Alcuin retires to the Abbey and School of Tours.—Sends
to York for more advanced books.—Begs for old wine from
Orleans.—Karl calls Tours a smoky place.—Fees charged to the
students.—History and remains of the Abbey Church of St.
Martin.—The tombs of St. Martin and six other Saints.—The
Public Library of Tours.—A famous Book of the Gospels.—St.
Martin’s secularised.—Martinensian bishops.
As time went on, Alcuin felt that he must withdraw from the varied and
heavy work which he was accustomed to do at the court, whether at Aachen
or elsewhere, and must retire to work quietly at one of his abbeys. He
obtained the king’s leave[181]. In 796 he wrote to inform Karl that he
had, in accordance with the king’s wish, opened the school at Tours; that
he must send to York for books; and that he hoped the king would order
the palace youths to continue to attend the palace school which he had
now left.
[Sidenote: Ep. 78. A.D. 796.]
“I, your Flaccus, in accordance with your desire and good pleasure, am
busy with ministering, under the roof of the holy Martin, to some the
honey[182] of the holy Scriptures; others I seek to inebriate with the
old wine of ancient disciplines; others I shall begin to nourish with the
apples of grammatical subtlety; some I purpose to illumine with the order
of the stars, as the painter nobly adorns the roof of the house of God. I
become very many things to very many men, that I may educate very many
to the profit of the holy Church of God and the honour of your imperial
realm, that no grace of Almighty God in me be unemployed, and no part of
thy bounty be without fruit.
“But I, your poor servant, need some of the more abstruse books of
scholastic learning which I had in my own land by the devoted labour
of my master[183], and to some extent of myself. I say this to your
excellency that you may be pleased to allow me to send some of our young
men to pick out what I need, and bring to France the flowers of Britain;
that not in York only there may be a garden enclosed[184], but in Tours
also the scions of paradise may bear fruit; that the south wind may
come and blow through the gardens by the river Loire, and the spices
thereof may flow out. I take as a parable of the acquisition of wisdom
the exhortation of Isaiah[185], ‘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[186] and without price.’ Your most
noble mind knows well that there is nothing loftier that can be acquired
for a happy life, nothing more joyous as an exercise, nothing stronger
against vices, nothing more laudable in all dignity. As the philosophers
have told us, there is nothing more necessary for the ruling of a people,
no better guide of the life to the very best principles, than the glory
of wisdom, the praise of discipline, the efficacy of learning. To the
earnest study and daily exercise of wisdom, exhort, O king, the youths of
your excellency’s palace, that they may so advance while in the bloom of
youth that they may be held worthy to bring to honour their grey hairs,
and by wisdom may attain to perpetual happiness. To sow the seeds of
wisdom in these parts, I, so far as my poor intellect enables me, shall
not be found slack. In the morning of life, in the vigour of study, I
sowed in Britain; now, my blood running cold, as in the evening of life,
I cease not to sow in France. To me, shattered in body, an expression of
the holy Jerome, in his letter to Nepotianus, is a solace: ‘Almost all
the powers of the body are changed in old men. Wisdom alone continues to
increase; all the rest decrease.’ And a little further on he says, ‘The
old age of those that have trained their youth in honourable arts, and
have meditated in the law of God day and night, grows more learned with
age, more expert with use, more wise with the process of time; it gathers
the very sweetest fruits of former studies.’”
The brethren of St. Martin of Tours had not a high character for
propriety of conduct. There are many evidences of this. It is interesting
to know that the earliest letter of Alcuin to which we can reasonably
assign a date is a letter appealing for a lapsed brother of this same
abbey of St. Martin of Tours, over which Alcuin was now called to
preside as an old man. The abbat to whom Alcuin addressed this letter
was Wulfhard, of whom the life of Hadrian I, as printed by Muratori
(iii. 1, 184, _Rer. Ital. Script._), states that he was sent along with
Albinus, that is, Alcuin, to Hadrian, by Karl in 773.[187] The letter
was probably written in 774.
[Sidenote: Ep. 1. A.D. 774.]
“To the pious father Uulfhard the abbat Albinus the humble levite wishes
health.
“I found this poor lamb wandering through the rough places of neglect.
