The large bulk of Alcuin’s letters and other writings.—The
main dates of his life.—Bede’s advice to Ecgbert.—Careless
lives of bishops.—No parochial system.—Inadequacy of the
bishops’ oversight.—Great monasteries to be used as sees for
new bishoprics, and evil monasteries to be suppressed.—Election
of abbats and hereditary descent.—Evils of pilgrimages.—Daily
Eucharists.
We in the diocese of Bristol have a special right to study and to make
much of the letters of Alcuin. Our own great historian, William of
Malmesbury, had in the library of Malmesbury from the year 1100 and
onwards an important collection of these letters, from which he quotes
frequently in support of the historical statements which he makes.
More than that, we know of some of the letters of Alcuin only from the
quotations from them thus made by William in this diocese some 800 years
ago. This is specially stated by Abbat Froben, of Ratisbon, who edited
the letters of Alcuin 140 years ago.
The letters of Alcuin are addressed to an emperor, to kings, queens,
popes, patriarchs, archbishops, dukes, and others; so that of Alcuin’s
political importance there can be no question. As to his learning,
William of Malmesbury pays him the great compliment of naming him along
with our own Aldhelm and with Bede. “Of all the Angles,” he says,[75]
“of whom I have read, Alcuin was, next to the holy Aldhelm and Bede,
certainly the most learned.”
Alcuin was born in Northumbria in or about the year 735. He left England
to live in France in 782, returned for a time in 792, and left finally in
793. He died in 804. We can thus see how he stands in regard of date to
those with whom we have dealt in former lectures. Aldhelm and Wilfrith
died in 709, only about a quarter of a century before Alcuin’s birth.
Bede died, according to the usual statement[76], in 735, the year of
Alcuin’s birth. Boniface was martyred in Holland in 755, when Alcuin was
twenty years old.
As in the case of Gregory and of Boniface, who have been the subjects
of the last two courses of lectures, the letters of Alcuin are the most
important—or among the most important—sources of information for the
history of the times. The letters are 236 in number, and they fill 373
columns of close small print in the large volumes of Migne’s series.
The letters of Boniface are not half so numerous, and they occupy
considerably less than one-third of the space in the same print.
The letters of Alcuin, great as is their number and reach, form but a
small part of his writings. His collected works are six times as large as
his letters. His commentaries and treatises on the Holy Scriptures are
much more lengthy than his collected letters, more than two-thirds as
long again. His dogmatic writings are not far from half as long again
as his letters. His book on Sacraments and kindred subjects is about
two-thirds as long as his letters. His biographies of saints, his poems,
his treatises on teaching and learning, are all together nearly as long
as the letters; and there is almost the same bulk of works which are
attributed to him on evidence of a less conclusive character.
Put briefly, this was his life. He was a boy at my own school, the
Cathedral School of York, a school which had the credit of educating,
800 years later, another boy who made a mark on history, Guy Fawkes.
The head master in Alcuin’s time was Ecgbert, Archbishop of York and
brother of the reigning king of Northumbria; and the second master was
Albert, Ecgbert’s cousin, and eventually his successor in the chief
mastership and in the archbishopric. Alcuin succeeded to the practical
part of the mastership on Ecgbert’s death in 766, the new archbishop,
Albert, retaining the government of the school and the chief part of the
religious teaching. In 778 Alcuin became in all respects the head master
of the school, and in the end of 780 Albert died, leaving to Alcuin the
great collection of books which formed the famous library of York.
Alcuin had for some years travelled much on the continent of Europe,
and he was well acquainted with its principal scholars. They were
relatively few in number, learning having sunk very low on the continent,
while in Northumbria it had been and still was at a very high level.
Alcuin had also made acquaintance with Karl, not yet known as Karl der
Grosse, Carolus Magnus, Charlemagne, the son of Pepin, king as yet of
the Franks, emperor in the year 800, a man about seven years younger
than Alcuin. On a visit to the continent in 781 he again met Karl, who
proposed to him that he should enter his service as master of the school
of his palace, and practically minister of education for all parts of
the vast empire over which Karl ruled. In 782 he joined Karl, having
obtained leave of absence from the Northumbrian king Alfweald, Archbishop
Ecgbert’s great-nephew, and from the new archbishop, Eanbald I. From that
time onwards he was Karl’s right-hand man, in matters theological as well
as educational; and in some matters of supreme political importance too.
