Alcuin of York : $b Lectures delivered in the cathedral church of Bristol in 1907 and 1908Browne, G. F. (George Forrest)
Religion
Alcuin of York : $b Lectures delivered in the cathedral church of Bristol in 1907 and 1908
Browne, G. F. (George Forrest)
Alcuin, 735-804
Alcuin was versed in secular music also. We learn from Ep. 100 that Karl
had asked him to write peaceful and soothing songs, both words and
music, for soldiers to sing when engaged in the horrors of war, and that
he complied with the request.
We have some very interesting evidences of the borrowing of Anglo-Saxon
manuscripts for use in France, and of the influence of Anglo-Saxon forms
on French services. There are two Anglo-Saxon forms for the coronation
of a king. One of these is found in the Pontifical of Ecgbert, the
Bishop and later the Archbishop of York, to which a date of about 745
may be given. It is merely the supplement to the Mass on the occasion
of a coronation, and accordingly it does not give the details of the
ceremony. The other is a later form, and it gives at length the details
of the ceremony, one of the longest prayers describing the king as raised
to the royal throne of the Angles and Saxons. But, curiously enough,
we learn the most interesting parts of the ceremony of crowning an
Anglo-Saxon king, not from this manuscript, but from three manuscripts
of the form for the coronation of a king of the French. The first of
these to be mentioned is a manuscript form of an Abbat of Corbie. In it
we find the prayer for “This thy servant whom with suppliant devotion we
elect equally to the kingdom of the whole of Albion, that is to say, of
the Franks ... That he may nourish and teach the Church of the whole of
Albion, with the peoples committed to his charge”. Here it would appear
that a marginal note had been added to the Anglo-Saxon form at the first
mention of “Albion”, “that is to say, of the Franks,” and has afterwards
been incorporated in one place and not in the other. The “elect equally”
indicates that the form was used for an Anglo-Saxon king who claimed to
be king of the whole land, while yet the old division into three main
nations was fresh in mind.[235] It is a further evidence in favour of
this being an Anglo-Saxon form, that the only saint mentioned besides the
Blessed Virgin and St. Peter is “Holy Gregory, Apostolic of the Angles”.
In the preparation of the Sens Order, to be mentioned later, this flaw
had been discovered, and St. Denys and St. Remy put in the place of St.
Gregory.
In a manuscript in the National Library of Paris, we have a second Order
for the Coronation of a King of the Franks, which is indubitably an
Anglo-Saxon Order. The following phrases occur: “This thy servant whom
with suppliant devotion we elect equally ... That the sceptre desert
not the royal throne, that is to say, of the Saxons, Mercians, and
Northumbrians (Nordanchimbrorum) ... That supported by the due subjection
of both of these peoples...”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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