weight of the higher learning which the scholars of the new revival should build up" (Gaskoin, 209). Alcuin's poems range from brief, epigrammatic verses, addressed to his friends, or intended as inscriptions for books, churches, altars, etc., to lengthy metrical histories of biblical and ecclesiastical events. His verses seldom rise to the level of real poetry, and, like most of the work of the poets of the period, they often fail to conform to the rules for quantity, just as his prose, though simple and vigorous, shows here and there a seeming disregard for the accepted canons of syntax. His principal metrical work, the "Poem on the Saints of the Church at York", consists of 1657 hexameter lines and is really a history of that Church.
II. Alcuin as a Theologian.—Alcuin's work as a theologian may be classed as exegetical or biblical, moral, and dogmatic. Here again the characteristic that has been noted in his educational work is conspicuous it is that of conservation rather than originality. His nine Scriptural commentaries—on Genesis, The Psalms, The Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, Hebrew Names, St. John's Gospel, the Epistles to Titus, Philemon, and the Hebrews, The Sayings of St. Paul, and the Apocalypse—consist mostly of sentences taken from the Fathers, the idea, apparently, being to collect into convenient form the observations on the more important Scriptural passages of the best commentators who had preceded him. A more important Biblical undertaking by Alcuin was the revision of the text of the Latin Vulgate. At the beginning of the ninth century, this version had displaced in France, as elsewhere throughout the Western Church, the Old Itala (Vetus Itala) and other Latin versions of the Bible; but the Vulgate, as it existed, showed many variants from the original of St. Jerome. Uniformity in the sacred text was in fact, unknown. Every church and monastery had its own accepted readings, and varying texts were often to be found in the Bibles used in the same house. Other scholars besides Alcuin were engaged in the task of endeavouring to remedy this condition. Theodulph of Orléans produced a revised text of the Vulgate which has survived in the "Codex Memmianus". The original work of Alcuin has not come down to us, the carelessness of copyists and the extensive usage to which it attained having led to numberless, though for the most part unimportant variations from the standard he sought to fix. In his letters he simply mentions the fact that he is engaged, by the order of Charlemagne, "in emendatione Veteris Novique Testamenti" (Ep., 136). Four Bibles are shown by the dedicatory poems affixed to them to have been prepared by him, or under his direction at Tours, probably during the years 799–801. In the opinion of Berger the "Tours Bibles" all represent in a greater or less degree, notwithstanding their variations in detail, the original Alcuinian text (Hist. de la vulg., 242). Whatever the exact changes made by Alcuin in the Bible text may have been, the known temper of the man, no less than the limits of the scholarship of the age, makes it certain that these changes were not of a far-reaching kind. The idea being, however, to reproduce the genuine text of St. Jerome, so far as possible, and to correct the gross blunders which disfigured the Sacred writings, the Biblical work of Alcuin was, from this point of view, important. Of the three brief moral treatises Alcuin has left us, two, "De virtutibus et vitiis", and "De animæ ratione", are largely abridgments of the writing of St. Augustine on the same subjects, while the third, "On the Confession of Sins", is a concise exposition of the nature of confession, addressed to the monks of St. Martin of Tours. Closely allied to his moral writings in spirit and purpose are his sketches of the lives of St. Martin of Tours, St. Vedast, St. Riquier, and St. Willibrord, the last being a biography of considerable length.
It is upon his dogmatic writings that the fame of Alcuin as a theologian principally rests. Against the Adoptionist heresy he stood forth as the foremost champion of the Church. It is a proof of his power of penetration—a quality of mind which some historians appear to deny him altogether—that he so clearly perceived the essentially heretical attitude of Felix and Elipandus toward the Christological question, an attitude whose heterodoxy was shrouded perhaps even from their own eyes in the beginning, by the specious distinction between natural and adoptive sonship; and it was a worthy tribute to the range of his patristic scholarship when Felix, the chief intellectual defender of Adoptionism, after the disputation with Alcuin at Aachen, acknowledged the error of his position. The condemnation of the rising heresy by the Synod of Regensburg (Ratisbon), in 792, having failed to check its spread, another and a larger synod, composed of representatives of the Churches of France, Italy, Britain, and Galicia, was convened at Frankfort by the order of Charles, in 794. Alcuin was present at this meeting and no doubt took a prominent part in the discussions and in the drawing up of the "Epistola Synodica", although, with characteristic modesty, he furnishes no evidence of the fact in his letters. Following up the work of the Synod, he addressed to Felix, for whom he had formerly entertained high esteem, a touching letter of admonition and exhortation. After his transfer to Tours, in 796, he received from Felix a reply which showed that something more than friendly entreaty would be needed to stay the progress of the heresy. He had already drawn up a small treatise consisting mainly of patristic quotations, against the teaching of the heretics, under the title "Liber Albini contra hæresim Felicis", and he now undertook a larger and more thorough discussion of the theological questions involved. This work, in seven books, "Libri VII adversus Felicem", was a refutation of the position of the Adoptionists, rather than an exposition of Catholic doctrine, and hence followed the lines of their arguments, instead of a strictly logical order of development. Alcuin urged against the Adoptionists the universal testimony of the Fathers, the inconsistencies involved in the doctrine itself, its logical relation to Nestorianism, and the rationalistic spirit which was forever prompting to just such attempted human explanations of the unsearchable mysteries of faith. In the spring of 799 a disputation took place between Alcuin and Felix in the royal palace at Aachen, which ended by Felix acknowledging his errors and accepting the teachings of the Church. Felix subsequently paid a friendly visit to Alcuin at Tours. Having sought in vain to bring about the submission of Elipandus, Alcuin drew up another treatise entitled "Adversus Elipandum Libri IV", entrusting it for circulation to the commissioners whom Charlemagne was sending to Spain. In 802 he sent to the emperor the last, and perhaps the most important, of his theological treatises, the "Libellus de Sancta Trinitate", a work which is uncontroversial in form, although probably suggested to him during the discussions with the Adoptionists. The treatise contains a brief appendix entitled "De Trinitate ad Fridegisum quæstiones XXVIII". The book is a compendium of Catholic doctrine concerning the Holy Trinity, St. Augustine's treatise on the subject being kept steadily in view. It is uncertain to what extent Alcuin shared in the attitude of remonstrance assumed by the Frankish Church, at the instance of Charlemagne, towards the badly translated and ill understood decrees of the second Council of Nicæa, held in 787. The style of the "Libri Carolini" which condemn,
