books
of Church practice, of lives of the saints, of hymns, epigrams,
prayers, controversial tracts; a compiler of summaries of patristic
teaching; a leader in the reform of monastic houses. Among the many
notable points in his career, as illustrating the life of learned
churchmen of his age, are two especially to be observed. The first is
his "humanism." He was a scholar of an ancient type; and the society
in which he lived delighted to believe itself classical as well as
Christian. In a contemporary description of the life at Charles's
court Alcuin is called "Flaccus" and is described as "the glory of our
bards, mighty to shout forth his songs, keeping time with his lyric
foot, moreover a powerful sophist, able to prove pious doctrines out of
Holy Scripture, and in genial jest to propose or solve puzzles of
arithmetic." As a theologian he was most famous for his books against
Felix of Urgel and Elipandus of Toledo, on the subject of the
Adoptianist heresy (see above, ch. vi), and there is no doubt that his
was an important influence in the Council of Frankfort which condemned
them. The second is his attitude towards the monastic life. He
admired the monastic life, but he had not been trained as a strict
Benedictine, indeed he was probably no more than a secular in deacon's
orders. He held abbeys as their superior, just as many {169} laymen
did; but he never seems to have been inclined to take upon him any
strict rule. His example shows how natural was the next step in
monastic history which is associated with the abbey of Cluny.

[Sidenote: The schools of Europe.]

In Alcuin England was linked to the wider world of Christendom. This
has been summarily expressed by a great English historian thus: "The
schools of Northumbria had gathered in the harvest of Irish learning,
of the Franco-Gallican schools still subsisting and preserving a
remnant of classical character in the sixth century, and of Rome,
itself now barbarised. Bede had received instruction from the
disciples of Chad and Cuthbert in the Irish studies of the Scriptures,
from Wilfrid and Acca in the French and Roman learning, and from
Benedict Biscop and Albinus in the combined and organised discipline of
Theodore. By his influence with Egbert, the school of York was
founded, and in it was centred nearly all the wisdom of the West, and
its great pupil was Alcuin. Whilst learning had been growing in
Northumbria, it had been declining on the Conti