Alcuin of York and the birth of modern education

The world of Ecgbert and Aethelbert, successors to Bede, and their pupil Alcuin, who took York’s powerhouse of knowledge to the court of Charlemagne to pioneer the European educational system

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The Teacher of York

Alcuin of York was a scholar, clergyman, poet, and teacher from York, then part of the Kingdom of Deira, later Northumbria. He was influential as a writer, as a mathematician, and in his writing. His work gave rise to the revival of intellectual life in the area around York which extended across Europe.

He brought the educational traditions and teaching methods from York to the court of Charlemagne, extending those traditions across Europe. He laid the foundations of the educational system, focused on monasteries and cathedral schools north of the Apls, which prevailed until the emergence of universities in the twelfth century.

There is an In Our Time podcast about him and another Podcast in the BBC Series Anglo Saxon Portraits, is an essay on Alcuin, the Scholar by Mary Garrison.

Renaissance

The Venerable Bede died in Jarrow in 735 CE, having established a renaissance of learning following the chaotic centuries since the end of the Roman empire, focused on the Benedictine study of the Bible. Bede’s work was the inception of an educational system based upon training in Latin and loosely on the liberal arts (liberalia studia), the basic literary and numerical studies adopted from Roman education.

Pythagoras had speculated that there was a mathematical and geometric harmony to the cosmos or the universe and his followers linked the four arts of astronomy, arithmetic, geometry, and music into one area of study to form the "disciplines of the medieval quadrivium". Over time, rhetoric, grammar, and dialectic (or logic) became the educational programme of the trivium. Together the quadrivium and the trivium came to be known as the seven liberal arts. Bede did not wholly embrace the Liberal Arts himself, but his monastic endeavours created the philosophical landscape for their revival not so far from the coast at Whitby.

The Liberal Arts

The Benedictine monasteries had become the main focus of learning by the sixth century, following the disintegration of the Roman empire. Benedictine monasteries were repositories of learning as they focused on prayer, study and manual labour. Study was intended to assist an understanding of the Bible through copying scripts alongside a learning of the liberal arts. Roman knowledge through an understanding of Latin was an instrument to assist Christian understanding. Over time, this became the basis of early education.

Among Bede’s pupils was Ecgbert, brother of the Northumbrian King Eadberht (who reigned from 737 CE to 758 CE). When King Eadberht founded an archbishopric at York, Ecgbert became Archbishop of York in the year of Bede’s death. It was at York, that Ecgbert continued Bede’s work.

Ecgbert founded a school attached to the cathedral for the sons of local nobles.

Silver coin of King Eadberht and Archbishop Ecgbert from Fishergate, York, circa 758 CE (Yorkshire Museum)

Education provided moral teaching to support the aims of Augustine’s Christian Doctrine. Augustine had advocated the harnessing of education to Christian ends.

These were peaceful and stable years in Northumbria, before the arrival of the Vikings at Lindisfarne in 793 CE.

As Ecgbert’s responsibilities increased, he entrusted the running of the school to his kinsman and pupil, Aethelbert. The fame of the school grew under Aethelbert and pupils came from across the country and from overseas. Aethelbert travelled to the Continent to collect books and he spread knowledge of the school. He made it his mission to collect books from across Europe and used his own private wealth to amass a remarkable library at York. Alcuin, in his longest poem, later included a bibliography of this remarkable library.

Where books are kept

Small roofs hold the gifts of heavenly wisdom;

Reader, learn them, rejoicing with a devout heart.

The Wisdom of the Lord is better than any treasures

For the one who pursues it now will have the pathway of light

(Alcuin, Carmen, 105, i: Dümmler 1881, p. 332)

Aethelbert pursued his religious ambitions through the assembly of knowledge at York. He was primarily a scientist. Because York was a cathedral, and not a monastery like Bede’s Jarrow, students came from far places such as Ireland and Freisland, and then left again with their learning. A cathedral school was able to attract bright individuals from afar. Indolis egregiac iuvenes quoscumque videbat Hos sibi coniunxit, docuit, nutrivit, amavit, “He attached to himself, taught, nurtured, and loved all the young men of excellent character whom he saw."

