Alcuin (originally Ealhwine), or Albinus, the adviser of Charlemagne, was born at York in 735, and educated at the cloister-school, of which in 778 he became master. In 781, returning from Rome, he met Charlemagne at Parma, and on his invitation attached himself to the court at Aix-la-Chapelle. Here he devoted himself first to the education of the royal family itself, and through his influence the court became a school of culture for the hitherto almost barbarous Frankish empire. In 796 he settled at Tours as abbot; and the school here became one of the most important in the empire. Till his death here in 804, he still corresponded constantly with Charlemagne. His works comprise poems; works on grammar, rhetoric, and dialectics; theological and ethical treatises; lives of several saints; and over two hundred letters.

  But I, your Flaccus, am doing as you have urged and wished. To some who are beneath the roof of St. Martin I am striving to dispense the honey of Holy Scripture; others I am eager to intoxicate with the old wine of ancient learning; others again I am beginning to feed with the apples of grammatical refinement; and there are some whom I long to adorn with the knowledge of astronomy, as a stately house is adorned with a painted roof. I am made all things to all men that I may instruct many to the profit of God’s Holy Church and to the lustre of your imperial reign. So shall the grace of Almighty God toward me be not in vain and the largess of your bounty be of no avail.

  There was in England a remarkable teacher named Albinus (Alcuin), and he had great reputation. He taught many of the English in the sciences contained in books, as he well knew how, and afterwards went across the sea to the wise King Charles, who had great wisdom in divine and worldly matters, and lived wisely. Albinus the noble teacher came to him, and, there a foreigner, he dwelt under his rule, in St. Martin’s monastery, and imparted to many the heavenly wisdom which the Saviour gave him.

  Alcuin was, of all the Angles, of whom I have read, next to St. Aldhelm and Bede, certainly the most learned, and has given proof of his talents in a variety of compositions. He lies buried in France, at the church of St. Paul, of Cormaric, which monastery Charles the Great built at his suggestion: on which account, even at the present day, the subsistence of four monks is distributed in alms, for the soul of our Alcuin, in that church.

  It being questionable, whether he were more famous for Venerable Bede, who was his master, or Charles the Great, who was his scholar; whilst it is out of doubt, that he is most honoured for his own learning and religion.

  He is a theologian by profession, the atmosphere in which he lived, in which the public to whom he addresses himself lived, is essentially theological; and yet the theological spirit does not reign alone in him, his works and his thoughts also tend towards philosophy and ancient literature; it is that which he also delights in studying, teaching, and which he wished to revive. Saint Jerome and Saint Augustin are very familiar to him; but Pythagoras, Aristotle, Aristippus, Diogenes, Plato, Homer, Virgil, Seneca, Pliny, also occur to his memory. The greater part of his writings are theological; but mathematics, astronomy, logic, rhetoric, habitually occupy him. He is a monk, a deacon, the light of the contemporaneous church; but he is at the same time a scholar, a classical man of letters. In him, at length, commenced the alliance of these two elements of which the modern mind had so long borne the incoherent impress, antiquity and the church—the admiration, the taste, the regret, shall I call it, for pagan literature, and the sincerity of Christian faith, the zeal to sound its mysteries, and to defend its power.

  A man fully equal to Bede in ability, though not in erudition.

  Alcuin has, on the whole, more simplicity and less pretension in his poetry than his predecessor Aldhelm, and so far he is more pleasing; but, unfortunately, where the latter was turgid and bombastic, the former too often runs into the opposite extreme of being flat and spiritless. His style is seen to best advantage in his calm details of natural scenery.

  Alcuin’s instructions were given rather in the form of conversation than of lectures. He taught the seven sciences which were distinguished as liberal, and were afterwards classified under the titles of Trivium and Quadrivium—the Trivium consisting of grammar, rhetoric, and dialectics; the Quadrivium comprising arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy; while above these two classes theology held a place by itself. Alcuin’s writings on these subjects contain little of an original kind, and may be regarded as mere notebooks of his teaching. His other works are very various—commentaries on Scripture, liturgical treatises, tracts on the controversies of the age and on practical religion, poems, lives of saints, and a large collection of letters. They appear to be justly described as displaying more of labour than of genius, more of memory than of invention or taste; but in estimating the merit of the man we are bound to compare him with his contemporaries. His work was that of a reviver.

  The brightest ornament of the court of Charlemagne, and the soundest thinker between John of Damascus and Anselm.

  Alcuin’s “Letters” are of great importance from the illustration they afford of the relations between England and Frankland in the eighth and ninth centuries. His poetical history of the bishops and archbishops of York is also of considerable value as a record of events in connexion with the chief centre of English learning at this period.

  His work was the highest that could have been committed to human hand. It was the civilization of a kingdom; it was to aid in the renaissance of learning for Christendom; and his was the noble achievement of connecting the intellect of Britain with that of Western Europe.

  The first theologian, philosopher, and teacher of his age.

  As a man he was remarkable for his singular modesty, piety, and good sense; as a scholar his learning was extensive and profound; but as a writer his style is often commonplace and redundant.

  His relations to Charles were intimate, cordial, and confidential. One can hardly err in ascribing to him almost all the theological documents and writings interblended with the political growth and development of the Frankish empire in that reign; the theology of Charles; the theology, and probably much of the jurisprudence of the Capitularies; to his influence must be traced some of the enlightened views of Charles; the mercy, the lofty aims, and the ethical apothegms, so remarkable in the life and speech of that remarkable monarch.

  It belongs to the glory of England to say that it was an English scholar of York who exactly at the right time bore off to the Continent the whole of English learning, and out of English learning built up a new world. Had Alcuin remained in England, had learning been confined to our shores, it would have perished in a few years under the destroying flood of the Danish invasions.

  In every way that lay in his power, Alcuin endeavored 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.

  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.