Examples of Alcuin’s style in his letters, allusive,
jocose, playful.—The perils of the Alps.—The vision of
Drithelme.—Letters to Arno.—Bacchus and Cupid.
A letter written by Alcuin in September, 799, may be taken as an extreme
example of his allusive style. A good deal of interpretation is needed
before the letter can be understood; it is a collection of riddles.
[Sidenote: Ep. 121. A.D. 799.]
The opening sentence runs thus: “The first letter to the first, and the
fifteenth to the sixth. The number consecrated in steps to the number
perfect in the works of God.”
The first letter is A, and thus the first words mean A(lcuin) to
A(dalhard), Abbat of Corbie, or Arno, Archbishop of Salzburg; but
inasmuch as A is described in the letter as _gallus monasticus_, and Arno
was Aquila, we must understand that the Abbat of Corbie is meant. No
other known A satisfies the conditions. The fifteenth letter is P, the
sixth is F, and therefore we have P(ater) F(ilio), the father to the son.
The Psalms of Degrees are fifteen, the day of completion of the works of
God in creation was the sixth, and therefore the concluding words are
only a repetition of “father to son”.
“Why does that brother come with empty hands? In his tongue he brought a
_Hail!_ to my ears; in his hands he brought nothing to my eyes. Thou who
art seated at a dividing of the ways [Corbie], why hast thou demanded
nothing certain of him who dwelleth in Maresa? The crows fly about the
roofs of the houses and cry out; and the dove, nourished on the pavements
of the church, is silent. I should have trusted that dove had he said
anything about the eagle [Leo III] which lately deserted the roofs of the
citadel of Rome to drink at the fountains of the Saxon land [the Pope had
come to Paderborn] to see the lion [Karl]; or if our blackbird, flying
between them, had demanded of the monastic cock [Adalhard] who rouses the
brethren to their matin watch, that by means of him the sparrow [Alcuin]
sitting alone upon the house top might know what is the convention
between the lion and the eagle; and if the youth of the eagle, as the
psalmist prophesies, is renewed[237] to pristine gladness; and if new
dwellings grow up in the marshes of perfidy that were cleansed[238]; and
if the lion, in pursuit of the ibex, meditates crossing the heights of
the Alps.
“The sparrow hath his ears open. But I see that the proverbial wolf [this
is said to mean the devil] in the fable[239] has taken away the cock’s
voice; lest it happen that if he crowed, the apostolic denial[240]
should be renewed in the city of his former power, and the last error be
worse than the first.
“Why has love sinned, which has not seen _Vale_ [fare thee well] written,
while I hear that the partridges [messengers], running across the fields,
have come to the dwelling [Corbie] of the cock. Perfect love driveth away
fear. Perfect love with the sparkling pupils of the eyes sees everything,
and with the clear intuition of piety will always find a fixed rule of
wholesome counsel. It would seem that the cock is turned into a cuckoo,
which is silent when the sun ascends into the summer constellation of the
crab, while the nest-making sparrow at every season alike twitters on the
smoky roofs.[241]
“That sparrow now in this September month flies to revisit his beloved
nest[242], that he may feed his young[243], gaping with hungry beaks,
with little grains of piety: desiring that some time on the banks of this
river Loire, rich in fish, he may hear the voice of the cock sounding
forth the _Vale_, and that he who with flapping of his wings rouses
himself to matutinal melodies may come and exhort the sparrow in the
midst of his young.”
At this point the letter changes its character, and we need not follow it
further.
[Sidenote: Ep. 16. A.D. 790.]
