SOURCE: Chazelle, Celia M. “To Whom Did Christ Pay the Price? The Soteriology of Alcuin's Epistola 307.” Proceedings of the PMR Conference 14 (1989): 43-62.

[In the following essay, Chazelle outlines Alcuin's rejection of the theory of the atonement, which states that Christ's Passion was a ransom he paid to Satan in order to liberate mankind.]

Towards the end of his life, Alcuin wrote a letter to his emperor and friend, Charlemagne, concerning the significance of Christ's Passion. The letter, epistola 307 in Ernst Dümmler's edition of Alcuin's letters,¹ focuses on Paul's statement in 1 Corinthians 6.20 that man's salvation was “bought with a great price,” and seeks to answer the question of to whom Christ is properly said to have made such a payment. Alcuin states that his letter was prompted by a request from Charlemagne for comments on the teachings of a Greek doctor et magister visiting the Carolingian court, who had advanced the claim that the price's recipient was death.

The doctrine that the Greek magister defended, commonly known as the ransom-theory of the atonement, is the concept that through the Passion Christ paid Satan or struck a bargain with him for man's release from captivity: in return for the life of the God-man, Satan allowed humanity to go free. While various forms of the ransom-theory had survived in eastern thought since the patristic period, the doctrine as a whole was one that the Latin Church had largely rejected; by Alcuin's time, it had disappeared almost entirely in the west.² Alcuin's letter to Charlemagne has been characterized as “the first and perhaps the only full-fledged critique of the ransom-theory that it has ever received in the Latin world,”³ but it is important for two other reasons, as well. Although Alcuin deals with the question of how Christ saved man specifically in order to correct the Greek teacher's exegesis of 1 Corinthians 6.20, and although the methodology of his letter differs radically from that of Anselm's Cur deus homo, to the best of my knowledge Alcuin's work constitutes the first systematic exposition from the early medieval west, prior to Anselm's treatise, that is concerned uniquely with the process of man's redemption.⁴ Moreover, despite some triumphal language—language that highlights Christ's victory over death—the need to respond to the Greek doctor provides Alcuin with an opportunity to elaborate with greater consistency and depth than is found elsewhere in his writings a vision of the nature of redemption that departs from the soteriology most commonly associated with the early medieval west,⁵ even though the ideas he presents do occur in others of his writings and in general circulated throughout this period.⁶ Thus, Alcuin's letter is again striking, and to some degree again foreshadows the Cur deus homo of Anselm, because its investigation of the process of redemption focuses exclusively on God the Father and his Son, working in consort on behalf of sinful mankind through the mechanism of Christ's innocent, sacrificial death. Satan and death as an external force synonymous with the devil are ultimately left out of the picture, while Christ's victorious resurrection in his divinity is made tangential to his human suffering and dying.⁷

Unlike Anselm's teaching, the doctrine that Alcuin proposed to Charlemagne is organized around not only the concept of man's redemption from sin through Christ's sacrifice but also a notion of the cleansing efficacy of the blood he spilled on the cross. It is a bloodshed that witnesses to Christ's fully human suffering and death, and indeed, in keeping with Old Testament images of sacrifice, is the key to the offering's value. All three of these ideas—man's redemption from his sins, Christ's sacrifice, and the role of his blood to wash away sins—are rooted in traditions of thought that reach back through the early Middle Ages to the Church Fathers and that are expressed with particular force in some of Augustine's writings.⁸ Similar themes regularly emerge in other early medieval writings dating to both before and after Alcuin composed his letter, most notably in texts where attention is focused on the eucharist, baptism, or penance: the first because it is the sacrament through which Christ's sacrificed body and his blood are both commemorated, the second because of its connection with the crucifixion through the water that also flowed from Christ's side, and the third because it is necessary to the sinner's cleansing of sin in preparation for his reconciliation.⁹ Alcuin's letter stands in contrast to such writings, however, both because it is an orderly investigation exclusively into the problem of how Christ redeemed man, one that focuses on this problem directly rather than via sacramental considerations, and because it isolates the three themes mentioned from other doctrines of redemption.

These attributes of Alcuin's response to the Greek magister make his text deserving of a more thorough study than is offered here, with, for example, greater attention to its sources, its relation to earlier doctrine, to other Carolinian literature, and to later Christian writings such as those of Abelard, of Anselm, and of Anselm's successors. Questions of this breadth cannot be adequately addressed in the space of a short article. What follows has a more modest aim, which is simply to draw attention to what Alcuin has to say in a work that, I think, has greater importance in the intellectual history of the medieval Church than has previously been assigned to it (or for that matter to its author), and to try to outline the structure of its thought as well as clarify some of the presuppositions that seem to underlie its teachings.

Alcuin's response to the Greek magister consists of three parts: First, the letter confronts the Greek teacher's usage of Romans 5.14 (“… death reigned from Adam to Moses”) to support the claim that the price paid by Christ has been rendered to death as “personified” in the devil. Alcuin therefore devotes considerable space to a discussion of the different forces denoted by the word “death” and of the word as it is employed in Romans 5 in order to differentiate thoroughly between Satan and the particular “death” whose conquest is most crucial to understanding Christ's achievement. Second, the letter examines the meanings of the terms, “redemption” and “to redeem” (Latin, redimere), and seeks to define them as they are used to speak of the work of the cross. Third, it analyzes Paul's employment of the word “price” again for its relation to the divine work of salvation.

