Chapter XVI

Examples of Alcuin’s style in his letters, allusive,
jocose, playful.—The perils of the Alps.—The vision of
Drithelme.—Letters to Arno.—Bacchus and Cupid.

A letter written by Alcuin in September, 799, may be taken as an extreme example of his allusive style. A good deal of interpretation is needed before the letter can be understood; it is a collection of riddles.

[Sidenote: Ep. 121. A.D. 799.]

The opening sentence runs thus: “The first letter to the first, and the fifteenth to the sixth. The number consecrated in steps to the number perfect in the works of God.”

The first letter is A, and thus the first words mean A(lcuin) to A(dalhard), Abbat of Corbie, or Arno, Archbishop of Salzburg; but inasmuch as A is described in the letter as _gallus monasticus_, and Arno was Aquila, we must understand that the Abbat of Corbie is meant. No other known A satisfies the conditions. The fifteenth letter is P, the sixth is F, and therefore we have P(ater) F(ilio), the father to the son. The Psalms of Degrees are fifteen, the day of completion of the works of God in creation was the sixth, and therefore the concluding words are only a repetition of “father to son”.

“Why does that brother come with empty hands? In his tongue he brought a _Hail!_ to my ears; in his hands he brought nothing to my eyes. Thou who art seated at a dividing of the ways [Corbie], why hast thou demanded nothing certain of him who dwelleth in Maresa? The crows fly about the roofs of the houses and cry out; and the dove, nourished on the pavements of the church, is silent. I should have trusted that dove had he said anything about the eagle [Leo III] which lately deserted the roofs of the citadel of Rome to drink at the fountains of the Saxon land [the Pope had come to Paderborn] to see the lion [Karl]; or if our blackbird, flying between them, had demanded of the monastic cock [Adalhard] who rouses the brethren to their matin watch, that by means of him the sparrow [Alcuin] sitting alone upon the house top might know what is the convention between the lion and the eagle; and if the youth of the eagle, as the psalmist prophesies, is renewed[237] to pristine gladness; and if new dwellings grow up in the marshes of perfidy that were cleansed[238]; and if the lion, in pursuit of the ibex, meditates crossing the heights of the Alps.

“The sparrow hath his ears open. But I see that the proverbial wolf [this is said to mean the devil] in the fable[239] has taken away the cock’s voice; lest it happen that if he crowed, the apostolic denial[240] should be renewed in the city of his former power, and the last error be worse than the first.

“Why has love sinned, which has not seen _Vale_ [fare thee well] written, while I hear that the partridges [messengers], running across the fields, have come to the dwelling [Corbie] of the cock. Perfect love driveth away fear. Perfect love with the sparkling pupils of the eyes sees everything, and with the clear intuition of piety will always find a fixed rule of wholesome counsel. It would seem that the cock is turned into a cuckoo, which is silent when the sun ascends into the summer constellation of the crab, while the nest-making sparrow at every season alike twitters on the smoky roofs.[241]

“That sparrow now in this September month flies to revisit his beloved nest[242], that he may feed his young[243], gaping with hungry beaks, with little grains of piety: desiring that some time on the banks of this river Loire, rich in fish, he may hear the voice of the cock sounding forth the _Vale_, and that he who with flapping of his wings rouses himself to matutinal melodies may come and exhort the sparrow in the midst of his young.”

At this point the letter changes its character, and we need not follow it further.

[Sidenote: Ep. 16. A.D. 790.]

Thus Alcuin could write a jocose letter, even quoting Scripture in that vein. Let us see another. He was detained in Britain at the end of the year 790 by an unexpected event, of which mention has already more than once been made. Ethelred, the king of Northumbria, had been deposed and kept in prison till the end of 790. Alcuin wrote to his pupil Joseph, in Gaul, to tell him that Ethelred had passed from prison to throne, from misery to majesty; and things were so unsettled that he did not like to leave for France. He was evidently not well supplied with money, food, or clothing. He begged Joseph to send him what was necessary for the sea voyage; also five pounds weight of silver which he had sent to his charge, and another five from his possessions in France; three garments, of goat-skin and of wool for the use of his attendants, lay and clerical, and of linen for his own use; also black and red cloaks of goat skin, if he could find such, and many pigments of sulphur and colours for pictures. Then he turns to the question of meat and drink. Quoting 2 Kings iv. 40, he exclaims, “‘O, thou man of God, there is death in the pot’, for [again quoting, from 1 Sam. ix. 7, and putting wine in place of bread] the wine ‘is spent in our vessels’: and [he adds] the acid beer of these parts makes havoc in our stomachs.”

Here is another example of his playfulness and lightness of touch.

[Sidenote: Ep. 9. A.D. 783-6.]

“To the most illustrious man Flavius Damoeta Albinus sends abundant greeting of perpetual peace.”

[Sidenote: Ep. 12.]

[Sidenote: Ep. 101.]

This was Riculfus, Archbishop of Mainz, whom in another letter he addresses as the great fisherman, probably because of piscatorial rights which he naturally had as a riparian proprietor. Alcuin himself—we may note—was a fisherman. He writes to Arno in 798, from Tours, that he does not know in which of two places he will be the next month, but whichever it was it would find him fishing. “I know not whether I shall play the diver on the banks of the Meuse and catch fish, or float on the waters of the Loire and catch salmon.” There are salmon now both in the Meuse and in the Loire; but the phrases in Alcuin’s letter seem to point to bottom-fishing on the Meuse and surface-fishing on the Loire. Alcuin learned to fish on the Ouse at York, of which he writes, as we have seen above[244], “Hanc piscosa suis undis interluit Usa.” We must return to