EACHER AND THE ING ~ European learning and culture flourished under the Frankish ruler Charlemagne - thanks in ~ s part to the influence of a Northumbrian monk called Alcuin. MARY GARRISON explains 14 Britain and Europe Part One

O N 15 MARCl-1781,a fur-sighted Frankish king met an F.nglish school tcacher in Parma. The meeting would llave momen-tous conscquences, for the king was Charlemagne, and the teacher, Alcuin of York, a Northumbrian deacon who would become Charlemagne's chief advisor in matters of leaming and religion, drafting importan! statements oflegislation and policy for the king, instructing the king and his fumily in subjects ranging from rhetoric and dialectic to astronomy, and training the entirc following gen-eraton of influential cburchmen. 'Of ail his pupils, there was not one who did not distinguish himself by beooming a devout abbot or a fumous bishop: remembered a ninth-c.entury writer. Alcuin also influenced the liturgy profoundly. And througb bis insistence on correct Latin spelling and pro-

Britain and Europe Part One

nunciation he hastened the separation of Latin from the continental vemacular language that would beoome French. His writngs span almost every then existing ficld of knowledge, and his ideological influence on the emerging Carolingian Empire would be decisive in a number of ways, and would herald the distinctive Imperial Christianity that was an aspiration of the ninth century.

At his imperial coronation in 800, Charlemagne was prcscnted with a revied text of the Latn Bible made by Alcuin. Alcuin's version, circulated very widely, is still one of the textual witness for the Vulgate, while his gift can be seen as emblematc of the new alliance of righteousness and piety with royal govemment, which charac-terised Oiarlemagne's empire.

lt was the cncounter in Panna that prompted Charlemagne to invite Alcuin to leavc his native Northumbria and join thc Frankish court.

How we met: the 14th-century Chronicles of France depict Alcuin's journey over the sea to meet the great Frankish king

Accordingly, it is no exaggeration to say that tbe meeting is one that changed the course of European history. Without Alcuin's influence, Carolingian history would look vcry different, and not merely because wc would lack his letters, one of thc richcst and most vivid sources. But without the invitation from Charlemagne, Alcuin himself would have remained unknown. He would probably have continued to serve as tcacher and librarian in York Minster, in a Northumbria increasingly ri.ven by dynastic feuding, and latterly subject to Viking attacks, which were devastating to religious life and the survival of manuscripts. Alcuin would surely have written none of the works for which he became known. Tbus he

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might havc bcen remembcred like his predcces sors at York. Archbishops F.cgbert and ~bcrht, scarcely known today even to scholars, though their contnbutions to York's outstanding eighth-century school and library must mean that thcy, too, werc mcn of talents and ideals.

And yet to list cvcn a fcw of Alcuin's accom-plishments is to look ahead by at least a decnde anda half. Por in 781,Ak uin had written virtually nonc of the works for which he would becornc known. Charlemagne for his part was then still an itinerant king, a victorious warrior almost con-stantly on campaign (bis court would not take up residcnce in Aachen till 794). How, thcn, did each man perccive what the other could offer? Did both see imrnediatcly what sc.ope the vi!.ion, wealth and opportunitics of one could accomplish when allied to the talents and leaming of the other? This is pcrhaps the biggest riddle, though by no means the only one, raised by the meeting in Parma. Although the lives of Alcuin and Charlemagne are both remarkably well-documented, many funda-mental enigmas about the meeting in Panna remain. Only through a dose look at thc context can it find secure grounding.

To trace the background to the meeting, and to see how and why Parma carne to be on each man's itinerary in 781 can dispel the impression of a mere coincidence with major consequenccs. lndeed, when this information is juxtaposed with information about each rnan's prior career and the extant data about Northumbrian-continental

had one son baptised by the Pope, Hadrian, and two sons anointed by lhc Pope as kings of Aquitaine and ltaly. The anointing was unprece-dented, e:.pecially as the sons concemed were mere boys. The baptism, on the other hand, was part of a complcx but by now well-cstabli4ed alliance of spiritual kinship, whcreby thc Pope, as godfathcr to the king's offspring, cntercd a bond of 'compaternity' or 'spiritual kinship' with the king (on the way home in Milan, Charlernagne would have a daughter baptised by the archbishop of that city who also stood as godfather, thereby acquiring another tie of spirirtual kingship). During this same Easter sojourn in Rome, an embassy from Constantinople arrived to arrange the engagement of Charlemagne's daughter, Rotrud, to Constantine VI, son of the Empress Irene, and a Frankish royal chaplain was sent hade to Constantinople. It is rernarkable that the Imperial delegation knew where to find Charlemagne and surely no coincidence. Finally, at this time, too, emissaries were sent togeth-er by both the Pope and Charlemagne to Tassilo, the ruler of Bavaria. These arrangements attest indirectly to the amount of coromunica-tion that eighth-century diplo-macy entailed.

Why Charlemagne might have been ready to head-hunt a top Anglo-

'Did both see immediately what one could accomplish when allied to the talents and learning of the other?' contacts, onc might see a certain inevitability in Olarlemagnc's summons to Alcuin and AJcuin's choice to serve the Church on the continent.

