Chapter XXIV (7)

But one of the most interesting features in Charlemagne’s intellectual labours was the attempt he made to perfect his native language, and give it a grammatical form. He began the composition of a German grammar, which was afterwards continued by Raban Maur; the other Palatine scholars joined him in the task, and assigned to the months and days of the week the names which they still bear in German. In pursuance of the same design, the emperor made a collection of old Tudesque songs, some of which he took down from the lips of his soldiers; but after his death Louis the Debonnaire found the manuscript, and perceiving the names of Scandinavian deities, with little appreciation of the importance of the work on which his great father had been engaged, tossed it into the fire. There was nothing which Charlemagne had more at heart than the completion of this undertaking, and he was accustomed to say that he hoped to see the day when the laws should be written in the Frankish tongue, comparing the shutting them up in a language of which the common people were ignorant to the conduct of Caligula, who caused his edicts to be written in illegible characters, and placed out of sight, that the people might unconsciously break them and so incur sentence of death. Alcuin no doubt assisted in this work, which was one that ever found favour with the English monks. Even before leaving his native country he is said to have made an Anglo-Saxon version of the Pentateuch, which was preserved and used so late as the twelfth century; and he would naturally be disposed to enter into the king’s designs, and specially to provide for the religious instruction of the people in their own language. Something in this direction had already been done in Germany by the followers of St. Boniface; and early in the eighth century we find formulas of confession, brief confessions of faith, and portions of psalms and hymns translated for popular use into the rude Tudesque dialect. Some of the early German hymns appear to have been written by the monks of St. Gall, and were used as valuable means of instructing the people in the elements of religion. Specimens of these are given by Noth in his history of the German language, and among them is a fragment of the 138th Psalm. It will of course be borne in mind that the language spoken by the people of Germany was essentially the same as that of the English missionaries, who thus possessed peculiar facilities in preaching and instructing their converts. Thus the form of abjuration and the confession of faith drawn up by St. Boniface and his followers, for the use of their German catechumens, is equally akin to the Anglo-Saxon and to the Tudesque idioms:--“Forsachister Diabolæ? Ec forsachs Diabolæ. Gelobistu in Got Almehtigan, Fadaer? Ec Gelobo in Got, Almehtigan Fadaer. Gelobistu in Crist, Godes suno? Gelobistu in Halsgan Gast?” And when we speak of Charlemagne as cultivating the Tudesque or old German dialect, it will also be remembered that the Franks were a German race, and that what we now call _French_ is not formed from their language, but from the Romanesque, or corrupt Latin, which prevailed in the southern provinces of Gaul, as well as in Spain and the north of Italy. As in course of time the Gallo-Roman element prevailed in France, the Romance language became universally used, while the Tudesque remained, as before, the language of the Germans. Hence Verstigan was not dealing in paradox when he asserted that in old times the English people all talked French, the Frankish and Saxon dialects being substantially the same language.

The graver studies of the Palatine scholars were enlivened, after the fashion of the Anglo Saxon schools, by dialogues, in which enigmas and a play of words are introduced in tiresome profusion. A curious fragment exists bearing the title of a disputation between Alcuin and Pepin, wherein the wits of the pupil are stimulated by the questions of the master. These exercises, _ad acuendos pueros_, as they were called, were much used by the English teachers, and specimens of a similar description are to be found which appear to have been used so late as the fourteenth century. “What is writing?” asks Alcuin. “The keeper of history.” “What is speaking?” “The interpreter of the soul.” “What is the liberty of man?” “Innocence.” “What is the day?” “The call to labour.” “What is the sun?” “The splendour of the universe.” “What is winter?” “The exile of spring.” “What is spring?” “The painter of the earth.” Alcuin says, “I saw the other day a man standing, a dead man walking, a man walking who had never breathed.” Pepin. “How can that have been? explain yourself.” Alcuin. “It was my image reflected in the water.” Pepin. “How could I fail to understand you? I have often seen the same thing.”

In his letters to the young princes Alcuin freely points out their faults, and gives them excellent advice. “Seek,” he writes, “to adorn your noble rank with noble deeds; let humility be in your heart, and truth on your lips; and let your life be a pattern of integrity, that so God may be pleased to prosper your days.” The court school, however, was not intended exclusively for princes and nobles; children of an inferior rank were also admitted, in order to receive such an education as might hereafter fit them to fill various offices in church and state. Charlemagne took this charge on himself, and afterwards promoted his scholars according to their merits and ability. We learn this from the following charming narrative related by the Monk of St. Gall.

