“The venerable father says that an accused sinner ought not to be received in the church. But if sinners are not to enter the church, how are you to have a priest to say mass in the church, or who will there be to respond except some quite newly baptised person? For does not St. John say, If we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. Again, we find that in the venerable bishop’s letter the accused man is called a devil, not a man. Think what the Apostle says, Judge not before the time.” Alcuin then proceeds to quote the canons on fugitives, and to describe the arrangements made in all parts for men to take sanctuary. He ends with a powerful appeal to the Emperor to bear in mind the danger of allowing any supreme dignity to be made light of. [Sidenote: Ep. 181. A fragment.] In another letter, written at the same time, and in great part in the same words, to a bishop not named, Alcuin adds something to what he has said in the letter to his pupils. The man, he says, had certainly committed many sins and done very impious wickedness. But he had the evidence of two priests, Christian of St. Benedict of Tours and Adalbert of St. Martin, that he had made confession to them before he was seized and bound and tortured. Probably Alcuin thought that would not appeal very forcibly to the mind of the Emperor, and that the impiousness of the man would do more harm to his cause than the fact of confession would do good. The man was given up by the brethren of St. Martin not that he might be taken off to Orleans, but that he might be taken before the Archbishop of Tours by the messengers of the Bishop of Orleans, a matter very different from what it appeared to be in Alcuin’s letter to his representatives at Court. The attempt to carry off the fugitive was very unscrupulous, for the man was within the altar rails and was actually lying prostrate in supplication and appeal before the sepulchre of St. Martin. Alcuin thought it best to send the fugitive far out of the way. We do not know what he had done, or who he was; but we may gather that his name was something like Kalb from the words which Alcuin applies to him in sending him to Salzburg, to the safe keeping of Arno the Archbishop. [Sidenote: Ep. 183. A.D. 801-2.] “I have sent to you this animal, the calf of my hand, that you may help him and keep him out of the hands of his enemies. Help him as much as you can, for the venerable bishop, that is Theodulfus, is greatly enraged against us. I have put into the mouth of this youth, the calf being an animal unnaturally rational, what he must moo in the ears of your holiness.” Now let us hear the voice of the emperor, by no means the moo of a calf. We learn from his letter what on other grounds we should have imagined, namely, that the culprit was a cleric. Well might the bishop of Orleans rage against the Abbat of St. Martin. [Sidenote: Ep. 182.]