a codicil added in 1368, again made provisions for the
disposition of his inheritance, which was to go in its
entirety to support twenty-four Spanish students in the
course of their studies at the university. By 1369, two
years after Albornoz’s death at Viterbo, the College
of San Clemente received its fi rst group of students,
many of whom went on to become distinguished ju-
rists upon completion of their studies and their return
to the Iberian Peninsula. Albornoz’s foundation of the
Spanish College at Bologna served as a model for the
subsequent development of the colegios mayores in
Spanish universities.
See also Pedro I the Cruel; King of CastileFurther Reading
Beneyto Pérez, J. El cardenal Albornoz, canciller de Castilla y
caudillo de Italia. Madrid, 1950.
——. El cardenal Albornoz: Hombre de iglesia y de estado en
Castilla y en Italia. Madrid, 1986.
Colliva, P. Il cardinale Albornoz, lo Stato della Chiesa, le Con-
stitutiones Aegidianae (1353-1357). Bologna, 1977.
Martí, B. M. The Spanish College at Bologna in the Fourteenth
Century. New York, 1966.
Verdera y Tuells, E. El cardenal Albornoz y el Colegio de España.
Bologna, 1972.
E. Michael GerliALCUIN (ca. 730/35–804)
The foremost educational leader of the 8th century,
known in Latin as Albinus and in Charlemagne’s court
circle often as Flaccus (after Horace). After living
nearly 50 years in York, he spent some twenty years
working in the Frankish kingdom as adviser and teacher
of Charlemagne and his court, architect of the Carolin-
gian political, religious, and cultural reform, poet and
voluminous author of letters and treatises, rectifi er of
the biblical text and liturgy, and in his last years abbot
of Tours.
The brief Vita Alcuini, anonymously composed
around 829, probably at Ferrières, at the direction of
Alcuin’s disciple Sigulf, contains amid its reminiscences
and anecdotes disappointingly few facts. Little is known
of Alcuin’s life at York; however, with respect to his later
career on the Continent, no intellectual of the period is
more amply documented. Alcuin’s own letters (more
than 300) and poems (more than 220), supplemented by
Carolingian correspondence, chronicles, and histories,
furnish us with considerable information about him.
Born of noble family in Northumbria, he was educated
at the cathedral school of York in its epoch as western
Christendom’s center of learning. His teacher and patron
was Ælberht, whom Alcuin succeeded in 767 as master
of the school, when Ælberht was raised to the episco-
pacy. Ordained as deacon, Alcuin never advanced tothe priesthood and may not have taken monastic vows,
even though in old age he expressed a wish to become
a Benedictine monk at Fulda. Alcuin accompanied
Ælberht on his travels and book-acquiring forays on the
Continent, and by 778–80 he had already established a
reputation among cognoscenti.
Alcuin would never have attained his subsequent
renown if it were not for a momentous (though not his
fi rst) encounter with Charlemagne. In March 781, while
bearing the pallium of archiepiscopal authority from
Pope Hadrian I for Eanbald, Ælberht’s successor to the
see of York, Alcuin en route met Charlemagne at Parma.
Charlemagne urgently requested him to join the Frank-
ish court, with its prestigious group of scholars (Peter
of Pisa, Paul the Deacon, Paulinus of Aquileia, soon
joined by others), and to assist him in his educational
and religious reforms. Alcuin forsook England to remain
on the Continent for the rest of his life. He returned to
England only twice, once in 786 to accompany papal
legates to the synods at York and at the court of King
Offa of Mercia, and once in 790–93 for a stay at York,
during which time he was in correspondence with
Charlemagne about the decrees of the Second Council
of Nicaea (787), which the Carolingians mistakenly
believed upheld the worship of images (iconolatry).
However, the resulting doctrinal declarations, called the
Libri Carolini, were made in his absence and therefore
not by Alcuin. They are, judging from the script and
biblical citations, probably by Theodulf.
His erudition, administrative qualities, pragmatism,
and responsibility gave Alcuin immense infl uence with
Charlemagne. In addition to his own works Alcuin more
than any other in the royal entourage wrote documents,
correspondence, capitularies, texts, and poems under the
king’s name. This is not to say that he functioned only
as the king’s persona; despite his service and extreme
deference to the king Alcuin expressed himself to Char-
lemagne freely and sometimes reprovingly. Although
he honored the king as divinely appointed defender,
protector, and spreader of the church and guardian of
the people’s mores as well as conqueror of nations, he
insisted the king was not above the law. He protested
strongly against the forced baptism and tithing of the
constantly resurgent Saxons and urged that the same
error not be repeated among the defeated Avars, whom
he chose to call Huns. In old age he excused himself
from journeying to the king or accompanying him in
battle or at the papal court. As abbot of St. Martin’s he
granted sanctuary to a condemned cleric, much to the
chagrin of the culprit’s bishop, Theodulf of Orléans, and
of the king himself.
Traveling with Charlemagne’s itinerant court until
794, when the palace of Aachen became a capital, Alcuin
was the central fi gure of a brilliant corps of scholar-poets
creating the Carolingian renaissance. This academy wasALBORNOZ