Prior to this period of Renaissance at York, education had contracted to a narrow range of studies, for purely religious purpose. What stood out at York was the evolution of a range of learning far wider than a focus on salvation and the saving of souls. Aethelbert was particularly interested in natural science and studied plants and animals. His view was that the rationality of the universe had been divinely created, and so human activity which helped to understand it was also theologically justified. He believed that reason had a divine purpose and envisaged the five zones of heaven – the seven planets; the regular motions of the stars; the rising and setting of celestial objects; movement of the air and tremors of earth; and the nature and diversity of men, livestock, and wild beasts and birds.

It was during Aethelbert’s time that Alcuin joined the school and became Ecgbert and Aethelbert’s favoured pupil and a great friend of Aethelbert.

The young Alcuin therefore came to the cathedral church of York during the golden age of Archbishop Ecgbert and his brother, the Northumbrian King Eadberht. King Eadberht and Archbishop Ecgbert oversaw the re-energising and reorganisation of the English church, with an emphasis on reforming the clergy and on the tradition of learning that Bede had begun. Ecgbert was devoted to Alcuin, who thrived under his tutelage.

York became an exceptional centre of leaning during the second half of the eighth century.

Ecgbert promoted learning for its own sake at York, beyond merely religious learning.

Inspirer of knowledge

Alcuin had a profound love of poetry. He studied the liberal arts and Latin authors such as Pliny (for natural history), Cicero (for rhetoric), the Anglo Saxon Aldhelm (for grammar) and poets including Virgil, Lucan and Statius. He studied the Bible, and the works of Gregory the Great, Cassiodorus and Bede. The study was not particularly original, but aimed at conserving and digesting the heritage of the past into handbooks for the survival of established teaching as a tool for Christian knowledge.

Alcuin accompanied Aethelbert on his travels at least once, and as Aethelbert grew older, Alcuin became involved in teaching.

Alcuin graduated to become a teacher during the 750s by which time Alcuin taught an extraordinarily wide curriculum.

In York, Alcuin drew inspiration for the school he would lead at the Frankish court. He revived the school with the trivium and quadrivium disciplines, writing a codex on the trivium, while his student Hraban wrote one on the quadrivium.

It was during this time in 766 CE that Charles I became King of the Franks.

Aethelbert succeeded Ecgbert as Archbishop on 24 April 767. Alcuin’s ascendancy to the headship of the York school, the ancestor of St Peter's School, began after Aethelbert became Archbishop of York. Around the same time, Alcuin became a deacon in the church. He was never ordained a priest and there is no evidence that he took monastic vows, though he lived as if he had. Religious boundaries were fluid at that time without a sharp division between disciplines.

Alcuin taught the seven Liberal Arts. He stressed the correct use of Latin and wrote textbooks in Latin. He followed Bede’s method of question and answer. He promoted the study of the calendar, the computus, and especially the once controversial calculation of the date of Easter. He gave elementary instruction in music, arithmetic and geometry.

He enjoyed riddles, jokes and puns in his teaching methods. He made arithmetical puzzles and seems to have been an excellent communicator. This was a very Anglo Saxon teaching technique. The BBC Discovery podcast, Alcuin of York, is an examination by Philip Ball of Alcuin’s famous river crossing riddle.

Alcuin developed a friendly literary circle where its members had nicknames, Alcuin was called Flacchus and a favoured pupil, Sigewulf, was known as Vetulus, ‘little old fellow”.

Alcuin wrote about the beautiful inscriptions given to the Church in York by Bishop Wilfred. This one reads “Hail, gracious priest, on account of your merits”, from St Mary’s Church, Bishophill, York (Yorkshire Museum)

Alcuin later wrote a lengthy poem recalling the magnificence of his beloved York at this time.

