Charlemagne and Alcuin: Diplomatic Studies in Carolingian Epistolography

Abstract

Legislative documents from the rulers of Germanic states established in former Roman territories are frequently the work of men of Roman descent. Thus Leo of Narbonne was probably the main helper of the Visigothic King Euric, and the Gallo-Roman Syagrius, of the Burgundian Gundobad. The Ostrogoths had Roman jurists in their service; one of these wrote the Edictum Theoderici. Cassiodorus is the author not only of the Variae, a selection of documents composed by him as chancellor of Theoderic the Great, but also of the Edictum Athalarici. The Merovingians Chlodewig and Childebert I employed Gallo-Roman administrators; the patrician Parthenius was an official of the Austrasian King Theudebert I. The need for Roman officials in Germanic governments disappeared largely with the growth of genuine Germanic political and legal institutions. Charlemagne's leading helpers were therefore no longer descendants of the old senatorial nobility which survived in Gaul and Italy, but mostly men of Germanic origin. On the other hand, of all the brilliant scholars of Saxon, Lombard, Spanish-Gothic, and Italic origin in Charlemagne's cosmopolitan entourage, one man alone achieved great political prominence: Alcuin, the Saxon nobleman from the British kingdom of Northumbria. A little-known phase of his activities in the empire of Charlemagne will be investigated here.