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Alcuin of York (c.735 - 804)

This famous scholar is one of our best sources of information for the later eighth century. He was educated in the cathedral school at York, and became a monk and teacher there. He was a deacon of York when, in 781, he was returning from a visit to Rome and met the king of the Franks at Parma. King Charles the Great, known often as Charlemagne (768-814), recognised in Alcuin a scholar who could help him to achieve a renaissance of learning and reform of the Church. At the king's invitation, Alcuin joined the royal court in 781, and became one of Charlemagne's chief advisers on religious and educational matters.

Alcuin was made head of the palace school at Aachen, which was attended by members of the royal court and the sons of noble families, and he established a great library there. He revised the church liturgy and the Bible and, along with another great scholar, Theodulf of Orleans, he was responsible for an intellectual movement within the Carolingian empire in which many schools of learning were attached to monasteries and cathedrals, and Latin was restored to a position as a literary language. In 796, Alcuin became abbot of St Martin's monastery at Tours, where he established a school and library.

An ambassador and scholar

Anglo-Saxon cross  © Alcuin was not himself a great or innovative thinker, but he was a superb teacher and scholar. He had the ability to guide others through what he saw as 'golden whirlpools of spiritual meaning', and to inspire them to rise to even greater intellectual heights. He wrote educational manuals, poetry and copied classical texts, and above all he was a copious writer of letters.

At Charlemagne's court he acted almost as an English ambassador. He provided a link with the English royal court and exchanged information and ideas on a regular basis, not just with secular and ecclesiastical leaders but with personal friends. He must have had a special gift for making and keeping friends and he wrote to them at length.

His correspondence was clearly appreciated, for it was collected and copied for distribution to centres of learning, such as Salzburg, as early as 798. Many of his letters read like exhortations, for he was concerned over social and educational issues as well as Church reform. A missionary friend was recommended to be 'a preacher of piety, not an exactor of tithes', to guide people into good living rather than taking taxes for the benefit of the Church. In a letter to the monks of Jarrow and Monkwearmouth in Northumbria, he encouraged them to ...

Divine retribution

The death of St Cuthbert - his body was buried at Lindisfarne  © Alcuin was also a practical man. He knew that the oil needed for church services was scarce in Britain and he sent olive oil to be distributed amongst the Northumbrian bishops. His distress and horror at the fate of Lindisfarne in 793 comes over very strongly in his letters both to the Bishop of Lindisfarne and the Northumbrian king.

Alcuin saw the Viking onslaught as divine retribution for the slack standards of the Northumbrian people, much as he might have interpreted an epidemic of disease as punishment for human sin. Worse was to come for his homeland, however, and Alcuin might have had difficulty in explaining the Viking activities of the ninth and tenth centuries in terms of God's punishment for bad behaviour.

One of Alcuin's poems celebrates York and its library, where he spent so many happy years, and he lists many of the authors whose works were on its shelves: classical Latin writers such as Virgil, Cicero and Lucan. The cathedral library at York became even more famous throughout Europe after Alcuin's time - only to be destroyed utterly by Danish Vikings in an attack in 866. Fortunately Alcuin's writings have not been lost to us and they remain a key source which give a unique insight into one of the most traumatic periods of English history.

Find out more

Books

Anglo Saxon Chronicle (Boydell and Brewer Ltd, various editions). Translation from Garmansway's revision of the text.

Chronicles of the Vikings: Records, Memorials and Myths by RI Page (British Museum Press, 1995)

Cultural Atlas of the Viking World by James Graham-Campbell, Colleen Batey, Helen Clarke, RI Page and Neil S Price (Andromeda, 1994)

Viking Scotland by Anna Ritchie (Batsford, 1993)

Viking Age England by Julian D Richards (Batsford, 1991)

The Viking Dig: The Excavations at York by Richard Hall (The Bodley Head, 1984)

Scar: A Viking Boat Burial on Sanday, Orkney by Olwyn Owen and Magnar Dalland (Tuckwell Press/East Linton, 1999)

The Age of Charlemagne by Donald Bullough (Paul Elek, 1965)

Places to visit

Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh. Viking artefacts from across Scotland and a reconstructed grave from the Westness cemetery, Orkney.

The Orkney Museum, Kirkwall, Orkney. The Viking gallery includes the story of the Scar boat burial, and a modern Norwegian boat of similar type can be seen in the courtyard.

Brough of Birsay, Orkney. On this spectacular tidal island are the remains of Viking houses and a 12th-century church.

Jarlshof, Shetland. A stunning site that spans five and a half millennia, including four centuries of a Viking farmstead.

Jorvik - York Archaeological Trust Reconstruction of tenth-century Viking York, featuring the finds from the amazing Coppergate excavations.

About the author

Dr Anna Ritchie is an archaeologist and a Viking specialist. She has excavated numerous sites, notably Buckquoy, in Orkney. She is author of Viking Scotland, as well as many other books on Scottish archaeology.