Abstracts

Hans-Werner Goetz: Alcuin’s Correspondence with Charlemagne’s Court: Themes, Functions, Sympathies

Although Alcuin’s letters (which mostly date back from his residence in Tours) reveal much more about Alcuin himself than about the court and its network –explicit mentions are rare –, some insight is possible: using the letters as medium and Alcuin’s perception as methodological approach, they show in which manner and with which intentions Alcuin maintained contact with Charlemagne, his family and his court. My paper will not deal with the circle of addressees or stylistic peculiarities, but with his reasons and motives for writing, his relations and deeper bonds with and solicitousness for the king and his court. In order to illustrate the complexity of this theme I shall touch very briefly, with exemplary quotations, on a number of pertinent aspects.

– Letters are an important means of communication and yet only a substitute for personal meetings. They are dependent on their bearers (with further oral messages), accompanied by presents and sometimes by manuscripts.

– Alcuin’s relationship to Charlemagne is characterized by a hierarchical order: deep respect and recognition, a fervent praise of the king’s learning and wisdom as the most important virtue, and a constant humble subordinating of his own person (but at the same time also reminding the king of his duties). Nevertheless, in an extremely subtle style, Alcuin dares to contradict and even reprimand the King.

– The relationship is no less characterized by a deep, personal solicitousness about the King’s welfare and health (including his relatives and entourage).

– Content and character of the letters reveal something of the ‘court spirit’ (Hofgeist), particularly regarding their academic exchange and discussion. Alcuin’s disputes with Charlemagne (and his ‘Egyptians’) over the names of the Sundays before Easter and the so-called ‘lunatic jump’ further reveal a clear estrangement from the present court.

– Above all, Alcuin is the admonisher throughout; his letters are epistolae adhortatoriae, guided by his convictions about the right order of the world. He wants to maintain his influence upon education, theology and politics.

In sum, Alcuin’s letters are characterized by his personal and emotional sympathies, his obtrusive admonitions and instructions, which, however, are forged in an emphatically restrained and polite style. Alcuin maintains strong bonds with the court, particularly with Charlemagne. However, these should be differentiated in a threefold regard:

(1) His addressee is Charlemagne (and his family), not “the court”, or only few of its members, resulting from strictly personal bonds, with persons who are no longer at the court.

(2) This is the ‘former court’. The present scholars, with their ‘un-Latin’ opinions, are rather suspect.

(3) With the exception of academic discussions with Charlemagne himself, Alcuin’s letters to court members (with their motives, connectivities, sympathies and pastoral admonitions) by no means differ from his letters to other recipients, particularly in Northumbria.

To conclude: Alcuin is much more individualist than ‘networker’.

Isabela Stoian: Ars bene loquendi fit ars bene credendi. Alcuin’s Grammar and spoken Latin at the Palace School

Alcuin’s elementary Grammar can be understood in various ways, according to different points of view. By its content, it is a grammatical compilation for beginners in Latin, following a tradition developed on the Isles about one century earlier. By its form, it is a dialogue, but not any kind of dialogue. It is more complex than the rigid and impersonal question-and-answer form that one can find in Donatus’ Ars minor in that it presents a narrative dialogue between two pupils and their master, which can presumably be read, to some extent, as a faithful portrait of a school situation. The playful exchange of replies between the two students who compete for knowledge can give us some hints on how people spoke to each other in Latin at the Palace School. By its function, Alcuin’s Grammar is a cultural instrument meant to serve the interests of the Church (and, implicitly, those of Charlemagne). Interestingly, this last point is not explicit in the Grammar itself, but it emerges clearly from other texts. Firstly, it is expressed quite plainly in Disputatio de uera philosophia, which is often taken as an introduction to the Grammar (but it is actually an introduction to all seven liberal arts, and part of medieval wisdom literature); secondly, Charlemagne’s legislation makes the point obvious. Thus, by its goal, Alcuin’s grammar surpasses the status of ars bene loquendi, and becomes an ars bene credendi. 

Rebecca Schmalholz: Ein Netzwerk von Gedichten – Wie die karolingischen Hofgedichte ein Gelehrtennetzwerk konstituieren

Poetry was ubiquitous in the Carolingian scholar world. Verses were inscribed on buildings and liturgical items, ancient epics learnt at school and religious poems sung at church. In the circle of scholars around Charlemagne however, they were also used as a means of communication. Sent via letter, passed along among friends and recited at court, they presented a canvas on which friendships and antagonism were painted in stark colors. The surviving examples of this poetry present a unique view into a world where connection was everything: Who was in, who was out, who was best among Alcuin, Theodulf and their peers? In my paper, I will explore the usefulness of the term network for the research of Carolingian poetry, the chances and challenges it presents and how it can help describing the intricate world of letter poems. 