“The glorious King Charles,” he says, “returning into Gaul after a prolonged absence, ordered that all the children whom he caused to be educated should be brought before him, that they might present him their compositions in prose and verse. Those of an inferior and obscure rank had succeeded best, whereas the sons of the nobles brought nothing of any value. Then the wise prince, separating the good scholars from the negligent ones, and putting the first on his right hand, said to them, ‘My children, you may rely on my friendship and protection, since you have done your best to execute my orders, and have worked hard according to the best of your abilities. Try to do yet better, and depend upon it you will receive the most honourable offices I have to give, and that you will always be precious in my eyes.’ Then turning to those on his left hand; ‘As to you,’ he said, ‘born of noble blood, and children of the first houses in my kingdom, vainly confident in your birth and riches you have neglected to obey my orders, and have preferred play and idleness to study, which is the proper glory of your age. But I swear to you, your noble birth shall find no consideration from me; and if you do not make up for your indolence by earnest study, you will obtain no favour from Charles.’”

Some writers, and among them M. Ampère, have considered that after all that has been said and written about the Palatine school, there was in reality no school, but only a literary academy. The probability is that there was both a school and an academy, and that the two institutions, though not identical, were directed by the same masters. According to this view, the Palatine _Academy_ was formed of the friends and courtiers of Charlemagne, while the _School_ was for the education of youths, chiefly, if not exclusively, intended for the ecclesiastical state, and chosen from all ranks, noble and simple. The Monk of St. Gall is decisive on this last point, and mentions two scholars, the sons of millers, who, after leaving the emperor’s school, in which they do not seem greatly to have distinguished themselves, obtained admission into the monastery of Bobbio. The proofs of the actual existence of this school are in fact too overwhelming to admit of a doubt. M. Ampère appears to have been staggered at the notion of a crowd of schoolboys accompanying the emperor wherever he sojourned. However strange and inconvenient such a system appears to our notions, the historical evidence is very strong in proof that it really existed. In the life of St. Adalard, there are allusions to the _turba clericorum palatii_. Alcuin in his letters complains not a little of the fatigue occasioned by this constant journeying. And we know that Otho the Great, whose revival of a Palatine school was undertaken in avowed imitation of Charlemagne, always required his scholars to accompany him; and that his brother Bruno, who superintended their studies, followed the court, and carried his books with him.

It was then, as we must believe, a real school over which Alcuin presided, and most French writers claim it as the germ of the university of Paris. The court of the Frankish monarch was indeed fixed, not at Paris, but at Aix-la-Chapelle, but it seems to have been removed to Paris in the reign of Charles the Bald, and there the Palatine school continued to flourish under a succession of famous masters, and possibly formed the nucleus of that great institution which fills so large a place in the history of education.

Meanwhile, his scholastic labours did not so occupy the time of Alcuin, as to hinder him from devoting himself to the correction of manuscripts, and the multiplication of books went on apace. A staff of skilful copyists was gradually formed, and so soon as any work had been revised by Alcuin and his fellow labourers, it was delivered over to the hands of the monastic scribes. Particular abbeys, as that of Fontanelles, acquired renown for the extraordinary accuracy of their transcribers, and the beauty of their writing. At Rheims and Corby, also, the monks greatly excelled, and laying aside the corrupt character which had till then been in use, they adopted the smaller Roman letters. Rules were made forbidding any man to be employed as a copyist who had not the knowledge of grammar requisite for enabling him to avoid errors; and treatises on orthography and punctuation were drawn up by Alcuin for the special use of his scribes. Libraries were gradually collected in all the principal monasteries, including the chief works of the Fathers and the Latin classics. In the library of St. Riquier, of which abbey Angilbert became superior, we find a few years later copies of Homer, Virgil, and Cicero; in that of Rheims, Cæsar, Livy, and Lucan; Dijon possessed a Horace, and at Montierendes there were the works of Cicero and Terence. The text of the last-named author was revised and corrected by Alcuin himself, a fact which confirms what has been before said of his toleration of the poets. From this time the transcription of books came to be regarded as one of the ordinary branches of monastic manual work, in a great degree taking the place of that agricultural labour on which, in earlier ages, the monks were so generally employed. The real hard work of head, eyes, and hand, which it involved, was pithily expressed in the well-known couplet:--

Tres digiti scribunt, totum corpusque laborat,
Scribere qui nesciunt, nullum putant esse laborem.

