Alcuin and the Music of Friendship

C. Stephen Jaeger

MLN, Volume 127, Number 5, December 2012 (Comparative LiteratureIssue Supplement) , pp. S105-S125 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University PressDOI: 10.1353/mln.2012.0155

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MLN 127 Supplement (2012): S105–S125 © 2013 by The Johns Hopkins University Press

Alcuin and the Music of Friendship1

❦

C. Stephen Jaeger

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

1This contribution to a commemorative volume for Eugene Vance pays homage to him not by its focus on his scholarly work, but by the congruence of its topic with our personal relationship. We worked together in Medieval Studies at University of Wash-ington for ten years at a time when I was writing a book on friendship in the Middle Ages. My close friendship with Gene was a lesson in the real power of friendship to give comfort and to mitigate conflict. I offer this essay in gratitude for that friendship and in hope of contributing in however minor a way to keeping the memory of this extraordinary scholar and friend alive. In place of an extensive discussion of research in my notes, I include a bibliography of relevant studies.

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since 796 as Abbot of St.-Martin of Tours. Here is an English transla-tion 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

2Alcuin, Epist. 149, ed. Duemmler, MGH Epist. 4, Karol. Aevi 2, p. 242–43:

Domino dulcissimo et vere dilectissimo David magnifico atque a deo coronato regi Flaccus, veteranus miles, perpetuam salutem Laetissima mihi litterarum vestrarum cartula occurrit, febricitantem refocilans, dormientem resuscitans, immo et inertiae morbo torpentem ad antiquas studens reformare vires.Et dulcem versificationis melodiam inter horribiles armorum strepitus et inter raucos tubarum sonitus ammonuit miscere, quatenus truces animorum motus aliqua musicae suavitatis melodia mulcerentur. Etsi vestrae mentis nobilissima stabilitas in una eademque soliditatis arce perpetualiter permaneat et in medio aequitatis libramine inconcussa fortitudine vigeat, tamen, ut puerorum saevitia vestrorum cuiuslibet carminis dulcedine mitigaretur, voluistis. Etiam et hoc ipsum sapientissimo consilio praevidistis. Quia saepe iratae mentis asperitas salubris consilii non invenit effectum; sicut assidua quoque mollities animi enervare solet fortitudinem. Sed inter haec morborum genera medio tramite prudens temperamentum consistit: inde tumentem furorem mitigans, hinc desidem animum erigens; et via regia in pacis consilio cuncta conponit. Quod militantibus virtutis genus maxime necessarium esse in antiquis historiarum libris legimus, ut cuncta sapiens temperantia, quae agenda sint, regat atque gubernet. Nam tria videntur in hoste consideranda: virtus, dolus, pax. Primo, an publica virtute vinci valeat adversarius. Sin autem, ad fraudes et ingenia doli res referenda sit. Et si nec hoc proficit, tunc pacis consilio inimicitiarum odia esse delenda videntur. Tamen si inmites animos aliquid Flaccina valeat fistula mulcere, omni sollicitudine esse reor secundum oportunitatem temporis et personae perficiendum. Ego vero Flaccus tuus interim vado perficere fideliter cum omni instantia, quod vestra dulcissima auctoritas mihi per Magamfredum, fidelem vestrum, demandare voluit. Et sciat certissime bonitas vestra, quod nullus maius desiderium habet, sicut iustum est, vestri auxilii supplementum implere. Igitur amicus dicitur quasi animi custos, id est qui animum amici sui cum omni sollicitudine fidei studet custodire integrum, quatenus nullatenus sacrum amicitiae ius alicubi violetur. Et hoc rari sunt qui intellegunt. Pene unusquisque secundum animi sui qualitatem, non alterius animi, qui amicus est suus, satisfactionem amicitiam [var.: amicitiae] custodire quaerit. Et si hoc in amico et coaequali diligenter observari debet, ut inviolata animi integritas permaneat illius, quanto magis in domino et in tali persona, qui suos subditos omni honore exaltare et gubernare amat? Veterum itaque proverbialis fulget sententia: “Amicus diu quaeritur, vix invenitur, difficile servatur”; et in sancta scriptura: “Amico fideli nulla est comparatio” . . .

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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, so that no point of the sacred law of friendship should be in any way violated. And rare are those who can understand this. Virtually everyone seeks to maintain friendship in accord with his own mind, not in accord with the satisfaction of the mind of another who is a friend. And if this is to be observed diligently in a friend and coequal, that the integrity of his [the friend’s] mind should remain inviolate, how much more in a lord and in such a person who loves to exalt and govern his subjects in all honor? Hence the lustre of that proverb of the ancients: “A friend is long sought after, hard to find and difficult to serve” [Jerome, PL 25, 1219B]; and in holy Scripture: “Nothing can compare to a loyal friend” [Eccle. 6:15] . . .

Since the battle and the war counsel preceding it, it is generally agreed, took place in July of 798, it seems probable that at the very moment when Alcuin wrote this letter, the king’s ears were indeed assailed—at least from a distance—by “the horrible din of clashing weapons and the raucous blare of trumpets.” The scene of Char-lemagne sitting in his tent not far from a horrendous scene of blood-shed wondering about the retrograde motion of Mars and the music appropriate to calm his boys down when they return from the killing field is one for a good playwright. And as for his “boys,” one must imagine the frame of mind of warriors returning to camp from the battlefield. With the smell and feel of death still on them and the cries