Moved by pity, I brought him by sedulous admonition to the home of our
discipline, binding up his wounds, pouring in wine and oil. To your
piety, gentlest of fathers, I send him back, beseeching you to receive
him for the love of Him who, amid the joy of the angels, has brought
back on His own shoulders into the home of His delights all of us, who
were wandering among the precipices of sins. Do not in austerity repel
from thee one whom Christ has for pity gathered back to Himself, nay,
has met penitent, has run to and embraced, has brought back to the house
of feasting. And if any envious man advise you to reject him, let such
an one fear lest he himself be rejected by Him who has said, ‘With what
measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.’... And though he
have sinned ten times, have not we sinned an hundred times; and though he
owe an hundred pence, do we not owe ten thousand talents?...”
Alcuin had a high regard for the wines of the Loire, and he particularly
liked them old. The best wine of that time would appear to have been
grown about the city of Orleans, and to have been kept under the charge
of the Bishop of Orleans as the chief owner of the terraced lands on
which the vines grew.[188] Here is a frolicsome letter about a present
of wine from Orleans. It is full of quotations from the Song of Songs
applied to local conditions, for the most part rather obscure. When he
comes to his concluding words, there is no obscurity in his request that
if wine is coming, good old wine may be sent.
[Sidenote: Ep. 153. A.D. 796-800.]
“To Theodulf, bishop of Orleans.
“To the great pontiff and father of vineyards, Teodulf[189], Albinus
sends greeting.
“We read in the Chronicles[190] that in the time of David, the king most
loved of God, Zabdi was over the wine-cellars of the vineyards. Now,
by the mercy of God, a second David [Karl] rules over a better people,
and under him a nobler Zabdi [Theodulf] is over the wine-cellars of the
vineyards. The king has brought him into the house of wine and set over
him the banner of love, that students may stay him with flowers and fill
him full of the apples of them that languish with love,[191] that is,
love of that which maketh glad the heart of man.
“Now even though there be a lack of that which strengthens, namely bread,
there is perhaps no lack of that which maketh glad, namely wine, in the
cellars of Orleans; for our hope is set on a thriving vineyard and not
on a fig-tree dried up. Wherefore Jonathan, the counsellor of David, a
man of letters,[192] sends unto Zabdi, saying: Let us get up early: let
us see how well the vineyard of Sorech thrives: to them that chant the
treaders’ cry therein the streams of the cellarer are dispersed abroad.
But now that the storehouse is opened with the key of love, let this
verse be sung by the ruler of the vineyard in the towers of Orleans:[193]
Eat with me, my friends; drink, and drink abundantly: come ye and take
wine and milk without price. My throat is as the best wine meet for the
drinking of my beloved, to be tasted by his lips. I am my beloved’s and
my beloved is mine.
“It must not be replied—I have put off my coat, how shall I put it on? I
have washed my feet, how shall I defile them?[194] I cannot rise and give
to thee.[195] If by chance the three loaves are not at hand, which were
lacking in the store-houses of Gibeon,[196] by the blessing of Christ
the seven water-pots are full of the best wine, which has been kept till
now. Who does not know that some of this wine, according to the command
of the Virgin’s Son,[197] is to be borne to the ruler of the feast of
the city of Tours? But remember this: You must not put new wine into old
skins. No one, having drunk old wine, straightway desireth new; for he
saith—The old is better.
“Blessed is he that speaks to an attentive ear.”
Tours was not in Alcuin’s time the bright place which it is now. When
Karl endeavoured to persuade Alcuin to accompany him to Rome in 779,
Alcuin begged that he might be excused. The journey was long, and he
wished to remain at Tours. It is evident that Karl in his reply spoke of
the splendours of Rome and contrasted them with “the smoky dwellings” of
Tours.
This is what Alcuin had said to the king:—
[Sidenote: Ep. 118. A.D. 799.]
“Now about that long and laborious undertaking of going to Rome. I
cannot in any way think that this poor little body of my frailty—weak
and shattered with daily pains—could accomplish the journey. I should
have earnestly desired to do it, if I had had the strength. I therefore
entreat the most clement benevolence of your paternity that you leave me
to aid your journey by the faithful and earnest prayers of myself and of
those who with me serve God at St. Martin’s.”
Karl’s answer we have not got. Alcuin’s rejoinder to it contains this
passage:—
[Sidenote: Ep. 119. A.D. 799.]