The first part of the letter, which deals with the different kinds of death,¹⁰ allows Alcuin to set forth what he held to be the primary result of Christ's work through the cross, and at the same time to state clearly his belief that such an achievement could not have involved a transaction with Satan. The word “death” can serve three distinct functions, Alcuin argues; it can be either a synonym for the devil, or a referent to sin, described as the death of the soul, or it can designate the termination of physical life.¹¹ In Alcuin's view, Paul had the second meaning in mind in Romans 5.14, and in support the letter to Charlemagne quotes Ezechiel 18.4: “The soul which shall have sinned will die.”¹² By this, Alcuin does not mean to deny the close relationship that sin also has with the devil and with corporal death in Christian doctrine. He does seek, however, to establish grounds for the belief that the most direct and most critical effect of Christ's work of redemption was not to free mortals from bondage to the devil or to overcome the permanence of bodily death, even though he considered these also to number among Christ's achievements, but to release them from their burden of sin.¹³

It is from the soul's death, above all, as distinct from Satan or the body's decease, that Christ freed humanity. As Alcuin elaborates: “But the kingdom of this death is destroyed by the arrival of grace, since Christ's blood has washed away the decree which our sins have written, fixing it to the cross, killing in himself the enmities that were between God and man.”¹⁴ To say that Christ paid a price to death/Satan for that release raises for Alcuin the question of why the devil did not hold onto whatever payment he received; for neither did the death of the soul that is sin have a kingdom in Christ, who was sinless, nor did his flesh remain in the tomb.¹⁵ The sentence just quoted concerning the destruction of death's kingdom is one of the few places in Alcuin's letter where a triumphal picture of salvation seems to come to the fore.¹⁶ Its bellicose tone masks the conviction elucidated further on in the text, that the flow of Christ's blood, with its awesome power to remove sins, demanded his sacrificial death in his humanity.

In the second portion of the letter, where attention is directed to the proper interpretation of the term, “to redeem,” Alcuin focuses on the nature of Christ's action through the cross and contends that when the use of the word “redemption” to describe that action is correctly understood, it again becomes evident that a transaction with or payment to Satan was not involved. From here Alcuin is able to develop further his conception of what in fact did take place. For it is not always true, Alcuin declares, that when something is said to be “redeemed” it is literally “bought back” (as the Latin suggests), such that the person who relinquishes the thing in question receives something else in exchange. As evidence, Alcuin cites Psalm verses alluding to those whom the Lord redeems, and also the Passover story from Exodus: when God freed the Hebrews, he notes, no recompense was given to the Egyptians. The lamb was sacrificed to God, not to Pharaoh, while its blood protected the Hebrews alone.¹⁷ Furthermore, Alcuin states, if man's redemption through Christ should be regarded as an act of selling and buying with death/Satan—as a redemption in the most literal sense of the term—it is necessary to explain why the event is called a “buying back.” The implication is that a previous sale took place, that at an earlier time God sold off the human race, an idea which is manifestly wrong.¹⁸

When Christ gave his holy, immaculate, sinless soul as “a redemption for many,” what he accomplished was not a purchase at all, but purely and simply a liberation. In Alcuin's view, this definition of the term is the only one that correctly reveals the true character of Christ's act.¹⁹ That liberation, a liberation from sin, required delivering up Christ's soul not to the devil, but to God the Father, as Jesus himself made it known by his cry on the cross, “Father, in your hands I commend my spirit.” It was an act that Christ undertook entirely of his own free will, not because he was driven by any necessity, and therefore he was also able to resume his soul when he chose to do so. In Christ alone rested this power, not in death/Satan, which had no hold on the sinless Son of God.²⁰

At this point, Alcuin suggests a doctrine derived from Augustine that was widely repeated in early medieval exegesis of the Passion, as one alternative interpretation of 1 Corinthians 6.20 to the ransom-theory of the Greek magister. Just as from Adam's side Eve was formed, so from the “sleeping” crucified Christ was brought forth the price of the Church, meaning the blood and water that poured from Christ's side.²¹ Referring to both the fourth book of Augustine's De trinitate and to Fulgentius for support, Alcuin adds that it is altogether wrong to hold that the blood which spilled on the ground was intended as a payment to the earth, since when Christ resumed his humanity at the resurrection neither his blood nor any other part of his body was lacking.²² The notion that the Church was formed from Christ's side receives no further discussion in the letter. The more radical solution to the meaning of Paul's statement that Alcuin makes central to his response to the Greek magister, and which he introduces in the final portion of his letter, is, rather, that far from death receiving a payment from Christ, death was itself “the price” of redemption. Reference is again made to Augustine's De trinitate 4 in order to insist that Christ's dying was a sacrifice made to God the Father. As such, it alone constituted the price that Christ was called upon to pay in order to redeem man from sin. Sacrifice and price are one. For this very reason, the price, like the sacrifice, had nothing to do with the devil,

Unless perhaps someone dares to say that the sacrifice offered to God the Father was one thing and the price by which we are redeemed another. In all the injuries, torments, and passions which the unique Son of God sustained for us, what did he bear but an oblation for our sins, but the price of our redemption?²³

It was a sacrifice offered by him who was both “priest and sacrifice, price and oblation.”²⁴ The “price” of redemption had to be paid not in the sense of a transaction with the devil, nor even, as will become more apparent shortly, in order to offer God restitution for man's sins, but in the sense of a burden. Christ's suffering and death were the hardships he assumed, in obedience to God the Father, in order to see redemption accomplished.

Indeed, Alcuin observes towards the close of his letter, it is inconceivable that such a price could ever have been paid to death for the additional, simple reason that death has no substance. If it did, it would be one of God's creations; but death was not among the creatures that God made in the first six days, and did not exist before man sinned. It is nothing more than the absence of life, just as shadows are merely the absence of light, and therefore could never receive the price that was more excellent than all creatures.²⁵

Alcuin's refutation of the ransom-theory of the Greek magister rests on the notion that Christ liberated mortals from the burden of the sins to which they daily succumbed as the heirs of original sin from Adam. With the stain of sin gone, the punishment of internal death that sin inflicts upon the human soul is also removed. Mankind is restored to the proper relationship to its creator and rendered capable of attaining the eternal life in soul, and ultimately body, promised through Christ's resurrection. Thus, the captivity of death from which Alcuin mainly envisions Christ to have freed man is the soul's inner affliction, and it is one that is clearly differentiated from corporal death and the devil, even though Christ's triumph over these punishments is also recognized.

