York and Bernicia
The achievement of 8th-century York has little connexion with these bald records of revolution and disaster, though the work of Archbishop Egbert, founder of the great school and library, cannot have been unconnected with the fact that he was brother to a king. For once in the troubled history of Northumbria, wealth, rank, opportunities, and character combined to permit a constructive and lasting personal achievement. The work of Wilfrid cannot be regarded as more than preparatory; the rise of York as a centre of Christian learning must largely be ascribed to this prince-bishop, who probably studied under Bede and certainly maintained close relations with that great scholar. From the early years of Egbert, York replaced Jarrow as the literary and educational focus of Northumbria. The beginnings of the school lay in the routine instruction given by Egbert to the clerks of his church but a 9th-century life of Alcuin shows that this instruction was extended in Æthelberht's time to the sons of noblemen.
It has been customary to present the expansion of the School of York in the form of a biography of Alcuin. But it should be borne in mind not only that others were in fact its founders but that there was at this moment an unparalleled opportunity for the rapid development of an international world of scholarship and the greatness of York lay in the energy with which it grasped it. Quite apart from his enlightened patronage, Charlemagne's political stabilization of Europe made possible, for the first time since the collapse of Rome, careers like that of Alcuin. Opportunities for travel, correspondence, and peaceful scholarship existed on a scale unknown since the Constantinian age. English prestige, and especially that of Northumbria, had been established by the missions to Germany and Frisia.
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St. Boniface (Winfrid) again set out in 718, visited Rome, and was commissioned in 719 by Pope Gregory II, who gave him his new name of Boniface, to evangelize in Germany and reorganize the church there. In 716 he set out on a missionary expedition to Frisia, intending to convert the Frisians by preaching to them in their own language, his own Anglo-Saxon language being similar to Frisian, but his efforts were frustrated by the war then being carried on between Charles Martel and Radbod, king of the Frisians. In 723, Boniface felled the holy oak tree dedicated to Thor near the present-day town of Fritzlar in northern Hesse. The felling of Thor's Oak is commonly regarded as the beginning of German christianization. In 732, he traveled again to Rome to report, and Gregory II conferred upon him the pallium as archbishop with jurisdiction over Germany. Boniface again set out for Germany, baptized thousands and dealt with the problems of many other Christians who had fallen out of contact with the regular hierarchy of the Catholic church. Boniface balanced this support and attempted to maintain some independence, however, by attaining the support of the papacy and of the Agilolfing rulers of Bavaria. In Frankish, Hessian and Thuringian territory, he established the dioceses of Büraburg, Würzburg and Erfurt. He also organised provincial synods in the Frankish Church, and maintained a sometimes turbulent relationship with the king of the Franks, Pepin the Younger, whom he may have crowned at Soissons in 751. The forcible conversion of Germany up to the Elbe river was completed by Charlemagne, who destroyed the Saxons' independence in the last decades of the 8th century. That territory was then a part of the kingdom of Austrasia and Neustria.
The achievement of 8th-century York has little connexion with these bald records of revolution and disaster, though the work of Archbishop Egbert, founder of the great school and library, cannot have been unconnected with the fact that he was brother to a king and was made bishop of York in 734 by Saint Ceolwulf of Northumbria, succeeding Wilfrid II on the latter's resignation. As with Aldfrith, the Irish annals give Ceolwulf an Irish name, "Eóchaid son of Cuidin", and if Cuidin is a calque of Cuthwine, Eóchaid is no more obviously related to Ceolwulf than Flann is to Aldfrith. Egbert was a correspondent of Saint Boniface who asked him to support his censure of Ethelbald of Mercia. For once in the troubled history of Northumbria, wealth, rank, opportunities, and character combined to permit a constructive and lasting personal achievement. The work of Wilfrid cannot be regarded as more than preparatory; the rise of York as a centre of Christian learning must largely be ascribed to this prince-bishop, who probably studied under Bede and certainly maintained close relations with that great scholar. From the early years of Egbert, York replaced Jarrow as the literary and educational focus of Northumbria. The beginnings of the school lay in the routine instruction given by Egbert to the clerks of his church but a 9th-century life of Alcuin shows that this instruction was extended in Æthelberht's time to the sons of noblemen. The orderly character of Egbert's instruction is expressed in his Dialogus Ecclesiasticae Institutions, an epitome of ecclesiastical law in the form of replies to questions by a pupil to a master. His other two works, the Penitential and the Pontifical, doubtless represent the subject-matter of the technical training afforded by Egbert to his clerks.
Quite early in the history of the school, the precise location of which is unknown, the archbishop assigned much of the teaching to his kinsman Æthelberht, to whom the formation of the great library was primarily due. Alcuin's Carmen de Pontificibus et Sanctis Ecclesiae Eboracensis provides a remarkable account of the contents of this library, but the list of forty specimen-authors has sometimes attracted too serious attention. Alcuin himself remarks that he has been obliged to omit many names which would have imposed an excessive strain upon his poetical powers. The list cannot necessarily be regarded as a representative selection, let alone as a catalogue of the library. Yet whatever the limitations of Alcuin's versified account, we may conclude with confidence that Egbert and Æthelberht accumulated one of the greatest libraries in the west and one without which the European renown of the school of York could not have been gained. Of all the tragedies which befell the north after the Norman Conquest, none was so irreparable as the destruction of this library by the fire arising from the hostilities of 1069.
