SOURCE: Delp, Mark Damien. “Alcuin: Master and Practitioner of Dialectic.” Proceedings of the PMR Conference 16/17 (1992-93): 91-103.

[In the following essay, Delp urges a favorable reappraisal of one of Alcuin's short texts on logic, De dialectica.]

In surveying the scholarship on Alcuin's educational writings, one cannot help noticing the negative judgements leveled on his little text on logic, De dialectica. Although older scholarship tended to be harsh, using adjectives such as “miserable”¹ and “mediocre,”² more recent scholars have brushed aside De dialectica as a mere “compendium.” The best that scholars seem able to acknowledge is that Alcuin was a great teacher and introduced important new material (such as the Pseudo-Augustinian Categoriae decem) to his contemporaries. On the contrary, however, Alcuin made important interpretations of his sources in De dialectica, and incorporated these interpretations in later anti-adoptionist treatises and letters.³ Thus, far from being an isolated compendium with a narrow educational purpose, De dialectica remained a useful reference work for Alcuin in his later years.

In his De dialectica Alcuin for the most part quite carefully follows source texts by either quoting verbatim or paraphrasing; and yet he also often uses and transforms select logical material for theological ends. For example, Alcuin usually defines substantia in terms of the secondary or universal substance of Categoriae decem: “definition begins from the primary breadth (latitudo) of substance, since whatever is found in nature can be called ‘substance.’”⁴Substantia, therefore, is defined as being latius or more inclusive than any of its specifications.

The comparative adverb latius, however, signifies more than mere logical generality for Alcuin, for—after paraphrasing Boethius' De differentiis topicis, wherein “the term ‘justice’ is greater than ‘person’ because it extends further (latius patet)”⁵—Alcuin gives his own example of the meaning of latius. Charlemagne exclaims:

It is amazing to me how an accident can be greater than a substance. A. What do you think: is the candle or the light that shines from it greater or better? C. The light of course. A. And isn't light an accident of the candle, and the candle a substance? C. It is, and now I recognize that the accident in it can be greater and better than the substance.⁶

In this example, Boethius' strictly logical adverb specifying the degree of generality becomes for Alcuin a metaphysical statement specifying the quality of being: major becomes synonomous with melius. For Alcuin, therefore, the value and meaning of substances and accidents can change depending on the theological context. Fire, with all its biblical connotations, is clearly superior to the candle of which it is predicated; but there can obviously be nothing that is latius in relation to the substantia of God.

It is precisely in considering God's special substance that Alcuin makes some of his most daring interpretations of his sources in De dialectica. For example, in coming to terms with God's sharing the commune nomen of substantia with the rest of creation, Alcuin makes the theological transition from a substance that possesses accidents to a supreme substance that is identical to its accidents. In section 973B of De dialectica Alcuin says to Charlemagne:

For every nature … can be called a substance, such as homo. And something happens to every nature except God alone, as heat in the human body, discipline in the soul. C. Does not goodness, justice and the other virtues happen to God? A. Goodness and justice do not happen to him, but he himself is Goodness and Justice, and the same must be thought concerning the other virtues.⁷

In a contrasting passage in section 967A-D Alcuin uses the mode of definition he calls privantia to speculate on the negativity of God's substantia:

Again, there is a definition by way of privation to the effect that, if one asks what a substance is, one receives the answer that it is neither quality, nor quantity, nor any kind of accident; for God can in every way be understood in terms of this kind of definition; for we can in no way comprehend what God is … but according to the philosophers he must be defined in terms of that which he is not.⁸

This rendering of substantia corresponds closely to the definition of primary usia in Categoriae decem, where the usia that cannot be defined has no genus or species, sustains all things, and is better (potior) than the secondary or generic substances precisely because it is “neither in the subject nor signified of the subject.”⁹

Therefore, in coming to terms with God as a substantia, Alcuin makes his own most daring interpretations of the term. The substance God becomes at once latius than any other substance, identical with its accidents, and in the final analysis definable only by negation. Therefore, although he closely parallels Boethius' De differentiis topicis and especially Categoriae decem, Alcuin none-theless ends up drawing conclusions of the most abstract kind in the area of theology.

