In Alcuin England was linked to the wider world of Christendom. This has been summarily expressed by a great English historian thus: "The schools of Northumbria had gathered in the harvest of Irish learning, of the Franco-Gallican schools still subsisting and preserving a remnant of classical character in the sixth century, and of Rome, itself now barbarised. Bede had received instruction from the disciples of Chad and Cuthbert in the Irish studies of the Scriptures, from Wilfrid and Acca in the French and Roman learning, and from Benedict Biscop and Albinus in the combined and organised discipline of Theodore. By his influence with Egbert, the school of York was founded, and in it was centred nearly all the wisdom of the West, and its great pupil was Alcuin. Whilst learning had been growing in Northumbria, it had been declining on the Continent; in the latter days of Alcuin, the decline of English learning began in consequence of the internal dissensions of the kings, and the early ravages of the Northmen. Just at the same time the Continent was gaining peace and organisation under Charles. Alcuin carried the learning which would have perished in England into France and Germany, where it was maintained whilst England relapsed into the state of ignorance from which it was delivered by Alfred. Alcuin was rather a man of learning and action than of genius and contemplation like Bede, but his power of organisation and of teaching was great, and his services {170} to religion and literature in Europe, based indeed on the foundation of Bede, were more widely extended and in themselves inestimable." [1]
[Sidenote: John Scotus.]
Side by side with the career of Alcuin, of which much is known, may be placed that of another scholar who was at least equally influential, but of whose life little is known. John the Scot, whose thought exercised a profound influence on the ages after his death, was one of the Irish scholars whom the famous schools of that island produced as late as the ninth century. He became attached to the court of Charles the Bald, as Alcuin had been to that of Charles the Great. He became like Alcuin a prominent defender of the faith, being invited by Hincmar, Archbishop of Rheims, to answer the monk Gottschalk's exaggerated doctrine of predestination, which went much farther than S. Augustine, and might be described as Calvinist before Calvin; but his arguments were also considered unsound, and his opinions were condemned in later synods. The argument that, evil being the negation of good, God could not know it, for with Him to know is to cause, was certainly weak if not formally heretical, and his subtleties seemed to the theologians of his time to be merely ineptitudes. He was also, it is at least probable, engaged in the controversy on the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist which began about this time, originating in the treatise of Paschasius Radbertus, de Sacramento Corporis et Sanguinis Christi. In 1050 a treatise bearing John the Scot's name was condemned; but it seems that this was really written by Ratramnus of Corbie. The view of Radbert was that which was {171} afterwards formalised into Transubstantiation. The view attributed to John was a clear denial of any materialising doctrine of the Sacrament. Later writers say that John returned to England, taught in the abbey school at Malmesbury, the famous school originated by Irish monks and illustrated by the fame of S. Aldhelm, and there died. His chief work was the de Divisione Naturae, in which he seems to anticipate much later philosophic argument (notably that of S. Anselm and Descartes as to the existence of God) and to have been the precursor if not the founder of Nominalism.
With John the Scot it is clear that both the old literature and philosophy survived and were fruitful and that new interests, which would carry theology into further developments, were arising. A revival of learning was naturally the growth of the monastic system; but that system was itself far from secure at the time of which we speak.
[Sidenote: The Benedictine rule.]
The Benedictine rule did not win its way over Europe without some checks; nor was it always able to retain its hold in an age of general disorder. Much depended upon the abbat in each particular house. In Gaul, the rule of S. Columban had made him absolute. But such a submission was never accepted in central and southern Gaul. From the end of the sixth century it is clear that monasticism was beginning to slacken its devotion. The history of the monastery of S. Radegund as given by Gregory of Tours shows this; so does the letter of Gregory the Great to Brunichild. Nor did the milder rule of S. Benedict long remain unaltered in practice.
A new revival is connected with the names of Odo and Cluny.
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[Sidenote: The decay of monasticism in the ninth century.]
Saint Odo emerges from an age in which the most striking feature was the reassertion of the imperial power and the imperial idea. The ninth century, as it began, witnessed a remarkable revival, the revival of a decayed and dormant institution—the Roman Empire—in whose ashes there had yet survived the fire which had inspired the rulers of the world in the past. The great idea of imperialism was reborn in the person of a man of extraordinary physical and mental power, a sovereign who, while he had not a little of the weaknesses of his age, had also in a remarkable degree centred in himself its highest philosophic aspirations. The early ninth century is dominated by the figure of Charles the Great. The result was inevitable. Lay power, lay over-lordship or supremacy, extends everywhere, intrudes into the recesses of monastic life, and dictates even in things purely spiritual. And as the new tide of barbarian invasion, Saracen or Norman, sweeps on in Spain or Gaul, the Church, for very physical needs, seeks refuge under the protection of lay barons, princes, and kings. Feudalism is rising. The monastic houses fall often under the arrogant rule of lay abbats. And the popes, not rarely a prey themselves to the vices of the age, sink into impotence and become enmeshed in worldly, often shameful, intrigue and disorder. The canons of Church councils show that it was below as it was above. Secularity was general, vice was far from rare.