Thus Alcuin could write a jocose letter, even quoting Scripture in that
vein. Let us see another. He was detained in Britain at the end of the
year 790 by an unexpected event, of which mention has already more than
once been made. Ethelred, the king of Northumbria, had been deposed and
kept in prison till the end of 790. Alcuin wrote to his pupil Joseph, in
Gaul, to tell him that Ethelred had passed from prison to throne, from
misery to majesty; and things were so unsettled that he did not like to
leave for France. He was evidently not well supplied with money, food,
or clothing. He begged Joseph to send him what was necessary for the
sea voyage; also five pounds weight of silver which he had sent to his
charge, and another five from his possessions in France; three garments,
of goat-skin and of wool for the use of his attendants, lay and clerical,
and of linen for his own use; also black and red cloaks of goat skin,
if he could find such, and many pigments of sulphur and colours for
pictures. Then he turns to the question of meat and drink. Quoting 2
Kings iv. 40, he exclaims, “‘O, thou man of God, there is death in the
pot’, for [again quoting, from 1 Sam. ix. 7, and putting wine in place of
bread] the wine ‘is spent in our vessels’: and [he adds] the acid beer of
these parts makes havoc in our stomachs.”
Here is another example of his playfulness and lightness of touch.
[Sidenote: Ep. 9. A.D. 783-6.]
“To the most illustrious man Flavius Damoeta Albinus sends abundant
greeting of perpetual peace.”
[Sidenote: Ep. 12.]
[Sidenote: Ep. 101.]
This was Riculfus, Archbishop of Mainz, whom in another letter he
addresses as the great fisherman, probably because of piscatorial rights
which he naturally had as a riparian proprietor. Alcuin himself—we may
note—was a fisherman. He writes to Arno in 798, from Tours, that he does
not know in which of two places he will be the next month, but whichever
it was it would find him fishing. “I know not whether I shall play the
diver on the banks of the Meuse and catch fish, or float on the waters
of the Loire and catch salmon.” There are salmon now both in the Meuse
and in the Loire; but the phrases in Alcuin’s letter seem to point to
bottom-fishing on the Meuse and surface-fishing on the Loire. Alcuin
learned to fish on the Ouse at York, of which he writes, as we have seen
above[244], “Hanc piscosa suis undis interluit Usa.” We must return to
Letter 9.
“I greatly rejoice in your welfare, and am much delighted with your
loving present, sending you as many thanks as I have counted teeth in
your gift. It is a wonderful animal, with two heads, and with sixty
teeth, not of elephantine size but of the beauty of ivory. I am not
terrified by the horror of this beast, but delighted by its appearance; I
have no fear of its biting me with gnashing teeth. I am pleased with its
fawning caresses, which smooth the hair of my head. I see not ferocity in
its teeth; I see only the love of the sender.”
[Sidenote: Carmen ccxix, ed. Quercet.]
Alcuin afterwards made this ivory comb the subject of a poetic riddle:—
A beast has sudden come to this my house,
A beast of wonder, who two heads has got,
And yet the beast has only one jaw-bone.
Twice three times ten of horrid teeth it has.
Its food grows always on this body of mine,
Not flesh, not fruit. It eats not with its teeth,
Drinks not. Its open mouth shows no decay.
Tell me, Damoeta dear, what beast is this?
We can imagine the beauty of this ivory comb, with one row of sixty
teeth,[245] the solid piece at the top being ornamented with a lion’s
head at each end looking outwards. A hundred years later, the comb, if
made in Northumbria, might have had a ridged top, with two bears’ heads,
the muzzles looking inwards. It was, no doubt, this beautiful comb that
played a large part in the miracles wrought by Alcuin after his death, as
described at page 49.
Considering the frequent passings to and fro across the Alps in Alcuin’s
time by Karl, and, indeed, by Alcuin himself, and the coming and going
between Salzburg, Arno’s see, and Gaul, we should have expected more
reference to the hardships of the way than we find in the letters of
Alcuin.
In writing to Remedius or Remigius, the Bishop of Chur, or Coire, a place
very well known now, he makes no reference to any difficulty in reaching
the city. It was, as we know, a place of considerable importance, and it
possesses to this day some very interesting Carolingian charters. The
only local allusion which Alcuin makes in his various letters to Remedius
informs us of the heavy tolls charged by those who held the passes, a
matter about which our King Canute spoke so strongly to the Pope.
[Sidenote: Ep. 213.]