Far from being ad hoc changes of his sources, Alcuin's interpretations of logical terms such as substance in De dialectica are both quoted and developed in his later writings. A good example of his consistent dialectical development is his letter to Arno, Bishop of Salisburg (dateable to around 802¹⁰), in which Alcuin contrasts substantia with essentia, a term not found in De dialectica. “[I]t must be known that essence is properly spoken of God who ‘always is that which He is,’ who said to Moses, ‘I am who am.’ For God alone ‘is’ entirely, because He is unchangeable …”¹¹ Alcuin uses the term essentia here to describe pure being as opposed to the conditioned being of substantia, which he defines as “the common name of all things that are … all living things whatsoever are called substances.”¹² Here the definition of substantia matches its definition in De dialectica: “Whatever belongs to natural things can be called substance.”¹³ Next, by means of a short syllogism, Alcuin proves that God is also a substantia: “For that which is not a substance is nothing all, therefore a substance is ‘to be something.’ Therefore God is a substance.”¹⁴ Up to this point Alcuin seems to have given mutually exclusive definitions of God: the first defines him as an eternal essence free from the mutability of accidents; the second defines him as a substance in the sense of a commune nomen like the moon or the sky, merely because he exists. Alcuin then finishes his syllogism, however, by incorporating the definitions of both essentia and substantia, thus qualifying the special way in which God exists: “And He is the highest substance (summa substantia) and the first substance (prima substantia) and the cause of all substances, because he is creator of all things.”¹⁵

Of special interest here is the juxtaposition of prima substantia and summa substantia which is so conspicuously lacking in De dialectica. Nevertheless, it seems clear that Alcuin referred to his own text on dialectic when writing this letter, for further on in the same letter he quotes himself verbatim in the context of a discussion of the Trinity: “for substance is so-called because it subsists.”¹⁶ The source is De dialectica, section 954D, where Charlemagne asks: “What is the source of the word “substance”? A. Substance is so called, because it subsists as does each nature in its own property.”¹⁷

Other traces of Alcuin's early dialectical work appear in his De trinitate ad Fredegisum Quaestiones XXVIII (circa 802), where he briefly discusses substance and its signification. When Charlemagne asks why, since we say there are three Persons in the Trinity, do we not say tres omnipotentes, nec tres magnos, and so forth, Alcuin responds:

Because God is omnipotent, great, good, and eternal, these are substantial names, and are directed toward God himself: therefore one is not permitted to say them in terms of a plural number, but in terms of the singular, and every name that signifies the substance or essence of God must always be cited in terms of a singular number.”¹⁸

The definition here of God's “substance or essence” corresponds closely with Alcuin's quotation of Categoriae decem in De dialectica 961A: “For it is proper to usia that it be singular and one in number, … as for example, a single person is an usia and of one number …”¹⁹

Furthermore, in Question 7 of Quaestiones ad Fredegisum Alcuin discusses relativa nomina and the category of ad aliquid in much the same language as his paraphrase of Categoriae decem in De dialectica 959A-B. In the Quaestiones ad Fredegisum he says:

According to dialectic, names are relative which are referred to some other thing, just as lord is referred to servant, and servant to lord, father to son and son to father. In short, when I say father, I simultaneously signify son, since there is no father without a son to whom he may be a father. Again, there is no son without a father to whom he may be a son.²⁰

In De dialectica Alcuin phrases the issue as follows:

Therefore ad aliquid is said precisely when that which is joined is found during a single occurance or a single passing away, as for example servant and lord, both either exist simultaneously, or do not exist simultaneously. Therefore when you say lord, the servant necessarily exists; and when you take the lord away, neither does the servant appear.²¹

The use of the comparison servus/dominus to illustrate the category of ad aliquid is ubiquitous in Alcuin's theological writings and is a commonplace in Latin patristic writings on the Trinity. In this case, however, Alcuin's theological writings are the source for his De dialectica. For example, in the letter of the Frankish bishops on the occasion of the Council of Frankfurt, which possibly antedated De dialectica, Alcuin says:

If, therefore, the Son of God was conceived as God immediately from the moment of his conception, when was there a time when the man was without God, in which case he would become an adopted son? For just as there was never a time when God the Father was without God the Son, … so also there was never a time when the man Jesus was without God … For just as Arius separates the Son from the Father by saying, “There was a time when he was not Son of God,” so also you all separate the man Christ from God the Son through adoption.”²²

In De dialectica Alcuin uses the same illustration of Arius' heresy to embellish the logical category of ad aliquid:

And such is the case concerning the Father and the Son. And therefore in view of this rule of category the stupid blindness of Arius and his friends is to be marveled at, or rather pitied. For they assert that the Son comes after the Father in time, while it is certainly the case according to dialectic that the Father is cosempiternal simultaneously with the Son. And if God the Father is eternal … therefore the Son is also eternal according to the necessity of dialectical reason.”²³

The example made of Arius and his friends becomes for Alcuin a kind of refrain in De dialectica, and provides us with an important example of the way in which Alcuin associated dialectic with polemical theological issues.