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of their victims still in their ears, the return from killing frenzy to civil behavior presumably did not come easily. Tempers flared, the trauma of fear seethed in hearts both heroic and cowardly, the savagery of battle rage only half-controlled broke out anew, as in contemporary America the very different rage of a fired employee or a bullied school- boy might well bubble up anew at home. One can also well imagine that the king and general wanted and needed some palliative and tempering influence and looked to his wisest counselor for it. Let us then read the “request” to which Alcuin responds at face value: that the king’s letter roused him from his pastoral torpor and inspired him to write first a letter commending temperance and friendship, and later a composition playing its music. Alcuin’s letter also leaves open the possibility that the king wished not only the “fierceness of his boys,” but also his own turbulence of mind, “softened by the sweetness of some song or other.” The mind contorted with anger cannot think straight, Alcuin says, and wise counsel is lost on it—a consideration that must weigh at least as heavily with the king and general as with his troops in the field, though the tactful courtier rushes to assure his lord that the royal mind stabilized by unshakeable fortitude requires a lesser dose of the medicine of music—or none at all. But while Alcuin is rearranging his busy calendar to make room for musical composition, he sends along some admonitions to the virtue of tem-perance, the golden mean, and friendship. Like music, these virtues also temper the raging mind. But the antithesis of counsel and music suggests that words have their limit, beyond which music must take over: “wholesome counsel often has no effect on the mind rasped with anger,” implying that the stronger medicine of music must back it up. Alcuin cites the authority of the ancients, who claim that temperance is the virtue most vital to waging war. Since it seems probable that the validity of this claim will not be immediately clear to warriors choked with bloodlust, we may assume that it is a lesson directed first to the king and only second, perhaps with an element of wishful thinking, to his troops. And it implies that temperance is the key or the mode in which his promised composition will play.

This intriguing letter calls for commentary on a number of points. I’ll address three: rage-softening, music, and friendship. In following these points we can see a line of tradition gradually coalesce that continues well beyond the eighth century, and we can see Alcuin at a critical point in its formation.

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Calming the Rage of Kings

The pastoral duty of “softening the rage” of lay people and “mol-lifying the anger of kings” has its biblical prototype in David driving out Saul’s demon and comforting him by his music. There are lots of appeals to the model in pre-Carolingian Christianity: for instance, a passage from Gregory the Great’s Regula pastoralis, a good author-ity since it became the standard, orthodox statement of the ideal of the office of bishop. His chapter 26 gives advice on admonishing the weak and the powerful:

. . . When the adverse spirit came over Saul, his madness was sedated upon hearing the lyre of David. What other meaning can we assign to “Saul” than the overweening of the powerful; and what does “David” mean other than the humble life of the saints… When the mind of the powerful is turned to raving through arrogance, it is just and fitting that they should be recalled to mental health by the tranquility of our elocution as though by the pleasing of a lute. (PL 77, 53A)3

The “humble life of the saints” indeed included the use of tranquil and soothing speech, at least in its prescriptive and idealizing formu-lations. Sigebert of Gembloux quotes a late-tenth century poem on the life of Erluin, first Abbot of Gembloux (d. 987) in his history of the abbots of Gembloux:

Who could recall the whole story of how patient, how sweet, how kind he always was? With his gentle ways he softened the hearts of the enraged, recalling them from ferocity to peaceful ways.4

Erluin’s calming effect was not limited but aimed at “the raging” gen-erally. But the formulation of this virtue tended to take kings, princes, and the mighty as its primary object, as in the passage quoted from the Regula pastoralis. For Walafrid Strabo it is high praise of the mar-tyr Mammes that “he conquered the ragings of princes” (Vicit furores principum; MGH Poetae 2, 296). Charlemagne himself apparently did

3PL 77, 53A: “ . . . cum Saulem spiritus adversus invaderet, apprehensa David cithara, ejus vesaniam sedabat. Quid enim per Saulem, nisi elatio potentum; et quid per David innuitur, nisi humilis vita sanctorum? . . . cum sensus potentum per elationem in fu-rorem vertitur, dignum est ut ad salutem mentis quasi dulcedine citharae, locutionis nostrae tranquillitate revocetur.”

4 Gesta abbatum Gemblacensium ch. 3, MGH SS 8, p. 524, 33ff.Sigebert quotes lines from the verse life of Erluin by the monk Richarius:

Quam patiens et quam dulcis, quantumque benignus Iugiter extituit, quis memorare queat? Nam placidus degens lenibat corda furentum In mores pacis de feritate vocans.

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not require this kind of doctoring. At least I do not find admonitions aimed at restoring placidity after raging. And in fact Einhard praises his “supreme steadfastness” (summa constantia), no doubt the quality which Alcuin praises in the emperor as “stability of mind” (mentis stabilitas).

Calming and soothing the rage of the mighty persisted as a duty of the clergy for centuries. Gerbert of Aurillac while counselor to Emperor Otto III, wrote to a friend, Abbot Eberhard of Tours, and claimed that he had always in his public life striven to combine living well with speaking well, according to the prescripts of Cicero:

. . . to us who are taken up with the governing of the republic, both [good conduct and eloquent speech] are necessary. For there is the highest utility in the ability to speak appropriately to persuade and to restrain the minds of the raging from violence by gentle oratory.5

Both the secular and the classical character of this passage are interest-ing. Gerbert sees “rage-softening” as a statesman’s duty and links the talent it requires with the great orator of Roman antiquity, Cicero. It remains solidly in this context. Wipo, chaplain and advisor to Conrad II and Henry III, composed a consecration formula for the ritual of girding on the king’s sword. It is built on the antithesis of the killing weapon to the king’s life-preserving compassion:

O enraged king, turn calm through mercy.When the law of moderate reason performs its duties,It alternates between softening harsh thingsAnd hardening the gentle in its flames.Hence the hard diamond is softened by the soft element, blood . . . It is a command of nature that sad things be softened by gentle.6

This excursion into the duty of restraining royal manners is one branching of a widespread Christian ideal, which found a vital con-text in the period of the peace movement. It also found a new, or an alternate, exemplum alongside David and his lyre: Orpheus and his. In the eleventh century Orpheus is invoked far more often than David as a softener of rage. A drama in the diocese of Reims in the later

5Die Briefsammlung Gerberts von Reims, ed. Fritz Weigle, Briefe der deutschen Kaiserzeit 2, (Berlin: Weimar, Böhlau, 1966), Epist. 44, p. 73: “. . . nobis in re publica occupatis utraque necessaria. Nam apposite dicere ad persuadendum et animos furen-tium suavi oratione ab impetu retinere summa utilitas.”

