Alcuin

Alcuin, (about 735 - May 19, 804) was a monk from York, England. He was related to Willibrord, Anglo-Saxon missionary to the Frisians and the first bishop of Utrecht, whose biography he afterwards wrote.

Alcuin had a long career as a teacher and scholar first at the school at York and finally as Charlemagne's leading advisor on ecclesiastical and educational affairs. From 796 until his death he was abbot of the great monastery of St. Martin of Tours.

Alcuin probably met Charlemagne at Parma in 781 and accepted his invitation to Aachen in 782.

From 782 to 790 Alcuin had as pupils the king of the Franks, the members of his family, the young men sent for their education to the court, and the young clerics attached to the palace chapel; he was the life and soul of the Academy of the palace, and we have still, in the Dialogue of Pepin (son of Charlemagne) and Alcuin, a sample of the intellectual exercises in which they indulged. One surviving tool of the drive to reform education is Charlemagne's circular letter De Litteris Colendis, "On the Study of Letters", which Alcuin wrote.

In 790 Alcuin returned to his own country, to which he had always been greatly attached, and stayed there some time; but Charlemagne invited him back to help in the fight against the Adoptionist heresy, which was at that time making great progress in the northern Spain. At the council of Frankfurt in 794 Alcuin upheld the orthodox doctrine, and obtained the condemnation of the heresiarch Felix of Urgel. After this victory he again returned to his own land, but on account of the disturbances which broke out there, and which led to the death of King AEthelred (796), he bade farewell to it for ever. Charlemagne had just given him the great abbey of St Martin at Tours, and there he passed his last years.

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