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.231 The denial of the universality of NicaeaII (contrary to the claims of the Greeks), and the proposition thata gathering of the bishops of several provinces which professed with-out reservation the whole body of the doctrine taught by the Fathersin the Six Councils could claim to share in their universality as wellas their orthodoxy, were as bold as they were appealing.They put229Letters: MGH Conc.II/i, pp.143 57 (discussed below), ep.no.23.Freeman, Additions and corrections , pp.164 6.230See John Marenbon, Alcuin, the Council of Frankfort and the Beginnings ofMedieval Philosophy , Frankfurter Konzil, pp.603 15.Alcuin also (it seems) uses theBoethian commentary in his De grammatica, in the definitions of vox, littera, nomen andverbum.(For a different view, postulating a text of Isidore glossed with extracts fromthe Commentaries (!), see C.H.Kneepkens, Some notes on Alcuin s De perihermeniiswith an edition of the text , Alcuin of York, ed.L.A.J.R.Houwen and A.A.MacDonald,Germania Latina III (Groningen, 1998), pp.81 112: the objections are consider-able.) My now-abandoned view was re-stated in Alcuin and the Kingdom of Heaven ,Carolingian Renewal, pp.185 6.231Opus Caroli, ed.Freeman, pp.557 8, with Einleitung , pp.44 8.bullough/f5/331-431 8/27/03 9:19 AM Page 405between two courts 405in the hands of the Frankish king a formidable instrument of author-ity over Christian peoples and the faith they professed; and it isnoteworthy that Alcuin did not need, or did not choose, to articu-late such views a second time, even at the peak of his contest withthe Adoptionist Felix.The king s sister Gisla was Alcuin s chosen addressee for one ofthe last perhaps the very last letter from England, written whenhe was anxiously contemplating the return voyage across the NorthSea.232 It is another and very accomplished example of his appositivestyle, pointing the contrasts between what has been foregone or isto be avoided and what is to be sought or has been gained.Alcuin hadpreviously, by his own account, given advice orally to the Northum-brian king; and there are grounds for supposing that he had writ-ten admonitory letters that do not survive.That to Gisla, whoselearning is fulsomely praised, is none the less the first in the extantcorrespondence in which Alcuin uses the word ammoneo when writ-ing to a member of a ruling dynasty.But because the recipient hasalready forsaken the world s glories and its royal pomps for Heavenlyhonours as bride of the King of Kings, its phraseology and tone aresignificantly different from those of later letters to both English andFrankish monarchs.Iustitia is theological righteousness , not secular justice.233 Sinning, which will be minor, will be washed away (abluere)with tears of penitence; and although Alcuin quotes the same verseof the First Letter to Timothy as when enjoining confession on theSt.Martin s community, that has no place in his advice to Gisla.The letter finally foreshadows its author s later exaltation of Mary,the Virgin Mother of God, with some unorthodox imagery: followingChrist, Gisla will be led into the house of the Father and the cham-ber (cubile) of his mother so that she may eat and drink at His table.234232Ep.no.15; above, p.369 and n.121.Note that the words in which Alcuinexpresses his concern, with a request for protection through prayer dum fluctivagimaris incertum iter temptare conpellar, ut divina clementia me ad portum salutis perducere digne-tur, are in some respects closer to Paulinus of Nola s and Venantius Fortunatus smetaphoric verses (Fort.Vita s.Mart.iv,1: post mare fluctivagum reptens ad litora portum;Paul.carm.xvii, 175 6 (ed.Hartel, p.89): donec optatos liceat salutis/tangere portus) thanis the corresponding metaphor with which he prepares for the conclusion of his York poem.For Alcuin s North Sea voyages, compare above, p.396 and n.199.233For Alcuin s notion of justification , McGrath, Iustitia Dei, pp.91, 216 (n.9),refers to the inauthentic De divinis officiis and cites Dic tu prior iniustitias, ut iustificeris,apparently without appreciating that this is Is 43.26 in a VL version.234Furthermore, linked to the Virgin Mother and following the Lamb, per omniabullough/f5/331-431 8/27/03 9:19 AM Page 406406 chapter threeCommunication with the Frankish Court and royal family was notnecessarily limited to letter-poems and letters addressed to an indi-vidual.That the longest of Alcuin s Bible-poems, 200 or 204 linesin elegiac distichs inc.Dum primus pulchro fuerat homo pulsus ab horto,was composed ca.801 to accompany a gift to the new Emperor hasbeen generally accepted since Bonifatius Fischer made it a keystoneof his proposed sequence of (lost) early Tours Bibles and theirTheodulfian rivals.235 Both the date and the supposed original set-ting are challengeable.The poem s transmission is independent ofTours or Tours-connected Bibles, although that does not establishdissemination from (say) the Aachen Court rather than from St.Martin s.It follows another, much shorter, verse-preface of Alcuin s(inc.In hoc quinque libri) in a north-east French Bible of the secondthird of the ninth century, Vienna Nat.bibl.1190.236 An incompletecopy (lines 1 182 only) and the same shorter poem are a mid-cen-tury insertion in a St.-Amand copy of Aldhelm s and Servius s met-rical writings; a complete copy was in a Salzburg (and St.-Amand?)collection of Alcuin s verse and other writings, copied between 836and 859 but lost since Frobenius Forster s day.237 It is one of twoAlcuin poems (although incomplete) in a verse miscellany written incaelestis regni penetralia transeas! A related but different image, less clearly focussed onMary, is used in a later letter to a Mercian princess.I have not noticed any otherearly-medieval allusion to Mary s heavenly chamber.235See especially B.Fischer, Alkuin-Bibeln [1971], Lateinische Bibelhandschriften,pp.203 403, at pp.218 46.Recent writers who follow Fischer include F.Stella,La Poesia Carolingia Latina a Tema Biblica, Biblioteca di Medioevo Latino, 9 (Spoleto.1993), pp.43 4 and D.Ganz, Mass production of early medieval manuscripts: theCarolingian Bibles from Tours , The Early Medieval Bible, ed.R.Gameson (Cambridge,1994), pp.53 62, at p.56.The poem (S.-K.no.204) is Alcuin s carm.lxix, MGHPoet.I, pp.288 92, a variant edition in Biblia Sacra Vulgata, 1: Genesis (Rome, 1926),ed.H.Quentin, pp.44 51; but Fischer, Lateinische Bibelhandschriften, at pp.231 7,reverts to Dümmler s text.236Vienna 1190, fols 16 et seq.(with the notorious scribal error Etrado for Ezradeo), where carm.lxviii (MGH Poet.I, p.287) precedes it on fol.16
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