Hic habeat vitam justis super astra paratam.[156]
[(The Hebrew) Jacob loved the simplicity of Rebecca,
The lofty soul of (the monk) Jacob (loved) the work of the scribe.
The former accumulated riches in pasturing his flocks,
The latter increased his fame through the writing of books.
The former won his Rachel, loved beyond all others.
May the scribe have the eternal life which is prepared above the stars for the just.]
The most important of the works of Alcuin that can be called original were his educational writings, comprising treatises On Grammar, On Orthography, On Rhetoric and the Virtues, On Dialectics, A Disputation with Pepin, and a study of astronomy entitled De Cursu et Saltu Lunæ ac Bissexto. West mentions three other treatises which have been ascribed to him: On the Seven Arts, A Disputation for Boys, and the Propositions of Alcuin.[157] Alcuin was more fortunate than his great predecessor Cassiodorus in respect to the preservation of his writings. Manuscripts of all of these remained in existence until the time came when the complete set of works could be issued in printed form, and the work of the old instructor could be appreciated by a generation living a thousand years after his life had closed. He died at Tours in 804, in his seventieth year. Mabillon speaks of Alcuin as “the most learned man of his age.” Laurie is disposed to lay stress upon the monastic limitations of his intellect, and thinks that his principal ability was that of an administrator; West emphasises the “pure unselfishness of his character,” and adds, with discriminating appreciation: “We must also credit him with a certain largeness of view, in spite of his circumscribed horizon. He had some notion of the continuity of the intellectual life of man, of the perils that beset the transmission of learning from age to age, and of the disgrace which attached to those who would allow those noble arts to perish which the wisest of men among the ancients had discovered.... Perceiving that the precious treasure of knowledge was then hidden in a few books, he made it his care to transmit to future ages copies undisfigured by slips of the pen or mistakes of the understanding. Thus in every way that lay within his power, he endeavoured to put the fortunes of learning for the times that should succeed him in a position of advantage, safeguarded by an abundance of truthfully transcribed books, interpreted by teachers of his own training, sheltered within the Church and defended by the civil power.”[158] Professor West’s appreciative summary does full justice to the work and the ideals of Charlemagne’s great schoolmaster. I should only add that in the special service he was in a position to render in the preservation, transmission, and publication of the world’s literature, Alcuin must be accorded a very high place in the series of literary workers which, beginning with Cassiodorus, includes such names as Columba, Biscop, Aurispa, Gutenberg, Aldus, Estienne, and Froben.
The most noteworthy of the successors of Alcuin in the palace school at Tours was John Scotus Erigena, who in 845 was appointed master by Charles the Bold. The influence of the Irish monk widened the range of study and gave to it an active-minded and speculative tendency that brought about a wide departure from the settled conservatism which had always characterised the teaching of Alcuin. The list of books given to the scribe for copying was increased, and now included, for instance, works of such doubtful orthodoxy as the Satyricon of Martianus Capella, a voluminous compilation constituting a kind of cyclopædia of the seven liberal arts. Its composition dates from about 500.[159]
In a treatise, De Instituto Clericorum, written in 819 (that is, during the reign of Louis I.), by Rabanus Maurus, who was Abbot of Fulda and later, Archbishop of Mayence, is cited the following regulation: “The canons and the decrees of Pope Zosimus have decided that a clerk proceeding to holy orders shall continue five years among the readers ... and after that shall for four years serve as an acolyte or sub-deacon.” (The Zosimus referred to was Pope for but one year, 417-418.) Rabanus had just before remarked, “Lectores are so called a legendo.” He goes on to say that “he who would rightly and properly perform the duty of a reader must be imbued with learning and conversant with books, and must further be instructed in the meaning of words and in the knowledge of the words themselves,” etc.[160] Rabanus follows this with a series of very practical instructions and suggestions for effective education on the part of the readers. These were based upon the treatise on elocution written nearly two hundred years earlier by the learned Bishop Isidore of Seville, and they were again copied three years after the time of Rabanus by Ibo, Bishop of Chartres, in the treatise De Rebus Ecclesiasticis. Maitland, to whom I am indebted for this citation, finds cause for indignant criticism of the historian Robertson for the superficial and misleading references made by the historian to the dense ignorance of the Church in the Middle Ages. Maitland suggests that if Robertson had applied for holy orders to the Archbishop of Seville in the seventh century, the Archbishop of Mayence in the ninth, or the Bishop of Chartres in the eleventh, he would have found the examination rather more of a task than he expected. West speaks of Rabanus as “Alcuin’s greatest pupil,” and as intellectually “a greater man than his master.”[161] He wrote a long series of theological and educational treatises.