2 - Logic and theology at the court of Charlemagne

Summary

The circle of pupils which Alcuin gathered round him at the court of Charlemagne provided the setting for the first attempts in the medieval West to assimilate the techniques of logic and apply them to theology. In particular, the scholars of Alcuin's circle had to take measure of the problems concerning essence and the Categories which they inherited from the Schools of Antiquity and the Fathers. Historians have not been flattering in their estimates of the philosophical activity carried on at Charlemagne's court: the most charitable commend Alcuin for his part in introducing various logical texts into the curriculum, but they are unanimous in declaring that he was not at all a thinker in his own right. And a writer as learned as Grabmann is willing to extend this judgement to the age as a whole. Charlemagne's, he suggests, was a time of intellectual ‘hyperconservatism’, in which philosophy could be conducted only as a slavish imitation of past thinkers.

This low estimate of Alcuin's philosophy is misleading only in that it posits a crude distinction between the assimilation of old material and the creation of new ideas. Nowhere in the works certainly attributed to him does Alcuin put forward an argument that is original and striking. Yet in his choice and juxtaposition of second-hand material he reveals a mind clear and resolved in its purpose. His works against the Adoptionist heresy efficiently marshal the patristic testimonies for his case.