If the hope of gain stimulated those outside to follow it as a trade, more spiritual motives were laid before the children of the cloister. As a work of charity done for the love of God and man, it was promised an eternal reward, and the persevering toils of a long life were, it was thought, capable of being offered as an acceptable work of penance. Meanwhile, the spirit of improvement was diffusing itself from the court through the whole country. The Capitulars of Charlemagne--so called because arranged in heads, or chapters--included amongst various laws for the regulation of the civil government others which regarded the encouragement of learning. A circular letter addressed by Charlemagne on his return from Rome in 787 to all the bishops and abbots of the kingdom, after thanking them for their letters and pious prayers, proceeded to criticise the grammar in which these had been expressed. “They who endeavour to please God by a good life,” writes the king, “should not neglect to please Him by correct phraseology, and it is well that monasteries and episcopal seminaries should pay attention to literature as well as to the practices of religion. It is better indeed to lead a good life than to become learned; nevertheless knowledge precedes action. Each one, then, should understand what he is about, and the mind better comprehends its duty when the tongue in praising God is free from mistakes of language.” The writer then goes on to notice that the excellent sentiments of his clergy had been expressed in a rude and uncouth style; they had been inspired by true devotion, but the tongue had failed for want of culture. “But if errors in words are dangerous, much more so are errors in their signification. We exhort you therefore that you fail not to cultivate learning with the humble intention of pleasing God, so as more surely to penetrate the mysteries of the Holy Scriptures. We wish, in short, to see you what the soldiers of Christ ought to be--devout in heart, learned in intercourse with the world, chaste in life, and scholars in conversation--so that all who approach you may be as much enlightened by your wisdom as they are edified by your holy life.” This was not allowed to remain an empty recommendation; it was followed by ordinances for reviving the old monastic and cathedral schools, and for founding other public schools, the establishment of which forms the most important feature in Charlemagne’s revival of learning. In the Benedictine monasteries two kinds of schools had always existed, or been supposed to exist--the greater and the less. In the minor schools, according to Trithemius, were taught “the Catholic faith and prayers, grammar, church music, the psalter, and the _Computum_, or method of calculating Easter,” while in the major schools the liberal sciences were also taught. In the Capitular of Aix-la-Chapelle, published in 789, Charlemagne required that minor schools should be attached to all monasteries and cathedral churches without exception, and that children of all ranks, both noble and servile, should be received into them. At the same time the larger and more important monasteries were to open major schools, in which mathematics, astronomy, arithmetic, geography, music, rhetoric, and dialectics were taught; and these again were of two descriptions.[83] Some were interior, or claustral, intended only for the junior monks, while others were exterior, or public, and intended for pupils as well secular as ecclesiastic. Some monk, qualified by his learning, was appointed scholasticus, and if none such were to be found in the community, it was not an uncommon practice to invite a monk from some other religious house to take charge of the school. A claustral and an exterior school often existed attached to the same monastery or cathedral, governed by separate masters, the scholars of the claustral school forming part of the community, while those of the exterior school, though subject to a certain claustral discipline, did not follow the same religious exercises. Lay students were received in these exterior schools, and that far more extensively than is commonly supposed, most popular writers having represented the monastic schools as exclusively intended for those in training for the religious life, thus confusing together the interior and exterior schools. Public schools of this kind were erected at Fulda, St. Gall’s, Tours, Hirsauge, Hirsfield, Gorze, Fleury, L’Isle Barbe, Fontanelles, and Ferrières, as well as at many other monasteries and cathedrals, a list of which is given by Mabillon.[84] Bulæus, indeed, endeavours to show that Charlemagne limited the studies of the ecclesiastical schools to grammar and sacred learning, and only permitted the monasteries and episcopal churches to retain the _minor_ schools, “from the clear view that a variety of sciences, sacred and profane, is inconsistent with the profession of ascetics.” He even ventures to put forth the notion that the higher schools were confined to certain central spots, such as Pavia, Bologna, and Paris. But Bulæus wrote with an object, which was to magnify his university at the expense of the monastic schools. We ask ourselves with surprise where he could have found evidence even for the existence of any schools at all at Paris and Bologna in the reign of Charlemagne?[85] And as to limiting the monastics to minor schools, it may be safely affirmed that the idea of limitation of any kind was the very last that ever suggested itself to the mind of the emperor. As Theodulph of Orleans says, he did nothing all his life but urge forward his monks and bishops in the pursuit of learning. During the whole Carlovingian period the schools of most repute were certainly not those of Bologna, Paris, and Pavia. They were the episcopal and monastic schools of Tours, Fulda, Rheims, St. Gall, and Hirsfield, the teachers of which were all either monks or canons. The ordinance of 789 must be clearly understood, not as forbidding ecclesiastics to study anything but theology, grammar, and church music, but as rendering it obligatory on them to study _at least_ so much; whilst, to use the words of Trithemius, “where temporal means were more abundant, and by reason of the number of the monks, more likelihood existed of finding one skilled in the teaching of sacred letters,” the other liberal arts were also required. The monks of those monasteries in which the higher studies were not taught travelled to other religious houses, and studied in their public schools; and we certainly find no trace, however faint, of the principle that the higher studies were considered unsuitable to ascetics, for, in point of fact, the ascetics were all but the only scholars of the age. If lay students were also to be met with--and even, as I think we shall see, more frequently than is ordinarily acknowledged by modern historians--yet they were still exceptional cases, and the vast majority of those who studied, as of those who taught, continued for centuries to be drawn from the monastic body.

