I. understand that the royal hand, stiffened with oft-wielding of CHAP. the good sword 'Joyeuse,' may have refused to accommodate itself to the most painful and laborious of all the acquirements of an ordinary education. under instruc The regular education of the youth of the Palace School Conditions was derived from the manuals of which we have given an which account, and, as regarded extent and variety, was probably Alcuin's a simple reproduction of that which Alcuin had himself re- tions were ceived at York. Of all living scholars, he was the least imparted. likely to introduce innovations upon the traditional curriculum. When, however, the circle was joined by Charles and the older members of his court, the instruction necessarily assumed a different form. The adult mind can rarely master knowledge after the fashion of more tender years. That wondrous faculty of the youthful intellect which causes it to resemble a capacious carpet bag, in the way in which it receives and retains whatever the instructor may think fit to put into it, disappears as the judgement becomes matured. The memory then refuses to burden itself with facts of which it apprehends neither the importance nor the connexion; and so we find Charles and his courtiers plying the vates from across the Channel with innumerable questions, often blundering strangely and misapprehending widely, but forming a circle which even at this lapse of time it is impossible to contemplate without interest:-the monarch Members himself, in the ardour of a long unsatisfied curiosity, pro- circle. pounding queries on all imaginable topics-suggesting, distinguishing, disputing, objecting,—a colossal figure, gazing Charles fixedly with bright blue eyes on his admired guest, and and his altogether a presence that might well have disconcerted a less assured intellect. Alcuin, however, holding fast by his reference is here intended only to the art of calligraphy as practised at the monasteries, will scarcely commend itself to the dispassionate critic. Einhard would never have been content to designate such an accomplishment by the single word 'scribere;' nor again, if Charles had once acquired the art of writing, would he have found it difficult to improve his command of it. Some lines quoted by Léon Maitre, even if accepted as authoritative, would fail to prove that the corrections of the MS. referred to were made by Charles' own hand. of the sons. CHAP. I. His wife, Boethius, Cassiodorus, and Isidorus, is calm and self-possessed; feeling assured that, so long as he only teaches what "Gregorius summus' and 'Baeda venerabilis' believed and taught, he cannot go very far wrong. Around him, as the years went by, he saw successively appear the three royal sons, born in rightful wedlock: Charles, the future ruler of Neustria and Austrasia; Pepin, the acknowledged lord of Italy; and Lewis, who almost from his cradle had worn the crown of Aquitaine the graceful young athlete and mighty hunter, his mind already opening to that love for learning which, through all the good and evil of his chequered life, he His sister. cherished so fondly in later years. There, again, was Charles' much loved sister, Gisela, abbess of Chelles, who from her girlhood had renounced the world, but whom the fame of the great teacher drew from her conventual retirement. Thither also came the last and best-loved of Charles' Liutgarda. wives, Liutgarda, of the proud Alemannic race, hereafter to prove among the firmest of Alcuin's friends; and the royal daughter, Gisela, whom parental affection held too dear for daughter. the proudest alliance. There too was Charles' son-in-law Angilbert. Angilbert, chiefly distinguished as yet by his fondness for the histrionic art, but afterwards the saintly abbat of St. Riquier. There too were the royal cousins, the halfAdelhard brothers, Adelhard and Wala, whose after action shook the and Wala. whole fabric of the Carolingian empire-the former brought back from Corbey to mingle again with the court life which he bad shunned, and to forget Desiderata's wrongs--the latter, whose fair face bespoke his Saxon lineage, restored from a mysterious banishment to the royal favour. There too were Riculfus, destined ere long to fill the chair of St. Boniface and rule the great see of Mayence; Einhard, the royal biographer, the classic of the ninth century; and Fredegis, Alcuin's youthful countryman, poet and philosopher, not always faithful to his master's teaching. His Riculfus. Einhard. Fredegis. Names assumed by mem bers of the Palace School. It appears to have been a frequent affectation, in mediaeval times, for distinguished men to assume a literary or historic alias;1 and to this custom we must attribute the fact that 1 Palgrave, i 277. 'Saepe familiaritas nominis immutationem solet facere, sicut ipse Dominus Simonem mutavit in Petrum,' is Alcuin's own observation on the practice. Epist. 125; Migne, c 361. 1 Alcuin usually, in his correspondence, addresses the members of this circle under another name. Charles' second name would seem to have really been David; and this fact may account for the assumption of Scriptural names by some of his courtiers. Pepin was Julius; Gisela (the sister), Lucia; Gisela (the daughter), Delia; Liutgarda was Ava; Adelhard was Antony; Wala, Arsenius; Einhard, with reference, as M. Teulet conjectures, to his destined state avocation, was Beseleel; Riculfus, Flavius Damoetas; Rigbod, Machairas; Angilbert, Homer; Fredegis, Nathanael. СНАР. I. admiration For the most part, it is evident that Alcuin regarded with Alcuin's genuine admiration the intense and untiring energy of the of Charles. royal intellect; 3 he averred, indeed, that were his subjects like him, all Frankland would become a second Athens. Sometimes, however, he found it necessary to suggest to the victorious warrior that the domain of knowledge, unlike the wide realm over which the latter ruled, could never become an autocracy. Charles occasionally indulged in expressions which seemed to betray a contrary notion-an idea that an immortal genius might be made to appear at his behest, much as a new province had often been added to his empire by the sword. "Why,' he exclaimed on one occasion, why have I not twelve of my clergy as learned as Jerome or Augustine?' The devout ecclesiastic was scandalised at such immoderation of desire. The Lord of heaven and earth,' he rejoined, has but two such, and thou wouldst have twelve!' 