“With regard to that with which it is your will to upbraid me, that I
prefer the houses of Tours, sordid with smoke, to the gilded citadels of
the Romans, I know that your prudence has read that elogium of Solomon’s,
‘it is better to dwell in a corner of the house-top, than with a brawling
woman in a wide house’.[198]
“And, if I may be pardoned for saying it, the sword hurts the eyes more
than smoke does. For Tours, content in its smoky houses, by the gift of
God through the providence of your goodness dwells in peace. But Rome,
which is given up to fraternal strife, ceases not to hold the implanted
venom of dissension, and now compels the power of your venerated dignity
to hasten from the sweet dwellings of Germany to restrain this pernicious
plague.”
From the foundation of the School of Tours, the students paid fees. The
great endowments of the abbey, much enlarged by Karl in 774 when he
granted to Abbat Wulfhard a large amount of property in the neighbourhood
of Pavia, do not appear to have been applied to the maintenance of the
School. A change was made about forty years after Alcuin, and then the
education of the school was given free. We learn that after Alcuin’s
death the school continued to flourish under Abbats Wulfhard II,
Fridugisus, and Adalard, the masters of the school receiving stipends
from the fees of the students. This “mercantile” arrangement was hateful
to Abbat Adalard, and the change came in his time, and by his order; but
it was not financed from the regular income of the abbey. The master at
the time was Amalric, who afterwards became Archbishop of Tours, dying
in 855. He gave to the abbey from his own private property certain funds
for the payment of the teachers, and in August, 841, it was decreed that
the schooling should be free. Amalric had many students under his tuition
who rose to important positions, of whom Paul the Archbishop of Rouen,
and Joseph the Chancellor of Aquitaine, are specially mentioned. He was
a good example of the “school master bishops” with whom the Church of
England was well stocked a generation ago.
[Illustration: PLATE I
The Abbey Church of St. Martin of Tours, before the pillage.
_To face p. 210._]
[Illustration: PLATE II
St. Martin’s, Tours; the Horloge.
_To face p. 211._]
The church of St. Martin, so magnificent in the times of the historian
Archbishop Gregory of Tours (573-94), became more and more magnificent
after several destructions by fire. It had reached its greatest splendour
when it was pillaged by the Huguenots. Tours claims to have originated
the name of those destructive people, who in the beginning used to steal
out for secret meetings at night beyond the walls of the city, flitting
about like the local bogey _le roi Hugon_.[199] And Tours possesses to
this day in the name of one of its streets a reminiscence of the early
hunting down of the Huguenots as a highly enjoyable form of the _chasse
aux renards_. When their time came, they wreaked a savage revenge, and
practically destroyed the noble Abbey Church. A reproduction of its
appearance in the perfection of symmetry has been prepared from plans
and drawings, and is shown in Plate I. The only remains left by the
Revolution and by the necessity for new streets are the south-west
tower, called of St. Martin,[200] or of the Horloge, and a tower of the
north transept, called of Charlemagne.[201] They are of 12th-century
foundation, but the latter has a capital of earlier date still clinging
to it. Louis XI had surrounded the shrine of St. Martin with a rich and
very massive gallery of solid silver, but his needy successor Francis was
beforehand with the Huguenots and coined it into crown pieces.
The tombs of St. Martin and the Saints who lay near him were destroyed by
the Huguenots, and their relics were burned. Portions were saved, and in
the new basilica of St. Martin, close to the site of the old basilica,
there is a noble crypt with a reproduction of the massive tomb of St.
Martin.[202] On the wall is an inscription to the following effect:
Nomina corporum sanctorum quæ hic sepulta erant circa tumulum
Beati Martini.
SS. Briccius, Spanus, Perpetuus, Gregorius Tur., Eustochius,
Eufronius, quorum venerabiles reliquiæ in capsis existentes ab
hæreticis impiissime in dicta ecclesia fuerunt combustæ anno
1562.
EUSTOCHIUS BRICCIUS
PERPETUUS MARTINUS SPANUS MARTYR
GREGORIUS EUFRONIUS
Sic erant corpora horum in ecclesia B. Martini Tur. ordinata.
The Rue des Halles runs right through the site of the old basilica. The
new basilica lies at right angles to the old one, its axis lying north
and south, an arrangement which places the modern _confessio_, with
its reproduction of the old tomb, practically on the site of the old
_confessio_.
