The school of York.—Alcuin’s poem on the Bishops and Saints
of the Church of York.—The destruction of the Britons by
the Saxons.—Description of Wilfrith II, Ecgbert, Albert, of
York.—Balther and Eata.—Church building in York.—The Library of
York.
It is usual to reckon the year 735 as the beginning of the great School
of York, and Archbishop—or rather, as he then was, Bishop—Ecgbert as its
originator. But it seems clear that we must carry its beginnings further
back, and count as its originator a man who filled a much larger place
in the world than even Ecgbert, archbishop as he became, and brother of
the king as he was. When Wilfrith, the first Englishman to appeal to
Rome, was put into the see of York by Theodore of Canterbury in 669,
his chaplain and biographer, Stephen Eddi, tells of four principal
works which, between that year and 678, his chief accomplished. The
first was the restoration of the Cathedral Church of York, which had
fallen into decay during the time when Lindisfarne was the seat of the
Bishop of Northumbria. The second was the building of a noble church at
Ripon for the people of the kingdom of Elmete, which Edwin, the first
Christian king of Northumbria, had conquered from the Romano-Britons;
corresponding to the West Riding of Yorkshire and parts of Lancashire, a
portion of the great British kingdom of Rheged, at the court of which
the bard Taliessin had sung. The fourth was the building of a still more
noble church at Hexham, to be the ecclesiastical centre of the northern
part of Northumbria, replacing Lindisfarne in that character. And the
third in order was the establishment of a School, no doubt at York, as
that was his episcopal seat, and he himself was the chief teacher. The
world credits William of Wickham with the invention of the idea of a
public school in the modern sense of the word; but seven hundred[83]
years before him Wilfrith had grasped the idea and put it into practice
at York. This is what his chaplain tells us. The secular chiefs, the
noblemen, sent their sons to him to be so taught that when the time of
choice came they would be found fit to serve God in the ministry, if that
was their choice, or to serve the king in arms if they preferred that
career. We must certainly reckon the year 676, or thereabouts, as the
date of foundation of the school at York, Wilfrith as its founder, and
its principle that of the modern public school, which is supposed to give
an education so liberal that whatever career its alumnus prefers he will
be found fitted for it. The first scholars of the school of York entered,
some of them, the ministry, as learned clerks; others, the army, as fit
to be soldiers. It was still so when I went to that school sixty-four
years ago. The school is older than Winchester by seven hundred years,
and older than Eton by seven hundred and sixty-five.[84] Bede’s strong
appeal to Ecgbert led to the revival of the school after the natural
decay from which good institutions suffer in times of ecclesiastical
and civil disorder, and we date the continuous life of the school from
him. It was an interesting coincidence, that men saw in the year 735 the
revival of the school and the birth of its most famous pupil, assistant
master, and head master. We may now turn to that man, whose early lot was
cast in a state of society, lay and clerical, such as that described in
scathing terms by Bede; and who was the first-fruits of the remedy which
Bede had suggested. As a link between Bede and Alcuin we may have in mind
a pretty little story about Bede which we find in a letter of Alcuin’s
some fifty or sixty years after Bede’s death.
[Sidenote: Ep. 274. Before A.D. 793.]
Alcuin is writing to the monks of Wearmouth. He tells them how well
he remembers what he saw at Wearmouth long years ago, and how much he
was pleased with everything he saw. He encourages them to continue in
the right way by reminding them of the virtues of their founders. “It
is certain,” he writes, “that your founders very often visit the place
of your dwelling. They rejoice with all whom they find keeping their
statutes and living right lives; and they cease not to intercede for
such with the pious judge. Nor is it doubtful that visitations of angels
frequent holy places; for it is reported that our master and your patron
the blessed Bede said, ‘I know that angels visit the canonical hours and
the congregations of the brethren. What if they should not find me among
the brethren? Would they not have to say, Where is Bede? Why does he not
come with the brethren to the appointed prayers?’”
