Daily Reading for May 20 • Alcuin, Deacon, and Abott of Tours, 804
The scholars and teachers Charlemagne brought to Aachen provide some clues about the various locales in which early medieval learning had survived. . . . Charlemagne brought an Anglo-Saxon, Alcuin of York, to Aachen after meeting him in Italy in 781. Alcuin had been trained in the English intellectual tradition of the Venerable Bede (died 735), the most prominent intellectual of his day, a monk who had welded together the study of humane letters and biblical scholarship. These scholar-teachers were hired by Charlemagne for several purposes.
First, Charlemagne wished to establish a system of education for the young of his kingdom. The primary purpose of these schools was to develop literacy; Alcuin of York developed a curriculm for them. He insisted that humane learning should consist of those studies that developed logic and science. . . . Beyond the foundation of schools, Charlemagne needed scholars to reform existing texts and to halt their terrible corruption, especially those used in church worship. Literary revival was closely connected with liturgical revival. Part of Charlemagne’s educational reform envisioned people who would read aloud and sing in church from decent, reliable texts. Literacy was conceived as a necessary prerequisite for worship.
Alcuin of York mainly worked at the task of revising the liturgical books. Alcuin published a book of Old and New Testament passages in Latin for public reading during Mass. He sent for books from Rome in order to publish a sacramentary, a book of prayers and rites for the administration of the sacraments of the church. Alcuin’s sacramentary was made obligatory for the churches of the Frankish kingdom in 785. Charlemagne made the Roman chant (called Gregorian after Pope Gregory the Great, who was said to have initiated such chants at the end of the sixth century) obligatory in all churches of his realm. Alcuin also attempted to correct scribal errors in the Vulgate Bible (the Latin version of Saint Jerome) by a comparative reading of manuscripts—a gigantic task he never completed.
From Culture and Values: A Survey of the Humanities by Lawrence S. Cunningham and John J. Reich, Alternate Volume, Sixth Edition (Cengage Learning, 2005).