The exact place given to sin and its redemption within the overall program of Alcuin's letter can be better shown if we consider briefly how Alcuin's attitude towards sin differs from that of Anselm in Cur deus homo. I should note that Anselm's work is mentioned here not in order to offer anything approaching a thorough comparison of its teachings with those of Alcuin, but simply as a means to clarify elements of the doctrine set forth to Charlemagne, in part by identifying through Anselm's treatise certain ideas that Alcuin did not espouse. Indeed, what follows should make it apparent that in the end the doctrines of the two works bear little resemblance to each other, beyond their similar emphasis on man's need to be redeemed of sin, their rejection of an active role for the devil in human redemption, and their focus on Christ's human suffering and death.

Anselm stresses man's active disobedience towards God and the mortal's own responsibility for his misdeeds, despite the inevitability of those sinful actions through his inheritance of original sin: to sin is to fail to subject oneself to the creator's will; it is to choose to do what is not pleasing to God. That active departure of the human will from the will of its creator dishonors God; it is the cause of man's condemnation because it essentially means that the sinner robs his maker by not rendering to him the honor that is rightfully his. While God did not want to leave man separated from the eternal blessedness for which he was created, in Anselm's belief it was imperative that God find a means of salvation that assured him proper reparation for the honor of which he had been deprived.²⁶ As Anselm demonstrates in the course of his treatise, this was a goal that was only realized when the God-Man, born without sin, willingly died on the cross. Christ's innocent life, offered to God the Father, served as a fitting recompense or satisfaction for the sins of all humanity.²⁷

The thought that underlies Alcuin's attack on the Greek teacher moves in a somewhat different direction. Here it is helpful to read the references to sin in the letter to Charlemagne against remarks on the same theme in other writings by the same author, where he provides more insight into his views. For Alcuin, the most pressing issue is not the active, willful disobedience of the mortal towards God, but human weakness and the mortal's complete inability to avoid the urge to sin.²⁸ Sin, Alcuin is convinced, places a horrible, inescapable burden on the human soul, and while he recognizes that through Adam the entire human race is responsible for that burden, his concern is less with where to lay the blame than with the devastating sorrow to which sin leads. Above all, it is a burden that renders the soul—including Alcuin's soul, for his remarks on the subject are often cast in a very personal vein²⁹—utterly incapable of its proper relationship with its creator, no matter what the mortal may wish to the contrary. God desires to restore that proper relationship, to bring each person back to him, by liberating the individual from the sins that have distanced him from heaven.

This picture of sin is an important reason why Anselm's argument that man owed recompense or “satisfaction” to the divine honor is alien to the doctrine of redemption that Alcuin presents. It is not only significant that in expressing the concept of satisfaction Anselm may have drawn on contemporary ways of thinking about the Christian faith and secular society that did not exist in the early ninth century.³⁰ Alcuin's own preoccupation with human weakness, with the inescapable character of man's propensity to do wrong, encouraged him to conceive of Christ's work in very different terms.

The single action in the divine work of salvation on which Alcuin's letter places the greatest emphasis is Christ's human death, as is also true of Anselm's Cur deus homo. But in Alcuin's case, this is not intended to imply that mankind is saved solely or even most directly through the offering of Christ's body to God the Father. As suggested earlier, the letter to Charlemagne diverges from Anselm's treatise by avoiding any hint that redemption involved a transaction between God the Father and Christ; there is no indication, in other words, that what Christ undertook, through his voluntary death, was to render the necessary satisfaction to the divine honor on behalf of the rest of the human race. Instead, as also noted earlier, the crucial significance that Alcuin attributes to Christ's sacrifice is the release of blood that it made possible.³¹

In order to elucidate the relationship that Alcuin, in composing epistola 307, understood to exist between the sacrifice of the cross and the blood spilled from Christ's side, it is again useful to take into account other writings by him where these themes are also discussed. A survey of such works suggests that, frequently, when Alcuin thought of the sacrificial character of Christ's act, he thought in terms influenced by Old Testament accounts of blood offerings; among these, in particular, was the Exodus story of the passover lamb, associated with Christ in John 1.29 and through the foundation of the eucharist at the Last Supper. From this perspective, just as the lamb saved the Hebrews not merely because it was sacrificed, but through the blood from it that was placed on their doorposts, man's redemption or liberation from sin was achieved through the blood Christ poured out after his own, sacrificial death. So long as the mortal turns to Christ in faith, especially through prayer and the sacraments, Alcuin's writings often suggest, the blood of his redeemer washes from him the sins that divide him from God.³²

In such texts, then, including the letter against the Greek magister, that bloodshed and not Christ's sacrifice per se is marked out as the central mechanism of human redemption. Alcuin does not spell out in epistola 307 or elsewhere the precise reasons why Christ's blood was efficacious in this manner, but when taken together, the various references to the bloodshed found in his writings indicate that, in his view, three factors were crucial: it came from a perfectly innocent victim, since Christ was without sin, it was filled with divine power because it belonged to the body of the Son of God, and its power is made continually available to the Church through the sacraments, especially baptism, penance, and the eucharist.³³

What Alcuin had in mind in attacking the ransom-theory of the atonement is that Christ willingly sacrificed his body to his Father, in perfect obedience to the Father's wishes, in order to pour out his saving blood; for the release of the savior's blood, human yet divinely empowered, could be accomplished only if his human nature suffered and died, much as the paschal lamb of the Israelites had to be slaughtered in order for its own blood to be released. Thus, the notion of a sacrifice made to God the Father is crucial to the soteriology of Alcuin's letter, and the devil is largely left out of the picture, as is also true in Cur deus homo; yet as is not the case in Anselm's treatise, the process of redemption remains essentially manward.³⁴ Christ's manhood, his human weakness, suffering, and offering of his own life to the Father, are absolutely central to his achievement of redemption; but what is at stake in freeing man from sin is less directly Christ's action as man towards God than God's action towards man, through the channel opened by Christ's human sacrifice. For Anselm, the divinity assures the salvific status of the humanity that then wins redemption,³⁵ while for Alcuin redemption is wrought through a divinely empowered attribute of the humanity.

Christ's sacrifice was therefore the “price” of man's redemption, not because it was offered to the devil or even because it was per se redemptive, as though an offering made (a “price” paid) to God the Father in reparation for man's sins. Rather, it was the price because this was what God had to accept from his son, and what Christ had to endure, in order for the saving blood to be spilled. It was the burden that they together had to bear for redemption to be effected, the bad side of the ledger that was infinitely outweighed by the good it achieved.