My heart is set to praise my home And briefly tell the ancient cradling Of York's famed city through the charms of verse. It was a Roman army built it first , High-walled and towered, and made the native tribes

Of Britain allied partners in the task – For then a prosperous Britain rightly bore The rule of Rome whose sceptre ruled the world – To be a merchant-town of land and sea, A mighty stonghold for their governors,

An Empire's pride and terror to its foes, A haven for the ships from distant ports Across the ocean, where the sailor hastes To cast his rope ashore and stay to rest. The city is watered by the fish-rich Ouse

Which flows past flowery plains on every side; And hills and forests beautify the earth And make a lovely dwelling-place, whose health And richness soon will fill it full of men. The best of realms and people round came there

In hope of gain, to seek in that rich earth For riches, there to make both home and gain

Alcuin

In 778 CE, Eanbald became Archbishop of York and Alcuin became sole head of the school.

The European Stage

In 781 CE, King Elfwald sent Alcuin to Rome to confirm the election of the new archbishop, Eanbald I, by collecting his vestment, the pallium. He had already been to continental Europe at least once, and probably had previously met Charlemagne.

On his way home, on 15 March 781, he met Charlemagne in the Italian city of Parma. At this time, Charlemagne was King Charles of the Franks, but he later became Charlemagne, the Great, after his coronation as Holy Roman Emperor in 800.

Charlemagne meeting Alcuin (British Library)

Charlemagne had already gathered a circle of poets and scholars and asked Alcuin to direct the education of the royal and noble children. Charles I had conquered the Lombards, so the first scholars he gathered were generally Italian. Charles was first a warrior, but also sought to grow the cultural authority of his kingdom: fortitudo et sapientia, wisdom and might, an idea derived from the Virgilian hero. At the invitation of Charlemagne, Alcuin became a leading scholar and teacher at the Carolingian court, where he remained a figure in the 780s and 790s.

Since the beginning of his reign, Charles had been focused on successfully fighting Lombards, Saxons, and Saracens. In boyhood he would have been engaged in the usual routine of hunting, riding, swimming, and the use of weapons. Yet he had an eye for scholarship and the development of national culture.

Alcuin later wrote to Charlemagne. I knew how strong was the attraction you felt towards knowledge, and how greatly you loved it. I knew that you were urging everyone to become acquainted with it and were offering rewards and honours to its friends in order to induce them to come from all parts of the world to aid in your noble efforts.

Alcuin left York for Charlemagne’s court in 782. There is a suggestion that he was in York for a while longer and didn’t leave for Charlemagne’s court until 786.

Alcuin's joined the illustrious group of scholars whom Charlemagne had gathered around him, at the heart of the Carolingian Renaissance. These scholars included Peter of Pisa (a Latin Grammarian), Paulinus of Aquileia, Rado, and Abbot Fulrad, and Paul the Deacon (a Lombard historian). Alcuin would later write, the Lord was calling me to the service of King Charles.

Charlemagne gathered the best scholars from across his Kingdom and beyond, so that his realm became more than just a centralised state, but adopted ideas from afar. It seems that he made many of these men his closest friends and counsellors. They referred to him as David, a reference to the Biblical king David. Alcuin soon found himself on intimate terms with Charlemagne and the other men at court, where pupils and masters were known by affectionate and jesting nicknames. Alcuin himself continued to be called Flaccus and sometimes Albinus. While at Aachen, Alcuin bestowed pet names upon his pupils, derived mainly from Virgil's Eclogues. Alcuin loved Charlemagne and enjoyed the king's esteem, but his letters reveal that his fear of him was as great as his love.

Alcuin became master of the Palace School of Charlemagne in Aachen (Urbs Regale) in 782. It had been founded by the king's ancestors as a place for the education of the royal children (mostly in manners and the ways of the court). However, Charlemagne wanted to include the liberal arts, and most importantly, the study of religion.

Aachen

The centre of Charlemagne’s world into which Alcuin stepped.

From 782 to 790 CE, Alcuin taught Charlemagne himself, his sons Pepin and Louis, as well as young men sent to be educated at court, and the young clerics attached to the palace chapel. Bringing with him from York his assistants Pyttel, Sigewulf, and Joseph, Alcuin revolutionised the educational standards of the Palace School, introducing Charlemagne to the liberal arts and creating a personalised atmosphere of scholarship and learning, to the extent that the institution came to be known as the school of Master Albinus.