6Die Werke Wipos, ed. Harry Breslau, 3rd ed. MGH Script. Rer. Germ. in us. Schol. (Hannover and Leipzig: Hahn, 1915; rpt. 1956), lines 249–53: “Dum rex iratus fueris, miserando quiesce. / Dura foventur agens, durescunt lenia flammis, / Alternatque vices moderatae ius rationis. / Hinc adamas durus solvetur sanguine molli . . . / At natura iubet mutari tristia blandis.”

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eleventh century illustrates the rage-calming mission in a historical context. Manasses, Archbishop of Reims from 1070–1080, was by most accounts an awful character. It seems that he was of high lineage and brought the rough social customs of the warrior class with him into the diocese, without caring much for the role of pastor. Guibert of Nogent ascribes to Manasses the quip, “The archbishopric of Reims would be a pleasant thing if it did not oblige one to be singing masses constantly”!7 The biographer of Abbot Thierry of St. Hubert, writing around 1090, described this difficult character and the abbot’s rela-tions with him:

By nature and custom he was more fierce than was appropriate. But he [Abbot Thierry] behaved to him in so laudable a way that he made him his friend . . . And so he put aside his harsh ways to a great extent at his admonitions, and though to many men he was frequently ungentle and truculent, to this man alone . . . he was always gentle and placid.8

His bad manners are noted along with his bad administration in a letter of Gregory VII from 1073. The pope urges him to fill posthaste the position of abbot of St. Remi of Reims, which had sat vacant for two years. (The pope clearly suspected that the Archbishop was steal-ing the monastery’s goods and income). The letter also tells him to behave better in his important position. Manasses filled the post but did not mend his manners. A monk of St. Arnulf of Metz named Walo accepted the abbacy. Very shortly after his installation he resigned, and sent two roasting letters to the archbishop, who apparently had bullied, tormented, insulted, cursed and threatened Walo beyond endurance. “I must have been a fool,” he writes, “to come to a beast so ungentle, so fierce, so violent, so horrendous!” The only reason he had done so, he claims, was the opportunity to tame and soften the raging of a man so fierce and truculent:

Oh how often have I administered to you the medicine of scripture! How often I attempted to mitigate your fury, singing, as it were, the songs of heavenly words! How often I strove—not with the Thracian lyre, but with the lyre of David—to expel or tame that demon that vexes you!9

7Guibert of Nogent, Autobiographie: De vita sua, ed. Edmond-René Labande (Paris: Les belles lettres, 1981) 64 (1. 11): “Bonus . . . esset Remensis archiepiscopatus, si non missas inde cantari oporteret.”

8Vita Theoderici Abb. Andaginensis, ch. 20, MGH SS 12, p. 49, ll. 9ff.: “. . . natura et moribus plus quam oporteret ferus, propter laudabilem conversationem eius sibi ami-cum eum fecerat… Multum ergo feritatis ab eo admonitus deposuit … et cum pluribus esset frequenter immitis et truculentus, huic uni … semper fuit mitis et placidus.”

9Walo to Archbishop Manasses, Epist. 108 in Briefsammlungen der Zeit Heinrichs IV, ed. Carl Erdmann and Norbert Fickerman, MGH Briefe der deutschen Kaiserzeit vol.

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It is a charming picture: the gentle monk Walo singing like a second David (not Orpheus) to soothe the wild beast Manasses. But his quasi implies that singing is a metaphor for soothing, not the actual medium of it. Manasses defends his warrior ways as a privilege of his class and charges Walo with wimpishness; he is too humble and quiet to deal with “the French manners” of a man like Manasses. The recollection of this charge sets off a tirade:

O monster whom no single virtue redeems from vice! Is it not true that you regard a life tempered by peace, modesty, and sobriety as lower in virtue than one given to harsh and bold combat in wars, since [as you claim] peace weakens strong minds, while battle strengthens the weak and idle?10

Clearly Walo’s “musical” medicine failed to tame Manasses. He con-tinued his truculent ways and, excommunicated by Gregory VII in 1080, he fled France and sought refuge at the court of the German emperor Henry IV, while Walo, evidently no wimp after all, rose to become Bishop of Metz in 1085.

Music

As with other areas of Carolingian culture, the discipline of music ben-efited enormously from the king’s interest in it. This is best observed in the area of the best-documented reform: the move away from the Gallican to the Roman chant, what we know as Gregorian chant. Much points to the king’s personal concern for the uniformity of liturgical song according to the Roman model. The Admonitio generalis from 789 states decisively: “To all the clergy. That they are to learn the Roman chant thoroughly and that it is to be employed throughout the office, night and day, in the correct form . . . ”11 Notker’s biography was to stress Charlemagne’s personal engagement:

Charlemagne, who enjoyed divine service so much that he never wearied of it, prided himself that he had achieved his object of making all possible

5, (Weimar: Böhlau, 1950) 183: “O quotiens adhibui tibi medicamina scripturarum! Quotiens celestibus verbis quasi quibusdam carminibus tuum temptavi mitigare furorem! Quotiens non Treicia sed Davitica cythara conatus sum illud vel expellere vel sedare daemonium, quo vexaris!”

10Briefsammlungen der Zeit Heinrichs IV, 185: “O monstrum nulla virtute redemptum a vitiis, putasne inferioris esse virtutis in pace temperanter, modeste et sobrie conversari quam in bello acriter et fortiter praeliari, cum pax soleat fortes etiam animos enervare, pugna vero inbelles et desides roborare?”