The leave of absence lasted some nine or ten years; at the end of that
time Alcuin came back for a short time, but he soon after terminated
his official connexion with York, and spent the rest of his life in the
dominions of Karl.
Archbishop Ecgbert, Alcuin’s master, had been a friend of the venerable
Bede. The only occasion on which we know that Bede left his cloister
was that of a visit to Ecgbert at York, shortly before Bede’s death,
if he died in 735. We have it from Bede himself that he had promised
another visit to York in the following year, but was too ill to carry
out his promise. Failing the opportunity of long conversations on the
state of the Province of York, which corresponded to the bishoprics of
York, Lindisfarne, Hexham, and Whithern, Bede set down his thoughts on
parchment or tablets, and sent them to his friend. This Letter of Bede to
Ecgbert is by very far the most important document of those times which
has come down to us; both because of the remarkable mass of information
contained in it, which we get from no other source, and because of the
large and broad views of ecclesiastical policy which it sets forth. It
was no doubt the advice and warnings of Bede that led Ecgbert to create
the educational conditions which developed the intellect of the most
intellectual man of his times, the subject of these lectures. Inasmuch
as it seems probable—indeed, is practically certain—that the distressful
state of Northumbria was the final cause of Alcuin’s abandonment of his
native land, it will be well to summarize the main points of Bede’s
dirge. We should bear in mind the fact that we are reading a description
by an ecclesiastic, a man keenly devoted to the monastic life; and that
the date is that of the year of Alcuin’s birth. It tells us, therefore,
something of the setting in which Alcuin found himself in early boyhood.
Ecgbert had only become Bishop of York in the year of Bede’s visit to
him, 734. York was not as yet an Archbishopric; it was raised to that
dignity in Ecgbert’s time. Some writers call Paulinus Archbishop, because
a pall was sent to him by Gregory; but the pall did not reach England
till after Paulinus had run away from York.
Bede thinks it necessary to urge Ecgbert very earnestly to be careful in
his talk. He does not suppose that Ecgbert sins in this respect, but it
is matter of common report that some bishops do; that they have no men of
religion or continence with them, but rather such as indulge in laughter
and jests, in revellings, drunkenness, and other pleasures of loose life;
men who feast daily in rich banquets, and neglect to feed their minds on
the heavenly sacrifice.
There were in 735 sixteen bishops’ sees in England, held in the south by
Tatuin of Canterbury, Ingwald of London, Daniel of Winchester, Aldwin
of Lichfield, Alwig of Lindsey, Forthere of Sherborn, Ethelfrith of
Elmham[77], Wilfrid of Worcester, Wahlstod of Hereford, Sigga of Selsey,
Eadulf of Rochester; and in the north by Ecgbert of York, Ethelwold of
Lindisfarne, Frithobert of Hexham, and Frithwald of Whithern. We may,
probably, narrow Bede’s censure to Lindisfarne and Hexham, if he really
did, as some assume, refer to his own parts. As a Northumbrian myself,
I think that a long-headed man like Bede, a Northumbrian by birth, more
probably referred to bishops of the parts which we now know as the
Southern Province. Alcuin’s letters, however, show that in his time there
was much that needed improvement in the case of northern bishops as well
as southern.
A bishop in those days had to do the main part of the teaching, and
preaching, and ministering the Sacraments, throughout the diocese. Bede
points out that Ecgbert’s diocese was much too large for one man to cover
it properly with ministrations. He must, therefore, ordain priests, and
appoint teachers to preach the Word of God in each of the villages; to
celebrate the heavenly mysteries; and especially to attend to sacred
baptism[78]. The persons so appointed must make it their essential
business to root deep in the memory of the people that Catholic Faith
which is contained in the Apostles’ Creed, and in like manner the Lord’s
Prayer. Those of the people who do not know Latin are to say the Creed
and the Lord’s Prayer over and over again in their native tongue; and
this rule is not for the laity only, but also for clergy and monks
who do not know Latin. For this purpose, Bede says he has often given
translations of these two into English to uneducated priests; for St.
