As in that earlier papal visit Charles, then a lad of twelve, had been sent to meet Stephen II., so now did Charles send his son Pippin (a young man of twenty-two and the crowned king of Italy) to meet Pope Leo. Pippin escorted the venerable guest into his father’s presence. Pope and king embraced and kissed with tears. The clergy in the papal train intoned the Gloria in Excelsis, and the nobles and courtiers round added their joyful acclamations. This meeting took place at Paderborn, where Charles had built a new and splendid church in the place of the edifice often destroyed by the Saxons. In this church Pope Leo hallowed an altar, which he enriched with relics of the protomartyr Stephen brought by him from Rome, and assured the king that by the powerful intercession of that saint the church would be preserved from future devastation.
Leo remained probably for about two months, from July to September, at Paderborn, in constant intercourse with Charles. Much would doubtless be said in the conferences between the two potentates concerning the condition of the Church, the heresy of the Adoptians,[60] the Iconoclastic controversy, and above all concerning the charges brought against the pope’s character by his relentless enemies in Rome. Was there also something said about that great event towards which, as we know, the course of history was tending, the bestowal of the imperial title on Charles? Here we have only conjectures to guide us, but in these conjectures we must take account of one most powerful influence upon which I have hitherto been silent, the influence of the absent, but continually consulted Northumbrian, Alcuin.
Alcuin, born of a noble Anglian family about the year 735, and therefore some seven years older than Charles, was brought up from childhood in the monastic seminary of York, and there drank in with eager lips the learning, deepest and best of its day in all Europe, which that celebrated school imparted to its pupils. Bede, it is true, had died about the time of Alcuin’s birth, but from Bede’s pupil Ecgbert, Archbishop of York (732–766), and from his successor Ælbert (767–778), he acquired a knowledge, not only of theology, but also of many secular arts and sciences. To astronomy he was led by the intricate calculations and endless discussions concerning the true date of Easter. But in the archiepiscopal library, as Alcuin himself tells us, there was also a respectable collection of the Latin classics, Pliny, Cicero, Virgil, Lucan, Statius are all enumerated by him, as well as Aristotle, who was probably represented only by a Latin translation. To the study of these authors the young Northumbrian gave many industrious years; Virgil especially was long the master of his soul, and the legends of a later generation told how the visit of an evil spirit to his cell was necessary to frighten him away from the nocturnal study of the Mantuan bard into the repetition of the Psalms appointed for the midnight service. Certain it is, however, that he did not forsake the study of the profane authors, until they had thoroughly permeated his style. Although an ecclesiastic he wrote Latin, both prose and verse, of which no Roman in the first century need have been ashamed. To pass from the continual barbarisms, obscurities, puerilities of Gregory of Tours, of Fredegarius, or even of the authors of the Liber Pontificalis, to the easily flowing prose, or hexameter verse of Alcuin is like going from the ill-spelt productions of a half-educated ploughman to the letters of Cowper or the poetry of Goldsmith.
Alcuin has been called the Erasmus of the eighth century, and though in one respect the comparison is too flattering, since the Northumbrian did but little for critical science, it gives on the whole not an incorrect impression of the literary position of this man, the “child and champion” of the Carolingian Renascence. It is evident that he and the men with whom he associated, Angles, Saxons, or Franks, were tired of the barbarism which had pervaded Europe for three centuries, and looked back with longing, perhaps sometimes with unwise longing, to the great days of Roman supremacy and peace. Even their Teutonic names were to them somewhat of a humiliation. In the literary circle or academy which formed itself in Charles’s court, chiefly under Alcuin’s influence, the members assumed classical names (like the Melancthon and Œcolampadius[61] of a later Renascence), and corresponded with one another under these disguises. Thus Alcuin himself was Flaccus Albinus, Riculf (afterwards Archbishop of Mainz) was Damœtas; Angilbert, Charles’s chaplain, was Homer; Arno, Archbishop of Salzburg, was Aquila. The name of the great king himself was David, a name admirably chosen to express his piety, his success in war, and his love of women.
The event which brought “Albinus” and his “dearest David” together was a journey which Alcuin undertook to Rome in 781, in order to obtain the pallium for his friend and superior, Eanbald II., Archbishop of York. Alcuin himself was at this time, and in fact throughout middle life and old age, only a deacon, though from his learning and piety he wielded more influence than many bishops. Returning from Rome, he met Charles at Parma, and was entreated by him to return to Frankland on the accomplishment of his mission. He protested that he could only do this with the consent of his king and his archbishop, and these consents having been obtained he returned to Charles’s court and resided there, a sort of literary prime minister, from 782 to 796, with the exception of a visit to his own country between 790 and 792. Though apparently he never entered the monastic state, he received from Charles, as a piece of preferment, the headship of two abbeys, that of Bethlehem at Ferrières and that of St. Lupus at Troyes. In 796, feeling the need of repose, he obtained his master’s reluctant permission to retire to the great monastery of St. Martin at Tours, which was placed under his rule, and where he spent the remainder of his days. This absence from the court is a fortunate thing for us, for to it we owe the letters between Charles and Alcuin, of which a considerable number are still preserved, and which show both king and deacon in no unpleasing light. Sometimes Alcuin advises the king to treat the conquered Saxons and Avars tenderly, and not to gall them with the yoke of tithes. Sometimes he explains to his royal friend the meaning of the terms Septuagesima and Sexagesima. Then he enters into long discussions about the calendar, the date of Easter, the intercalations necessary to bring the solar and the lunar years into harmony. The king half mischievously refers these calculations to the well-taught pages of his palace, who discover in them some errors, which, after much mutual banter, the elder scholar is compelled to acknowledge. Always, however, the intercourse is friendly, sincere, elevating. The king does not patronize, and the deacon does not cringe. One cannot but feel in reading these letters that both men were made to be loved.
Such was the man who, as there is every reason to believe, had whispered to many of his friends the fateful word “Imperator” before Pope Leo III. arrived, a hunted and half-blinded fugitive, at Charles’s court.
In the month of May (799) Alcuin had written to his royal master a remarkable letter, commenting on the tidings which Charles had sent him of the assault on Pope Leo. From this letter it will be well to extract some sentences.
“To his peace-making lord King David, Albinus wishes health. I thank your Goodness, sweetest David, for remembering my littleness and making me acquainted with the facts which your faithful servant has brought to my ears. Were I present with you I should have many counsels to offer to your Dignity, if you had opportunity to listen or I eloquence to speak. For I love to write concerning your prosperity, the stability of the kingdom given you by God and the advancement of the Holy Church of Christ. All which are much troubled and stained by the daring deeds of wicked men which have been perpetrated, not on obscure and ignoble persons, but on the greatest and the highest.
“For there have been hitherto three persons higher than all others in this world. One is the Apostolic Sublimity who rules by vicarious power from the seat of St. Peter, prince of the apostles. And what has been done to him, who was the ruler of the aforesaid see, you have in your goodness informed me.
“The second is the Imperial dignity and power of the second Rome. How impiously the governor of that empire [Constantine VI.] has been deposed, not by aliens but by his own people and fellow citizens, universal rumor tells us.