Lecture 27: Evangelization of Western Europe
• The Venerable Bede (c. 673–735) spent his entire life in the
Benedictine monasteries at Wearmouth and Jarrow; ordained a
deacon at 19 and a priest at 30, he devoted his life to scholarship.
o He wrote a number of works that exist in so many manuscripts
that they clearly formed the curricula for others: on metrics,
computation, grammar, and natural science.o He wrote commentaries on a large number of biblical books
noteworthy for their use of earlier authorities and their sober
treatment of the literal meaning of the text.o He wrote lives of saints, and his Historia ecclesiastica gentis
Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People, 731)
is the most important source for the early history of England.• Alcuin (c. 730–804) was a major contributor to the Carolingian
renaissance, a versatile scholar who transmitted to the Franks the
knowledge of Latin culture, which had remained alive in Anglo-
Saxon England.
o Born in Northumbria, Alcuin studied at the cathedral school of
York; he established a library at the Frankish court and, in 781,
was invited by Charlemagne to join the other scholars there.
He was in England from 786 to 793 but returned to France as
abbot of St. Martin’s Abbey in Tours from 796 until his death.o Wide-ranging in his scholarship, Alcuin wrote on grammar,
rhetoric, dialectic, orthography, and mathematics, as well
as poems on a number of subjects (including the library he
established); other works included philosophical, theological,
and biblical treatises.o As abbot of St. Martin’s, he authorized the production of full
manuscripts of the Bible; he also revised liturgical texts (the
Roman lectionary and the Gregorian Sacramentary).• Through the efforts of Merovingian rulers, Benedictine monks, and
a strong and aggressive papacy, the beginning of the 9th century