Alcuin
Alcuin (Latinised: Flaccus Albinus Alcuinus; circa 735 – 19 May 804) was a Northumbrian scholar, theologian and catholic educator who taught for the court of Charlemagne.
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Quotes
[edit]- The church of St Cuthbert is spattered with the blood of the priests of God, stripped of all its furnishing, exposed to the plundering of pagans.
- I, your Flaccus, am busy carrying out your wishes and instructions at St. Martin's, giving some the honey of the holy scriptures, making others drunk on the old wine of ancient learning.
- Letter to Charlemagne (796), as translated by Stephen Allott, Alcuin of York, c. A.D. 732 to 804: His Life and Letters (1974), p. 12
- Populus iuxta sanctiones divinas ducendus est, non sequendus; et ad testimonium personae magis eliguntur honestae. Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, vox populi, vox Dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit.
- The people, by Divine ruling, is to be led, not to be followed, and for witness persons of high standing are to be preferred. The saying, 'The voice of the people is the voice of God,' is not to be listened to, since the seething of the crowd is always near to madness.
- Letter to Charlemagne (800), as quoted in Eleanor Shipley Duckett, Alcuin, Friend of Charlemagne (1951), p. 224, footnote
- Quapropter potius animam curare memento, quam carnem, quoniam haec manet, illa perit
- Therefore remember to care rather for the soul than the flesh, for this remains and that perishes.
- Epitaph at St. Martin of Tours abbey[citation needed]
- What is a letter? — The keeper of history.
What is a word? — The betrayer of the mind.
What produces words? — The tongue.
What is the tongue? — The scourge of the air.
What is air? — The preserver of life.
What is life? — The gladness of the blessed; the sorrow of the wretched; the expectation of death.
What is death? — The inevitable event; the uncertain pilgrimage; the tears of the living; the confirmation of our testament; the thief of man.
What is man? — The slave of death; a transient traveller; a local guest.
What is man like? — An apple.
How is man placed? — As a lamp in the wind.
Where is he placed? — Between six walls.
What? — Above, below, before, behind, on the right, and on the left.
How many companions has he? — Four.
Whom? — Heat, cold, dryness, wet.
In how many ways is he changeable? -— Six.
Which are they? — Hunger, fulness; rest, labour; watchings and sleep.
What is sleep? — The image of death.
What is man's liberty? — Innocence.
What is the head? — The crown of the body.
What is the body? — The home of the mind.
What are the hairs? — The garments of the head.
What is the beard? — The discrimination of sex; the honour of age.
What is the brain? — The preserver of the memory.
What are the eyes? — The leaders of the body; vessels of light; the index of the mind.
What are the ears? — The collators of sounds.
What is the forehead? — The image of the mind.
What is the mouth? — The nourisher of the body.
What are the teeth? — The millstones of our food.
What are the lips? — The doors of the mouth.
What is the throat? — The devourer of the food.
What are the hands? — The workmen of the body.
What is the heart? — The receptacle of life.
What is the liver? — The keeper of our heat.
What is the spleen? — The source of laughter and mirth.
What are the bones? — The strength of the body.
What are the thighs? — The capitals of our pillars.
What are the legs? — The pillars of the body.
What are the feet? — Our moveable foundation.
What is the blood? The moisture of the veins; the aliment of life.
What are the veins? — The fountains of flesh.
What is heaven? — A rotatory sphere.
What is light? — The face of all things.
What is day? — The incitement of labour.
What is the sun? — The splendour of the world; the beauty of heaven; the grace of nature; the honour of day; the distributor of the hours.
What is the moon? — The eye of night; the giver of dew; the prophetess of the weather.
What are the stars? — The paintings of the summit of nature; the seaman's pilots; the ornaments of night.
What is rain? — The earth's conception; the mother of corn.
What is a cloud? — The night of day; the labour of the eyes.
What is wind? — The perturbation of air; the moving principle of water; the dryer of earth.
What is the earth? — The mother of the growing; the nurse of the living; the storehouse of life; the devourer of all things.
What is the sea? — The path of audacity; the boundary of the earth; the divider of regions; the receptacle of the rivers; the fountain of showers; the refuge in danger; the favourer of pleasures.
What are rivers? — Motion never-ceasing; the refection of the sun; the irrigators of the earth.
What is water? — The ally of life; the washer of filth.
What is fire? — Excess of heat; the nourisher of the new-born; the maturer of fruits.
What is cold? — The ague of the limbs.
What is frost? — The persecutor of herbs; the destroyer of leaves; the fetter of the earth; the source of the waters.
What is snow? — Dry water.
What is winter? — The banishment of summer.
What is spring? — The painter of the earth.
What is summer? — The re-clothing of earth; the ripener of corn.
What is autumn? — The granary of the year.
What is the year? — The chariot of the world.
What does it carry? — Night and day; cold and heat.
Who are its drivers? — The sun and moon.
How many are its palaces? — Twelve.
What is a ship? — A wandering house; a perpetual inn; a traveller without footsteps; the neighbour of the sands.
What is the sand? — The wall of the earth.
What makes bitter things sweet? — Hunger.
What makes men never weary? — Gain.
What gives sleep to the watching? — Hope.
What is a wonder? — I saw a man standing; a dead man walking who never existed.
How could this be? — An image in water.
An unknown person, without tongue or voice, spoke to me, who never existed before, nor has existed since, nor ever will be again; and whom I neither heard nor knew? — It was your dream.
I saw the dead produce the living, and by the breath of the living the dead were consumed? — From the friction of trees fire was produced which consumed.
I saw fire pause in the water unextinguished? — From flint.
Who is that whom you cannot see unless you shut your eyes? — He who sneezes will show him to you.
I saw a man with eight in his hand, he took away seven, and six remained? — School-boys know this.
Who is he that will rise higher if you take away his head? — Look at your bed and you will find him there.
I saw a flying woman with an iron beak, a wooden body, and a feathered tail, carrying death? — She is a companion of soldiers.
What is that which is, and is not? — Nothing.
How can a thing be, yet not exist? — In name and not in fact.
What is a silent messenger? — That which I hold in my hand.
What is that? — My letter.- Alb. Op. pp. 1385–1392, as quoted in Sharon Turner, The History of the Anglo-Saxons, 3rd ed. (1820), vol. 3, bk. 9, ch. 7, pp. 472–74
