Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/36

18 whole life in the dwelling of my monastery, he shews an extent of knowledge in classical literature and natural science entirely unrivalled in his own day and probably not surpassed for many generations to come. Yet, be it remembered, it was first and foremost as a theologian and interpreter of the Scriptures that the middle ages revered him; and it is as an historian and the father of English historians that we now see his greatest distinction. Nor can the student of his works fail to recognise that Bede, like Aldhelm, combined the current which flowed eastward from Ireland with that which came with Benedict from Canterbury. His genial and versatile learning is no less characteristic than the loyalty in which he held fast to the strict tradition of the Catholic church. A child of Bede's in spirit, though he was probably not born until about the time of the master's death, was destined to take back his tradition to the continent at the moment when it was first ripe to receive the stimulating influence.

Alcuin faithfully carries on the current of learning in the north of England of which Bede is the headspring. In his poem On the Pontiffs and Saints of the Church of York he describes his master's work in language which shews us the distinctive qualities for which his disciples valued him:

Alcuin, like Bede, was a teacher and an organiser of learning, a man of wide reading rather than of original thought. His position in the church at York had afforded him access to a library of unusual compass. In the poem just quoted he gives a list of these volumes; it