The establishment or revival of the ecclesiastical schools scattered the seeds of learning broadcast over the Frankish empire. All the great men whom Charlemagne gathered around him took part in one way or other in this work. Theodulph, Bishop of Orleans, a Goth by nation, and an Italian by birth, specially distinguished himself by his zeal in the establishment of schools throughout his diocese. He published a Capitular on the duties of priests, in which he permitted them to send their nephews or other relations to certain schools in the diocese which were not then regarded as public. He also enjoined that priests should open schools in villages and rural districts, “and if any of the faithful should wish to confide their little ones to him in order to study letters, let him not refuse to receive and instruct them, but charitably teach them.” This was to be done gratis, no remuneration being accepted save what might be willingly offered by the parents. One would gladly know more of the kind of teaching given in these parochial schools, and specially how far the children of the peasantry were admitted into them. That village rustics really went to school and learnt something in the days of Charlemagne seems, however, past dispute; and among the Capitulars of the King of Europe we find one which requires the peasants, as they drive their cattle to pasture and home again, to _sing the canticles of the Church_, that all men may recognise them as Christians. This command obviously implied that the Latin canticles were well known to the peasantry, and probably the conning of church hymns and antiphons formed a very large portion of their school instruction. Theodulph was one of the _missi dominici_, or envoys sent by Charlemagne through the provinces of his empire to inquire into and reform abuses. On his return from one of these expeditions he published a poem entitled, “An Exhortation to Judges,” in which he gives a very remarkable account of his progress through the Narbonnese provinces, and describes the difficulty he found in resisting the attempts that were made to bribe him. The proffered bribes were of all kinds--gold and precious stones, delicately chased vases--which, from the classic subjects they represented, were doubtless relics of ancient Grecian art--horses, mules, furs, woollen stuffs, and candles. He refused everything, however, except food for himself and hay for his horses, and advises all judges to do in like manner. This was the same Theodulph whose name is familiar to us as author of the Responsory, _Gloria, laus et honor_. Having incurred the displeasure of the Emperor Louis, he was imprisoned by order of that prince at Angers; but on Palm Sunday as the emperor passed in the solemn procession of the day by the bishop’s prison walls, Theodulph sang from the window the words which he had composed, and thereby so touched the heart of the Debonnaire monarch that he gave him his liberty, and caused the same anthem to be thenceforth introduced into the office of the day, of which it still forms a part.

The name of Theodulph is to be had in remembrance not only as a founder of schools, but also as a writer of school-books. He felt compassion for young and tender minds condemned to gather all their knowledge from the dry and unattractive treatises of Priscian, and Martian Capella, and hit on a plan of his own for rendering them a little more popular. He composed in easy Latin verse the description of a supposed tree of science, which he caused moreover to be drawn and painted, on the trunk and branches of which appeared the seven liberal arts. At the foot of the tree sat Grammar, the basis of all human knowledge holding in her hand a mighty rod; Philosophy was at the summit: Rhetoric stood on the right with outstretched hand, and on the left the grave and thoughtful form of Dialectics; and so of the rest. The whole was explained in the _Carmina de septem artibus_, wherein the good bishop endeavoured with all his might to scatter the thorny path of learning with the flowers of imagination. The attempt was at least commendable, and in so great a scholar it had the gracefulness of condescension, for Theodulph is reported to have pursued some rare branches of study, and to have had at least a tincture of Greek and Hebrew.

Other ministers of Charlemagne are also named as actively sharing in the labours of the Renaissance. Smaragdus, abbot of St. Michael’s, in the diocese of Verdun, and one of the emperor’s prime councillors, not only established schools in every part of the diocese, and specially in his own abbey, but wrote a large Latin grammar for the use of his scholars. The copy which Mabillon saw preserved in the abbey of Corby bore on the title-page the words: _In Christi nomine incipit Grammatici Smaragdi Abbatis mirificus Tractatus._ Then follows a prologue in which the abbot declares that having, according to his capacity, taught grammar to his monks, they had been accustomed to transfer the pith of his lectures to their tablets, that what they took in with their ears they might retain by dint of frequent reading. And from this they took occasion to conjure him to write this treatise, which he has done, adorning his little book with sentences not from Maro or Cicero, but from the Divine Scriptures, that his readers may at one and the same time be refreshed with the pleasant drink of the grammatical art and also of the Word of God. And his reason for doing so has been that many defend their ignorance by saying that in grammar God is not named, but only pagan names and examples, and that therefore it is an art rightly and justly neglected. But he is rather of opinion that we should do as the Israelites did when they spoiled the Egyptians, and offer to God the treasures taken from the heathen. He appears to have devoted some attention to the vulgar dialects, and gives lists of Frank and Gothic patronymics with their Latin interpretations.[86]

