Letter 12

From: Alcuin of York, scholar and court theologian To: Arno of Salzburg, archbishop Date: ~799 AD Context: Alcuin writes to his close friend Arno about the troubles in Rome surrounding Pope Leo III, sharing his concerns about the implications for the church. To the most holy Archbishop Arno, my dearest friend, from Alcuin, The situation in Rome has shaken me more than I can easily say. Not because the Roman church has not seen turbulence before — it has, often — but because the nature of this particular crisis seems to me symptomatic of something deeper: the question of who actually governs in the Christian world, and what the relationship is between the various powers that claim authority. Pope Leo has been attacked by members of his own city's nobility, accused of crimes, and driven to seek the protection of a Frankish king. This sequence of events is deeply strange when you think about what the papacy is supposed to be. The successor of Peter, the vicar of Christ, the head of the universal church — requiring a military escort home. Something has gone wrong. What has gone wrong is, I think, the gradual collapse of the old Roman civic structures that gave the papacy its foundation in Italian society. The papacy in the age of Gregory the Great could draw on the residual strength of Roman civic institutions. That strength is gone now, and the papacy must find its foundations elsewhere. I think those foundations will ultimately be found in the relationship with the Frankish kingdom. This is not entirely comfortable, but it may be necessary. Your loving friend, Alcuin