Alcuin

Alcuin (ăl`kwĭn) or Albinus (ălbī`nəs), 735?–804, English churchman and educator. He was educated at the cathedral school of York by a disciple of Bede; he became principal in 766. Charlemagne invited him (781?) to court at Aachen to set up a school. For 15 years Alcuin was the moving spirit of the Carolingian renaissance. He combated illiteracy with a system of elementary education. On a higher level he established the study of the seven liberal arts, the trivium and quadrivium, which became the curriculum for medieval Western Europe. He encouraged the study and preservation of ancient texts. His dialogue textbook of rhetoric, called Compendia, was widely used. He wrote verse, and his letters were preserved. Alcuin's treatise against Felix of Urgel did much to defeat the heresy of adoptionism. He died as head of the abbey of St. Martin of Tours, where he had one of his most famous schools.

Bibliography

See studies by E. J. B. Gaskoin (1904), E. Duckett (1951, repr. 1965), and G. Ellard (1956).

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Alcuin

(born c. 732, in or near York, Yorkshire, Eng.—died May 9, 804, Tours, France) Anglo-Latin poet, educator, and cleric. As head of Charlemagne's Palatine school, he introduced the traditions of Anglo-Saxon humanism into western Europe and was the foremost scholar of the revival of learning known as the Carolingian Renaissance. He also made important reforms in the Roman Catholic liturgy, prepared an important new edition of the Vulgate Bible, wrote a number of poems, and left more than 300 Latin letters, a valuable source for the history of his time. Although traditionally identified as the author of the Caroline books and as the creator of Carolingian miniscule, Alcuin is now recognized as having played a less important role in the creation of both. He was also an important political adviser and confidant of Charlemagne.