St. Benedict of Anian, the cupbearer of Charlemagne, and afterwards the great reformer of the Benedictine order, was almost as zealous in restoring studies as in bringing back regular discipline. “Everywhere,” says his disciple St. Ardo, “he appointed cantors, taught readers, established grammar-masters, and those skilled in sacred letters; also he collected a great multitude of books.” Nor must we omit to notice the labours of Leidrade, the emperor’s librarian, and one of the “missi dominici,” who, being appointed Archbishop of Lyons, addressed a curious letter to his imperial master, in which he describes the result of his various labours. He has, by God’s grace, established regular psalmody in his church; he has schools of singers, and schools of readers, who cannot only read the Scriptures correctly, but who understand the spiritual sense of the gospels and the prophecies; some even have attained to the mystical signification of the books of Solomon and of Job. He has also done what in him lay to promote the copying of books, and has built, repaired, and decorated an incredible number of churches and monasteries. Besides these there was Angilbert, the favourite minister both of Pepin and Charlemagne, who retiring from court became abbot of St. Riquier and founder of a noble library; and Adalhard, the emperor’s cousin, created by him count of the royal palace, who, out of a holy fear of offending God, and losing His grace in the seductions of a court atmosphere, took refuge in the abbey of Corby, where he was eventually chosen abbot. In this capacity he greatly raised the reputation of the Corby schools. Paschasius, who wrote his life, says that Adalhard was a most elegant scholar, having been carefully educated in the Palatine school, and that he was equally eloquent in the Tudesque and Romanesque dialects as in Latin, and instructed the common people in their own barbarous tongues. His literary friends gave him the double surname of Antony Augustine--Antony from his love of that saint, and Augustine, because like him he studied to imitate the virtues of all those around him.

Meanwhile Alcuin, who had been master to most of these illustrious men, ceased not to cherish the hope that he might be suffered to return to his native land. “The searcher of hearts knows,” he writes, “that I neither came thither, nor do I continue here for the love of gold, but only for the necessities of the Church.” Like a true Englishman his heart clung to his old home, to the memory of his quiet cell at York, where he had studied Horace and Homer, undisturbed by other sound than the waving of the branches as they were shaken by the genial morning breeze, a sound which, he says, did but stir his mind the more to meditation. The flowery meadows and murmuring streams of England, the smiling garden of his monastery full of its May apple blossoms or its July roses, and the abundance of birds singing in the Yorkshire woods, all these find a place in the sweet verses in which the English exile paints the beloved scenes in the midst of which he had passed his childish days;[87] and all the brilliancy of Charles’s court could not compensate to his mind for the loss of home. In 790 he was, therefore, permitted to revisit England, but two years later he was recalled by urgent messages from the emperor, who desired that he should attend the Council of Frankfort held to condemn the heresy of Elipandus. Alcuin felt himself obliged to obey the summons, but he did not bid farewell to York without testifying the regret with which he tore himself from its peaceful retirement. “I am yours in life and in death,” he writes to his brethren, “and it may be that God will have pity on me, and suffer that you should bury in his old age, him whom in his infancy you brought up and nourished.” Charlemagne, however, having regained possession of his favourite scholar, was not to be induced a second time to give him up; the utmost that poor Alcuin could obtain was permission to retire from the court to some monastery within the Frankish dominions. Fulda was too far distant from the royal residence, and the death of Ithier, abbot of St. Martin’s of Tours, in 796, enabled the emperor to appoint Alcuin as his successor.