Alcuin continued and built upon his methods of teaching which had been developed at York. He brought his Anglo Saxon teaching techniques, including his riddles to liven up the rather dry Lombard teaching methods. He made learning attractive. The collection of mathematical and logical word problems, Propositiones ad acuendos juvenes ("Problems to Sharpen Youths") has been attributed to Alcuin.

Alcuin helped Charlemagne to write official decrees, including those aimed at the development of literacy across the Kingdom. He pioneered Charlemagne's Admonitio generalis, a collection of legislation issued in 789 CE, which covered educational and ecclesiastical reform within the Frankish kingdom. This framed what Charlemagne sought to achieve, including the establishment of schools throughout Francia.

It was generally felt that a successful kingdom required three classes of people - warriors, workers, and those who would pray and converse with God, through an understanding of wisdom, including by understanding Latin. Alcuin was called upon to lead the development of the third of these classes.

Alcuin became interested in Aachen in logic and abstract philosophical reasoning, which were applied to theological questions, such as proving God’s existence or defining his nature. He wrote a text on logic and revised the study of Boethius’ works.

Alcuin engaged with women in the court through his letters, in Francia, Northumbria and Mercia. He saw engagement with women in correspondence as a means to influence those in places of power. He engaged in correspondence on scholarly matters and they exchanged gifts. These letters tell us about the politics of the court. Women were also his pupils.

He wrote poems. They were not always of the highest standard. They were often long poems. He also wrote private poems in his letters.

He also focused on theology and wrote treatises, including two against the Adoptionist heretics in Spain; and on the Trinity. He revised the Latin version of the Bible. There was a revision of the liturgy.

Alcuin established a new curriculum and teaching methods, which were then adopted across Charlemagne’s empire. Royal decrees founded schools in each diocese and monastery. There was a standardisation of handwriting through the adoption of the new Carolingian miniscule.

He continued the question and answer technique of learning, exemplified in "The Disputation of Pepin the most Noble and Royal Youth with Albinus the Scholastic":

"What is Language? "The Betrayer of the Soul."

"What generates language? "The tongue."

"What is the tongue? "The Whip of the Air."

"What is Air? "The Guardian of Life."

"What is Life? "The joy of the happy; the expectation of Death."

"What is Death? "An inevitable event; an uncertain journey; tears for the living; the proving of wills; the stealer of men."

"What is Man? "The Slave of Death; a passing Traveller; a Stranger in his place."

Alcuin helped Charlemagne to lay the foundations for a European system of education, which kept learning alive during the turbulent ninth and tenth centuries.

Alcuin’s letters are a rich historical record of a time of profound historical change in Europe. He revealed his inner thoughts and longing for Northumbria. They tell much of the history of Northumbria. Alcuin’s letters make the late eighth century the most documented period of this era. We learn personal information about Alcuin from his letters, such as his favourite food which was porridge with butter and honey.

Alcuin was the most learned man anywhere to be found, according to Einhard's The Life of Charlemagne (c. 817–833). Alcuin is considered among the most important intellectual architects of the Carolingian Renaissance.

Among his pupils were many of the dominant intellectuals of the Carolingian era.

Alcuin established a great library at Aachen, for which Charlemagne obtained manuscripts from Monte Cassino, Rome, Ravenna and other places. Books are naturally attracted to centres of power and influence, like wealth and works of art and all that goes with a prosperous cultural centre.

During this period, he perfected Carolingian minuscule, an easily read manuscript hand using a mixture of upper and lower case letters. Carolingian minuscule was already in use before Alcuin arrived in Francia. However there was a diversity of script between monasteries. Most likely Alcuin was responsible for copying and preserving the script while at the same time restoring the purity of the form. Alcuin spread correct Latin learning and common script which was mutually legible. The script is the basis for the script used today and Times New Roman font has origins in the common text developed at this time. Each letter is distinctly formed, separated and unique from another, so it became the tool for print many centuries later.