To us in England, and especially to those of us who are North-countrymen,
nothing that Alcuin wrote has a higher interest than his poem in Latin
hexameters on the Bishops and Saints of the Church of York. By the Church
of York Alcuin evidently meant the Church of Northumbria, although
his account of the prelates dwells chiefly on the archbishops of his
time. Considering his long sojourn in France, it was fitting that the
manuscript of this famous poem should be discovered at a monastery near
Reims, the monastery of St. Theodoric, or Thierry according to the later
spelling. A great part of the poem is in the main a versification of
Bede’s prose history of the conversion of the North to Christianity, and
an adaptation of Bede’s metrical life of St. Cuthbert. On this account
the French transcriber from the original omitted about 1100 of the
1657 lines of which the poem consists, and only about 550 lines were
originally printed by Mabillon in the Acta Sanctorum. When our own Gale
was preparing to publish it, he got the missing verses both from the
St. Theodoric MS. and also from a MS. at Reims itself. Both manuscripts
disappeared long ago, probably in the devastations of the French
Revolution[85].
The poem describes the importance of York in the time of the Roman
occupation of Britain, the residence, as Alcuin tells us, of the dukes
of Britain, and of sovereigns of Rome. York was, in fact, the imperial
city; it shared with Trèves the honour of being the only imperial cities
north of the Alps. He speaks eloquently of its beautiful surroundings,
its flowery fields, its noble edifices, its fertility, its charm as a
home. This part of the poem inclines the reader to settle in favour of
York the uncertainty as to the place of Alcuin’s birth. One graphic
touch, and the use of a special Latin name for the river Ouse which flows
through the middle of the city, goes to the heart of those who in their
youth have fished in that river—
Hanc piscosa suis undis interluit Usa.
He goes on to speak of the persistent inroads of the Picts after the
withdrawal of the Roman troops. Inasmuch as the sixth legion was
quartered at York, and all of the other three legions in Britain were
withdrawn before the sixth, it may be claimed that York was the last
place effectively occupied by the Roman troops. This indeed is in itself
probable, since York was in the best position for checking the attempts
of the Picts to reach the central and southern parts of Britain. He
describes how the leaders of the Britons sent large bribes to a warlike
race, to bring them over to protect the land, a race, he says, called
from their hardness Saxi, as though Saxons meant stones.[86] The eventual
conquest of the Britons by the Saxons evidently had Alcuin’s full
sympathy. The Britons were lazy; worse than that, they were wicked; for
their sins they were rightly driven out, and a better race entered into
possession of their cities. We would give a great deal to have had from
Alcuin a few words of tradition about some details of the occupation of
York by the Angles, and of the fate of the British inhabitants. Alcuin’s
words would suggest that their fate was a cruel one, but we do not know
anything of it from any source whatsoever. One of his remarks strikes
us as curious, considering that the Britons were Christians and their
conquerors were pagan: the expulsion, he says, was the work of God,
that a race might enter into possession who should keep the precepts of
the Lord. Clearly Alcuin held a brief for his ancestors of some five
generations before his birth. He writes also in a rather lordly way of
the kingdom of Kent, as though Northumbria was the really important
province in the time of King Edwin, as indeed it unquestionably was.
Edwin was the most prominent personage in England, the Bretwalda, at the
time of the conversion of Northumbria. All that Alcuin says of Edwin’s
young wife Ethelburga, and of the kingdom of Kent whence she came, is
this: “He took from the southern parts a faithful wife, of excellent
disposition, of illustrious origin, endowed with all the virtues of the
holy faith.” We shall have, at a later stage, to remark upon the silence
with which Wessex also was treated by Alcuin.