Ambrose declared that all the faithful should say the Creed every
morning, and the English practice was to chant the Lord’s Prayer very
often. How much we of to-day would give for just one copy of Bede’s Creed
and Lord’s Prayer in English![79]
Ecgbert’s position in the sight of God, Bede says, will be very serious
if he neglects to do as he advises, especially if he takes temporal gifts
or payments from those to whom he does not give heavenly gifts. This last
point Bede presses home with affectionate earnestness upon the “most
beloved Prelate”. “We have heard it reported,” he says, “that there are
many villages and dwellings, on inaccessible hills and in deep forests,
where for many years no bishop has been seen, no bishop has ministered;
and yet no single person has been free from the payment of tribute to the
bishop; and that although not only has he never come to confirm those
who have been baptized, but there has been no teacher to instruct them
in the faith or show them the difference between good and evil. And if
we believe and confess,” he continues, “that in the laying on of hands
the Holy Spirit is received, it is clear that that gift is absent from
those who have not been confirmed. When a bishop has, from love of money,
taken nominally under his government a larger part of the population than
he can by any means visit with his ministrations in one whole year, the
peril is great for himself, and great for those to whom he claims to be
overseer while he is unable to oversee them.”
Ecgbert has, Bede tells him, a most ready coadjutor in the King of
Northumbria, Ceolwulf, Ecgbert’s near relative, his first cousin, whom
Ecgbert’s brother succeeded. The [arch]bishop should advise the King
to place the ecclesiastical arrangements of the Northumbrian nation on
a better footing. This would best be done by the appointment of more
bishops. Pope Gregory had bidden Augustine to arrange for twelve bishops
in the Northern Province, the Bishop of York to receive the pall as
Metropolitan. Ecgbert should aim at that number. It may here be noted
that in this year of grace 1908 there are still only nine diocesan
bishops in the Northern Province, besides the archbishop, and five of
these nine have been created in the lifetime of some of us. Bristol knows
to its heavy cost that Ripon was the first of the five.
But Bede points out, and here we come to very interesting matter, that
the negligence of some former kings, and the foolish gifts of others,
had left it very difficult to find a suitable see for a new bishop. The
monasteries were in possession everywhere. It may be remarked in passing
that all over the Christian parts of the world monasteries existed, even
in those early times, in very large numbers. We know the names, and the
dates or periods of foundation, of no less than 1481 founded before the
year 814, in various parts of the world; and the actual number was very
much larger than that, from what we know of the facts, especially in
the East. In the time of Henry VIII, besides the monasteries which had
been suppressed by Wolsey, Fisher, and others, as also the large number
of alien priories suppressed at an earlier date, and besides all the
ecclesiastical foundations called hospitals and colleges, more than 600
monasteries remained in this land to be suppressed.
There being, then, no lands left to endow bishoprics, there was, in
Bede’s opinion, only one remedy; that was, the summoning of a Greater
Council, at which an edict should be issued, by pontifical and royal
consent, fixing upon some great monastery for a new episcopal seat.
To conciliate the abbat and monks, the election of the bishop-abbat
should be left to them. If it should prove necessary to provide more
property still for the bishop, Bede pointed out that there were many
establishments calling themselves monasteries which were not worthy of
the name. He would like to see some of these transferred by synodical
authority for the further maintenance of the newly-created see, so
that money which now went in luxury, vanity, and intemperance in meat
and drink, might be used to further the cause of chastity, temperance,
and piety. Here in Bristol, with Gloucester close at hand, we need no
reminder of the closeness of the parallel between Bede’s advice in 735
to King Ceolwulf and the actual course taken in 1535 by King Henry, and
carried to completion by him in 1540-2, in the foundation of six new
bishoprics on the spoils of as many great monasteries. Nor need it be
pointed out that Bede’s proposal to suppress small and ill-conditioned
monasteries was a forecast of the original proposal of Henry VIII.
Bede then proceeds to speak with extreme severity of false monasteries.
It appears that men bribed kings to make them grants of lands—professedly
for monasteries—in hereditary possession, and paid moneys to bishops,
abbats, and secular authorities, to ratify the grants by their
signatures; and then they made them the dwellings of licentiousness and
excess of all kinds. The men’s wives set up corresponding establishments.
Bede urged the annulment of all grants thus misused: again we seem to
hear a note prophetic of eight hundred years later. To so great a pitch
had this gone, that there were no lands left for grants to discharged
soldiers, sons of nobles, and others. Thus it came to pass that such men
either went beyond sea and abandoned their own country, for which they
ought to fight, or else they lived as they could at home, not able to
marry, and living unseemly lives. If this was allowed to go on, the land
would be unable to defend itself against the inroads of the barbarians.