Tours at that time held the first rank among the religious houses of France, and what with the task of reforming its discipline and establishing a first-rate school within its walls, Alcuin enjoyed little of the leisure after which he yearned. He found himself in fact in possession of a great abbatial lordship, to which were attached vast revenues and 20,000 serfs. The revenues were expended by him in foundations of charity, such as hospitals, which earned for him the gratitude of the people of Tours. He applied himself to his new duties with unabated energy, enriched his library with the precious manuscripts he had brought from York, and by his own teaching raised the school of Tours to a renown which was shared by none of its contemporaries. In the hall of studies a distinct place was set apart for the copyists, who were exhorted by certain verses of their master, set up in a conspicuous place, to mind their stops, and not to leave out letters. Here were trained most of those scholars whom we shall have to notice in the following reigns, such as Rabanus Maurus, the celebrated abbot of Fulda. A letter addressed by Alcuin to the emperor soon after his establishment at Tours gives a somewhat bombastical account of his labours, but the reader will pardon the pedantry of one who had spent all his life as a schoolmaster. “The employments of your Flaccus in his retreat,” he says, “are suited to his humble sphere, but they are neither inglorious nor unprofitable. I spend my time in the halls of St. Martin, teaching the noble youths under my care: to some I serve out the honey of the Holy Scriptures; others I essay to intoxicate with the wine of ancient literature: one class I nourish with the apples of grammatical studies, and to the eyes of others I display the order of the shining orbs that adorn the azure heavens. To others again I explain the mysteries contained in the Holy Scriptures, suiting my instructions to the capacity of my scholars, that I may train up many to be useful to the Church of God and to be an ornament to your kingdom. But I am constantly in want of those excellent books of erudition which I had collected around me in my own country, both by the devoted zeal of my master Albert and my own labour. I therefore entreat your majesty to permit me to send some of my people into Britain that they may bring thence flowers into France....” After some lengthy praises of the utility of learning, he proceeds: “Exhort then, my lord the king, the youth of your palace to learn with all diligence, that they may make such progress in the bloom of their youth as will bring honour on their old age. I also, according to my measure, will not cease to scatter in this soil the seed of wisdom among your servants, remembering the words, ‘In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thy hand.’ To do this has been the most delightful employment of my whole life. In my youth I sowed the seeds of learning in the flourishing seminaries of my native soil. Now in the evening of my life, though my blood is less warm within me, I do not cease to do the same in France, praying to God that they may spring up and flourish in both countries.” In consequence of this suggestion, a commission was despatched to England for the purpose of transcribing some of the treasures of the York library. The French scribes made copies of the English service books, and that so exactly, that they took no heed of the geographical distinctions of the two countries, but copied the pontifical of Archbishop Egbert, and its form for the anointing and coronation of kings, exactly word for word. Hence in a Rheims pontifical of the ninth century, still preserved in Cologne cathedral, the emperor of the Franks is addressed as King of the Saxons, Mercians, and Northumbrians--a circumstance which has induced some modern critics to speculate as to the exact time when the North of England was subject to the Frankish sceptre. The copies procured through the industry of these scribes were multiplied at Tours, and thence dispersed throughout the kingdom. Alcuin’s own works were also in great demand, specially his elementary treatises on the different sciences. His other works, which are very numerous, consist chiefly of theological treatises and commentaries on the Scriptures, some metaphysical and philosophical writings, and a collection of poems, among which are the _Eulogium on the Archbishops and the Church of York_, and the _Elegy on the Destruction of Lindisfarne_, the latter of which is perhaps the happiest production of his pen, and evinces the real feeling of a poet. The news of the sad event which it commemorates excited consternation throughout Europe, but by none was it received with bitterer sorrow than by the abbot of Tours. “The man,” he says, “who can think of that calamity without terror, and who does not cry to God in behalf of his country, has a heart not of flesh but of stone.” He at once wrote letters of sympathy to Ethelred, King of Northumbria, and the monks who had escaped from the sword, which would be sufficient to evince how fondly his heart still clung to his native land even without the touching apostrophe which he introduces to his cell at York. What view was taken by Alcuin of the work of education, to which his whole life was devoted may be gathered from his treatise on the seven liberal arts, the introduction to which is cast in the form of dialogue between the master and his disciples. I will give an extract which may suffice to show the noble and elevated sentiments which these early scholars entertained on the subject of learning:--

_Dis._ “O, wise master, we have often heard you repeat that true philosophy was the science that taught all the virtues, and the only earthly riches that never left their possessor in want. Your words have excited in us a great desire to possess this treasure. We wish to know where the teaching of philosophy will lead us, and by what steps we may attain to it. But our age is weak and without your help we shall not be able to mount these steps.”

_Master._ “It will be easy to show you the way of wisdom, provided you seek it purely for God’s sake to preserve the purity of your own soul, and for the love of virtue; if you love it for its own sake, and do not seek in it any worldly honour and glory or, still less, riches or pleasure.”

_Dis._ “Master, raise us up from the earth where our ignorance now detains us, lead us to those heights of science where you passed your own early years. For if we may listen to the fables of the poets, they would seem to tell us that the sciences are the true banquets of the gods.”

_Master._ “We read of Wisdom, which is spoken of by the mouth of Solomon, that she built herself a house and hewed out seven pillars. Now, although these pillars represent the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost and the seven Sacraments of the Church, we may also discern in them the _seven liberal arts_, grammar, rhetoric, dialects, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy, which are like so many steps on which philosophers expend their labours, and have obtained the honours of eternal renown.”

As the school of St. Martin rose in celebrity, it became the resort of a crowd both of foreigners and natives. Alcuin’s own countrymen in particular flocked around him, and it would seem that the number of English scholars who constantly arrived, at last excited the jealousy of the clergy of Tours. One day as four Frankish priests were standing at the gate of the monastery, a newly arrived Englishman, Aigulf by name, passed in, and supposing him to be ignorant of their language, one of them exclaimed, “There goes another of them! When shall we be free from these swarms of Britons? They gather round the old fellow like so many bees!” Aigulf hung his head and blushed; but when Alcuin heard what had passed he sent for the Frenchmen, and courteously requested them to sit down, and drink the health of the young scholar in his best wine. “The old Saxon,” as they called him, ceased not in his retirement to watch over the interests of learning, even in the remotest provinces. There was hardly a bishop or abbot of any distinction who had not at one time or other been his pupil, and he continued to enjoy and exercise among them the privileged freedom of an old and honoured master. His letters bear evidence of the immense range over which his influence extended. In his ninety-fourth epistle he conjures a young missionary to be always reminding the parish priests to keep up their schools. Another time he addresses a bishop, and advises him to return to his own country that he may set in order good grammar lessons for the children of his diocese. His fifty-sixth letter is to the English Archbishop of York; and in it he enters into several useful details; and advises him to have his school divided into different classes--one for reading, one for writing, and one for chanting, so as to preserve good order. Then comes a letter to the Emperor, reminding him to have the Palatine scholars daily exercised in their learning; arithmetical subtleties accompany another letter, and some sage observations on the utility of punctuation, which commendable branch of grammar has, he regrets to say, been of late much lost sight of. In short, his active mind, thoroughly Anglo-Saxon in its temper, worked on to the end; labouring at a sublime end by homely practical details. One sees he is of the same race with Bede, who wrote and dictated to the last hour of his life, and when his work was finished, calmly closed his book and died.