It has been customary to present the expansion of the School of York in the form of a biography of Alcuin. But it should be borne in mind not only that others were in fact its founders but that there was at this moment an unparalleled opportunity for the rapid development of an international world of scholarship and the greatness of York lay in the energy with which it grasped it. Quite apart from his enlightened patronage, Charlemagne's political stabilization of Europe made possible, for the first time since the collapse of Rome, careers like that of Alcuin. Opportunities for travel, correspondence, and peaceful scholarship existed on a scale unknown since the Constantinian age. From his French abbey Alcuin sent wine to Eanbald and his friends in York, and tin to make their church-bells. The great religious houses themselves became involved in commerce: the monastery of St. Denis traded extensively in wine and was frequently visited by English merchants.
Throughout the western Church more settled communications were developing a stronger corporate sense and a consciousness of united spiritual endeavour which are reflected in the international association of clergy for spiritual purposes. This factor appears with some clarity in the correspondence of Alcuin's friends; Boniface asks to be admitted to the spiritual fraternity of Monte Cassino, and Lullus, writing from the Continent, notifies the Archbishop of York of the names of deceased brethren to secure prayers for them. This unitas fraternae dilectionis et societatis spiritualis was bound to develop its more strictly cultural concomitants. The great opportunity came to York in the form of an expanding Christendom wherein the fruits of Bede's genius could be distributed abroad in a manner impossible during his own lifetime.
At the same time scholars of the Carolingian Renaissance did not become so déraciné as to lose their invigorating national consciousness. Anglo-Saxons on the Continent were anxious to preserve contact with their compatriots and to read recent works from home. Alcuin's poem on the Church of York obtained wide circulation among Englishmen abroad, while his pupils at York sent him new poems on the miracles of St. Ninian of Whithorn.
When we approach the life and writings of this outstanding figure of the movement, we observe how little Alcuin the Carolingian courtier obliterated Alcuin the Northumbrian, the native and alumnus of York. It should be recalled that he was born in the city about 730 and did not go to reside permanently abroad until 782. The directly formative influence upon his scholarship was that of Æthelberht, who, on succeeding Egbert as archbishop in 767, left to his favourite pupil the main teaching responsibilities in the school. When, thirteen years later, Æthelberht in turn resigned the archbishopric to another pupil, Eanbald, Alcuin also assumed the direction of the library. Meanwhile the continental experience and contacts of Alcuin had been steadily broadening. As befitted a kinsman of Willibrord, he enjoyed close relationships with the Frisian church and received Frisian pupils at York including the young Liudger, afterwards first Bishop of Münster, who, having studied under Alcuin at York, returned home to Utrecht about 773, bene instructus, habens secum copiam librorum.
After his travels abroad and his sojourn at the court of Charlemagne, Alcuin returned to York for a brief visit in 786, and a prolonged one from 790 to 793. In a letter to King Offa written in 796 he remarks that the violence of the pagans and other disorders were preventing him from returning to the north, and in this same yeare the emperor gave him the rich abbey of Tours. Throughout his stay abroad he maintained the vital link with his birthplace; at Tours he missed the splendid books of the York library and asked the emperor's permission to send some of his pueri to bring them back.
Alcuin has often been said to have lacked constructive genius in his work and inspiration in his writings. But to seek primarily for intellectual pioneering and creative originality is to miss the true contribution of the School of York. It represented rather a phase of encyclopaedism and systemization, a humanizing and a dissemination of achievements already won by English piety and learning. Moreover, there are signs that Alcuin contemplated a post-encyclopaedist stage as necessary to cultural development both in York and in Europe. In a letter to Archbishop Eanbald he advocates the division of the pupils at York into three groups, each with its proper teacher, of readers, singers, and scribes. That he should proffer this advice to Eanbald shows that this initial specialization—clearly thought of as preparing the way for mature professionalism— had not obtained during his own early days at York.
By the time York trembled before the Viking incursions, its message had been handed on: the 8th century forms the apogee of its history in the annals of European culture. Such a concatenation of opportunities and personalities was never to recur, and by the time of Alcuin's death the contribution of York to the Frankish schools had substantially been made. Nevertheless the international tradition lingered for another halfcentury. Its vitality is attested almost on the eve of the Danish interruption by certain items in the correspondence of Lupus, Abbot of Ferrières, the great classicist of his day. In letters probably dated between 851 and 852 and addressed to Archbishop Wigmund and to Aldsige, abbas or vice-dominus of the Church of York, Lupus expresses a wish for the renewal of friendly intercourse between Ferrières and York. From Aldsige, Lupus solicits the loan of a manuscript of Quintilian, one of the Questions of St. Jerome on the Old and New Testaments, together with a similar work by Bede.