11 MGH Leges 2, Capitularia regum Francorum 1 (Hannover: Hahn, 1883) p. 61, parag. 80: “Omni clero. Ut cantum Romanum pleniter discant, et ordinabiliter per nocturnale vel gradale officium peragatur . . . ”

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progress in the study of letters. He was, however, greatly grieved that all his province, regions and cities, differed in the sacred liturgy, and particularly in the modulations of the chant.12

There may have been some problems in accommodating the sweet Roman chant in rough-cut Frankish throats. That at least is the view of the biographer of Gregory the Great, John the Deacon, a monk of Montecassino, who described Charlemagne’s problems with regular-izing the chant as follows (875):

Among the various peoples of Europe the Germans or Galls were able to learn and relearn the sweetness of this music [Roman chant] remark-ably well. But they were unable, both because of their mental flightiness and their native ferocity, to maintain it untainted, always mixing some of their own into the Gregorian chants. After all, their alpine bodies and the high-pitched clanking of their grating voices cannot properly produce the sweetness of the melodies they’ve undertaken to sing, because when they try to sing softly with subtle inflexions and modulations, the barbarous vulgarity of their drunkard throats cranks out rough sounds born of their native raucousness, like wagonwheels grinding over rocky roads, and so instead of soothing the mind of the listener, it rather confuses them with its exasperating clamor.13

John’s view of the distant forebears of Beethoven and Brahms is colored by Roman superiority, of course. Germans would seem to have no busi-ness singing at all, and so his praise of their “remarkable” (insigniter) learning of Roman chant is condescension, as if he might—using the logic of Samuel Johnson’s nasty quip—observe that a singing German is like a dog who walks on two legs. No one is disappointed that he does not do it well, because everyone is astonished that he does it at all. Notker, in his biography of Charlemagne, had a very different explanation of the Germans’ difficulties in regularizing the chant: it

12Notker, Gesta Karoli Magni Imperatoris, ed. Hans F. Haefele, MGH Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum, Nova Series 12, (Berlin: Weidmann, 1959) 12: “ . . . indefessus ille divine servitutis amator Karolus, voti sui compotem quantum fieri potuit in litterarum scientia effectum se gratulatus, sed adhuc omnes provintias immo regiones vel civitates in laudi-bus divinis, hoc est in cantilene modulationibus, ab invicem dissonare perdolens . . . ”

13John the Deacon, Sancti Gregorii Magni Vita, 2.7, PL 75, 90D–91A: “Hujus modu-lationis dulcedinem inter alias Europae gentes Germani seu Galli discere crebroque rediscere insigniter potuerunt, incorruptam vero tam  levitate animi, quia nonnulla de proprio Gregorianis cantibus miscuerunt, quam feritate quoque naturali, servare minime potuerunt. Alpina siquidem corpora, vocum suarum tonitruis altisone per-strepentia, susceptae modulationis dulcedinem proprie non resultant, quia bibuli gutturis barbara feritas, dum inflexionibus et repercussionibus mitem nititur edere cantilenam, natarali quodam fragore, quasi plaustra per gradus confuse sonantia, rigidas voces jactat, sicque audientium animos, quos mulcere debuerat, exasperando magis ac obstrependo conturbat.”

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was a Roman conspiracy. He tells the well known story of Pope Ste-phen II sending Roman musical saboteurs to infiltrate the German churches, introduce the wrong chants, and so preserve unchanged the anarchy of Frankish singing (Vita Karoli loc. cit.)

The passage in John’s Life of Gregory does place music between its opposing roles of soothing the mind and rousing it. It is clear that the Carolingian theorists, practitioners, and commentators on music shared an idea of the moral force of music, that is, of its influence on behavior, as, conversely in the passage just quoted, the Roman imagined German character determining musical performance. Karl Morrison recently published a lengthy study of Carolingian music arguing music’s role in educating and guiding towards self-knowledge. But particularly the soothing and rousing roles of music point to the most influential tract on music in the Middle Ages, Boethius’s De institutione musica. While Alcuin did not know, at least never quoted, this work, it is clear from a variety of sources that he understood the moral force of music more or less as Boethius had presented it, and since those ideas were widely shared, it is worthwhile looking back to this work briefly. In his introduction Boethius divides music into three kinds, cosmic, human and instrumental: musica mundana, musica humana, and musica instrumentalis. Human music has complex ties to cosmic. But what interests us at the moment is the effect of music on the human mind and body, or what Boethius calls the moralitas of music. He refers to Plato, who claimed that entire communities can be ruined and individuals depraved by the gradual perversion of a prudent and modest music: “The minds of those hearing the perverted music immediately submit to it, little by little depart from their character and retain no vestige of justice and honesty.” Rhythms and melodies “remold the mind according to their own temper.” The character of the music transforms the character of the listener. Boethius says that warlike modes can set the mind raging no less than peaceful ones soothe it. And he tells a story of the Greek philosopher, Pythagoras, who was out one evening contemplating the starry heavens, when he heard of a young man who had been stirred to madness by music in the Phrygian mode and was heading for the house of an enemy to set it on fire. Pythagoras recognized the problem at once and took control. He ordered that a spondaic melody be played. What rapid-response team of emergency musicians answered his command, Boethius does not say—but the danger is overcome: “thus Pythagoras restored the frenzied mind of the boy to a state of absolute calm.” Alcuin, who is said to have tutored Charlemagne in music, never quotes Boethius

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“On the instruction of Music.” The earliest direct reference to it in the Carolingian period is in Aurelian of Rheome’s tract, De musica disciplina, ca. 843. But for the present topic it does not matter whether Alcuin and Charlemagne knew Boethius on music. It is clear that they both understood music’s influence on the mind and accepted it as a given fact of the nature of music. Neither master nor pupil expressed any doubt that the “boys” of Charlemagne can be lulled from their bloodlust, as the youth of Taormina, in the story of Pythagoras, was lulled from his. That belief was part of popular, not only of high cul-ture. But the two meet and make common cause. Aurelian introduces his tract on music with praise of the art and with anecdotes of its force from antiquity. He points to Orpheus: he enchanted the lords of the underworld, he rescued Eurydice by song, and he soothed the rage of wild beasts. He cites David curing Saul and Elijah inspired to prophecy by music. He also knows its enraging force:

Music moves human emotions, goading the mind in various directions. In war it restores the strength of warriors, and the more vehement the blare of the trumpet, the stronger for battle the mind is rendered.14

But Aurelian also develops Boethian ideas of cosmic and human music, joining its force in a sophisticated way to its metaphysics. As macrocosm is to microcosm, so cosmic is to human music. Musical consonances join the body to the cosmos in a harmonious “coapta-tion.” Likewise the soul to the body:

What is it, he asks, that commingles that incorporeal vivacity of reason with the body, if not a certain “coaptation,” like a “tuning” that creates a consonance of low and high voices. (228ff.)

