Alcuin

Alcuin (Latinised: Flaccus Albinus Alcuinus; circa 735 – 19 May 804) was a Northumbrian scholar, theologian and catholic educator who taught for the court of Charlemagne.

Alcuin of York (middle)

Statue of Alcuin

Quotes

• I, your Flaccus, am busy carrying out your wishes and instructions at St. Martin's, giving some the honey of the holy scriptures, making others drunk on the old wine of ancient learning.
  • Letter to Charlemagne (796)

• Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, vox populi, vox Dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit.
  • And those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness.
  • Variant translation: We should not listen to those who like to affirm that the voice of the people is the voice of God, for the tumult of the masses is truly close to madness.
  • Works, Epistle 127 to Charlemagne (800)

• What makes bitter things sweet? Hunger.
  • Disputation of Pepin with Albinus

• Quapropter potius animam curare memento, quam carnem, quoniam haec manet, illa perit
  • Therefore remember to care rather for the soul than the flesh, for this remains and that perishes.
  • Epitaph at St. Martin of Tours abbey

Quotes about Alcuin

• The Northmen are often said to have burst out of their coastal settlements in what is now Sweden, Norway, and Denmark at the end of the eighth century. The most famous account of their arrival into the Christian realms of the west comes from Britain. In 793 warriors appeared off the coast of Northumbria, leaped from their ships, and robbed the island of Lindisfarne, desecrating the monastery and murdering its brothers. This ferocious raid sent shock waves rippling out from Britain. When the news reached Charlemagne’s court in Aachen, Alcuin of York wrote to the king of Northumbria, deploring the fact that “the church of St Cuthbert is spattered with the blood of the priests of God, stripped of all its furnishing, exposed to the plundering of pagans.” He suggested to the king that he and his noblemen might mend their ways, starting by adopting more Christian haircuts and clothing styles. But it was too late for any of that. The Northmen had announced themselves as a major power in the western world. The next year, 794, raiders appeared on the other side of the British Isles, in the Hebrides. In 799 Vikings raided the monastery of Saint-Philibert at Noirmoutier, just to the south of the river Loire.
  • Dan Jones, Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages (2021).