ment of the learning of the clergy, and a large vision as to needs in that uncouth and illiterate age. The hand that prepared them was doubtless Alcuin's, though they appear in the name of Charlemagne. 65. Letter from Alcuin to Charlemagne (Alcuin's Letters; trans. by C. W. Colby) In 796, Charlemagne appointed Alcuin Abbot of the monastery of Saint Martin's at Tours, after fourteen years' service as head of he palace school at the Frankish court. Alcuin was now sixtyone years old, and he spent the remaining eight years of his life here as Abbot, largely engaged in supervising the work of copying books. This letter, written to Charlemagne in 796, shortly after taking up his work at Tours, is interesting as describing his work in Frankland. In it he contrasts the learning with that of his homeland, and appeals for books to copy. His praise of wisdom and frequent quotations from Scripture are characteristic of the man. But I, your Flaccus,' am doing as you have urged and wished. To some who are beneath the roof of Saint Martin I am striving to dispense the honey of Holy Scripture; others I am eager to intoxicate with the old wine of ancient learning; others again I am beginning to feed with the apples of grammatical refinement; and there are some whom I long to adorn with the knowledge of astronomy, as a stately house is adorned with a painted roof. I am made all things to all men that I may instruct many to the profit of God's Holy Church and to the lustre of your imperial reign. So shall the grace of Almighty God toward me be not in vain and the largess of your bounty be of no avail. But I your servant lack in part the rarer books of scholastic lore which in my native land I had, thanks to the unsparing labour of my master and a little also to my own toil. This I tell your excellency on the chance that in your boundless and beloved wisdom you may be pleased to have me send some of our youths to take thence what we need, and return to France with the flowers of Britain; that the garden may not be confined to York alone but may bear fruit in Tours, and that the south wind blowing over the gardens of the Loire may be charged with perfume. Then shall it be once more as is said in Solomon's Song from which I quote: "Let my beloved come into his garden and eat his pleasant fruits." And he shall say to his young men: "Eat, O friends; 1 The members of that literary circle which formed itself about Charlemagne and Alcuin assumed among themselves Hebrew or Greek or Latin names. Charlemagne himself was David; Alcuin, Horatius Flaccus; Angilbert, Homer; Enginhard, Calliopeus, etc. drink, yea drink abundantly, O beloved. I sleep, but my heart waketh." Or that sentence of the prophet Isaiah which encourages us to learn wisdom: "Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price." This is a matter which has not escaped your most noble notice, how through all the pages of Holy Scripture we are urged to learn wisdom. In toiling toward the happy life nothing is more lofty, nothing more pleasant, nothing bolder against vices, nothing more praiseworthy in every place of dignity; and moreover, according to the words of philosophers, nothing is more essential to government, nothing more helpful in leading a moral life, than the beauty of wisdom, the praise of learning and the advantages of scholarship. Whence also wisest Solomon exclaims in its praise. "For wisdom is better than all things of price and no object of desire is to be compared with her. She exalts the meek, she brings honours to the great. Kings reign by her aid, and lawgivers decree justice. Happy are they who keep her ways, and happy are they who watch at her gates daily." O Lord King, exhort the youths who are in your excellency's palace to learn wisdom with all their might, and to gain it by daily toil while they are yet in the flush of youth, so that they may be deemed worthy to grow grey in honour, and by the help of wisdom may reach everlasting happiness. But I, according to the measure of my little talent, shall not be slothful to sow the seeds of wisdom among your servants in this region, mindful of the saying, "In the morning sow thy seed and in the evening withhold not thy hand: for thou knowest not whether shall prosper, either this or that, or whether they both alike shall be good." In the morning I sowed in Britain studies which have flourished for a generation. Now as it were towards even I do not cease with blood grown cold to sow in Francia. And in both places I hope that by the Grace of God the seed may spring. The solace of my broken strength is this saying of Saint Jerome who in his letter to Nepotian has it: "Almost all the strength of an old man's body is changed and wisdom alone grows as the rest dwindles." And a little later: "The old age of those who have trained their youth in honest arts and have meditated in the law of the Lord day and night, becomes more learned with age, more polished by use, wiser by the lapse of time, and reaps the sweetest fruits of studies long grown old." In which letter whoever wishes may read much in praise of wisdom and the studies of the ancients, and may learn how the ancient sought to flourish in the beauty of wisdom. Ever advance toward this wisdom, beloved of God and praiseworthy on earth, and delight to recognize zeal; and adorn a nobility of worldly lineage with the greater nobility of the mind. In which may our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the virtue and wisdom of God, guard thee, exalt thee, and make thee enter the glory of his blessed and everlasting vision. 