“He loved all his disciples, but of all he loved Alcuin the most, for Alcuin more closely than any of them followed his example in act and deed. There were two special virtues in Alcuin—one, that he never did anything which he was not quite clear that his master’s approval covered; the other, that whatever devices and temptations the enemy brought to his mind, he told them all straight out to his master without any sense of shame. Thus it came to pass that any stimulus of lust which he ever felt was most gloriously conquered by this wonderful method, dashing the children of Babylon against the stones, bruising the head of the serpent with the heel. He was careful that against him the words of Christ should not be spoken—‘Every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved’; but rather that his lot should be with them of whom it is added—‘But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest that they are wrought in God.’ O true monk without the monk’s vow! how very seldom is thy example followed by one whose vow binds him to it[18].” In the chapter from which these details are taken the author three times uses the name “Albinus” for his hero, in place of “Alchuinus” with which he began the chapter. Throughout the Life he much more often calls him Albin than Alcuin. We must probably understand that he was known from his boyhood by both names; and it is evident that Albin would be more easy to pronounce than Alcuin, and would not unnaturally be more generally used. On the other hand, it is quite possible that he himself elected to call himself Albin. If Alcuin took the name Albinus from any English source, the source is not far to seek. The English nation owes to the original Albinus the first suggestion to Bede that he should write the Church History of the English race. Bede tells us this in the Preface to his great work; and we have it still more directly expressed in a letter from him to Albinus in which he speaks of the History as _ad quam me scribendam iamdudum instigaveras_, and of Albinus as _semper amantissimus in Christo pater optimus_. He was Abbat of St. Peter and St. Paul, Canterbury, a pupil of Theodore and Hadrian, the latter of whom he succeeded. He greatly helped Bede by sending him full details of the conversion of Kent, “as he had learned the same from written records and from the oral tradition of his predecessors.” Bede sent to him the completed copy of the History, that he might have it transcribed, and informs us that Albinus had no small knowledge of Greek, and knew Latin as well as his native tongue, English. Alcuin may well have taken his name of Albinus from one with whom he had so much in common, who died only two or three years before Alcuin’s birth.