The cathedral school culture of the eleventh century rediscovers classical ideas of musical education of the human body in a big way. It impinges on a subject that had long been important in monastic and clerical education: how to walk. The motion of the body is, Cicero had said, like a song that the body sings; if the soul is in tune with the body, that song will sound and look sweet, if not, raucous.15 Bern of Reichenau can praise Archbishop Pilgrim of Cologne (ca. 1036) as a man whom moral discipline has composed so harmonically that the “natural emotions of his soul” correspond with the heavenly harmo-nies. “The melody of celestial harmony has tuned you. . . . Your soul

14Aurelian of Reome, De musica disciplina I, ed. Lawrence Gushee, Corpus scriptorum de musica 21 (Nijmegen, 1975), lines 1731ff.

15Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, 1. 19.

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delights more sweetly in the sweetness of this art, since the entire con-nection of our body and soul is joined by a musical coaptation . . . ”16

A sophisticated, important, and now little-read poem from the mid-eleventh century, “On the nature of virtue” (“Quid suum virtutis”), sets the Orpheus story in the framework of Boethian music theory. The music of Orpheus “soothes with its sweetness.” By the gravity of the spondee, it calms anger and brings peace to the soul. The effects of his music are the best demonstration that the body and soul of man “are aptly conjoined by the tempering effect of number.”17 And this tempering and soothing effect is then dramatically illustrated in the episode of Orpheus’s descent to the underworld, the showpiece of the poem. His singing magically transforms the monsters, the rag-ing Eumenides, and the teeth-gnashing god of the netherworld from savage inhumanity to courteous sociability.

Baudri of Bourgueil dedicates lines to music in his virtuoso ekphras-tic description of the bedchamber of Countess Adela of Blois. Music is the most important art of the quadrivium, second only to Philosophy, because “she is the force which holds the other sisters in harmony with each other.” Music “has the power to charm humans with such sweet-ness that it can recreate the human soul itself. The human condition, the vigor and rhythm of life itself is governed by a certain harmony . . . ”18 In another poem, Baudri takes the musical instrument as the symbol of the well-governed life. God himself conducts the “mystical symphony of our manners”; like a celestial piano tuner he “harmo-nizes our morals and our bodies, so that the mystical symphony of our conduct will be pleasing.”19 Bernard of Chartres, in his glosses on the Timaeus, develops ideas of musical/moral education:

16Die Briefe des Abtes Bern von Reichenau, ed. Franz-Josef Schmale, (Stuttgart: Kohlham-mer, 1961). Epist. 17, pp. 50–51: “[te] caelestis armoniae melos … reddit intentum… tota animae nostrae corporisque compago musica coaptatione coniungitur, animus quoque tuus sonora artis huius dulcedine suavius delectetur.”

17Quid suum virtutis”: Eine Lehrdichtung des 11. Jahrhunderts, ed. B. A. Paravicini, (Hei-delberg: Winter, 1980) lines 499–1024 (descent to hell). Lines quoted, 799–802: “Et cum nunc mulcet, nunc asperat et modo pacat / Affectum mentis musica temperies, / Certo certius est hominis subsistere totum /Apte coniungi temperie numeri.”

18Baldricus Burgulianus Carmina, ed. Karlheinz Hilbert, (Heidelberg: Winter, 1979) Carmen 134, pp. 17ff., lines 979–1003: “Fecerat hanc ideo sibi Philosophia secundam, / … / Quippe per hanc alie sibi consensere sorores.” “Hec demulcebat homines dul-cedine tanta, / Ut recreare hominis ipsam animam valeat. / Nam staus humane, vigor et modulatio vite / Quodam concentu, nesco quo, regitur,/ .. / Hic harmonie typicalis compotus atque /Celestis rithmus corpora nostra regit.”

19Carmen 218, ed. Hilbert 287–88: “...Sic Deus et mores et corpora nostra coaptet, / Ut placeat nostre symphonia mistica vite.”

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Although the soul is constructed according to consonances, yet they turn dissonant when joined to the body, and they must be reformed outwardly through music. And this means: music is given to man not for his delight, but for the composition of his manners.

Musical education is especially important for the governors of the state, he claims: it renders them affable and gentle.

I have argued in an earlier work that the grand allegories of the twelfth century represent the abstraction of practical ideals of educa-tion from the eleventh. We can see this in Alan of Lille’s construction of the ideal man in the Anticlaudianus by means in part of musical harmonies. But a passage from a homily to the Virgin Mary by Bishop Amadeus of Lausanne from the mid-twelfth century illustrates better than any text known to me the power of music to guide the minds and manners of humans away from barbarity to civilized forms of behavior. It is a vision of God creating human beings and educating them morally by means of music; this supernal musician, half God and half Orpheus, sang humans to life, to faith, and to civility:

By the sweetness of his wondrous song, [God] created the sons of Abra-ham from stones, and the trees of the wild forests, that is the hearts of the gentiles, he moved to faith. He also composed the wild beasts morally, that is man’s fierce impulses and uncultivated barbarity, and thus he educated men out of their [merely] mortal state to enter the ranks of the gods.20

Friendship

The third theme of Alcuin’s letter that interests us, friendship, is the most deeply engrained in Carolingian culture, though perhaps the least studied and the least understood. The last paragraph quoted of Alcuin’s letter contains a kind of mini-treatise on friendship:

. . . 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, so that no point of the sacred law of friendship should be in any way violated. And rare are those who can understand this. Virtually everyone seeks to maintain friendship in accord with his own mind, not in accord with the satisfaction of the mind of another who is a friend. And if this is to be observed diligently in a friend and coequal, that the integrity of his [the friend’s] mind should remain inviolate, how much more in a lord and in such a person who loves to exalt

20Amadeus of Lausanne, Huit homélies mariales, ed. G. Bavaud, Sources Chrétiennes 72, (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1960) 110–12, 4. 17–22: “. . . suavitate mirificae cantilenae suscitavit [deus] de lapidibus filios Abrahae, et ligna silvarum, id est corda gentilium ad fidem commovit. Feras quoque, id est feros motus et incultam barbariem moraliter composuit, et homines ab hominibus eductos in numerum deorum instituit.”