Bede’s prophecy to that effect came crushingly true in Alcuin’s
time, not fifty years after it was written. And here again we have a
remarkable forecast of Henry VIII’s avowed purpose in the suppression of
monasteries, that he must have means to defend his land against invasion.
Thus the three arguments of Henry VIII, namely, that lands and money
were needed for more soldiers and sailors, that lands and money were
needed for more bishoprics, and that many of the religious houses did
not deserve that name, were carefully set out by one whom we may call a
High-Church ecclesiastic, eight hundred years before Henry.
On two of the points mentioned by Bede in connexion with monasteries, it
may be well to say a little more by way of illustration. The two points
are, the hereditary descent of monasteries, and the principle on which
the election of the abbat should proceed. To take the second first,—Bede
is very precise on this point. He says that when a monastery is to be
taken as the seat of a bishop, licence should be given to the monks to
elect one of themselves to fill the double office of abbat and bishop,
and to rule the monastery in the one character and the adjacent diocese
in the other. We should have thought it would have been better to leave
them free to elect some prominent churchman from the outside, than to
limit their choice to one of themselves. And the exception for which
arrangement was made points in the same direction of limitation. If they
have not the right man in their own monastery, at least they must choose
one from their own family, or order, to preside over them, in accordance
with the decrees of the Canons. This strictness was traditional in
Northumbria. The great founder of monastic institutions in the Northern
Church, Benedict Biscop, who founded Monk Wearmouth in 674 and Jarrow in
685, was very decided about it. He would not have an abbat brought in
from another monastery. The duty of the brethren, he said, when speaking
to his monks on his own imminent decease, was, in accordance with the
rule of Abbat Benedict the Great, and in accordance with the statutes
of their own monastery of Wearmouth—which he had himself drawn up after
consideration of the various rules on the Continent from the statutes of
the seventeen monasteries which he liked best of all that he had seen—to
inquire carefully who of themselves was best fitted for the post, and,
after due election, have him confirmed as abbat by the benediction of
the bishop. There is a great deal to be said in favour of this course,
and there is a great deal to be said for more freedom of election. The
case which comes nearest to it in our English life of to-day is that of
the election of the Master of a College in one of the two Universities.
In Cambridge the election—in two cases the appointment—is in every case
open, in the sense that it is not confined to the Fellows of the College,
and in very recent times there have been several cases of the election
of a prominent man from another College, to the great advantage of the
College thus electing.
The other point is of much wider importance, namely, the hereditary
descent of monasteries and of their headship. Our Northumbrian abbat
Benedict was very decided here also. The brethren must not elect his
successor on account of his birth. There must be no claim of next of kin.
He was specially anxious that his own brother after the flesh should
not be elected to succeed him. He would rather his monastery became a
wilderness than have this man as his successor, for they all knew that
he did not walk in the way of truth. Benedict evidently feared that a
practice of hereditary succession to ecclesiastical office might spring
up. No doubt he had seen at least the beginning of this in foreign parts.
It was no visionary fear, for in times rather later we have examples of
ecclesiastical benefices, and even bishoprics, going from father to son,
and that in days of supposed celibacy. We have plenty of examples of
monasteries descending from mother to daughter later on in England; and
in Bede’s own time he mentions without adverse remark that the Abbess
of Wetadun (Watton, in East Yorkshire) persuaded Bishop John of Hexham
to cure of an illness her daughter, whom she proposed to make abbess
in her stead. Alcuin himself, as we have seen,[80] tells us quite as
a matter of ordinary occurrence, not calling for any remark, that he
himself succeeded hereditarily to the first monastery which he ruled,
situated on Spurn Point, the southern promontory of Yorkshire. We cannot
doubt that the evils naturally arising, in some cases at least, from
hereditary succession to spiritual positions, had much to do with the
intemperate suppression of the secular clergy and the enforcement of
clerical celibacy. In considering the question as it concerned the times
of Alcuin, we must bear in mind that we are dealing with times very long
before the development of the idea of feudal succession.
It is interesting to note that the earliest manuscripts of the Rule of
St. Benedict which are known to exist do not definitely lay down the
precise rule that the person elected to an abbacy must be a member of
the abbey or at least of the same order. The Rule was first printed in
1659 by a monk of Monte Cassino; and this print was carefully collated
throughout with a manuscript of the thirteenth century at Fort Augustus
for the edition published by Burns and Oates in 1886. Chapter 64 is as
follows, taking the translation annexed to the Latin in that edition,
though it does not in all cases give quite the force of the original.