It is quite true that the facts of the greater part of the poem are
taken from Bede. But it is of much interest to note the selection which
Alcuin made. Of the kings, he writes of Edwin, Oswald, Oswy, Ecgfrith,
and Aldfrith, omitting mention of the sub-kings, several of whom were
connected with constitutional difficulties. Of the bishops, he writes
of Paulinus, Wilfrith, Cuthbert, Bosa, and John, mentioning Aidan
only incidentally, but with the epithet “most holy”. He avoids all
controversial topics in writing of Wilfrith. There is just one word of
reference to Wilfrith’s many disturbances, in connexion with the only
mention Alcuin makes here of Rome: Wilfrith, he says, was journeying to
Rome, _compulsus_, being driven to go there. It is worthy of remark that
of the hundred and sixty-eight lines which Alcuin gives to his account of
Wilfrith, he devotes nine to Wilfrith’s vision, in which the name of the
Blessed Virgin played so large a part. It was Wilfrith’s chaplain, Eddi,
who recorded this, not Bede, who is very reticent about Wilfrith. Michael
appeared to Wilfrith at a crisis in a serious illness, and announced
that he was sent by the Almighty to inform him that he would recover.
The message went on to explain that this was due to the merits and
prayers of the holy mother Mary, who from the celestial throne had heard
with open ears the groans, the tears (_sic_)[87], and the vows of the
companions of Wilfrith, and had begged for him life and health. Stephen
Eddi gives a highly characteristic ending to the message, which Alcuin
omits. “Remember,” the archangel said, “that in honour of St. Peter and
St. Andrew thou hast built churches; but to the holy Mary, ever Virgin,
who intercedes for thee, thou hast reared none. This thou must amend, by
dedicating a church to her honour.” The church which he had built for
St. Peter was at Ripon, that for St. Andrew was at Hexham; we have still
in each case the confessio, or crypt for relics, which he built under
those churches. In obedience to the vision, Wilfrith now built a church
of St. Mary by the side of the church of St. Andrew at Hexham. This
present generation has seen a noble restoration and completion of the
abbey church of Hexham.[88]
It is scarcely necessary to remark upon this grouping together of
churches dedicated to various saints. At Malmesbury, under St. Aldhelm,
there were six churches on the hill in one group, St. Andrew, St.
Laurence, St. Mary, St. Michael, St. Peter and St. Paul, and the little
Irish basilica of Maildulf.
Alcuin mentions also the missionary zeal of the Northumbrian church,
beginning with the early Ecgbert, who on the expulsion of Wilfrith left
Ripon, and lived for the rest of his life in Ireland as a trainer of
missionaries. Besides him, Alcuin names as English missionaries Wibert,
Wilbrord, the two Hewalds, Suidbert, and Wira.
So far Alcuin copied Bede and Eddi. In the last 442 lines of his poem
he gives us information which we do not find elsewhere, dealing in
some detail with Bishop Wilfrith II and Archbishops Ecgbert, Albert,
and Eanbald, of York. Wilfrith II resigned the bishopric of York in
the year of Alcuin’s birth, after holding it for fourteen years. A
delightful account of him had been handed down to Alcuin’s time. He was
to all acceptable, venerable, honourable, lovable. He took great pains
in improving and beautifying the ornaments of his church, covering
altar and crosses with silver plates, gilded. Other churches in the
city he beautified in like manner. He was zealous in multiplying the
congregations; following the precepts of the Lord; careful in doctrine;
bright in example. Liberal with hand and mouth, he fed the minds of the
studious and the bodies of the needy. In the end he retired and spent his
latest years in contemplation.
Of Ecgbert, the succeeding bishop, Alcuin writes in terms of the highest
praise. He was evidently more of a ruler than the second Wilfrith had
been, and could be very severe with evil men. He had a love for beautiful
things, and added much to the treasures of the church, special mention
being made of silk hangings with foreign patterns woven in. It was to
him that Bede wrote the striking letter which we have analysed above. He
was of the royal house of Northumbria, and one of his brothers succeeded
to the throne while Ecgbert was archbishop. The bishop had taken Bede’s
advice, had sought and obtained from Rome the pallium, as the sign of
metropolitical position. Curiously enough, Alcuin makes no reference to
this, the most important ecclesiastical step of the time, another silence
on his part which may have hid feelings he did not wish to express. He
does mention the pall, but only as a matter of course, in comparing the
two brothers, the prelate and the king; the one, he says, bore on his
shoulder the palls sent by the Apostolic, the other on his head the
diadems of his ancestors. He draws a charming picture of the two brothers
working together for the country’s good, each in his own sphere,
The times were happy then for this our race,
When king and prelate in lawful concord wielded
The one the church’s laws, the other the nation’s affairs.
