ALCUIN

(735?-804)

BY WILLIAM H. CARPENTER

Alcuin, usually called Alcuin of York, came of a patrician family of Northumberland.  Neither the date nor the place of his birth is known with definiteness, but he was born about 735 at or near York.  As a child he entered the cathedral school recently founded by Egbert, Archbishop of York, and ultimately became its most eminent pupil.  He was subsequently assistant master to Aelbert, its head; and when Aelbert succeeded to the archbishopric, on the death of Egbert in 766, Alcuin became scholasticus or master of the school.  On the death of Aelbert in 780, Alcuin was placed in charge of the cathedral library, the most famous in Western Europe.  In his longest poem, ’Versus de Eboracensi Ecclesia’ (Poem on the Saints of the Church at York), he has left an important record of his connection with York.  This poem, written before he left England, is, like most of his verse, in dactylic hexameters.  To a certain extent it follows Virgil as a model, and is partly based on the writings of Bede, partly on his own personal experience.  It is not only valuable for its historical bearings, but for its disclosure of the manner and matter of instruction in the schools of the time, and the contents of the great library.  As master of the cathedral school, Alcuin acquired name and fame at home and abroad, and was soon the most celebrated teacher in Britain.  Before 766, in company with Aelbert, he made his first journey to Germany, and may have visited Rome.  Earlier than 780 he was again abroad, and at Pavia came under the notice of Charlemagne, who was on his way back from Italy.  In 781 Eanbald, the new Archbishop of York, sent Alcuin to Rome to bring back the Archbishop’s pallium.  At Parma he again met Charlemagne, who invited him to take up his abode at the Frankish court.  With the consent of his king and his archbishop he resigned his position at York, and with a few pupils departed for the court at Aachen, in 782.

Alcuin’s arrival in Germany was the beginning of a new intellectual epoch among the Franks.  Learning was at this time in a deplorable state.  The older monastic and cathedral schools had been broken up, and the monasteries themselves often unworthily bestowed upon royal favorites.  There had been a palace school for rudimentary instruction, but it was wholly inefficient and unimportant.

During the years immediately following his arrival, Alcuin zealously labored at his projects of educational reform.  First reorganizing the palace school, he afterward undertook a reform of the monasteries and their system of instruction, and the establishment of new schools throughout the kingdom of Charlemagne.  At the court school the great king himself, as well as Liutgard the queen, became his pupil.  Gisela, Abbess of Chelles, the sister of Charlemagne, came