When the letter to Charlemagne states that on the cross Christ paid “the price” for the formation of the Church from his side, however, it indicates how indissoluble the shedding of Christ's blood and his sacrifice are in Alcuin's thought. The sacrifice and the pouring out of Christ's blood can be distinguished from each other to the extent that the latter resulted from the former, yet it is evident that Alcuin also understands the spilling of blood as the culmination to all the torments that led up to and encompassed the sacrificial death on the cross. Christ's bloodshed was inseparable from those torments and sacrifice inasmuch as it was the final, visible proof that the humanity of Christ had suffered and died, the proof that he had indeed paid “the price,” and implicitly, therefore, the final proof of his true humanity.³⁶ As such, it was also the proof of the infinite bounty of God's love for the human race, a love so great that he was willing to submit his only-begotten son to the Passion in order to wash away the sins that kept man apart from him. There is an aching beauty to the soteriology of Alcuin's letter, in its combined picture of man's helpless incapacity to bring himself out from under the burden of sin and of the lengths to which the divine love allowed Christ to go in order to achieve that goal.

Man is helpless against the oppressive weight that sin places on his soul, an inescapable burden that perpetually divides him from his creator; but God, in his boundless love for his creation, sent his very own Son to earth, to become man, to be himself the saving oblation offered on the cross, in order that from his tormented body might pour the blood that alone could cleanse the human soul of its stains and allow mankind to regain its true relationship with the Divine. The sheer lyricism of the soteriology presented in Alcuin's letter against the Greek magister alone makes the letter worthy of note, while its vision of the meaning of redemption, for this quality alone, deserves a more secure place in the history of medieval theology than it has usually received.

This is not to say that Alcuin was uninfluenced by earlier thought. As already indicated allusions to the letter's three principal themes—that Christ saved man from sin, that he offered a sacrifice to God the Father, and that his blood washed away sins—appear in other patristic and early medieval texts,³⁷ and on several occasions in the letter, Alcuin quotes and cites the writings of various Church Fathers. In particular, there are the points in the letter where Alcuin openly draws inspiration from Augustine's De trinitate. The fourth book of that work is the only source Alcuin directly quotes to confirm his image of Christ as the sacrificial victim, and the only one to which he refers in his denial that Christ spilled his blood as a payment to the earth and his subsequent affirmation of the wholeness of the redeemer's resurrected humanity. Beyond this, it may be significant that De trinitate 4 is a place where Augustine alludes to 1 Corinthians 6.20 and stresses themes that appear elsewhere in his writings as well, those of Christ's sacrifice, man's redemption from sin, the willingness of Christ's death, and the cleansing efficacy of his blood.³⁸

In composing the letter against the Greek magister, Alcuin may have looked for support for his arguments not only to De trinitate 4, but also to Book 13 of the same treatise (to which epistola 307 does not directly refer). There Augustine poses the question, foreshadowing Anselm's query, “Was there no other way for God to liberate men from the misery of their mortality, that he should will the only-begotten Son … to become man [and] suffer death?”³⁹ The answer to this question is explored at length in chapters 10 through 20 of De trinitate 13,⁴⁰ where again Augustine elaborates on the significance of Christ's dying, the redemptive value of his blood, and the price that he paid. In the end, however, both the fourth and thirteenth books of De trinitate focus to a much greater extent than does Alcuin's letter on Christ's conquest of the devil. This is where Augustine's references to “the price” come in: the price was Christ's blood, which the devil received so that he was overcome, not by power but by justice.⁴¹ Augustine's argument is not the idea probably espoused by the Greek visitor to Charlemagne's court, that God had to pay a ransom to Satan in order to win back mankind, but instead that Satan unjustly took Christ's blood and thus lost his control of humanity, since he took something not rightfully his. Yet this understanding of “the price” clearly differs from that offered by Alcuin. In general, Alcuin's letter stands apart from both Book 4 and Book 13 of De trinitate when it presents Christ's sacrifice and the subsequent removal of sins through his blood as together forming the single driving force behind human salvation, while for the reasons suggested at the outset of this article it also seems distinguished from other, early medieval writings where such themes emerge.

Elsewhere in his writings, Alcuin demonstrates more flexibility in his perception of the Passion and how Christ saved mankind. His exegesis of biblical passages that he linked with the Passion, for instance, is closely connected with the contents of the verses in question as well as frequently drawn from various patristic authorities; consequently, while some scriptural texts lead him to recall Christ's triumph over death or the devil, and others the revelation, even from the cross, of his savior's omnipotent majesty, still others bring him to remember the examples of humility and obedience that the crucified Jesus set for mortals, or once more the cleansing efficacy of the blood he shed, or his sacrifice to God the Father.⁴² Similarly, Alcuin's poetry and other letters can range from the startling praise of the fully triumphant though crucified lord of the universe, in his carmen figuratum honoring the cross, to the beseeching tone taken in a titulus to a cross, and in several letters, where Alcuin dwells on his own sinfulness and his ardent need for cleansing through the blood shed by his tortured redeemer.⁴³ In the treatises that formally attack the Spanish Christology of Adoptionism, where Alcuin is intent on demonstrating that Christ possessed in one person both a perfect human and a perfect divine nature, as the Carolingians believed the Spanish Adoptionists to have denied,⁴⁴ his approach differs yet again. Here the overall focus is more on the Incarnation than on the Passion; that God assumed true human flesh from a virgin is largely seen as itself the central act by which man was saved. Despite allusions to various doctrines of redemption, the Passion is considered chiefly as proof of the Incarnation, as evidence that the divinity was totally present in the crucified Christ and that it was the Son of God himself who took part in the crucifixion. At some points, Alcuin recalls Christ's conquest of Satan or the eternal kingship of the crucified redeemer, while elsewhere he dwells mainly on his torments, or stresses the voluntary character of his Passion; but what links all these passages together is their almost invariable regard to show how the crucified, tortured human nature of Christ was indissolubly united with his divine omnipotence. No matter what picture of the crucifixion is suggested, Christ's divinity is made to permeate every allusion to his human qualities.⁴⁵