The Carolingian Miniscule script needed less time to write, and was probably an adjunct of the new State educational project, the greatest ever undertaken in the Western World. For such an enterprise the employment of an accelerated script was an important element.

Rabanus Marus (left), Alcuin (middle) and Archbishop Odgar of Mainz (right) (Carolingian manuscript)

At Aachen, Alcuin composed a trialogue between a master, a 14 year of Frank and a 15 year old Anglo Saxon. He also compiled a textbook of synonyms.

In this role as adviser, he dissuaded the emperor's policy of forcing pagans to be baptised on pain of death, arguing. Faith is a free act of the will, not a forced act. We must appeal to the conscience, not compel it by violence. You can force people to be baptised, but you cannot force them to believe. His arguments seem to have prevailed. Charlemagne abolished the death penalty for paganism in 797 CE.

Alcuin returned briefly to York in 789 CE. In 790 CE, Alcuin again returned from the court of Charlemagne to York, and he lived at York until 793 CE.

In 793 CE Charlemagne invited Alcuin back to help in the fight against the Adoptionist heresy, which was at that time making significant progress in Toledo, the old capital of the Visigoths and still a major city for the Christians under Islamic rule in Spain. Alcuin is believed to have had contacts with Beatus of Liébana, from the Kingdom of Asturias, who fought against Adoptionism.

Alcuin had been reluctant to leave York, but the first Viking attack at Lindisfarne in that same year 793 CE, followed by Jarrow in 794 CE and mounting anarchy culminating in the murder of the Northumbrian King Ethelred in 796 CE caused Alcuin to remain in Francia, under the safety of the strong rule of Charlemagne. His distress and horror at the fate of Lindisfarne in 793 comes over very strongly in his letters both to the Bishop of Lindisfarne and the Northumbrian king. Having failed during his stay in Northumbria to influence King Æthelred in the conduct of his reign, Alcuin never returned home.

As he returned to Charlemagne's court, he wrote a series of letters to Æthelred, to Hygbald, Bishop of Lindisfarne, and to Æthelhard, Archbishop of Canterbury in the succeeding months, dealing with the Viking attack on Lindisfarne in July 793. These letters and Alcuin's poem on the subject, De clade Lindisfarnensis monasterii (“On the destruction of the monastery at Lindisfarne”), provide the only significant contemporary account of these events. In his description of the Viking attack, he wrote, never before has such terror appeared in Britain. Behold the church of St Cuthbert, splattered with the blood of God's priests, robbed of its ornaments.

In his letter to Hygbald, Bishop of Lindisfarne he wrote, When I was with you, the closeness of your love would give me great joy. In contrast, now that I am away from you, the distress of your suffering fills me daily with deep grief, when heathens desecrated God's sanctuaries, and poured the blood of saints within the compass of the altar, destroyed the house of our hope, trampled the bodies of saints in God's temple like animal dung in the street.

Alcuin saw the Viking horrors as divine retribution for the moral decline of the Northumbrian people.

In his letter to Hygbald he wrote, what security is there for the churches of Britain if St Cuthbert with so great a throng of saints will not defend his own? Either this is the beginning of greater grief or the sins of those who live there have brought it upon themselves.

Alcuin’s lonely end

Alcuin was pressured to return to York by the Archbishop of York in 795 CE. Yet 796 CE was a year of misery and the death of Kings. Ethelred’s successor was expelled after only a month. Alcuin decided to remain in Europe. Charlemagne perhaps later gave Tours to Alcuin as compensation for his lost lands in Northumbria.

Upon the death of Abbot Itherius of Saint Martin at Tours, in 796 CE, a year of devastation in Northumbria, Charlemagne appointed Alcuin to be abbot of Marmoutier Abbey, in Tours, in Western Francia, near Orleans, where he remained until his death. Charlemagne did so with the understanding that Alcuin should be available if the King ever needed his counsel.

In 796 CE, Alcuin was probably in his sixties.

