

A letter written by Alcuin in September, 799, may be taken as an extreme example of his allusive style. A good deal of interpretation is needed before the letter can be understood; it is a collection of riddles.