“By this letter I commend to your fatherly protection this merchant of
ours, who is conveying merchandise to Italy. Let him have safe passage
over the roads of your land in going and in returning. And in the defiles
of the mountains let him not be troubled by your officers of custom, but
by the freedom of your charity let him have free passage.”
The inconsiderable references which we do find to the difficulties of the
way come chiefly in the addresses of his letters. Thus he addresses a
letter to Arno, Archbishop of Salzburg, in these words:—
[Sidenote: Ep. 91.]
“To the eagle that flies across the Alps; goes swiftly over the plains;
stalks through the cities; a humble inhabitant of the earth sends
greeting.”
[Sidenote: Ep. 129.]
“To Paulinus, Patriarch of Aquileia.
“Four friends send greeting across the waters of the Alps in a ship laden
with love.”
[Sidenote: Ep. 200.]
“To Peter, Archbishop of Milan.
“O that I had the wings of an eagle, that I might fly across the heights
of the Alps swifter than the winds.”
In his _Life of Willibrord_,[246] cap. xxxii, he says:—
“The Alps of St. Maurice are exalted more felicitously by the blood of
the Theban saints than by the height of their snows.”
[Sidenote: Ep. 151.]
To Arno.
“To my father, of most sweet love, the eagle prelate, a swan from across
the sea sends wishes for perpetual health with the pen-feathers of holy
affection.”
[Sidenote: Ep. 134.]
To Arno.
“To the eagle, of all the birds of the Alpine heights most dear, Albinus
sends greeting.”
[Sidenote: Ep. 126.]
To Arno.
“A love which neither the cold of the Alps nor the heat of Italy can
overthrow.”
[Sidenote: Ep. 101.]
To Arno.
“I long to hear when the eagle, flying high, transcends the summits of
the Alps, and, wearied with flight, composes its wings in the parts of
Rhetia.”
It will have been noticed that most of these are addressed to the Tyrol.
It may be remarked that there are traditions of the presence of Karl in
the far east of the Alps, especially in a valley about twenty miles due
west of the city of Trent. Mr. D. W. Freshfield has printed[247] the long
Latin inscription which gives an explanation of frescoes in the Church of
San Stefano in Val Rendena, showing Karl and a Pope baptizing heathen.
The inscription credits the district with having been full, in Karl’s
time, of castles held by pagan lords or by Jews, who were converted or
slain.
We have an interesting evidence of the sufferings endured in crossing the
Alps in the later Anglo-Saxon times. It is well known that persons who
granted charters of lands, under conditions, invoked desperate penalties
on the heads of any who should attempt to alienate the lands or trifle
with the conditions. In the reigns of Athelstane and Eadmund, under
dates ranging from A.D. 938 to 946, a West Saxon scribe produced and
employed frequently a new form and idea of curse. He made the royal and
archiepiscopal signatories indulge in the pious and fervent wish that any
one who endeavoured to violate the gift set forth in the charter might
suffer from the cold blasts of the ice-fields and the pennine host of
malignant spirits[248].
William of Malmesbury relates[249] the death of an Archbishop of
Canterbury from cold in the passage of the Alps. When Odo died in 959,
Aelfsin, the Bishop of Winchester, bought the archbishopric and behaved
with mad violence. He stamped on the grave of Odo, addressing him as
“worst of old men”, taunting him that he had got his desire (which Odo
had always opposed), namely, the succession to the archbishopric. That
night the departed Odo appeared to him in a dream and warned him of a
speedy end. Aelfsin disregarded the warning, and set off to Rome for the
pallium. On the way across the Alps he was overcome with cold. His feet
were frost-bitten, and there was no remedy but to put them into the warm
carcasses of disembowelled horses, these feet with which he had done
violence to the grave of Odo. Even so he could not get warm, and he was
frozen to death. His death made way for Dunstan, and he is not reckoned
among the archbishops.
The misery of extreme cold was a familiar fact to the Northumbrians
after the experiences of Benedict Biscop and others in crossing the Alps.
