The Scribe(62)
As he crossed the peristylium he stopped for a moment to look around him. As far as he could see, Fulda’s monastic chapter had adhered to the latest reforms instituted by Charlemagne. In his institutio canonicorum, he aimed to promote community life among the chapter’s clergymen by regulating the system and design of the clerical buildings surrounding the cathedral and the bishop’s palace.
He was fascinated by that arrangement of structures of various styles and functions that wrapped around the little cathedral, and he was even more surprised by the fact that the bishop of Fulda had chosen an old Roman domus as the site for his episcopal see. The palace was a two-story stone building. The upper floor had eleven small heated rooms with doors leading out to a communal gallery with views over the atrium. The ground floor housed the cellar, two porticos, two chambers with timber floors, a stable, the kitchens, a bakery, the pantry, the granary, and a small infirmary. Perhaps he was not the right man to make such a judgment, but he had the impression that the palace exceeded the humility required of a prelate of the Church. That said, he knew that he should not criticize too harshly one who had so warmly welcomed him. After all, the Bishop of Fulda had felt most complimented by his presence, especially when he learned that Alcuin was interested in the exquisite treasures of his library.
It was completely dark by the time he arrived at his cell in the boarding house. He could have stayed in the optimates’ residence in the abbey, but preferred a small, private cell to a large but shared room. He thanked the heavens for a space of his own, took off his shoes, and made ready to use his brief moment of solitude to meditate on the events of the day, which had been particularly arduous, but not as bad as the days he had to endure in his far-off Northumbria. After all not in Fulda nor in Aquis-Granum did he have to rise for Matins, and after the Prime service he always had a warm breakfast of cakes with honey, cured cheese, and apple cider waiting for him. Indeed, his daily duties were nothing like those he had performed with utter devotion during his days at the episcopal school in York, where he taught rhetoric and grammar, ran the library, oversaw the scriptorium, collected codices, translated texts, oversaw the loans of books brought in from the distant monasteries of Hibernia, supervised the admission of novices, organized debates, and assessed the progress of each student. How distant were those days in York!
As if he were reliving them, his mind conjured images of his childhood in Britain. He had been born into a Christian family in Whitby, Northumbria, a tiny coastal town whose few inhabitants lived from what they could pull from the sea and from the meager orchards sprawled around an ancient fort. He remembered the rain-soaked land, an eternally damp place, but fresh, where every morning he would wake to the smell of dew and salt, and the sound of waves in constant battle.
His parents found him to be a nervous boy who was happier examining seeds or studying snails than throwing stones with the other children. A strange boy, they thought, not least when he accurately guessed how much fish a certain boat would catch—or which house would collapse after the next storm.
He found it pointless to explain that he merely observed the condition of the nets used by the fishermen or the rot that had taken hold of pillars and beams. Unfortunately, the rest of the village thought the gangly little boy was touched by the Devil, so, to right his soul, his parents decided to send him to the cathedral schools in York.
His teacher was Aelbert of York, a knock-kneed monk, the head magister at the time and disciple of the previous head, Count Egbert, who was a relative. Perhaps that was why Aelbert took him in like a son and devoted himself body and soul to channeling his strange talent. There Alcuin learned that England was a heptarchy made up of the Saxon kingdoms of Kent, Wessex, Essex, and Sussex in the south of the island, and the northern realms of the Angles of Mercia, East Anglia, and Northumbria, where he resided.
He enjoyed broadening his mind in the typical subjects of the trivium, which included grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic; and of the cuadrivium, comprising arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. Along with these, in accord with the Anglo-Saxon tradition, he studied astrology, mechanics, and medicine.
“Saeculare quoque et forasticae philosophorum disciplinae” Aelbert insisted time and again, trying to convince Alcuin that the secular arts were nothing but the work of the Devil, handed to the Christians so they would forget the Word of God.
“But Saint Gregory the Great himself—in his Commentary on the Book of Kings—legitimizes these studies,” Alcuin retorted when he was just sixteen years old.
“That does not give you the right to spend the entire day reading that compendium of lies that is the Historiae Naturalis.”
“Would you be less displeased if I studied the Etymologiae u Originum sive etymologicarum libri viginti? Because if you compare the two, you will note that the Hispanic saint modeled the structure of some of his books on Pliny’s encyclopedia. And not just on Pliny, but also on the ecclesiastical writers Cassiodorus and Boethius. And on Caelius Aurelianus’s translations of Asclepiades of Bithynia and Soranus of Ephesus—and Lactantius and Solinus—and even Prata by Suetonius.”
“You should read from the Christian point of view, not the pagan one.”
“The pagans are sons of God, too.”
“But at the service of the Devil, boy! And do not contradict me or I will cast all thirty-three volumes out the window one by one.”
In reality Aelbert did not worry too much about what kind of texts Alcuin read, for the boy never neglected his duties as a Christian. On the contrary, he had proven himself an accomplished and diligent student, able to gain the upper hand in theological debates with the most experienced monks, so his dabbling in the pagan texts, though undesirable, had not diverted him in any way from his journey toward wisdom.