6 That Alcuin's duties were both trying and onerous can His post a hardly be doubted, embracing as they did the instruction of laborious the monarch, the courtier, and the youthful members of the 1 Palgrave, i 149. If this were the case, we may safely assume that the name had been bestowed upon him in the sense in which it is erroneously explained by Isidorus-fortis manu, quia fortissimus in praeliis fuit' (Etymologiae, bk. viii)—rather than from a knowledge of the meaning of the Hebrew. 2 The same name, it is to be noted, that is given to Wala in the singular contemporary sketch of his political career discovered by Mabillon. See Epitaphium Arsenii, by Paschasius Radbertus. Palgrave, i 275-7; Alcuin, Epist. 125; Migne, c 361. 3 Cujus mentis miranda est nobilitas, dum inter tantas palatii curas et regni occupationes philosophorum pleniter curavit arcana scire mysteria, quod vix otio torpens alius quis modo cognoscere studet.' Note suffixed to Carmen Elegiacum, Migne, ci 649. one. CHAP. I. Advan tages under which he taught. Alcuin not a philosopher. His as a gram Palace School. He was like the original settler clearing an open space in some virgin forest, and compelled to bestow no small amount of preliminary toil in removing the wild growths of centuries, before he breaks up the ground and sows the seed. On the other hand, he had the counterbalancing advantage of being bound by no traditions save those of the great doctors of the Church, whom he could interpret as his private judgement dictated. No predecessor in the Palace School-if indeed the school can be held to have had a previous existence-had already opened up a path which Alcuin might have found it equally difficult to follow or to desert. Holding as he did the very keys of knowledge, his statements and explanations were received with unquestioning deference. The dicta of Pythagoras himself obtained not more deferential assent. It is remarkable, considering how completely he rested upon authority, that he very rarely deems it necessary to cite an author when giving his decision. That he possessed so little aptitude for philosophy was a serious drawback to his efficiency as a teacher, but it must, we think, be looked upon as a matter for congratulation that he stood identified with no philosophic school. He was neither a Platonist nor an Aristotelian. An able writer has reputation indeed asserted that Alcuin was nothing more than a marian. grammarian; and it was in this capacity that his reputation undoubtedly stood highest even with his contemporaries. Notkerus, writing a century later, asserts that Alcuin's expositions of this, the first stage of the trivium, were so masterly, that Donatus, Nicomachus, and Priscian dwindled into insignificance when compared with him.' Fortunately, the treatise is still extant, and we are consequently able to ascertain its precise value. The form into which the instruction is thrown, that of the dialogue, alone suffices to suggest the mental status of the majority of his pupils. The cate1 Hauréau, pp. 125–6. 2 'Albinus talem grammaticam condidit, ut Donatus, Nicomachus, Dositheus, et noster Priscianus, in ejus comparatione nihil esse videantur' (quoted Migne, ci 849). With M. Hauréau, 'nous trouvons que Notker le Bègue exagère l'éloge.' chetical method has generally been found the best adapted to the beginner, and many of Alcuin's pupils, whether as regards power of comprehension or actual knowledge, could only have been relegated, in any school, to the first or most elementary class. CHAP. I. His in- struction Palatine School. The dialogue on Grammar is carried on between two youths the one a Saxon, the other a Frank-respectively 16 and 15 years of age; the Saxon, as the elder, being accredited with the larger share of knowledge, and replying to the queries of the younger; while the master, in whose presence the dialogue is carried on, occasionally comes to his aid when the answer is beyond his ability. M. Monnier conjectures that it was Alcuin's design to exhibit Frankish ingenuity and 'esprit' in contrast to Saxon stolidity; and it is evident throughout that the questioner has the advantage in the opportunity afforded for raillery and wit, the respondent being anxious rather to establish a reputation for accuracy, and apparently somewhat inclined to resent a too pertinacious sounding of the depths of his knowledge. It is especially Foreshadowing worthy of remark that, at the very outset, the writer of the designates the dialogue as a disputatio; and we can have no disputadifficulty in recognising, as it were in embryo, the opponent tion. and respondent of the famous contests of the schools. The contest, however, it will be observed, had not as yet assumed a dialectical form, the scholastic developement of the Aristotelian logic being still undreamt of, but appears in its more elementary stage as an intellectual trial of strength between two combatants. scholastic ́ Grammar › having been first of all defined as the 'scientia litteralis," the Frank commences by asking the Saxon why 'littera' is so called? I suppose,' replies the latter, littera The letter is the same as legitera, inasmuch as it forms the path of the reader.' The Frank. Give me its definition.' The Saxon. 'A letter is the smallest part of an articulate sound' ( vocis). 1 Migne, ci 850-902. 2 In obedience to the precept preserved in Boethius: 'Dicendi ac disputandi prima semper oratio est, et jam dialecticis autoribus et ipso M. Tullio saepius admonente, quae dicitur definitio.' De Divisione, Opera, p. 648. defined. |