Letter 13

From: Alcuin of York, scholar and court theologian To: Charlemagne, King of the Franks Date: ~799 AD Context: Alcuin writes to Charlemagne on the cultivation of the liberal arts and their role in the Christian intellectual life, arguing for investment in education as a fundamental act of Christian governance. To the most excellent and most Christian King Charles, from his teacher Alcuin, greetings. I want to say something about the liberal arts that goes beyond the immediate practical arguments — arguments about the quality of the clergy, the correctness of the liturgy, the ability of the church to interpret scripture — to the more fundamental case. The seven liberal arts [grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy, the traditional curriculum of classical education] are not, properly understood, the arts of paganism that were merely tolerated by the church. They are the arts of human reason, given by God, refined by centuries of the best human thinking, and essential to any human community that wishes to govern itself and understand itself well. When Christians mastered the liberal arts, they did so not in spite of their faith but because their faith demanded it: a faith that believes in a rational God who created an ordered world must use its intellect to understand that world as fully as possible. The school we are building at the palace, the schools I am urging bishops to maintain in every cathedral city — these are not luxuries. They are as necessary to a genuinely Christian kingdom as the churches and the clergy. Perhaps more necessary, because without the formation that education provides, the churches and the clergy will not know what they are doing. Your servant in the cause of learning, Alcuin