It is brought out in a very graphic way in the description which Bede
gives of the trance of one Drithelme[250], who had appeared to be dead
for six hours. Among other remarkable visions of the other world, he came
in his trance to a valley, on one side of which was piercing cold, and on
the other unquenchable fire. The unhappy souls, tortured in the biting
cold, leaped madly across for warmth into the flames. Then, scorched in
the fearful heat, they sprang back again for coolness into the torturing
cold. In that continual alternation of tortures their time was spent.
Drithelme was wont ever after, in beating down his animal passions, to
stand up to his neck in the river, even in winter with broken masses of
ice dashing against him. And when one called to him from the bank, “I
wonder, brother Drithelme, that you endure such cold,” he would reply,
“I, at least, have seen worse cold than this.”
Here is a peep behind the scenes in connexion with the morals of a Pope,
and an example of wisdom in burning letters that ought not to see the
light. Alcuin is writing to Arno.
[Sidenote: Ep. 127. A.D. 799.]
“You were the third cause of my [proposed] journey. The first was that
of the churches of Christ. The second was that of the lord king, because
mourning in tears I left him; my desire being to inscribe on my soul a
perpetual memory of the joy of his presence. The third was the longing
to see the most sweet face of your dearness. But I am prevented from
accomplishing that which I have strongly wished to accomplish. It will
come to pass through your holy prayers, if it do but please Him without
whom nothing good can be done.
“Your former letter[251], which reached us under your name, contained
some complaints about the manner of life of the apostolic[252] and about
the danger you were in when with him by reason of the Romans. Your clerk
Baldric, as I suppose, brought it, bringing also a cope stitched together
in the Roman fashion, a vestment of linen and wool. As I did not wish
that your letter should fall into other hands, Candidus alone read it
with me; and then I put it in the fire, lest any scandal should arise
through carelessness on the part of the keeper of my papers....
“I would gladly write more, but the runner has your orders to get back
quickly.”
Nothing could exceed the affectionateness of Alcuin’s letters to Arno,
the Archbishop of Salzburg, to whose care in preserving the letters
addressed to him we owe so much. Arno’s name recalled to Alcuin’s mind
the early days when he saw hovering in the Yorkshire skies the great
eagles that gave their Anglian name of _earn_ (_arn_) to Arncliffe and
other places. He always thought of him as the Arn, addressed him as the
Aquila, the eagle.
[Sidenote: Ep. 108. A.D. 798.]
“To the Eagle, most noble of birds, the Goose, with strident voice, sends
greeting.
“When I heard of you as winging your way from transalpine hills to your
nest of sweetest quiet, a great repose shone suddenly forth upon my mind
anxious on your account. My mind flew back, as from crashing storms, to
a haven of placid peace. For love is wont to be joyful in prosperity
and oppressed in adversity. Thus it is that the voice of the bride,
bewailing the absence of the longed-for spouse, cries ‘I am wounded with
love’.[253] For both are true: your love wounds, and it heals. One part
of the wound inflicted by love remains an open sore, your longed-for
face has not yet beamed upon the eyes of your lover. The anxiety of not
knowing that you were well has been removed from my mind, but the hunger
of the eyes is not yet appeased by the sight of your countenance. This
Sorrow we trust may very soon be taken away, by the ministry of that
grace which has deigned to remove the anxiety of mind by the arrival of
your letters; and then he who desires both health and vision will be full
of joy in the arrival of yourself.
“You have written to me of the religious life and justness of the lord
apostolic[254], what great and unjust trials he suffers at the hands
of the children of discord. I confess that I glow with great joy that
the father of the churches sets himself about the service of God with
pious and faithful mind, without guile. No wonder that justice suffers
persecution in his person at the hands of evil men, when in our Chief,
the fount of all goodness and justice, the God Christ, justice suffered
persecution even unto death.”