“In the appointing[81] of an abbot, let this principle always be
observed, that he be made abbot whom all the brethren with one consent
in the fear of God, or even a small part of the community with more
wholesome counsel, shall elect. Let him who is to be appointed be chosen
for the merit of his life and the wisdom of his doctrine, even though
he should be the last of the community. But if all the brethren with
one accord (which God forbid) should elect a man willing to acquiesce
in their evil habits, and these in some way come to the knowledge of
the bishop to whose diocese that place belongs, or of the abbots or
neighbouring Christians, let them not suffer the consent of these wicked
men to prevail, but appoint[82] a worthy steward over the house of God,
knowing that for this they shall receive a good reward, if they do it
with a pure intention and for the love of God, as, on the other hand,
they will sin if they neglect it.”
We hear a good deal in our early history of kings and great men
renouncing the world and entering the cloister. Bede shows us the darker
side of this practice. Ever since king Aldfrith died, he says, some
thirty years before, there has not been one chief minister of state who
has not provided himself while in office with a so-called monastery of
this false kind, and his wife with another. The layman then is tonsured,
and becomes not a monk but an abbat, knowing nothing of the monastic
rule. And the bishops, who ought to restrain them by regular discipline,
or else expel them from Holy Church, are eager to confirm the unrighteous
decrees for the sake of the fees they receive for their signatures.
Against this poison of covetousness Bede inveighs bitterly; and then
he declares that if he were to treat in like manner of drunkenness,
gluttony, sensuality, and like evils, his letter would extend to an
immense length.
It may be well to mention here another religious practice which had
two sides to it, the practice of going on pilgrimage. Anglo-Saxon men
and women had a passion for visiting the tombs of the two princes of
the Apostles, Peter, whose connexion with Rome is so shadowy up to the
time of his death there, and Paul, their own Apostle, the teacher of
the Gentiles, whose connexion with Rome is so solid a fact in the New
Testament and in Church history. Bede tells us that in his times many
of the English, noble and ignoble, laymen and clerics, men and women,
did this. As a result of the relaxed discipline of mixed travel, a
complaint came to England, soon after, that the promiscuous journeyings
on pilgrimage led to much immorality, so that there was scarcely a town
on the route in which there were not English women leading immoral lives.
There is one striking passage in Bede’s unique letter which shows us how
great were the demands of the early Church upon the religious observances
of the lay people; while it shows with equal clearness the inadequacy of
the response made by the English of the time. The passage will complete
our knowledge of the state of religion among our Anglian forefathers
towards the end of Bede’s life. It refers to the bishop’s work among the
people of the world, outside the monastic institutions. The bishop must
furnish them with competent teachers, who shall show them how to fortify
themselves and all they have against the continual plots of unclean
spirits, by the frequent use of the sign of the Cross, and by frequent
joining in Holy Communion. “It is salutary,” he says to Ecgbert, “for
all classes of Christians to participate daily in the Body and Blood of
the Lord, as you well know is done by the Church of Christ throughout
Italy, Gaul, Africa, Greece, and the whole of the East. This religious
exercise, this devoted sanctification, has, through the neglect of the
teachers, been so long abandoned by almost all the lay persons of the
province of Northumbria, that even the more religious among them only
communicate at Christmas, Epiphany, and Easter. And yet,” he continues,
“there are innumerable persons, innocent and of most chaste conversation,
boys and girls, young men and virgins, old men and old women, who without
any controversy could communicate on every Lord’s Day, and indeed on the
birthdays of the holy apostles and martyrs, as you have seen done in the
holy Roman and Apostolic Church.” The Church History of early times has a
great deal of practical teaching for the church people of to-day.
If the life of religious people in the monasteries and in the world was
thus tainted and slack, we can imagine what the ordinary secular life was
likely to be. There was terrible force in Bede’s suggestion that a nation
so rotten could never withstand a hostile attack of any importance.
Archbishop Ecgbert certainly did all that he could to bring things into
order; and he wisely determined that the very best thing he could do to
pull things round was to get hold of the youth of the nation, and train
them with the utmost care in the way that they should go. This leads us
on to the rise or revival of the Cathedral School of York.