Parma itself was a convenient stopping place on the old Roman road network linking Pavia, the royal city of the Lombards, whose kingdom Charlemagne had decisively subdued in the mid-770s, with Rome itself. Charlemagne's presencc therc was anything but coincidental. ln 780, as the Royal Frankish annals report, Charlemagne had 'straightened out' matters in Saxony, campaigning as far as the junction of the Ohre and the Elbe, having the rcsidents baptised and imposing a sct-tlement on the Saxons and the Slavs. He then tumed his attcntion to ltaly. He spent Christmas 780 in Pava with his queen and childrcn and Eastcr 781 in Rome. The pretext of the joumey was rcligious, but events show Charlemagne to be at the centre of a diplom atic web, which re-Jched as far as Byi.antium and c.oncemed far more than the need to decide whkh of Charlemagne's conquered territories in ltaly ought to be handed over to the Pope's jurisdiction.

While in Rome over Easter, Olarlemagne had

Saxon scholar at this time beoomes dearer if we look back a few more years, to m and ns. A famine had coincided with disastrous defeats in those years - a rebcllion by the Srumns and the defeat at Roncesvalles (later transmuted into leg-end in the Chanson de Roland) - and these events have been though t to have signified to Charlemagne that he had lost God's favour. Oiarlemagne's first ground-brcaking reform leg-islation dates from shortly afterwa.rds, n9. Justice and ecclesiastical order and discipline we.re pre-rcquisites for divine approval; leamed churchmen could hdp too and Charlemagnc had added sever-a! to his court after the overthrow of the Lombard kingdom. During his ltalian trip of 7SO-l, Charlernagne promulgated similar reform legisla-tion in Mantua The concerns about justice and rel igious discipline were thus still pressing.

Alcuin's journey to thc continent in 780-81 was prompted by the need to collcct the archiepis-copal pallium (a ceremonial garment conferred by the Pope) for the ncw Archbishop of York, Eanbald, who had bcen a fellow student with AJcuin of the legendary ~berht, teacher and,

latterly, archbi~hop ofYork. ~t had retired in ns. two ycars before his death, bequeathing his library to AJcuin and bis archiepiscopal office to Eanbald. AJcuin's dcvotion to bis teacher A:.lberht are evident in his writings; it is easy to imagine that hlS grief (poignantly expressed in his poem about York) w-.is somehow related to his decision to leave his nativc city and take up residence at the Frankish court. In fuct, it is impossible to asccrtain whethcr Alcuin set out Rome for the pallium before or after ~berht's death.

We know more about prior links be-tween Alcuin and Charlemagne, and be-tween Northurnbria and the Frankish

of connections that makes Alcuin's transfer to Franlcia seem less like an unpreparcd coincidence lhan the predictable leap of an electron from one atom to another in a chemical reaction. Already in the seventh and eighth centuries, missionaries from Northumbria (and elsewhere in Anglo-Saxon England) had brought Christianity to Gennany and Frisia; among thesc was Alcuin's kinsman Willibrord (e 739), whose vita Alcuin would write. l.etters from the 760s and 770s show both the king of Northumbria ( then Alchred) and the Archbishop (iElberht) informed about conti-nental al:fuirs and in oontact with the Anglo-Saxon bishop of Mainz. Alcuin himself had travelled to Rome at l~ once with tfJberht and had already met Charlemagne. In adclition, he had struck up wann friendships with the .king's courtiers as well important bishops and abbots.

Sometime during these decades the enigmatic but influential iElberht had, according to Alcuin's testimony, been head-hunted (unsuccessfully) by great kings on the continent - Alcu.in does not tell us who. In view of the fact that scarcely any writ-ings by iElberht survive, it may seem surprising that he should have attracted the notice of foreign kings. But it was A:Jberht who had instituted at York the study of a curriculu.m which surpassed that available anywhere on the oontinent.

In adclition to this broad background of travel, acquaintance and commwcation, there is aiso Alcuin's own testimony about what it meant to him personally to work on the continent. In later life, Alcuin would regard Cb.arlemagne as a frend granted to him by God for the sake of

whatAlcuin might accomplish for the Cburch in Cb.arlemagne's service; he would look back on bis continental career as the fulfilment of a prophecy made by a Northumbrian hermit many years before; sorne two decades after his teacher iElberht's death, he would remember in a letter that bis own teacher had instructed him to devote himself utterly to the struggle against heresy and schism if any shou1d arisc in bis lifetime. It was this understanding that led Alcuin to refuse requests to return to York. Wllereas in 781 he had told Charlemagne lhat he could not join the Frankish oourt without lhe permission of bis king and archbishop, by 795 he would write to his coUeagues at York: 'I did not entirely d.isre-gard your petition, but the aforementioned pricst (the messenger) found me as 1 was visit-ing holy places; and the king is off with bis army laying waste to Saxony and without his permis.sion 1 cannot leave; for such a friend as he is to me is nol to be spurned; with

God's grace granting it, the friendship which God gavc me with him, has

accompfhed much good. Not for the sakc of greed for gold