Tours was very well resourced. It was there that Alcuin encouraged the work of the monks on the beautiful Carolingian minuscule script, ancestor of modern Roman typefaces.

Whilst at Tours Aluin wrote further works on the Trinity and another revised version of the Bible. There was concern that the Bible text was becoming less pure. Tours started to produce complete volumes of the Bible in one volume.

Much of the surviving written material about Alcuin, including two thirds of his letters, come from his period at Tours.

He was increasingly drawn to a monastic life of prayer, fasting and stricter observance.

Alcuin suffered from fever (malaria), failing eyesight, and arthritis. His old friend Eanbald died that year. There is a suggestion of melancholy in Alcuin’s years at Tours. His letters suggest a sense of isolation. There is a sense of longing for his former home. He wrote of struggling with the uncultured minds of Tours and of boys pesting me with their little questions.

He wrote the rather sad poem.

All the beauty of the world is quickly upturned, And all things in their time are transformed. For nothing remains forever and nothing is immutable, Dark night obscures even the clearest day.

A freezing winter cold strikes down gorgeous flowers, And a bitter wind unsettles calm seas. On fields where the pious boy once hunted deer, A tired old man now stoops with his walking stick.

Why do we wretched ones love you, O fleeing world? Always crashing down, you still flee from us.

After the death of Pope Adrian I in 795 CE, Alcuin was commissioned by Charlemagne to compose an epitaph for Adrian. The epitaph was inscribed on black stone quarried at Aachen and carried to Rome where it was set over Adrian's tomb in the south transept of St Peter's basilica just before Charlemagne's coronation in the basilica on Christmas Day 800.

Charles became Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire on Christmas Day 800. Alcuin was at Tours, which was distant from Charlemagne’s court. Charles had been peripatetic as other kings of that time, but by about 795 CE he invested in his centre of power at Aachen. In the build up to his coronation, Charlemagne toured his Kingdom and went to Tours where he spent a considerable period of time with Alcuin. So at this pivotal moment, Charles sought Alcuin’s advice, although Alcuin did not travel with Alcuin to Rome as his health was failing.

The idea of reviving the Western Empire, since the end of the Roman Empire and the emergence of an empire in the East, must have been in the minds of both Pope and King long before the stirring events of the year 800 CE. Alcuin, as adviser both in temporal and spiritual affairs to the Frankish Court, was well aware of the intended project.

The folk of Ryedale and the lands around York, shared vicariously through Alcuin in another pivotal moment in the evolution of western civilisation.

Alcuin died on 19 May 804 and was buried at St. Martin's Church in Tours. His epitaph was composed by Alcuin himself.

O thou who passest by, halt here a while, I pray, and write my words upon thy heart, that thou mayst learn thy fate from knowing mine.

What thou art, once I was, a wayfarer not unknown in this world. What I am now, thou soon shalt be.

Once was I wont to pluck earthly joys with eager hand and now I am dust and ashes, the food of worms.

Be mindful then to cherish thy soul rather than thy body, since the one is immortal, the other perishes. Why dost thou make to thyself pleasant abodes? See in how small a house I take my rest, as thou shalt do one day.

Why wrap thy limbs in Tyrian purple, so soon to be the food of dusty worms? As the flowers perish before the threatening blast, so shall it be with thy mortal part and worldly fame.

O thou who readest, grant me in return for this warning, one small boon and say: 'Give pardon, dear Christ, to thy servant who lies below.’ May no hand violate the sacred law of the grave until the archangel's trump shall sound from heaven. Then may he who lies in this tomb rise from the dusty earth to meet the Great Judge with his countless hosts of light.

Alcuin, ever a lover of Wisdom, was my name. Pray for my soul, all ye who read these words.

Legacy

Charlemagne died in 814 CE and was succeeded by Louis the Pious, who had been influenced by Alcuin’s teachings.

The Great Library of York was either exported to mainland Europe or destroyed in the devastating Viking attacks on York and Northumbria in 866 and 867. The school and library of York were the finest in eighth-century Europe.

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