Alcuin Quotes

Alcuin Quotes

Alcuin of York – also called Ealhwine, Alhwin or Alchoin – was an English scholar, clergyman, poet and teacher from York, Northumbria. He was born around 735 and became the student of Archbishop Ecgbert at York. At the invitation of Charlemagne, he became a leading scholar and teacher at the Carolingian court, where he remained a figure in the 780s and '90s. During this period he invented Carolingian minuscule, an easily read manuscript hand using a mixture of upper and lower case letters.Alcuin wrote many theological and dogmatic treatises, as well as a few grammatical works and a number of poems. He was made Abbot of Tours in 796, where he remained until his death. "The most learned man anywhere to be found", according to Einhard's Life of Charlemagne , he is considered among the most important architects of the Carolingian Renaissance. Among his pupils were many of the dominant intellectuals of the Carolingian era. Wikipedia

✵ 735 – 19. May 804

Alcuin: 2 quotes3 likes

“And those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness.”
Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, vox populi, vox Dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit.

Alcuin

Variant translation: We should not listen to those who like to affirm that the voice of the people is the voice of God, for the tumult of the masses is truly close to madness.
Works, Epistle 127 (to Charlemagne, AD 800)

“What makes bitter things sweet? Hunger.”

Alcuin

in R Lacey and D Danziger, The Year 1000, Little, Brown and Co,GB, 1999, p. 57