The connexion of St. Martin with Tours came about in this way. He was
born about 316, a native of Lower Hungary; had a taste for the monastic
life; was compelled by edict to become a soldier; served for three years
up to the age of eighteen; went to visit Hilary at Poitiers; after some
years came again to Hilary, and founded the monastery of Lugugé, near
Poitiers, said to have been the first monastic institution in Gaul. His
reputation stood so high that in 371 he was elected by the populace to
the bishopric of Tours, much against his will. He built the monastery of
Marmoutier, _Maius Monasterium_, about two miles to the north-east of the
walls of Tours, where a large number of students received an education in
such learning as then was known. His time was mostly spent in conversion
of the pagans in his diocese. At the age of eighty, in 396, he was called
to Condate to settle an ecclesiastical dispute, was seized with fever,
and died. It was just at that time that his great admirer, Ninian, was
finishing his stone church at Whithern, in Galloway, and to Martin he
dedicated it. From that time, and owing to the connexion between Britain
and Gaul, dedications to St. Martin were frequent, as is instanced by the
old British church of St. Martin at Canterbury.
[Illustration: PLATE III
St. Martin’s, Tours; the Tour Charlemagne, with the dome of the new St.
Martin’s on the left.
_To face p. 212._]
[Illustration: PLATE IV
The modern reproduction of the Tomb of St. Martin.
_To face p. 213._]
When Martin died, the people of Poitiers flocked to Condate to claim the
body of their former abbat. But the people of Tours asserted their better
claim, and carried him off in a ship to Tours. The body of the saint
was landed from the ship on the south bank of the Loire, and deposited
in a small oratory; the spot was called the Station of the Body of St.
Martin. It was moved thence to a more central spot, and miracles began to
be wrought at its new abode. Briccius, his successor in the bishopric,
built a church over it in the eleventh year after the Saint’s death.
Perpetuus removed this church and built a more magnificent structure.
The rich gifts of kings and others made the church of Perpetuus very
beautiful. St. Odo, in a sermon on its destruction by fire, described it
as lined with various coloured marbles; in one place the walls were red
with Protonis marble, in another white with Parian, in another green with
Prasine. This church was burned by Willicharius. Chlotaire I rebuilt it.
The Normans burned it again in 853 and 903, and soon after the year 1000
it was rebuilt by Hervey the Treasurer in the form in which it existed to
the time of the Revolution. The Calvinists pillaged it, as has been said
above. At the destruction in the time of the Revolution the various parts
of the church were sold to speculators, and under the First Empire all
disappeared except the two towers which now remain. The Cathedral church
in the old Roman city, the eastern part of the present city, was burned
in the wars between Louis VII of France and our Henry II, who was Lord of
Tours and Count of Anjou.
In 1861 a rock-hewn tomb was found under a house which was known to stand
on the site of the high altar of the Abbey church. A subterranean chapel
was built over the tomb, and adorned with red granite. This is now the
Confessio of the new basilica of St. Martin.
There had only been two bishops of Tours before Martin. The first,
Gatian, died in 301. He had officiated secretly[203] in the remarkable
cave, across the front of which the ancient church of St. Radegonde now
stands, with its inscriptions.
Sca Radegundis Gemma Galliæ Pretiosissima, Ora pro nobis. S.
R. Regina Galliæ. Scus Gatianus Turonum Primus Episcopus huius
Parochiæ Fundator Primo Sæculo.
Lidorius succeeded Gatian after a lapse of thirty-seven years, and built
a small basilica for his bishop’s stool.
Martin had, during his bishopric, brought from St. Maurice, in the valley
of the Rhone, some relics of that saint, which he deposited in a chapel
built by Lidorius, to which also he removed from the cemetery the remains
of Gatian. This was the origin of the Cathedral church of Tours, and we
are thus enabled to see why its primary dedication was to St. Maurice,
and its second and permanent dedication is to St. Gatian.