It was after the retirement of Alcuin from court, that we must date the arrival in France of the Irish scholars, Dungal and Clement, concerning whom the monk of St. Gall relates a story which is treated as apocryphal by Tiraboschi, though it has found a place in most earlier histories. He tells us, that having landed on the coast of France, they excited the curiosity of the people by crying aloud, “Wisdom to sell! who’ll buy?” The rumour of their arrival reaching Charlemagne’s ears, he caused them to be brought before him, and finding them well skilled in letters, retained them both in his service. Clement remained at Paris and received the direction of the Palatine school, whilst Dungal was sent to Pavia, where he opened an academy in the monastery of St. Augustine. Whatever may be thought of the incident connected with their first appearance in France, there is no doubt as to their historic identity. Tiraboschi quotes an edict of the Emperor Lothaire published in 823, for the re-establishment of public schools in nine of the chief cities of Italy, from which it appears that Dungal was at the time still presiding over the school of Pavia. He seems to be the same who, in 811, addressed a long letter to Charlemagne on the subject of two solar eclipses, which were expected to take place in the following year, and may be yet further identified with the _Dungalus Scotorum præcipuus_, who is noticed in the catalogue of the library of Bobbio, where he at last retired, bringing with him a great store of books, which he presented to the monastery. Among them were four books of Virgil, two of Ovid, one of Lucretius, and a considerable number of the Greek and Latin fathers.

As to Clement, there is no difficulty in tracing his career. He seems to have been deeply imbued with the learned mysticism of the school of Toulouse, and in a treatise on the eight parts of speech, which is still preserved, quotes the rules of the grammarian Virgil, and the writings of the noble doctors Glengus, Galbungus, Eneas, and the rest. Alcuin complained much of the disorder introduced into the Studies of the court school after his departures. “I left them Latins,” he exclaimed, “and now I find them Egyptians.” This was a double hit at the gibberish of the twelve Latinites, which Alcuin could not abide, and at the hankering which the Irish professors always displayed, both in science and theology, for the teaching of the school of Alexandria, many of them having embraced the peculiar views of the Neo-Platonists. The Egyptians, however, found a welcome at the court of Charlemagne in spite of their eccentricities; for there no one was ever coldly received who could calculate eclipses, or charm the ears of the learned monarch with Latin hexameters. And it is perhaps to one of these Irish professors that we must attribute those verses preserved by Martene, and professing to be written by an “Irish exile,” which contain such agreeable flattery of the Frankish sovereign and of his people, and which were presented to the emperor as he held one of those solemn New-year courts, at which his subjects vied one with another in offering him jewels, tissues, horses, and bags of money. And perhaps, to his mind, the graceful lines that celebrated the Frankish people as “a race of kings come forth from the walls of Troy, into whose hands God had delivered the empire of the world,” were more acceptable than even the glittering heaps of the precious metals.

Charlemagne did his utmost to draw Alcuin once more to his side, and specially pressed him to accompany him on his visit to Rome, in the year 800, when he received the imperial crown. But Alcuin was not to be moved by his arguments and entreaties, though he did not refuse to quit his retirement at the call of real duty. In 799 he attended the council of Aix-la-Chapelle, to oppose in person the heretical teacher, Felix of Urgel, who, together with Elipandus, had revived the Nestorian heresy in a new shape. After a disputation of six days, Felix owned himself vanquished, and frankly renounced his errors. This was perhaps the most glorious moment in Alcuin’s life; but he only used the credit which he had thus obtained with his sovereign to solicit permission to resign all his preferments into the hands of his disciples, that he might spend the remainder of his life in retirement. Frèdegise, therefore, succeeded him in the abbacy of St. Martin’s, and Sigulf in that of Ferrières. “I have made all things over into the hands of my sons,” writes the old man, rejoicing in his late-earned freedom, “and laying down the burden of the pastoral care, I wait quietly at St. Martin’s until my change shall come.”

The short remainder of his life was spent in the humblest exercises of charity and devotion. He chose the place of his interment and often visited it with disciples, and his letters show him to have been incessantly occupied with the great thought of his approaching end. It came at last, and on the morning of Whitsunday, May 19, 804, the great scholar passed gently and happily to the eternity he had so long contemplated. Charlemagne mourned his death as that of a friend and master, and before his final departure addressed him some Latin verses, which, if not distinguished for much poetical merit, at least do justice to the honest affection that dictated them. He survived Alcuin ten years, and was buried in the royal “chapel”[88] that he had erected as the place of his sepulture, not reclining in a coffin, but seated on his throne, with the crown on his brow, the sceptre in his hand, his good sword Joyeuse by his side, and the book of the Gospels resting on his knees. And a brief inscription marked the spot where rested all that was mortal of “the great and orthodox emperor.”