We have seen how slight a reference Alcuin makes to the fact of the
pall from Rome. He appears to have held a very moderate view of its
importance to the end of his life. His letter to the Pope, Leo III,
in the year 797, conveying a request that the pall might be granted
to the newly-consecrated Archbishop of York, Eanbald II, is an
important document. After referring to his letter of the previous year,
congratulating Leo on his accession, he proceeds as follows, curiously
enough not mentioning by name the archbishop or his city or diocese. He
is writing from his home in France.
[Sidenote: Ep. 82.]
“And now as regards these messengers—who have come from my own fatherland
and my own city, to solicit the dignity of the sacred pall, in canonical
manner and in accordance with the apostolic precept of the blessed
Gregory who brought us to Christ—I humbly pray your pious excellency that
you receive benignantly the requests of ecclesiastical necessity. For in
those parts the authority of the sacred pall is very necessary, to keep
down the perversity of wicked men and to preserve the authority of holy
church.”
That is a remarkably limited statement of the need for the pall, when we
remember the tremendous claims made for it in later times. And it is the
more remarkable because Alcuin is evidently making the most persuasive
appeal he could construct; he would certainly state the case in its
strongest terms when addressing the one man with whom it finally rested
to say yes or no. He seems to say clearly that to have the pall was
_bonum et utile_ for the archbishop, for the purposes which he names; he
says nothing, because apparently he knows nothing, of its affecting, one
way or another, the archbishop’s plenary right, in virtue of his election
and consecration, to consecrate bishops, ordain priests, and rule his
province and his diocese.
Alcuin digresses from the series of archbishops to deal with the saints
of the Church of York, of times near to and coinciding with his own. Of
the former, he naturally takes Bede, and he takes no other. To Bede he
gives only thirty-one lines, but he does not stint his praise. Six of the
thirty-one lines are devoted to Bede’s abbat, Ceolfrith, who took from
Wearmouth as a present to the Pope the famous Codex Amiatinus, now at
Florence,[89] and died and was buried at Langres. From Alcuin’s poem we
learn that Ceolfrith’s body was eventually brought back to Northumbria,
and this enables us to accept William of Malmesbury’s statement that King
Edmund, on an expedition to the north, obtained the relics of Ceolfrith
among many others, and had them safely buried at Glastonbury.
Of the saints who lived on to the time of Alcuin’s own manhood he takes
two, and we are rather surprised at his selection. The one is Balther,
the occupant of the Bass Rock, known later as Baldred of the Bass; the
other is the anchorite Eata. Both, indeed, were anchorites, the one at
Tyningham and on the Bass, the other at Cric, which is said to be Crayke
in the East Riding of Yorkshire. Baldred died in 756, and Eata in 767.
At Thornhill, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, there is a sepulchral
monument, one of three with inscriptions in early Anglian runes, in
memory of one Eata, who is described as Inne, which some have guessed
to mean a hermit.[90] On the strength of this guess they have claimed
that Thornhill was the place of burial of Alcuin’s Eata. To Balther
Alcuin gives more than twice as many lines as to Bede; to us this seems
a remarkably disproportionate treatment. There is a considerable amount
of uncertainty about Balther, and Alcuin’s lines leave the uncertainty
without solution. The events which he connects with the anchorite
Balther, as one of the saints of the Northumbrian Church, are really
connected with an earlier Balther, of the time of St. Kentigern, a saint
of the ancient British Church of Cumbria. The death of this Balther is
placed in 608; and in any case he was before the first formation of the
Christian Church among the Northumbrian Angles. Simeon of Durham puts the
death of Balther in 756, and this fits in well with Alcuin’s statements;
but we may most probably suppose that there was an earlier Balther and a
later, and that the legendary events of the life of the earlier have been
transferred to the life of the later. Alcuin certainly understood that
his Balther was Balther of the Bass.