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and govern his subjects in all honor? Hence the lustre of that proverb of the ancients: “A friend is long sought after, hard to find and difficult to serve” [Jerome, PL 25, 1219B]; and in holy Scripture: “Nothing can compare to a loyal friend” [Eccle. 6:15] . . .

This passage is as close as Alcuin, prolific writer of letters and poems of friendship though he was, ever came to theorizing on the subject. And why does he do it here? Is it a non sequitur, like the topic of “the three ways of dealing with the enemy” oddly placed after commenda-tions of temperance for the king and his troops? Possibly the “laws of friendship” are invoked to tie the king to his “boys”; he is after all so concerned to dampen their battle rage and retune their manners to peace, at least to calm, that he requests a musical composition from his most learned courtier. But the lines also seem to comment on Alcuin’s own friendship with the king and to underscore his eager desire to aid him: “no one has a greater desire to help you . . . Therefore, the word friend derives from . . .” Alcuin’s “therefore” makes very clear that the topic of friendship is intimately linked with the other two: music and the softening of rage.

The court of Charlemagne developed a cult of friendship. There are no richer sources on friendship in the life of a royal court than the letters and poems of the period—and I mean that for the entire Middle Ages. It is best to confront from the outset a common misunder-standing, that the friendship cult moved over from Christian monastic customs to the secular world. On the contrary, the royal court is the originator and centerpoint of friendship ideals in the Carolingian age; the monasteries and cathedrals receive the social practice and its rhetoric from the court, as they receive the educational program from the court. It is probable that this aspect of Carolingian culture has its roots in the character of the king himself. Einhard stressed Charlemagne’s cultivation of friendship as a personal quality:

Charles had the ideal character for friendships. He would both enter them easily and retain them with great constancy, and he would cultivate anyone he had bound to himself in such a close relationship as a sacred duty.21

He also found friendships useful in politics; it was one of the means by which he increased the kingdom. Kings of Spain and Ireland declared him their lord merely by the friendship he showed them.

21Einhard, Vita Karoli Magni, ed. Otto Holder-Egger, 6th ed., MGH Script. Rer. Germ. In us. Schol. 25 (Hannover and Leipzig: Hahn, 1911) p. 24, ch. 19: “Erat in amicitiis optime temperatus, ut eas et facile admitteret et constantissime retineret, colebatque sanctissime quoscumque hac adfinitate sibi coniunxerat.”

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Harun-al-Raschid declared Charlemagne’s friendship more valuable to him than that of all the kings of the earth put together, so says Einhard (Vita Karoli, p. 19, ch. 16).

Far from being a monastic virtue, love and friendship could be designated by Smaragd of St. Mihiel as “the royal virtue” in direct reference to Charlemagne: “This truly is the royal virtue, to give sweet kisses to all and to embrace all lovingly with open arms.”22 He also gives us the flavor of the language of court friendship in the dedica-tion of this work to Charlemagne:

Those embraces which your royal arm has sweetly bestowed on us are painted on the secret surfaces of our mind, your honey-dripping kisses carved on the tablets of our heart . . . Your mild and beautiful presence brings happiness to all, exalts and glorifies all, distributes to all gifts, affection and love.23

Possibly the court poets developed this baroque language of honey-dripping love into a ceremonial atmosphere or scenario of court life, one compounded of Old Testament models, Virgil’s pastoral poetry, and the Song of Songs. (The use of classical and Old Testament nicknames is part of this scenario.) Though it is also possible that the scenario that emerges from court poetry developed from the scenario of court life as actually staged.

The much quoted poem of Angilbert (Homer) on the court will give us a glimpse of this courtly staging. The “plot” of his epistolary poem has the poet sending his flute or pipe to the court as his mes-senger, merging the Ovidian trope with a court ceremony of arrival and greeting. He bids the flute to sing as though, self-activated, it could deliver his greetings by its own breath. The flute is to run along “through the holy palaces of David” and bring greetings “to all his dear ones,” “embracing” them with its sweet tune (lines 72–78). He bids it to throw itself down before the king and “sweetly kiss the hal-lowed toes on his feet!” (77) The flute’s ritual progress through the court is musical both within the metaphorical frame (the flute plays a song to the court) and in the character of the song. It becomes a

22Smaragd of St. Mihiel, Via Regia, PL 102, 937B: “Vere enim haec, ut video, regalis est virtus, quae cunctis in palatio panem laetitiae frangit, cunctis vinum jucunditatis porrigit, dulcia cunctis oscula tribuit, et diligens omnes ulnis extensis amplectitur. Tene ergo istam, o clarissime rex, tam claram et beatam regiamque virtutem; tecum sit, tecum maneat, tecum surgat, tecum pergat, tecum laetetur et convivetur; decet enim in convivio regis tam regiam jugiter inesse virtutem.”

23MGH Epistolae 4, Epistolae Karolini Aevi 2, 533: “Amplexus, quos nobis dulciter regalis ulna porrexit, in mentis archano depinximus, oscula melliflua in cordis tabulis fortiter sculpsimus. . . . Vestra enim forma patiens et ornata omnes laetificat, omnes exaltat et glorificat, omnibus munera, dilectionem et amorem ministrat.”

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love messenger and delivers its messages in a choreographed progress. The dance-like nature of its progression is underscored by the refrain, repeated in some variant 18 times in 108 lines:

David loves poetry; rise up, my pipe, and make poetry!David loves poets, David is the poet’s glory. . . (2–3)

It calls to the other poets to respond to the king’s love (“David loves poets”) by joining in the chorus:

And so, all you poets, join together in one,And sing sweet songs for my David! (3–5)

They are to draw their inspiration from their love for the king:

May David’s sweet love inspire the hearts of singers,And love for him make poetry in our hearts!Homer the poet loves David; make poetry, my pipe! (7–9)24

The love language has a particular honeyed sentimentality and preciosity in Angilbert’s poem, but the tone is common in poetry from the court circle. Paul the Diacon expresses his love for the king in the conceit of a compulsion:

What need of cells or chains to restrain me. The love of my lord king conquers me. . . . Just as Saint Peter burned in the immense love of Christ . . . so also the strong love of you inflames my heart.25

Alcuin, like Angilbert, sends a “love song” (carmen amoris) to the king as a love messenger: “May my flute make songs for my beloved David.”

24Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance, ed. and trans. Peter Godman, (London: Duck-worth, 1985) 112–19 (nr. 6):

Surge, meo domno dulces fac, fistula, versus! David amat versus; surge et fac, fistula, versus! David amat vates, vatorum est gloria David. Quapropter vates cuncti, concurrite in unum, Atque meo David dulces cantate camenas! David amat vates, vatorum est gloria David; Dulcis amor David inspiret corda canentum, Cordibus in nostris faciat amor ipsius odas! Vatis Homerus amat David; fac, fistula, versus! (1–9)

Cartula, curre modo per sacra palatia David, Atque humili cunctis caris fer voce salutem Basia dans dulci modulamine semper amicis Atque mei David pedibus prostrata camenas Mox expande tuas, decies dic mille salutes, Atque pedum digitis da basia dulcia sacris! (72–77)

25Die Gedichte des Paulus Diaconus: Kritische und erklärende Ausgabe, , ed. Karl Neff, (Munich: Beck, 1908) 103 (Carmen # 22): “Non opus est claustris nec me compescere vinclis: / Vinctus sum domini regis amore mei . . . / Ut sacer inmenso Christi Petrus arsit amore, / . . . Sic . . . / Inflammat validus cor mihi vester amor.”

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And again in the same poem: “As my spirit pursues you, so also does my song of love . . . O beloved David.”26

The court poetry gives us a consistent picture of a court of love. Love beams from the king like light, wafts in melodies through the court, bathes its members in its warmth, compels them with its chains, charms them with its songs. They are players in a pastoral idyll, lovelorn shepherds, sages, and patriarchs. Love is the overarching metaphor: they are wounded by the king’s love; they pine for him and feel immense desire welling through the chambers of memory at the thought of his beautiful face. In addition all the court poems present themselves as music, not only verse. In that sense they might not inappropriately be called the music of friendship.

The most prolific and skillful writer of love letters and poems from the Carolingian period is none other than Alcuin. The commission to write a melody of peace, temperance, calm and friendship for Frankish soldiers fell to Alcuin not only because of his position in the kingdom, but also because of his skill in composing what he himself called “love songs,” carmina amoris. Alcuin loved the king and his other friends deeply and passionately, if we are to take his writings at face value. One example can stand for many. He wrote most intimately to his friend Archbishop Arn of Salzburg. The opening lines of one of his poems run,

Love has penetrated my breast with its flameAnd love always burns with new heat.Neither sea nor land, hills nor forests nor mountainsMay stop or hinder the way of himBlessed father, who always licks your innards, [viscera tua lingat]Or washes your chest, O beloved, with his tears.27

The nature of love in Alcuin is a subject for a longer study. It deserves one. His love poems might justly be described, with some adjustment for anachronism, as “romantic.” And it is no exaggeration to call Alcuin one of the most skillful love poets of the Middle Ages. But our subject is not the emotion of love or its poetic expression, but rather the practi-cal uses of love and friendship. They played a role in what Alcuin took

26 Alcuini Carmina, ed. Ernst Dümmler, MGH Poetae Latini Aevi Carolini, 1, p. 257, Carmen # 14, lines 9–16: “Carmina dilecto faciat mea fistula David”; “Te mea mens sequitur, sequitur quoque carmen amoris . . .” (17).

27MGH Poetae 1, p. 236, Carmen 11, Lines 2ff.: “Pectus amor nostrum penetravit flamma . . . / Atque calore novo semper inardet amor. / Nec mare, nec tellus, montes nec silva vel alpes / Huic obstare queunt aut inhibere viam, / Quo minus, alme pater, semper tua viscera lingat, / Vel lacrimis lavet pectus, amate, tuum”

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to be one of his most important tasks, peacemaking. He practiced this perhaps most intensely at the court, prior to his abbacy at St. Martin’s. At least in his elegiac poem reminiscing on his residence at Aachen, he recalled the “holy praise of the thunderer which resounded from peace-making minds in peace-making words.” It would be equally cor-rect to translate pacificis here as “peaceful,” but there can be no doubt that Alcuin thought of himself as pacifex, a peacemaker. He wrote to his friend Abbot Adalhard of Corbey, fearfully anticipating violence and lawlessness under the new Northumbrian king Aethelred: “Let us be seed-sowers of peace among Christian peoples.”28 And many of his letters to abbots, bishops and kings attest to his hard work at this particular form of agriculture.

Now let’s return briefly to Alcuin’s letter 149. We can now understand better the passage implicitly opposing counsel (words, speech, letters) to music. Where counsel fails to recall the mind from raging, music takes over: “it composes all things along the royal path of peace . . .” Music does this no less than temperance, but the latter is conveyed by words and examples, the former by melody. And so the music is to serve as that pacifex, to ring out pacifically. I doubt that the brief comments on friendship are meant to apply just to Alcuin and Char-lemagne, but rather, that he wanted friendship linked significantly with peace-making and calming music. The link between love/friendship and peace-making is explicit in other contexts. The vagueness of the connection here may be intentional, and the urging to peace-making may look towards the poor Saxons, otherwise not mentioned at all.

* * *

The connection grew more explicit in the following ages. A poem from the first half of the eleventh century, the “Satyra de amicitia,” celebrates friendship and makes music into an inspirer of it. It begins by lamenting the strife and conflict in the world. The poet conjures Amphion singing to restore harmony and to soften pain and sorrow. Music is the great resolver of conflict in the world, along with love. Friendship is like music, he continues; it composes men’s minds to like-mindedness, and virtue is the glue that holds the bond thus created in place.29 A poem from the Cambridge Songs, “Lantfrid and Cobbo,”

28Alcuini sive Albini Epistolae, ed. Ernst Dümmler, MGH Epistolae 4, Epistolae Karo-lini Aevi 2, p. 35, Epist. 9, lines 20–21: “Pacis enim seminatores simus inter populos Christianos.”

