Alcin, or ALBINUS,

Alcin, or ALBINUS, the most distinguished scholar of the 8th century, the confidant and adviser of Charlemagne, was born at York about the year 735. He was educated at the cloister-school of his native city, under the care of Archbishop Egbert and Ethelbert, and succeeded the latter as master of the school in 778. Three years later, on his return journey from Rome with the pallium of the new Archbishop of York, he met Charlemagne at Parma; and the year after he yielded to the invitation of the monarch, and took up his residence at his court at Aix-la-Chapelle. Here he devoted himself first to the education of the royal family itself, and through his influence the court became a school of culture for the hitherto almost barbarous Frankish empire. Even the great emperor himself sometimes took his place as a pupil in the school, and he gave his master the revenues of three abbeys for his support. In 790 Alcuin was sent to England to renew the peace with King Offa of Mercia. Two years later he returned, and soon afterwards became involved in the controversy against the Adoptian heresy. In 796 he retired from the court, and settled at Tours, of which he had been made abbot. The school here soon became, under his fostering care, one of the most important in the empire, and the nursery for other schools elsewhere. While living at Tours, he corresponded constantly with Charlemagne. He died here in 804. Alcuin is more famous for the influence he exerted than for any work he gave to the world himself. His writings have but little profundity, nor, indeed, have his Latin poems much artistic merit; but he gave a powerful stimulus to Western learning, and occupies a conspicuous place in the history of letters as the apostle of culture and urbanity in a rude and indeed almost barbarous age. His prose writings mainly consist of elementary scholastic works on grammar, rhetoric, and dialectics; theological works, including biblical commentaries, and treatises on the dogma of the Trinity, and on practical morals; lives of several saints—one, Saint Willibrord, especially interesting to Englishmen; and over two hundred letters to Charlemagne, to friends in England, and to Arnulf of Salzburg, his friend and pupil. The best edition of his works is by Frobenius (Ratisbon, 1777). It has been reprinted in Migne's great Patrologiæ Cursus, edited by Angelo Mai (1851). See Life by Lorenz (1829); Monnier's Alcuin et Charlemagne (1864); Mullinger's Schools of Charles the Great (1877); Werner's Alcuin und sein Jahrhundert (1881); and A. F. West's Alcuin, and the Rise of Christian Schools (1893).