Those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness.
Drinking alone holds no fun. Drink with friends or strangers! Be foolish, least you'll remember something meaningful.
If many people follow your enthusiastic endeavours, perhaps a new Athens might be created in the land of the Franks, or rather a much better one.
What makes bitter things sweet? Hunger.
Man thinks, God directs. [Lat., Homo cogitat, Deu indicat.]
At Athens, wise men propose, and fools dispose.
Here halt, I pray you, make a little stay. O wayfarer, to read what I have writ, And know by my fate what thy fate shall be. What thou art now, so shall thou be. The world's delight I followed with a heart Unsatisfied: ashes am I, and dust.
Men can be attracted but not forced to the faith. You may drive people to baptism, (but) you won't move them one step further in religion.
Man thinks, God directs.
What has Ingeld to do with Christ?
Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, vox populi, vox Dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit. We should not listen to those who like to affirm that the voice of the people is the voice of God, for the tumult of the masses is truly close to madness.
Author details
Alcuin: Biography and Life Work
Alcuin was a notable Deacon.
Alcuin of York, also called Ealhwine , Alhwin , or Alchoin , was an Anglo-Latin scholar, clergyman, poet, and teacher from York , Northumbria . He was born around 735 and became the student of Archbishop Ecgbert at York. At the invitation of Charlemagne , he became a leading scholar and teacher at the Carolingian court , where he remained a figure in the 780s and 790s. Before that, he was also a court chancellor in Aachen . "The most learned man anywhere to be found", according to Einhard 's Life of Charlemagne ( c. 817 –833), he is considered among the most important intellectual architects of the Carolingian Renaissance . Among his pupils were many of the dominant intellectuals of the Carolingian era.
Philosophical Views and Reflections
The majority of details on Alcuin's life come from his letters and poems. Also, autobiographical sections are in Alcuin's poem on York and in the Vita Alcuini , a hagiography written for him at Ferrières in the 820s, possibly based in part on the memories of Sigwulf, one of Alcuin's pupils.
For a complete census of Alcuin's works, see Marie-Hélène Jullien and Françoise Perelman, eds., Clavis scriptorum latinorum medii aevi: Auctores Galliae 735–987, Tomus II – Alcuinus , Turnhout, Brepols, 1999.