 Luce Carteron: Quod suggessistis exiguis uiribus opus: dedicatory letters at Charlemagne's court

The importance of the epistolary net during the Carolingian period is well-known – along with its influence on the constitution of an empire on a European scale. It is though obvious that all letters do not share the same characteristics: some of them show a particular style, which places them at the borderline between a communicative function and a literary aspect. One of the most specific cases among them is represented by dedicatory letters, which often also assume the role of a preface. These epistles are a very specific type of text: both transition and transaction, as underlined by Gérard Genette, they constitute the threshold of the literary work which they accompany. As a text whom authorship is claimed by the writer, it is also a way to insert this work in a situation of communication: addressed to its recipient – who is often also the one who asked for the work – it is publicly read at Charlemagne’s court.

Dedicatory letters of the Carolingian period mark a turning point in this textual tradition: the topoi used since Antiquity become so systematic that they compose the largest part of the letter body, while humility marks pervade the whole text. This obvious shift highlights the Carolingian tendency to question the world and shows how these intellectuals perceived language: the discrepancy between literal and figurative interpretations, continuously reaffirmed, becomes a hermeneutic key to explain this world and reflects their representation method.

Often considered as a simple accumulation of topical phrases, dedicatory letters are actually very meaningful: they allow their authors, through the re-appropriation of these phrases, to unveil their subjectivity. These topoi, organised in a very significant way, are representative of the method and principles followed by medieval authors. They prove their awareness of making a literary work, and of the social relationships which build around it, as as a social and valuable object, as well. It can thus be considered that dedicatory letters  establish a communication by putting the writer – or at least the scholar who corrected or rewrote a text – in contact with its recipient. The obvious rewriting and intertextuality effects make them part of a rhetorical, but also literary tradition. This can be seen concerning the dedicatory letters transmission – they have sometimes been left to us separately from the work which they accompanied – or regarding the tensions between different voices perceptible  through the texts (Bible verses, anterior literary works…). The writer’s subjectivity is expressed by means of this play on literary traditions and codes.

This talk aims at interrogating the forms and issues of such letters: which stylistic and semantic effects can result from the use of topical phrases? And how dedicatory letters, where are deployed such phrases, can they reveal an author's subjectivity, and even more so, intend to establish a communication with its recipient? We will evoke an epistolary corpus emanating from various authors from Charlemagne’s court in order to systematize our observations to that scale.

Mary Garrison: Alcuin's Network and Influence

Even in relatively recent general syntheses on medieval cultural history, Alcuin is assessed in subjective and ambivalent ways: as a not very original figure who never made it to a bishopric, or (more fairly) as an architect of the Carolingian renaissance.

How does this question look if one moves away from subjective evaluations, and even from looking at content, to investigation in terms of means and media?

In this paper I will consider Alcuin’s distinctive influence and legacy from the perspective of his networks, arguing that he was almost uniquely vernetzt and that his vernetzlichkeit is both a symptom of his unique achievement and what enabled him to be so influential. Three chief areas where Alcuin’s connectivity can be thus evaluated are: the extent and nature of his social network as revealed by his extant letters and contrasted to the networks of others; the pattern of preservation of his letters; and his legacy as traced by a modern stemma of students and teachers. In Malcolm Gladwell’s terms, Alcuin was not only both a connector and a maven, but also a salesman or persuader. 

Diana Baraboi: Die Briefe von Hrabanus Maurus

In diesem Beitrag werde ich mich mit dem Thema „Die Briefe von Hrabanus Maurus“ beschäftigen. Hrabanus Maurus, ein Mönch aus dem 9. Jahrhundert, hat ein riesiges Werk hinterlassen. Wie viele andere Theologen seiner Zeit kompilierte Hrabanus aus anderen Autoren und benutzte oft die Bibel, um seine Thesen zu stützen, aber trotzdem war er sehr original, denn er inserierte auch persöhnliche Kommentare. Aber er schrieb nicht nur ein unermessliches literarisches Werk, sondern auch ein paar Briefe, die sehr wichtig sind, denn sie stellen seine Persönlichkeit dar und erteilen Informationen über den historischen, sozialen und politischen Kontext jener Epoche und über die Verhältnisse zwischen dem Sender und dem Empfänger. Seine Episteln sind mehrerlei, jeder hat ein anderes Zweck und es gibt verschiedene Adressaten, aber man kann fragen, ob diese Briefe nur ein Kommunikationsmittel waren oder auch eine andere Absicht hatten. Mit wem kommunizierte Hrabanus Maurus und was wollte er in der Tat sagen? Welches ist eigentlich die Botschaft seiner Episteln? In der vorliegenden Arbeit werde ich versuchen, seine Briefe zu analysieren und ihren Sinn ans Licht zu bringen.

Dr. Miriam Czock: Netzwerker der Gerechtigkeit – Alkuins Gerechtigkeitsbegriff als Knotenpunkt der Kommunikation von Texten

Abstract to be submitted

        Prof. Dr. Francesco Stella: Alcuin and the Monastic Epigraphs Collection in Carolingian Time

Abstract to be submitted

[1] Berührt werden auch die Werke von Sedulius Scottus, Johannes Scotus Eriugena, Gottschalk, sowie kleinere Sammlungen.