29Friedel Rädle, “Satyra de amicicia... (Clm 29111): Das Freundschaftsideal eines Freigelassenen,” Lateinische Dichtungen des X. und XI. Jahrhunderts: Festgabe für Walther Bulst zum 80. Geburtstag, ed. Walther Berschin and Reinhard Düchting, (Heidelberg: Schneider, 1981) 162–85.

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also first half of the eleventh century, is the story of two friends, so close, so alike in all things, that they seem to share a single nature. Their friendship is tested by the loan of Lantfrid’s wife to Cobbo at his request. The wife is returned intact. It was just a test, an experimentum amoris, of Lantfrid’s love—for Cobbo; the poor wife is just chattel. But the poem begins with a stanza on music with no explicit connection to the story. It rehearses the variety of ways beautiful music is made. A study by Jan Ziolkowski argues persuasively the significant linking of music and friendship in the poem.30

Earlier I referred to the eleventh-century Orpheus poems, which explicitly connect love with music, its moral force and its metaphys-ics. In one poem Orpheus’s song in the underworld strikes love and compassion into the hearts of the monsters of hell: “Love presses them all with its urgings; from all sides the clamor for forgiveness rings out.” Eurydice herself is revived by her lover’s song and “desires to embrace him.”31

In the twelfth century both the learned culture and courtly society embraced the capacity of music to arouse love and friendship. Hugh of St. Victor speaks of “the music between body and soul” which are joined together by ties of affection, and so joins the Boethian/ancient metaphysics of music to the ideal of music pacifying and harmonizing the warring elements of the human being. Both Bernard Silvester and Alan of Lille took up the ideas in their grand allegorical poems of the creation of a new man. In both cases the joining of soul to body by musical proportions is represented as the forging of a love or friendship of body and soul: music ends strife and creates friendship.

The literature of courtly love, especially its lyric poetry, is of course a literature of love music; courtly love lyric is sung poetry. But a scene in the Tristan romance of Gottfried brings together various strands of this discussion. Princess Isolde, instructed by her future lover Tristan, displays for the entertainment of the court the whole array of talents she has learned from him. They are remarkable: languages, composing letters and songs, “morality” (moraliteit), poise and grace in her carriage and self-presentation, and in particular, music. The poet’s description of her song performed before the court of the king of Ireland is one of the virtuoso showpieces of this work. She sings a “double song,” Gottfried says; two songs in one, one audible, the other silent. The audible song is the one produced by her voice and instrument; the

30The Cambridge Songs (Carmina Cantabrigiensia), ed. and trans. Jan Ziolkowski (New York and London: Garland, 1994) 158–61.

31“ ‘De nuptiis Mercurii et Philologiae’: Une version médiévale inconnue de la légende d’Orphée,” ed. André Boutemy, Hommages à Joseph Bidez et à Franz Cumont, (Brussels: La-tomus, 1941) 43–70, here line 586: “Omnibus instat amor, venie sonat undique clamor.”

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inaudible one, the song produced by her beauty, her physical pres-ence. She does not just sing music; she is music. The charm of her aura “sings” a “mindsong” (muotgedoene), a spiritual song or a ditty of no tone—the Keatsian phrase fits well. The scene is the fullest realiza-tion I know of the ancient idea that the disciplined physical presence with all its grace, charm, and harmonies, represents unheard music. The passage combines “human” and “instrumental” music in a single image, a single person. But in this case the effect is to inspire love in the entire audience:

Her wondrous beauty [i.e. the unheard, the visible song] stole with its spiritual ditty silent and secret into many a noble heart and smoothed on the magic salve that took thoughts captive and bound them with longing and the pains of love.32

The experience that love and music go hand in hand, that music inspires, feeds, and commemorates love, is common enough in life and literature. The connection is both intuitive and culturally received. Duke Orsino of Twelfth Night and Charles Swann of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, both fed their love on music.

Alcuin’s soldiers will have received Alcuin’s carmen amoris to a differ-ent end, if he ever wrote it: its intention would have been to inspire friendship and temperance in them, at the same time as it soothed their raging hearts. I don’t want to foist on Alcuin an idea foreign to him by looking backward through the perspective of Proust, Shake-speare and Gottfried von Strassburg. But I think that the music of friendship is strongly enough implied in his letter to Charlemagne as to place that letter at a distant point in a line of descent to other love-inspiring music.

University of Illinois

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Garrison, Mary. “Praesagum nomen tuum: The Significance of Name Word-Play in Alcuin’s Letters to Arn.” Erzbischof Arn von Salzburg. Ed. Meta Niederkorn-Bruck and Anton Scharer. Vienna: Institut für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, 2004. 107–27.

Jaeger, C. Stephen. The Envy of Angels: Cathedral Schools and Social Ideals in Medieval Europe, 950–1200. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1994.

———.Ennobling Love: In Search of a Lost Sensibility. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1999.

32Gottfried von Strassburg, Tristan with the ‘Tristran’ of Thomas, trans. A. T. Hatto, (London: Penguin, 1967) 148. Original text, Gottfried von Strassburg, Tristan, ed. and trans. Rüdiger Krohn, (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2001) lines 8122–31.

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McGuire, Brian Patrick. Friendship and Community: The Monastic Experience, 350–1250. 1988. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2010.

Morrison, Karl F. “’Know Thyself’: Music in the Carolingian Renaissance.” Committenti e produzione artistico-letteraria nell’alto medioevo occidentale, Settimane di Studio del Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo 39, pt. 1 (1991): 369–479.

Ziolkowski, Jan. “Twelfth-Century Understandings and Adaptations of Ciceronian Friendship.” Mediaeval Antiquity. Ed. Andries Welkenhuysen, Harman Braet, and Werner Verbeke. Louvain: Louvain UP, 1995. 59–81. Mediaevalia Lovaniensia Series 1, Studia 24.