It is when Alcuin comes to Archbishop Albert that he really lets
himself go. Ecgbert had in fact established the eminence of the great
School of York, and had himself acted as its chief governor and its
religious teacher. But Alcuin does not even refer to that in his
account of Ecgbert. The praise of the school goes all to the credit of
Ecgbert’s cousin, his successor in the mastership and eventually in the
archbishopric, Albert. Eight lines of laudatory epithets Alcuin bestows
upon Albert, before proceeding to detail; his laudation fitly culminates
in what all ages have regarded as high praise, _non ore loquax sed
strenuus actu_—not a great talker, but a strenuous doer.
In 766 Albert became archbishop. Like his immediate predecessors, he
did much to beautify churches in the city. In this work Alcuin was one
of his two right-hand men; and yet each detail which Alcuin gives is
puzzling. He tells us that at the spot where the great warrior Edwin
the king received the water of baptism, the prelate constructed a grand
altar, which he covered with silver, precious stones, and gold, and
dedicated under the name of St. Paul, the teacher of the world, whom
the learned archbishop specially loved. There is a difficulty here.
While it is certain that the church of stone of larger dimensions which
Edwin and Paulinus began, to include the wooden oratory of St. Peter
the place of Edwin’s baptism, was the church which Oswald completed and
the first Wilfrith restored, as the Cathedral Church of York, there was
no altar of St. Paul in the Cathedral Church in the middle ages. We
should naturally have supposed that an altar so splendid as that which
Albert constructed, at a spot so uniquely remarkable in the Christian
history of Northumbria, would have been sedulously retained throughout
all changes. The explanation may well be that not the size only but the
level of the surface of the site has been greatly increased in the course
of 1200 years. The herring-bone work of the walls of the early Anglian
Church of York was found deep down below the surface when excavations
were made after the fire of 1829, and at a later period in connexion with
the hydraulic apparatus for the organ. Probably the altar of St. Paul,
and the place of baptism, were down at that level, and were buried in
the ruins of one fire after another, many feet below the present surface
of the Minster Yard. My old friend Canon Raine, who edited the three
volumes of the _Historians of the Church of York_, writing of the present
crypt in his introduction to the first volume,[91] says, “In another
peculiar place is the actual site, if I mistake not, of the font in which
Edwin became a Christian.” Canon Raine was secretive in connexion with
antiquarian discoveries, and from inquiries which I have made it is to
be feared that the secret of this site died with him. All we can say is,
that where that site was, there was this splendid altar[92] of St. Paul,
_mundi doctoris_.
A more doubtful point is raised by Alcuin’s description of the building
of a new and marvellous basilica, begun, completed, and consecrated, by
Albert. Two of his pupils, Eanbald and Alcuin, were his ministers in the
building, which was consecrated only ten days before his death. It was
very lofty, supported on solid columns, with curved arches; the roofs
and windows were fine; it was surrounded by many porches, porticoes,
which were in fact side chapels; it contained many chambers under various
roofs, in which were thirty altars with sundry kinds of ornament. Alcuin
describes this immediately after describing the construction of the
altar of St. Paul in what must have been the old Cathedral Church; but
he does not say that the new church was on the old site, or that it
replaced the Cathedral Church. Still, a church of that magnitude can only
have been the chief church of the city. Simeon of Durham throws light
upon the point by stating as the reason for building this new basilica,
that the monasterium of York—that is, the Minster, as it has always
been called[93]—was burned[94] on Monday, May 23, 741; and the Saxon
Chronicle has the entry[95], “This year York was burned.” The balance
of argument on this disputed point is that Albert did really build a new
Cathedral Church in place of one that was burned while Alcuin was a boy.
The investigations which have taken place show that in Anglo-Saxon times
a basilica of really important dimensions was in existence, much larger
than Edwin’s little oratory or Oswald’s stone building, and all points
to its being the “marvellous basilica” which Eanbald and Alcuin built by
order of Albert.