After referring sympathetically to Arno’s complaints that his life has
been a very unquiet one of late, by reason of much travelling, Alcuin
continues:—
“There is one journey upon which I wish that you would enter. Would that
I could see you praying in the venerable temple of blessed Martin our
protector, that thy supplication and ours might restore my strength, that
by Christ’s mercy the pious consolation of love might advance us both
on the way of perpetual beatitude. How this may come about, let your
providence consider. If the opportunity of the present year does not
grant to us our will, by reason of the hindrance of affairs, may we meet
in quiet times and at a quiet season, after Easter of next year, at St.
Amand[255]. The frequent infirmity of my poor little body would make a
long journey very fatiguing to me in the storms of winter.”
Arno could himself write a genial and affectionate letter. One of his
letters to the Cuckoo[256] has been preserved:—
[Sidenote: Ep. 287.]
“_Kartula dic: Cuculus valeat per saecula nostra._ To the very dear bird
the Cuckoo the Eagle sends greeting.
“Be mindful of thyself and of me. Do what I have enjoined, accomplish
what you have promised. Be gentle and true to our father [Alcuin],
obedient and devoted to God. Love Him who has raised thee from the mire
and set thee to stand before princes. Stand like a man against your
adversary; go higher, never lower; advance, never fall back....
“I have dipped my pen in love to write this letter. Rise, rise, most
pleasing bird. The winter is passing away; the rains have gone; the
flowers are showing on the earth; the time of song has come. Let your
friends—that is, the angelic dignities—hear your voice. Your voice is
sweet to them, may your appearance be fair in the eyes of the Lord thy
God, who desires your presence.”
The Cuckoo’s enemy, against whom he was to fight manfully, was drink.
He was evidently a very sweet and sympathetic singer at the frequent
feasts,[257] and was not sufficiently careful in respect of strong drink.
Alcuin’s Carmen 277 mourns in forty-eight lines the absence of the
Cuckoo, gone they did not know where. Some of the lines are significant:
“Ah me! if Bacchus has sunk him in that pestiferous vortex!” And again:
“Alas! that impious Bacchus, I suppose, is entertaining him, Bacchus who
desires to subvert all hearts. Weep for the Cuckoo, weep all for the
Cuckoo. He left us in triumph, in tears he will return. Would that we had
the Cuckoo, even in tears; for then with the Cuckoo we could weep.”
Though himself a judge of wine, with a decided preference for good and
ripe wine, Alcuin was a determined advocate for strict temperance.
Total abstinence was not his idea of temperance. Of another temptation
of the physical senses he says surprisingly little; indeed, he hardly
ever refers to it. In Carmen 260, _To his brothers of York_, a poem
with a charming description of spring in its opening verses, he gives
to the younger brethren a very direct warning on both of these physical
temptations[258]:—
“Let not the tipsy Bacchus cast his fetters upon you, nor, noxious, wipe
out the lessons engraved on your minds. Nor let that wicked Cretan boy,
armed with piercing darts, drive you from the citadel of safety.”
The conversion of Arno into Aquila was very natural to a Yorkshireman.
In several cases we can only guess at the Teutonic names which Alcuin
translated into Latin; for example, Gallicellulus (Ep. 260). In two
cases, at least, he translates into Greek. Cambridge men who remember
with much affection their private tutor in Mathematics, William Walton,
will remember his skill in thus rendering names; his Prosgennades still
survives, known to the world as Atkinson. With Alcuin, Hechstan becomes
Altapetra. The abbess Adaula evidently had a Teutonic name. Anthropos was
his friend Monna. Stratocles had some such name as Heribercht. Epistle
282 is addressed, very near the end of his life, “to my best-loved
friends in Christ, brother and son, Anthropos and Stratocles, the humble
levite Alchuine sends greeting.” Epistle 283, of the same late date,
is addressed “to my dearest son Altapetra, the levite Albinus sends
greeting”. In the course of this letter to Hechstan, Alcuin sends
greetings and requests for prayers to two friends whose names would not
fall very easily into Latin, Scaest and Baegnod, the latter a common
Anglo-Saxon name, usually in the form Beagnoth, with the final _d_
aspirated. It occurs in runes on a knife in the British Museum, and is
found in Kent and Wessex.