Alcuin and the Music of Friendship

798 was not a good year for Saxons. Chafing under harsh edicts issued by Charlemagne a decade and a half before, and smarting from strings of disastrous defeats, they seized and murdered royal legates in early 798. Outraged, Charlemagne gathered a great army, which came together at Minden on the Weser River in July and mounted a terrible campaign of destruction, moving from the Weser to the Elbe, laying waste to everything in their path by fire and sword. The Saxon army opposing them allowed itself to be trapped on a field bordered by the Schwentine River, where 4000 of them were slaughtered. Those who fled in panic were pursued and killed by the Franks.

That is, broadly sketched, the political and military context for Alcuin’s letter to Charlemagne, numbered 149 in Ernst Duemmler’s edition for the MGH, datable to July 22, 798. It responds to a letter of the king to Alcuin which has been lost, but clearly was written in the midst of the Saxon campaign and contained, along with specific questions about astronomical and astrological matters, a request for a musical composition from his tutor and court favorite, now installed since 796 as Abbot of St.-Martin of Tours. Here is an English translation of the parts of the letter relevant to my topic:²

To his sweetest and most truly beloved lord, David the Magnificent, crowned by God, Flaccus, a veteran soldier, [sends wishes for your] perpetual well-being

The happiest of all your letters has reached me, reviving me as I fevered, reawakening me as I slept, or rather striving to reinvigorate me as I lay stricken with the disease of inertia.

It also admonished me to mix a sweet melody of versifying amidst the horrible din of clashing weapons and the raucous blare of trumpets, since a sweet and gentle musical refrain can mollify the savage impulses of the mind. Even if the most noble stability of your mind remains perpetually unmoved in its unmovable fortress and the scale of your justice remains in balance by your unbowed strength, still, you wished that the fierceness of your boys might be softened by the sweetness of some song or other.

This too you foresaw with wisest counsel, [namely] that wholesome counsel often has no effect on the mind rasped with anger, just as on the contrary a persistent mental softness is wont to undermine fortitude. But amid these various kinds of afflictions the prudent temperament holds to the middle path. From this vantage point it both dampens swelling rage and revives the idle mind.

It also composes all things along the royal path of peace through good counsel. We read in the ancient books of history that this is the sort of virtue most essential for those waging war: that a wise temperance should rule and govern all things that must be done. For it seems that there are three things that one must bear in mind in dealing with the enemy: strength, deception, and peace. As for the first, can the adversary be conquered by the nation’s strength? But if not, then the matter must be solved by trickery and ingenious subterfuges. And if this too is ineffective, then a counsel of peace would seem to be the sole means for settling enmities and hatred [inimicitiarum odia]. However, if the Flaccian pipes [i.e. my music] may avail to soothe ungentle minds to any extent, then I think it must be done with all diligence as time and personal obligations permit.

In the meantime, however, I your Flaccus shall proceed to carry out faithfully and with all urgency what your sweetest authority has deigned to demand of me through Meginfried, your devoted treasurer. And may your goodness know for a certain fact that no one has a greater desire, as is only right, to help you in any way possible. Therefore, the word “friend” derives from “custodian of the soul” [amicus dicitur quasi animi custos], that is, one who strives with the full commitment of loyalty to keep the soul of his friend intact...