Quotes About Alcuin

Alcuin was my name: learning I loved.

Those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God (Vox Populi, Vox Dei), since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness. -- Letter to Charlemagne, 800 AD.

How did he do it? First of all, with the help of an outstanding teacher and librarian named Alcuin of York, he collected books and had them copied. People don't always realise that only three or four antique manuscripts of the Latin authors are still in existence: our whole knowledge of ancient literature is due to the collecting and copying that began under Charlemagne, and almost any classical text that survived until the eighth century has survived till today.

Edited by Alcuin himself, these were written to be as user-friendly as possible. No longer did words run into one another. Capital letters were deployed to signal the start of new sentences. For the first time, a single stroke like a lightning-flash was introduced to indicate doubt: the question mark.