Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/34

16 attended by the picturesque circumstances which the monk relates. Yet, however little there be of truth in the fable, it is still valuable as evidence of the clearness with which a subsequent generation seized the main fact of Charles s indebtedness to the British islands, and also with which it expressed, as an accepted and natural relation, the notion of affinity between learning and godliness which it was the work of Alcuin and still more of the Scots to inculcate upon their age. Through their influence it was that the king sent forth the famous capitularies of 787 and the following years, which enforced the establishment of schools in connexion with every abbey in his realm, and laid the new foundation of medieval learning. Arnabat peregrinos is said almost to Charles’s reproach by his biographer Einhard; yet the strangers whom he welcomed are in truth the first authors of the restoration of letters in Francia.

The name of Alcuin introduces us to another element in this work. For England had also been for some time the scene of a literary life, less independent indeed and more correct in its ecclesiastical spirit, but hardly less broad than that of the Scots. A singular fortune had brought together as the second fathers of the English church, a Greek of Tarsus and an African, Theodore archbishop chapters 219 of Canterbury, and Hadrian, abbat of Saint Peter’s in that city, the one from Rome, the other from the neighbourhood of Naples. While Theodore worked to reduce the church of England into a nearer conformity with catholic discipline, the two friends had their school at Canterbury, where one might learn not only the know ledge which made a good churchman, but also astronomy and the art of writing verses, and apparently even medicine.