Alcuin makes several statements about church-building in York. In lines
195-198, he tells us that King Edwin caused a small building to be
hurriedly erected, in which he and his could receive the sacred water of
baptism. We should naturally suppose that it was by the side of water.
In lines 219-222 he tells us that Paulinus built ample churches in his
cities. Among them he names that of York, supported on solid columns; it
remains, he says, noble and beautiful, on the spot where Edwin was laved
in the sacred wave. In lines 1221-1228 he tells us first that Wilfrith
II greatly adorned “the church”, evidently meaning his cathedral church,
and then that he adorned with great gifts other churches in the city of
York. In lines 1487-1505 he tells us that Albert took great care in the
ornamentation of churches, and especially that at the spot of Edwin’s
baptism he made a grand altar, which he covered with silver and gems
and gold, and dedicated it under the name of Saint Paul whom he greatly
loved. He made also, still it would seem at the same spot, another altar,
covered with pure silver and precious stones, and dedicated it to the
Martyrs and the Cross. As we have seen, there was no altar dedicated to
St. Paul in the mediaeval Minster of York; but there was not an altar
only but a small church—which remained as a parish church till very
recent years—dedicated to Saint Crux. The parish of St. Crux is now
absorbed in All Saints. Lastly, in lines 1506-1519 he describes the
building of the great new basilica which Eanbald and himself built under
the orders of Archbishop Albert. The conclusion appears to be that the
new basilica—which probably became the cathedral church—did not stand on
the site of Paulinus’s church, but was erected close by that specially
sacred spot; and that both Paulinus’s stone oratory, beautified by
Wilfrith II, with its added altars to St. Paul and St. Crux, and also the
new and great basilica of Albert, are now absorbed in the vast area of
the Minster of York.
Eanbald succeeded Albert in the archbishopric, and Alcuin succeeded
Albert in the mastership of the School of York and in the ownership of
the great library which for three generations had been got together
at York. Alcuin tells us that it contained all Latin literature, all
that Greece had handed on to the Romans, all that the Hebrew people
had received from on high, all that Africa with clear-flowing light
had given. Passing from the general to the particular, Alcuin names
the authors whose works the library of York possessed. What we would
give for even five or six of those priceless manuscripts! Of the
Christian Fathers, he records a rather mixed list. They had Jerome,
Hilary, Ambrose, Augustine, Athanasius, Orosius, Gregory the Great,
Pope Leo, Basil, Fulgentius, Cassiodorus, and John Chrysostom. They had
the works of the learned men of the English Church, our own Aldhelm of
Malmesbury, and Bede; with them he names Victorinus and Boethius, and
the old historians, Pompeius and Pliny, the acute Aristotle and the
great rhetorician Tully. They had the poets, too, Sedulius, Juvencus,
Alcimus[96], Clemens, Prosper, Paulinus, Arator, Fortunatus, Lactantius.
They had also Virgil, Statius, and Lucan. They were rich in grammarians:
Probus, Focas, Donatus, Priscian, Servius, Euticius, Pompeius,
Comminianus. You will find, he says, in the library very many more
masters, famous in study, art, and language, who have written very many
volumes, but whose names it would be too long to recite in a poem. It may
perhaps be a fair guess that he had used up all the names which he could
conveniently get into dactyls and spondees for hexameter verse.
Two years after handing over to Alcuin the possession of this great
library, and to Eanbald the archbishopric itself, Albert died. We may
here remind ourselves of outstanding facts and dates. Alcuin, born in
735, had as a young man held the office of teacher in the School of York
for some years. In 766 he had been promoted to a position which so far
as teaching was concerned was practically that of Head Master. In 778 he
became in the fullest sense the master of the school. In 780 he inherited
the great collection of books which had been brought together by
successive archbishops. In 782 he was called away to become the teacher
of the School of the Palace of Karl, and director of the studies of the
empire, still continuing to hold the office of master in name. In 792
he left England for the last time, and his official connexion with the
school of York came to an end. He gave twenty years of his older life to
the service of the Franks, and died in 804.