Here is a peep behind the scenes in connexion with the morals of a Pope, and an example of wisdom in burning letters that ought not to see the light. Alcuin is writing to Arno.
Ep. 127. A.D. 799.
“You were the third cause of my [proposed] journey. The first was that of the churches of Christ. The second was that of the lord king, because mourning in tears I left him; my desire being to inscribe on my soul a perpetual memory of the joy of his presence. The third was the longing to see the most sweet face of your dearness. But I am prevented from accomplishing that which I have strongly wished to accomplish. It will come to pass through your holy prayers, if it do but please Him without whom nothing good can be done.
“Your former letter[251], which reached us under your name, contained some complaints about the manner of life of the apostolic[252] and about the danger you were in when with him by reason of the Romans. Your clerk Baldric, as I suppose, brought it, bringing also a cope stitched together in the Roman fashion, a vestment of linen and wool. As I did not wish that your letter should fall into other hands, Candidus alone read it with me; and then I put it in the fire, lest any scandal should arise through carelessness on the part of the keeper of my papers....
“I would gladly write more, but the runner has your orders to get back quickly.”
Nothing could exceed the affectionateness of Alcuin’s letters to Arno, the Archbishop of Salzburg, to whose care in preserving the letters addressed to him we owe so much. Arno’s name recalled to Alcuin’s mind the early days when he saw hovering in the Yorkshire skies the great eagles that gave their Anglian name of earn (arn) to Arncliffe and other places. He always thought of him as the Arn, addressed him as the Aquila, the eagle.
Ep. 108. A.D. 798.
“To the Eagle, most noble of birds, the Goose, with strident voice, sends greeting.
“When I heard of you as winging your way from transalpine hills to your nest of sweetest quiet, a great repose shone suddenly forth upon my mind anxious on your account. My mind flew back, as from crashing storms, to a haven of placid peace. For love is wont to be joyful in prosperity and oppressed in adversity. Thus it is that the voice of the bride, bewailing the absence of the longed-for spouse, cries ‘I am wounded with love’.[253] For both are true: your love wounds, and it heals. One part of the wound inflicted by love remains an open sore, your longed-for face has not yet beamed upon the eyes of your lover. The anxiety of not knowing that you were well has been removed from my mind, but the hunger of the eyes is not yet appeased by the sight of your countenance. This Sorrow we trust may very soon be taken away, by the ministry of that grace which has deigned to remove the anxiety of mind by the arrival of your letters; and then he who desires both health and vision will be full of joy in the arrival of yourself.
“You have written to me of the religious life and justness of the lord apostolic[254], what great and unjust trials he suffers at the hands of the children of discord. I confess that I glow with great joy that the father of the churches sets himself about the service of God with pious and faithful mind, without guile. No wonder that justice suffers persecution in his person at the hands of evil men, when in our Chief, the fount of all goodness and justice, the God Christ, justice suffered persecution even unto death.”