Trithemius says that Rabanus was born in 788 _quarto nonas Februarii_, the second of February. Mabillon adds, “I do not know whence he got the day; the year is probably pretty close.” But the year itself, on the strength of internal evidence found in the man’s writings and in the monastic rules regarding the holding of office before the attainment of a fixed age, Mabillon places at 776. This extension of twelve years is a very important affair since it makes Rabanus a monk of thirty-three at the date of the Council of Aquisgranum (Aix-la-Chapelle or Aachen), called by Charlemagne to reannunciate the doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit. The name of Rabanus’s father was Ruthard and his mother was christened Aldegunde. “She was a woman of the most honest conversation,” as Trithemius declares, the fit helpmeet of a man “rich and powerful, who for a long time served in the wars under the Frank princes.” There was a brother, doubtless an elder brother, called Tutin, a person “noble among the first,” and perhaps the father of a nephew, Gundram, whom Rabanus mentions as the royal chaplain of Lewis of Germany. The lad Raban—“the raven”—took on his dark garments at nine years of age and went to be a little shaveling monk at Fulda. There he continued, patiently toiling on at his studies according to the methods of a benighted time, and it is plain that he progressed so well as to get the favor of his abbot, Ratgar. Since Ratgar took office in 801 or 802, and Alcuin died in May, 804, it must have been at or about the twenty-fifth year of his age that Rabanus was directed to put himself under the care of Alcuin. A record which has been preserved shows that in 801 our poet had been made a deacon at Fulda, and it is natural for us to look upon this journey to the monastic school of St. Martin at Tours as an honor given to one who had already earned some distinction in scholarship. Be this as it may it is certain that nearly the latest work of Alcuin’s life was the preparation of the successor to his own ideas who should hold high the torch of knowledge to his land and generation. To him—though the old eyes at Tours should not see it—was to succeed Walafrid Strabo, and to Walafrid Strabo were to be added the scholars of St. Gall, and notably the marvellous cripple Herman of Reichenau. Ratgar now was busy building a great church, and architectural notions befogged his brain. But he had built better than he was aware when he sent off Rabanus and Hatto to sit at the feet of the man who had brought the system of Bede the Venerable into Gaul, and who was to commit his own enthusiasm for learning to a greater scholar than Paul Winfrid, the Deacon.