Abstract
By analysing the biblical structures of meaning that Alcuin uses as he reacts to current events it is possible to identify a decisive turning-point in his outlook. That occurs not in 793, the year of the traumatic viking attack on Lindisfarne, but in 796. In 793 Alcuin had explicitly refused to discern a single providential meaning in the viking attack. He then recommended an attitude to suffering based on Job. His views changed dramatically in 796, the year of the miseria and mors regum. He would now claim, in retrospect, that the viking attacks did signify divine punishment for wickedness, and would abandon his prior Augustinian agnosticism about the significance of contemporary history. Not Job but lamenting Jeremiah would now convey his stance. The implicit new claim to prophetic insight into the significance of recent events can also be identified in Alcuin’s pronouncements about Offa of Mercia and Charlemagne in and after 796.
Published Version
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