The range of attitudes towards the process of human redemption that Alcuin exhibits in such writings only matches the enormous variety of approaches to that process found in the writings of contemporaries and earlier churchmen, going back to the Church Fathers.⁴⁶ The brief reference made above to Augustine's teachings in De trinitate is indicative of the capacity of early writers to mix and match doctrines of redemption. Why, then, did Alcuin focus narrowly on Christ's sacrifice and bloodshed when he wrote against the Greek visitor to Charlemagne's court? One reason must be that he considered these ideas the most effective means to demonstrate the error of the ransom-theory of the atonement: in particular, they together constituted a doctrine of redemption that clearly disassociated redemption from any considerations of God's dealings with the devil. Such disassociation was of major importance if Alcuin was to refute decisively the belief that Christ paid a price to death/Satan. To dwell on Christ's conquest of the devil, to suggest another way of viewing the work of salvation, would have undermined this attribute of Alcuin's letter.

Perhaps more significant, though, is the personal attachment Alcuin may have felt to the doctrine that Christ suffered and died so that his blood could wash away sins. As already noted, several of Alcuin's writings reveal their author's intense anxiety over his own sinfulness and his profound sense that, as much as if not more than other mortals, he must continually seek forgiveness and remission of his sins from the creator who deigned to die for mankind.⁴⁷ If Alcuin was particularly drawn to any view of how Christ redeemed man, it probably was the one that, as some of his writings show, he associated so closely with the remission of sins made continually available to sinners such as himself through the eucharist and penance, as well as through baptism. That he focused on this doctrine when writing at the beginning of the ninth century, in a text devoted to a systematic explanation of Christ's work and offering the Latin west's first thorough refutation of the ransom-theory of the atonement, is a reason that his letter's importance in the history of medieval Christian thought deserves recognition. Although Alcuin's attack on the Greek magister draws upon some earlier theologians, such as Augustine, its clear differences from previous writings that consider the nature of redemption provide fitting testimony to the originality of the intellect that produced it.

Notes

1. The letter discussed in this article is edited in Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Epistolae, 4, Epistolae Karolini Aevi, 2, ed. Ernst Dümmler (Berlin: Weidmann, 1895), Alcuini sive Albini Epistolae, 1-481, Ep. 307.466-471. The most recent, comprehensive biography of Alcuin is Eleanor Shipley Duckett, Alcuin, Friend of Charlemagne: His World and his Work (New York: Macmillan, 1951). Before that see C. J. B. Gaskoin, Alcuin: His Life and Work (New York, 1904); Arthur Jean Kleinclausz, Alcuin (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1948).

   On Alcuin's involvement in Carolingian liturgical reforms see Gerald Ellard, Master Alcuin, Liturgist: A Partner in our Piety (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1956). Important investigations of other issues regarding Alcuin and his writings include Leopold Wallach, Alcuin and Charlemagne: Studies in Carolingian History and Literature, Cornell Studies in Classical Philology, 32 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1959), and idem, Diplomatic Studies in Latin and Greek Documents from the Carolingian Age (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977); H. - B. Meyer, “Alkuin zwischen Antike und Mittelalter: Ein Kapitel frühmittelalterlicher Frömmigkeitsgeschichte,” Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie 81 (1959), 306-350, 405-454; John Marenbon, From the School of Alcuin to the Circle of Auxerre: Logic, Theology and Philosophy in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Donald Bullough, “Alcuin and the Kingdom of Heaven: Liturgy, Theology, and the Carolingian Age,” in Carolingian Essays: Andrew W. Mellon Lectures in Early Christian Studies, ed. Uta-Renate Blumenthal (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1983), 1-69; and the introduction by Peter Godman to his edition of Alcuin's poem on York: Peter Godman, ed. and trans., Alcuin: The Bishops, Kings, and Saints of York, Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), esp. xxxiii-cxxx. Comprehensive arguments for attributing the Libri Carolini to Theodulf of Orleans rather than Alcuin, as earlier scholars have sometimes held, are set forth by Ann Freeman, initially in “Theodulf of Orleans and the Libri Carolini,” Speculum 32 (1957), 663-705. Recent research, such as that by Freeman, Bullough, Meyer, Marenbon, and Godman, has corrected several of the views presented in Duckett's biography and in Ellard's study of Alcuin's liturgical work, most notably by amending the list of Alcuin's authentic writings as well as by reassessing the relative roles played in early Carolingian affairs by that churchman and his colleagues, especially Theodulf of Orleans and Benedict of Aniane. In light of this scholarship, a new, comprehensive analysis of Alcuin's life, thought, and relationship with Charlemagne would clearly be desirable.

2. The ransom-theory appears already with Irenaeus, and recurs with numerous Church Fathers of the second and later centuries, among them Clement, Origen, Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa, Basil, Ambrose, and Augustine. Generally on this and other aspects of patristic soteriology, see J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 2nd ed. (New York: Harper and Row, 1960), esp. pp. 173-174, 183, 185-186, 375-377, 382-383, 387, 391; Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, 5 volumes, vol. 1, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), esp. pp. 141-155, 232-236. On soteriology in the medieval west, see J. Pelikan, The Christian Tradition, 3: The Growth of Medieval Theology (600-1300) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), esp. pp. 124-144; Gustav Aulèn, Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of the Atonement, transl. A. G. Hebert (New York: Macmillan, 1931), pp. 1-60, 81-84. In many respects still useful for the patristic and the medieval traditions are the works of Jean Rivière: Le dogme de la rédemption: Essai d'étude historique (Paris: Libraire Victor Lecoffre, 1905); idem, Le dogme de la rédemption au debut du moyen âge, Bibliothèque Thomiste, 19 (Paris: J. Vrin, 1934); idem, “Rédemption,” in Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique, ed. A. Vacant et al. (Paris: Libraire Letouzey et Ané, 1936), pp. 1912-2004, for the Church Fathers esp. pp. 1932-1942.

