Alcuin connects the learning of England with the revival on the Continent. He had been trained in the school at York by Archbishop Egbert, who was himself a pupil of Bede. He had studied the ancient classics in Greek as well as Latin and knew at least a little of Hebrew. The library at York is known to have contained books in all those languages, and Aristotle was among them. Vergil, he said, when he was a boy he cared more for [Transcriber's note: a line appears to be missing here] than the vigils of the Church and the chanting of the {168} psalms. About 782 he took charge of the schools which Charles had founded at his court, and he became a very close friend and trusted adviser of the emperor himself. With him (but for a short return to England) he lived till in 796 he had leave to retire to Tours, where he was abbat of the great monastery of S. Martin, and where he died in 804. He was a great teacher; a writer of books of education and books of Church practice, of lives of the saints, of hymns, epigrams, prayers, controversial tracts; a compiler of summaries of patristic teaching; a leader in the reform of monastic houses. Among the many notable points in his career, as illustrating the life of learned churchmen of his age, are two especially to be observed. The first is his "humanism." He was a scholar of an ancient type; and the society in which he lived delighted to believe itself classical as well as Christian. In a contemporary description of the life at Charles's court Alcuin is called "Flaccus" and is described as "the glory of our bards, mighty to shout forth his songs, keeping time with his lyric foot, moreover a powerful sophist, able to prove pious doctrines out of Holy Scripture, and in genial jest to propose or solve puzzles of arithmetic." As a theologian he was most famous for his books against Felix of Urgel and Elipandus of Toledo, on the subject of the Adoptianist heresy (see above, ch. vi), and there is no doubt that his was an important influence in the Council of Frankfort which condemned them. The second is his attitude towards the monastic life. He admired the monastic life, but he had not been trained as a strict Benedictine, indeed he was probably no more than a secular in deacon's orders. He held abbeys as their superior, just as many {169} laymen did; but he never seems to have been inclined to take upon him any strict rule. His example shows how natural was the next step in monastic history which is associated with the abbey of Cluny. [Sidenote: The schools of Europe.]