The public library at Tours, which is now on the quay facing the Loire,
and not at the place, as indicated by the guide-books, where the Mairie
stands, has a remarkably interesting collection of manuscripts. Two of
the finest of them are undoubtedly of Charlemagne’s time. One of these,
Tours No. 22 (St. Martin No. 247) is a beautiful Book of the Gospels,
written all in gold on very white parchment, in remarkably perfect
condition. The gold employed must have been singularly pure. There are
277 leaves each with double columns of 25 lines, and in all 289 leaves;
the size is 12⅖ by 9⅕ inches. The initial letters are quite simple, and
in exceedingly good taste. The other, Tours No. 23 (St. Martin No. 174),
is also a Book of the Gospels, with 193 leaves, 11⅗ by 9⅕ inches. It
has so-called Hibernian initial letters, purple, with interlacements,
and birds’ heads with the characteristic eyes and beaks. It is much
more probably Anglian than Hibernian, and we may attribute it to the
scriptorium of the school of York, or to that of St. Martin of Tours as
a copy from a York manuscript. The present librarian assigns it to the
writing school of Marmoutier, across the Loire, which he thinks was the
chief writing school of Tours in Alcuin’s time. That opinion is founded
on a remark in connexion with the first establishment of Marmoutier, to
which reference will be made below;[204] the English student may well
attribute the MS. to St. Martin’s itself, produced, as a copy, under
Alcuin’s own eye, especially as it has always appeared in the catalogue
of St. Martin’s and not in that of Marmoutier, and is now classed as a
St. Martin’s MS.
The _Evangeliarium_ first mentioned, in gold letters on white parchment,
is a book of historic fame. It is the book on which the kings of France
down to Louis XIV, in 1650, took their oath of fidelity and protection
to St. Martin of Tours, when admitted as abbat and first canon of the
collegiate church. The book was bound with great magnificence of gold
and gems; and when the Huguenots, under the Prince of Condé, sacked
the place, they carried off the rich binding, but fortunately left the
manuscript itself quite uninjured. The oath of the kings is written on
the reverse of folio 277, in a style closely copied from the manuscript
itself, probably in the eleventh or twelfth century, all in small gold
capital letters, with a point after every word. The entry runs as
follows;—
Hoc est iuramentum regis Francie quod facere tenetur dum primo
recipitur in abbatem et canonicum huius ecclesie beati Martini
Turonensis.
Ego N. annuente Domino Francorum rex Abbas et canonicus huius
ecclesie Beati Martini Turonensis iuro Deo et Beato Martino
me de cetero protectorem et defensorem fore huius Ecclesie in
omnibus necessitatibus et utilitatibus suis custodiendo et
conservando possessiones honores iura privilegia libertates
franchisias et immunitates eiusdem Ecclesie quantum divino
fultus adiutorio secundum posse meum recta et pura fide sic me
Deus adiuvet et hec sancta verba.
The first king who held the secular abbacy of St. Martin of Tours was
Charles the Bald, Charlemagne’s grandson, who became king of France
(Neustria) in 843, about thirty years after Charlemagne’s death. There
were ecclesiastical abbats till the year 845, when the Count Vivian
became the first lay abbat. After Charles the Bald it is probable that
the kings held the abbacy. Hugh Capet (987-996) united the title of Abbat
of St. Martin to that of King of France. The fifteen kings from Louis VII
in 1137 to Louis XIV in 1630 took the oath on this book on admission to
the abbacy.
The status of the abbat and of the brethren of St. Martin was long in
uncertainty. Charlemagne refers to the vague status of the brethren in
his letter of rebuke to them, which is given on p. 237; they called
themselves canons, or monks, as best suited the necessities of an
occasion. Probably there had been a time when the monastery included both
secular and regular inmates. It is uncertain also whether the brethren
elected the bishop (or archbishop) of Tours, and, indeed, whether they
had not a bishop of their own. Hadrian I, addressing the abbat Itherius,
who was the first founder of Cormery as a place of residence for regular
monks of St. Benedict, writes thus[205] of St. Martin’s—“we decree that
it be lawful to have a bishop there as has been from ancient times up
to now, by whose preaching the people who come from various parts with
devoted mind to the holy thresholds of the said confessor of Christ may
receive remedial help from the Creator of souls.” Urban II, in 1096,
at the Council of Tours, recognized this, and “united the Martinensian
bishopric to the Apostolic See”, a very honourable extinction. We
have the names of eight abbats before Itherius. The seventh of them,
Wicterbus, was bishop and abbat; the eighth, the immediate predecessor of
Itherius, Wulfhard I, was abbat only. It is supposed that the appointment
of Alcuin, one of the secular clergy and in deacon’s orders, was a
decided step in the secularization of the Abbey, and that his policy
was in the same direction. It may be suggested that already in the time
of Itherius that abbat was conscious of a secularizing tendency, and on
that account founded Cormery; and that Alcuin found the existence of the
regular abbey at Cormery a convenient outlet for the remnant of regular
brethren at St. Martin’s, and handed St. Martin’s over to his successor,
Wulfhard II, as a purely secular foundation. The step to a lay abbacy was
then not a long one.