3. “… la première et peut-être la seule critique de fond [de la théorie de la rançon] qu'elle ait jamais recontrée en terre latine.” J. Rivière, Le dogme au debut du moyen âge, pp. 30-31. Rivière goes on to make the claim, with which I disagree, that “L'incident n'a pas d'autre titre à entrer dans l'histoire. …” The interest of the position Alcuin takes in Ep. 307 is also noted briefly by H. - B. Meyer, “Alkuin,” esp. p. 334, although my article will show that I disagree with him slightly on the substance of Alcuin's teachings there.

4. A few of the most striking differences between the two works may be mentioned here. First, there is simply the difference in length: Alcuin's arguments, which cover a little over five pages in the MGH edition of the letter, are extremely brief and uninvolved compared with those set forth in the two lengthy books of Anselm's treatise. Second, the starting-points of the two works are not the same: unlike Alcuin, who had only a Christian audience in mind (specifically, his emperor), Anselm sought to outline arguments that might persuade even the unbeliever of the rationality of the Christian doctrine that God became man in order to save the human race. Thus, while Alcuin assumes his audience's faith in Christ and his Passion, and seeks to demonstrate only how that event was salvific, Anselm wants to prove the validity of belief in Christ as well as in his endurance of the cross; his analysis of just how Christ's death was redemptive is therefore tied to his effort to demonstrate, more basically, why the Incarnation had to occur at all. Anselm asks why the God-Man was necessary in order to save man, and from this perspective is concerned with how that salvation was accomplished; Alcuin asks how Christ's Passion saved man, having assumed that his audience agrees with him already that to do so led God to take on human nature and undergo the crucifixion. A few other differences between Alcuin's and Anselm's works will be suggested later in this article. On the unbelievers to whom Anselm refers, see R. W. Southern, St. Anselm and His Biographer: A Study of Monastic Life and Thought, 1050 - c.1130 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), pp. 88-91. Anselm's work is edited in PL 158.359-432. A fine translation with a lucid introduction to Anselmian thought is found in Eugene R. Fairweather's A Scholastic Miscellany: Anselm to Ockham, The Library of Christian Classics, 10 (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1956), introduction pp. 47-62, text pp. 100-183. A more recent translation is that in Jasper Hopkins and Herbert Richardson, eds. and transls., Anselm of Canterbury, 4 vols., vol. 3 (Toronto: Edwin Mellen Press, 1976), pp. 41-137. Besides the work done by R. W. Southern and E. R. Fairweather (both cited above, this note), see also John McIntyre, St. Anselm and His Critics: A Re-Interpretation of the Cur Deus Homo (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1954), and Jasper Hopkins, A Companion to the Study of St. Anselm (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1972), esp. pp. 187-212.

   It should be noted that Anselm's question, “Why did God become man?” was anticipated by Augustine in De trinitate 13.10, as pointed out to me by Professor John Cavadini of Villanova University. Given that Alcuin composed Ep. 307 either during or after the completion of his own treatise, De fide sanctae et individuae trinitatis (PL 101.9-58), which draws upon De trinitate and for which he must have made himself thoroughly familiar with the earlier work, he probably had Augustine's query and response in mind as he wrote.

5. I.e., in patristic as well as early medieval discussions of the Passion, the notion that Christ in his divinity and resurrection vanquished the forces of death and Satan. Doctrines of redemption of this kind tend to diminish the importance to salvation of Christ's humanity other than as a vehicle for the divine power. On the early Middle Age's triumphal view of redemption, see, e.g., G. Aulèn, Christus Victor, esp. 47-60, as well as, in different terms, Jean Rivière, e.g. in “Rédemption,” 1939-1940 (for both see above, n. 2).

6. The relationship of the doctrine espoused in Ep. 307 to that expressed in other Alcuinian writings is discussed further below. For other early medieval theologians who set forth similar ideas, see below, n. 9.

7. In Cur deus homo Anselm never speaks of Christ's work as a sacrifice; but the idea is implicit as he develops his argument that a sinless God-Man had to undergo death in order to recompense God for humanity's sins. Alcuin's distinction among the different types of death is discussed below.

8. Analyses of Augustine's soteriology can be found in, among others, E. TeSelle, Augustine the Theologian (London: Burns and Oates, 1970), pp. 171ff., Eugène Portalié, A Guide to the Thought of St. Augustine, trans. Ralph J. Bastian (Chicago: H. Regnery, 1960), esp. pp. 161-173, and J. N. D. Kelly, Doctrines, pp. 390-395. On the influence of Augustinianism on later thinkers in the west, including the Carolingians, see Jaroslav Pelikan, The Growth of Medieval Theology, The Christian Tradition, 3 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), for the Carolingians esp. pp. 50-105. Outside of Augustine, the appearance of the doctrine of Christ's sacrifice, especially, in the Church Fathers and other early writers before the Carolingian period is remarked by J. Rivière, “Rédemption,” esp. pp. 1935-1937, and J. N. D. Kelly, Doctrines, pp. 388 (Hilary), 389-390 (Ambrose, Ambrosiaster, Pelagius), 398-399 (Cyril); cf. ibid., pp. 440-455, on teachings regarding the eucharist.

   There is a tendency in scholarly discussions of patristic and early medieval soteriology either to overlook the role given to Christ's blood or to view it as essentially another way of expressing the notion of his sacrifice. In this article, I try to show why, at least in Alcuin's thought, while the two ideas are closely related it is necessary to distinguish between them. Indeed, the need to distinguish Christ's bloodshed from his sacrifice is apparent from the early writings that refer to the blood less as a sign of his suffering or death than of his divine power and victory over death: cf., e.g., Ambrose, writing, significantly, on the sacraments; as he declares, man was “… a debtor of the devil. An enemy held your bond, but the lord impaled it and destroyed it with his blood” (Ambrose, The Sacraments, 5.4, trans. Roy J. Deferrari, Fathers of the Church, 44 [Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1963], p. 318). (The same Church Father also speaks of the flow of blood and water from Christ's side as the source of baptism and the eucharist, e.g., in idem, Expositio Evangelii secundum Lucan, 10.135, CSEL [Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum] 32, S. Ambrosii Opera, 4, ed. C. Schenkel [Prague: F. Tempsky, 1902], pp. 506-507).