_CHAPTER VI._

THE CARLOVINGIAN SCHOOLS.

A.D. 804 TO 900.

The death of Alcuin in no degree checked the intellectual movement to which he had communicated the first impulse. He had fairly done his work; and even after his death his influence survived in the disciples whom he had so carefully trained and who long supplied the public schools of the empire with a succession of excellent masters. St. Martin’s of Tours, indeed, declined under the government of Fredegise, and the Palatine scholars themselves did not pass into the best hands. After Alcuin’s withdrawal from court the school of the palace fell, as we have seen, first under the management of the Irishman Clement, who had a fancy for changing the whole method of instruction, and then under that of Claud, Bishop of Turin, a man of audacious opinions, the only one of the Western bishops who declared in favour of the Iconoclasts, and who likewise took up the heretical tenets of Felix of Urgel. The school continued to decline during the whole reign of Louis le Debonnaire; but it revived under his son and successor Charles the Bald, who followed the example of his illustrious grandfather, and gathered around him learned men from all countries, especially from England and Ireland. The crowds of scholars who flocked from the latter island is noticed by Henry of Auxerre, who says, that it seemed as if Ireland herself were about to pass over into Gaul, and it became a proverb during the reign of this monarch, that instead of speaking of the school of the palace, one should rather call the royal residence the palace of the schools. Charles was not merely an encourager of humane letters; he possessed a certain philosophical turn of mind which led him to indulge in abstruse speculations, and to encourage similar tastes in those around him. He addressed a capitular to the bishops of his kingdom, questioning them on their opinions as to the immateriality of the soul; and he placed at the head of his royal school a scholar more famous for the subtlety of his intellect than the orthodoxy of his views. John Scotus Erigena, an Irishman by birth, had early applied himself to the study of the Greek language and philosophy, and had embraced the chief doctrines of the Neo-Platonic school. He astonished the Western world by his translation of the works of St. Denys the Areopagite, an achievement which the Roman scholars, who still regarded their Transalpine neighbours as essentially barbarians, could hardly be brought to credit, and which exhorted compliments from Anastasius, the papal librarian, and some complaints from Pope Nicholas I., who would have been better pleased had the work been first submitted to ecclesiastical approval. Erigena’s free opinions won him no disfavour with Charles the Bald; nevertheless certain controversies, of which we shall have to speak hereafter, and in which he took an active part, drew from him the expression of heterodox sentiments which excited no little scandal. This was increased by the publication of his philosophical treatise, “_De Natura Rerum_,” in which he plainly put forth the doctrines of the Greek Platonists, and represented the Creator and the creature as essentially one and the same. Besides this radical Pantheistic error, which runs through all his works, his views on the subject of the supremacy of reason over authority are liberal in the extreme.[89] “Authority,” he says, “emanates from reason, not reason from authority; true reason has no need to be supported by any authority. We must use reason first in our investigations and authority afterwards.” He also affirmed that the substance of man was his will. The only punishment of sin, he says, is sin; there is no eternal fire; even the lost enjoy a certain happiness, for they are not deprived of truth. These, and a thousand equally unsound passages, raised him a crowd of adversaries, all of whom he treated with that supercilious contempt which would seem necessarily to enter into the character of the scholastic heretic. “They are all deceived,” he writes, “owing to their ignorance of liberal studies; they have none of them studied Greek, and with a knowledge of the Latin language alone it is impossible for them to understand the distinctions of science.”

In 855 the Council of Valence, nothing dismayed at having to deal with a foe who was acquainted with Greek, examined his writings, declared certain propositions extracted from his treatise on Predestination to be the invention of the devil, and everywhere interdicted them from being read. Nevertheless, Erigena was not removed from his post at court; nor was it until ten years later, in 865, that he found himself obliged to retire, in consequence of the remonstrances addressed to the king by Pope Nicholas I., who required his removal from the Palatine academy, “where he was giving poison instead of bread, and mingling his tares with the wheat.” All authorities agree in regarding him as intellectually superior to any man of his age, though it is possible that his heterodox principles have had some share in winning him the extraordinary favour which he has found at the hands of Hallam and Guizot, who are willing, naturally enough, to make the most of one who in the Dark Ages set at nought the claims of authority, and raised the standard of independent reason. In spite, however, of the prominent position which he holds among men of letters, and the noisy eulogiums which have been heaped on him at the expense of his more orthodox contemporaries, I shall say no more of him in this place than that he withdrew from Gaul,[90] and was succeeded in his office as Palatine scholasticus by the monk Mannon, who, after teaching with success for some years, returned to his monastery at Condat; after which we hear no more of the Palatine school till its revival, at the beginning of the tenth century, under the famous Remigius of Auxerre.