Abstract

In 796 the Abbey of St. Martin at Tours acquired a new abbot. The brethren soon began to complain about his habit of attracting unwelcome English tourists. They were said to have cried, “O God, deliver this monastery from these Britishers who come swarming round this countryman of theirs like bees returning to a mother bee.” The abbot was Alcuin: scholar, teacher, and moving spirit behind the Carolingian Renaissance. The words of the brethren are a fitting reminder that Alcuin belonged to two worlds: the world of the Carolingian court and the world from which he had come, the school of York. Alcuin had left York in his mid forties in 781, but York had not left him. He sent correspondence to Northumbria and to other areas of Anglo-Saxon England and returned to England twice, in 786 with the legatine mission and in 790-93. Alcuin's intellectual standing was high and owed much to his influence at the Carolingian court. He was thus a figure to whom the Anglo-Saxon clergy looked for inspiration and example. Although never advancing beyond deacon's orders, he formulated ideals about the role, function, and spiritual authority of bishops in the land he had left. These ideals are found in his poem praising the see of York and its school and in his correspondence. It is the purpose of this article to investigate these ideals