9. All three themes mentioned recur singly and side-by-side in various Carolingian treatises that discuss the eucharist, baptism, and penance. See, for instance, the main treatises stemming from the ninth-century eucharistic controversy, Paschasius Radbertus, De corpore et sanguine domini, CCCM 16, e.g., 28, 52, 53, 83, 84, 96, 126; Ratramnus, De corpore et sanguine domini, PL 121, e.g., 138 A/B, 139C-140A, 144B, 154B-155A. On baptism see esp. Theodulf of Orleans, De ordine baptismi, PL 105.231D-232A, 234D-235A, 240A/B. From among the Carolingian writings where the theme of penance is emphasized, see some of Alcuin's letters, in MGH Epp. 4, Alcuini … Epistolae, e.g., Epp. 138.218, 166.271, 223.367; cf. idem, De virtutibus et vitiis, PL 101.622B/C (where Alcuin stresses the cleansing action of penance), and see also Paulinus of Aquileia, Liber exhortationis, PL 99, esp. 204A; 208D-209A; 220A; 240A; 241A; 261A. A pre-Carolingian writer who regularly refers to Christ's suffering, his sacrifice for sin, and the blood he shed was Bede: cf., e.g., his sermons, PL 94.121, 131, 135, 138B-D. The significance of Christ's bloodshed is noted in some early medieval poetry and liturgical texts, where the emphasis tends to be on its divine power: e.g., in “The Dream of the Rood,” Anglo-Saxon Poetry, ed. and trans. R. K. Gordon (London: Dent, 1954), pp. 235-238; in the “Ab ore verbum,” Analecta Hymnica 51.78, 82-84; and in the collect for the mass of the feast of the Inventio crucis, in the Missale Gothicum (Vat. Reg. lat. 317), ed. L. C. Mohlberg, Rerum ecclesiasticarum documenta, series maior, fontes 5 (Rome, 1961), 80.

10. I.e., after Alcuin's introductory comments: Ep. 307.467, ll. 4-28 (above, n. 1).

11. The distinction made here shows the influence of Augustine, e.g., in De trinitate 4.3(5), CSEL 50.165.

12. Ep. 307.467, ll. 18-19.

13. Alcuin's close association of sin with death and the devil is apparent, for one, from his discussion of Christ as mediator in De fide 3.12, PL 101.45B/C. Christ came, Alcuin there declares, “to offer for us what he assumed from us, in order to bear away from us what he found in us, that is sin. For just as the proud devil is the mediator to death, who led proud man to death, so Christ is the mediator to life, who, humble, led obedient man to life; since just as the former, exalted, fell and cast down the consenting, so the latter, humiliated, rose and raised the believer.” (“… veniens ad nos offere pro nobis quod sumpsit ex nobis, ut auferret a nobis quod invenit in nobis, id est, peccata. Sicut enim diabolus mediator est ad mortem, qui superbus superbientem hominem perduxit ad mortem, ita Christus mediator ad vitam, humilis hominem obedientem reduxit ad vitam: quia sicut ille elatus cecidit, et dejecit consentientem, sic iste humiliatus surrexit, et erexit credentem.”) See also below, concerning Alcuin's usage of several different doctrines of redemption.

14. Ep. 307.467, ll. 19-22. Cf. Augustine, De trinitate 4.13(17), CCSL 50.184.

15. Ep. 307.467, ll. 23-28.

16. A triumphal view of the work of salvation appears regularly in other writings by Alcuin, however, one example being his carmen figuratum to the holy cross: MGH PLAC 1, Alcuin, Carmen 6, pp. 224f. For bibliography on this poem, see below, n. 43.

17. Ep. 307.467, ll. 29-43; see Ps. 118.34, 143; 106.2; 135.24; Ex. 12.1-13.

18. Ep. 307.467, l. 44 - 468, l. 3.

19. Ep. 307, esp. 468, ll. 4-7.

20. Ep. 307.468, ll. 8-24.

21. Ep. 307.468, ll. 24-27. See Augustine, Tractatus 120.2, CCSL 36.661. The parallel of Adam to Christ (who is thus the “second” Adam) occurs very early in Christian exegesis, esp. in Irenaeus, who makes it fundamental to his soteriology. See J. N. D. Kelly, Doctrines, pp. 147-149.

22. Ep. 307.468, ll. 28-38. Augustine, De trinitate 4.3(6), CCSL 50.168; cf. Fulgentius, Libri tres ad Trasimundum regem, 3.34, PL 65.229B.

23. Ep. 307.469, ll. 5-32, esp. ll. 29-32. See Augustine, De trinitate 4.12(15), CCSL 50.181; 4.13(17), CCSL 50.183; 4.14(19), CCSL 50.186.

24. Ep. 307.469, ll. 34-35.

25. Ep. 307.470, l. 27 - 471, l. 6.

26. See, e.g., CDH 1.10-15, 19-24.

27. See esp. CDH 1.25, 2.6-19.

28. The following discussion of Alcuin's attitude towards sin draws on several of his writings, since sin, its dangers, and its conquest were among his favorite themes. Particularly useful are his treatises and letters against the Adoptionists, other letters of moral exhortation, or where he dwells on his own sinful nature, his treatise on the virtues and vices, and some of his poetry. Examples from these works will be indicated in subsequent notes. For another treatment of Alcuin's views in this area of thought, see H. -B. Meyer, “Alkuin,” esp. pp. 430-452.

29. As already noted by H. -B. Meyer, “Alkuin,” pp. 430-431; cf. ibid., nn. 339-340, for letters in which Alcuin dwells on his own sinfulness. Generally emblematic of his concern is also his treatise, De virtutibus et vitiis, PL 101.613-639.