66. State of Learning in England in Alfred's Time (From King Alfred's Introduction to the Anglo-Saxon translation of Pastoral Care, by Pope Gregory the Great. English Text Society version, p. 2. Sweet, 1871) This shows how learning in England had decayed since the days when Alcuin was at York, due to the plundering and pillaging by the Danes. England had once supplied scholars to Frankland, but must now seek them abroad. King Alfred (king from 871 to 901) gives here a remarkable picture of the conditions of his time. The land ravaged by a fearful enemy, King Alfred bids greet Bishop Waerferth with loving words and with friendship; and I let it be known to thee that it has very often come into my mind what wise men there formerly were throughout England, both of sacred and secular orders; and what happy times there were then; and how the kings who had power over the nation in those days obeyed God and his ministers; how they preserved peace, morality, and order at home, and at the same time enlarged their territory abroad; and how they prospered both in war and in wisdom; and also the sacred orders, how zealous they were both in teaching and learning, and in all the services they owed to God; and how foreigners came to this land in search of wisdom and instruction, the which we should now have to get from abroad if we were to have them. So general became the decay of learning in England that there were very few on this side of the Humber who could understand the rituals in English, or translate a letter from Latin into English; and I believe that there were not many beyond the Humber. There were so few, in fact, that I cannot remember a single person south of the Thames when I came to the throne. Thanks be to God Almighty that we now have some teachers among us. And therefore I command thee to disengage thyself, as I believe thou art willing, from worldly matters as often as thou art able, that thou mayst apply the wisdom which God has given thee wherever thou canst. Consider what punishments would come upon us if we neither loved wisdom ourselves nor suffered other men to obtain it: we should love the name only of Christian, and very few of the Christian virtues. When I thought of all this I remembered also how I saw the country before it had been ravaged and burned; how the churches throughout the whole of England stood filled with treasures and books. There was also a great multitude of God's servants, but they had very little knowledge of the books, for they could not understand anything of them because they were not written in their own language. As if they had said: "Our forefathers, who formerly held these places, loved wisdom, and through it they obtained wealth and bequeathed it to us. In this we can still see their traces, but we cannot follow them, and therefore we have lost both the wealth and the wisdom, because we would not incline our hearts after their example." When I remembered all this, I wondered extremely that the good and wise men who were formerly all over England, and had learned perfectly all the books, did not wish to translate them into their own language. But again I soon answered myself and said, "Their own desire for learning was so great that they did not suppose that men would ever be so careless, and that learning would so decay; and they wished, moreover, that the wisdom in this land might increase with our knowledge of languages." Then I remembered how the law was first known in Hebrew, and when the Greeks had learned it how they translated the whole of it into their own language, and all other books besides. And again the Romans, when they had learned it, translated the whole of it, through learned interpreters, into their own language. And also all other Christian nations translated a part of it into their own language. Therefore it seems better to me, if you agree, for us also to translate some of the books into the language which we can all understand; and for you to see to it, as can easily be done if we have tranquillity enough, that all the free-born youth now in England, who are rich enough to be able to devote themselves to it, be set to learn as long as they are not fit for any other occupation, until that they are well able to read English writing; and let those afterwards be taught more in the Latin language who are to continue learning, and be promoted to a higher rank. When I remembered how the knowledge of Latin had decayed throughout England, and yet that many could read English writing, I began, among other various and manifold troubles of this kingdom, to translate into English the book which is called in Latin Pastoralis, and in English Shepherd's Book, sometimes word by word, and sometimes according to the sense, as I had learned it from Plegmund, my archbishop, and Asser, my bishop, and Grimbold, my mass-priest, and John, my mass-priest. And when I had learned it, as I could best understand it and most clearly interpret it, I translated it into English. I will send a copy of this to every bishopric in my kingdom; and on each copy there shall be a clasp worth fifty mancuses. And I command, in God's name, that no man take the clasp from the book, or the book from the minster. It is uncertain how long there may be such learned bishops, as thanks be to God there now are nearly everywhere; therefore I wish these copies always to remain in their places, unless the bishop wishes to take them with him, or they be lent out anywhere, or any one wish to make a copy of them. 67. Alfred obtains Scholars from abroad (Asser's Life of Alfred the Great; trans. by J. A. Giles, p. 70. London, 1885) Asser, the companion and friend of the king, here describes his efforts to obtain scholars from Mercia (west central England, which had been overrun by the Danes) and from Frankland. But God at that time, as some consolation to the king's benevolence, yielding to his complaint, sent certain lights to illuminate him, namely, Werefrith, bishop of the church of Worcester, a man well versed in divine scripture, who, by the king's command, first turned the books of the Dialogues of Pope Gregory and Peter, his disciple, from Latin into Saxon, and sometimes putting sense for sense, interpreted them with clearness and elegance. After him was Plegmund, a Mercian by birth, archbishop of the church of Canterbury, a venerable man, and endowed with wisdom; Ethelstan also, and Werewulf, his priests and chaplains, Mercians by birth and erudite. These four had been invited out of Mercia by King Alfred, who exalted them with many honours and powers in the kingdom of the West-Saxons, besides the privileges which archbishop Plegmund and bishop Werefrith enjoyed in Mercia. By their teaching and wisdom the king's desires increased unceasingly, and were gratified. Night and day, whenever he had leisure, he commanded such men as these to read books to him; for he never suffered himself to be without one of them, wherefore he possessed a knowledge of every book.... But the king's commendable avarice could not be gratified even in this; wherefore he sent messengers beyond the sea to Gaul, to procure teachers, and he invited from thence Grimbald, priest and monk, a venerable man and good singer, adorned with every kind of ecclesiastical discipline and good morals, and most learned in holy scripture. He also obtained from thence John, also priest and monk, a man of most energetic talents, and learned in all kinds of literary science, and |