30. As argued, e.g., by R.W. Southern, Anselm, esp. pp. 97-114.

31. On the relationship between the divine and human in the God-Man according to Anselm, see esp. CDH 2.7-18. It may be noted here that Alcuin's view of redemption also differs from that proposed by Abelard, which again diverges from Anselm's. Abelard, like Alcuin before him, suggests that there was no payment to either God or the devil, but he emphasizes a vision of salvation that highlights Christ's role as teacher and example; by his words and deeds, including his death, Christ inspires man to love for the Divine and thereby to virtue: e.g., Abelard, Expositio in Rom. 3.23-26, PL 178.833-836 (cited in R.W. Southern, Anselm, p. 96). From this perspective, the Passion loses the central place in the work of redemption that both Alcuin and Anselm gave to it. See R. W. Southern, Anselm, pp. 96-97; G. Aulèn, Christus Victor, pp. 95-97.

32. See, e.g., among Alcuin's writings, for reference to the parallel of Christ with the passover lamb, MGH PLAC 1, Alcuin, Carm. 116.346; and his Commentaria in Joannem (following Augustine), PL 100.986C. For a small sampling of the many places where Alcuin alludes to the cleansing power of Christ's blood, see the Expositio in psalmos poenitentiales, PL 100.589C, 590A, 593B/C; the Commentaria in Joannem (following Augustine), PL 100.985B, 986A/B, and earlier in the same treatise, where Alcuin is more influenced by Bede, PL 100.926B; the Contra Felicem libri septem, PL 101.134B, 139D, 155B, C, 227A, 229A/B. On the relation of Christ's sacrifice to his bloodshed, e.g., the Expositio in epistolam ad Hebraeos, PL 100.1078B; cf. the Expositio in psalmos poenitentiales, PL 100.593B-594B. On the relationship of the blood Christ shed to the sacraments, see esp., e.g., the Expositio in epistolam ad Hebraeos, 10 (drawing on Chrysostom), PL 100.1081A/B (to baptism and penance); the Commentaria in Joannem (following Augustine), PL 100.986A/B (probably to both baptism and the eucharist); MGH PLAC 1, Alcuin, Carm. 109.337 (to penance, and more vaguely to the eucharist). More generally, also, e.g., MGH Epp. 4, Alcuini Epistolae, Epp. 34.76, 113.165, 166.272.

33. See above, previous note.

34. The distinction between doctrines of the atonement that make redemption a “Godward” (from man to God) rather than a “manward” (from God to man) movement was elaborated by Gustav Aulèn, in Christus Victor, esp. pp. 1-7. His main thesis is summarized in Bernard Sesboüé, “Salut,” in Dictionnaire de Spiritualité, 14, fasc. 91, ed. M. Viller, et al. (Paris: Beauchesne, 1988), cols. 251-283, at pp. 256-257.

35. See CDH 2.6-7.

36. This emerges esp. in Ep. 307.468, ll. 38-41 and 469, ll. 5-32.

37. See above, (p. and n. 8).

38. Augustine, De trinitate 4.13(16-17), 14(19), CCSL 50.181-184, 186-187.

39. Augustine, De trinitate 13.10(13), CCSL 50A.399.

40. Augustine, De trinitate 13.10-20, CCSL 50A.399-420.

41. Augustine, De trinitate 15(19), CCSL 50A.408.

42. Such mixtures of ideas occur particularly in Alcuin's commentaries on the penitential and gradual psalms, in PL 100, cf. e.g. 589C, 590D-591A, 594A/B, 594 C; 625D, 628D-629A. Cf. also in some of Alcuin's letters the similar range of ideas, e.g., MGH Epp. 4, Alcuini Epistolae, 17.45-46, 34.77, 38.81, as well as other letters already mentioned.

43. For Alcuin's carmen figuratum, see MGH PLAC 1, Alcuin, Carmen 6.224f.; for the titulus, see ibid., Carmen 109(11).337. A recent translation of the carmen figuratum is available in Peter Godman, ed. and transl., Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985), pp. 138-143; see also Godman's introduction, esp. p. 20. The poem's contents and origins are discussed in H. -B. Meyer, “‘Crux, Decus es Mundi’: Alkuins Kreuz- und Osterfrömmigkeit,” in Paschatis Sollemnia. Studien zu Osterfeier und Osterfrömmigkeit, ed. Balthasar Fischer and J. Wagner (Freiburg: Herder, 1959), pp. 96-107, and Dieter Schaller, “Die karolingischen Figurengedichte des Cod. Bern. 212,” in Medium Aevum Vivum. Festschrift für Walther Bulst, ed. Hans R. Jauss and D. Schaller (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1960), pp. 22-47.

44. An important reevaluation of the controversy over Spanish Adoptionism, one that breaks decisively away from earlier interpretations of the dispute, is that by John Christopher Cavadini, “The Last Christology of the West: Adoptionism in Spain and in Gaul, A.D. 785-817” (Diss., Yale University, 1988). In addition to Cavadini's work, several overviews of the dispute are available, most of them (as Cavadini shows) somewhat misrepresentative of the nature of Adoptionist teachings: e.g., in J. Hefélé, Histoire des conciles, 3.2, trans. H. Leclerq (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1910), pp. 1001-1060; Émile Amann, L'époque carolingienne, Histoire de l'église, 6, ed. A. Fliche and V. Martin (Paris: Bloud et Gay, 1947), pp. 129-152; J. Pelikan, The Growth of Medieval Theology, esp. pp. 52-59 (above, n. 2).

45. See, e.g., Alcuin (sometimes drawing on earlier authorities), Contra Felicem, PL 101.134B, 147C/D, 154D, 190C, 204C/D, and the other passages from the same treatise already cited in n. 32; idem, Adv. Felicis haeresin, PL 101.93C-94A, 94C, 97A, 100B, 103B, 105D-106A, 109C/D; also idem, Contra epistolam ab Elipando, PL 101.255A/B, 259A/B; and MGH Epp. 4, Alcuini Epistolae, Epp. 166.273, 309.474-475.

46. J. N. D. Kelley, Doctrines, pp. 375-399; J. Rivière, “Rédemption,” pp. 1935-1942.

47. See above, n. 29. Alcuin links his own need for remission of his sins to Christ's death and bloodshed esp. in MGH Epp. 4, Alcuini Epistolae, Epp. 83.126, 94.139.