In his anti-adoptionist writings, Alcuin uses the term proprium perhaps more than any other common technical term, and the range of its use parallels its different senses in De dialectica. In general, he uses the term either to describe the relationship of the name “son of god” to the man Jesus Christ, or to describe the relationship of Christ himself to the Father. In the former case the name “son of god” belongs to the man Jesus Christ as a proprium in the technical sence of De dialectica 953D: a property separates the species “from any commonality with other species.” Indeed, Alcuin commonly uses the phrase ab omni aliarum … communione separari in his anti-adoptionist writings to make it clear that the name “son of god” is properly applied exclusively to Christ's substance or Person. Furthermore, in the passage following from Epistula ad Elipandum we find other examples of the technical meaning of proprium developed earlier in De dialectica:

The [Fathers] understand some names in Christ to be proper to God and other names to be significative (significativa); you should discern which thing belongs to which category. Proper names are in Christ: only-begotten, first-born, God, Son of God, and Lord Jesus Christ. Significative names are because of certain actions which have been fulfilled in him: lion, stone, sheep, calf, worm, and many other things which must be discerned by reason.²⁴

In this passage, Alcuin allows for the possibility of many proprietates for Christ, all of which serve to distinguish his substantia or Person from all others.²⁵ On the other hand, the significativa nomina do not designate his substance strictly speaking, but rather his acts, and thus define indirectly what he is.

The distinction between defining a substantia in terms of properties on the one hand, or in terms of acts on the other hand, is found in De dialectica 967A-B. There Alcuin distinguishes between the definition “that demonstrates the substance of any proper nature”²⁶ on the one hand, and the definition that “signifies a person's act, not the substance”²⁷ on the other. The propria nomina in Epistula ad Elipandum are clearly meant to apply to Christ and Christ alone among men. The significativa nomina on the other hand are meant in the looser sense as having some special and, in this case, symbolic relationship to Christ's substantia. The propria nomina, in other words, define him by his substantia, whereas the significativa nomina define him by his actus.

Two other dialectical themes in De dialectica recur in Alcuin's later theological writings. In De dialectica 963D Alcuin discusses species of contrariety wherein the question arises whether evils are ever opposed to evils. Alcuin answers:

This is the case according to the philosophers, who have said that virtues are always middles (media), and that they have vices on either side. And it seems to me that the Apostle has signified this when he says: “We must walk the royal path (via regia) leaning neither to the right nor the left,” as for example more just or less just.²⁸

Although the via regia is a ubiquitous theme in Alcuin's writings,²⁹ it is often found in the more dialectical passages of Alcuin's anti-adoptionist works, although with a clever twist: whereas in De dialectica Alcuin uses the biblical analogy to illustrate the correct medium between two negative extremes of a virtue, in the context of the adoptionist controversy the via regia becomes the total rejection of a medium between truth and falsity.

In a letter to the monks at Metz Alcuin admonishes them to follow the via regia concerning the definition of proprium and adoptivum: “Follow the open road of Apostolic doctrine, and lean neither to the right nor to the left of the royal path when confronted with the byways (diverticula) of any novelty.”³⁰ The diverticula cuiuslibet novitatis is of course the word adoptivum, which in turn has for Alcuin become almost synonomous with falsity.

The via regia is also used in the context of another common logical motif in Alcuin's anti-adoptionist writings, the difference between homo verus and homo pictus, which was originally quoted verbatim in De dialectica from Categoriae decem to illustrate the species of names called omonyma and similitudo:

Homonyms occur when two things receive a common name, but are separated by the interpretation of the thing, as for example a picture of a person (homo pictus) and a true person (homo verus). For there is one name in these things, but the reason or interpretation is different” (ratio … vel interpretatio diversa).³¹

Again, in 955D:

An example of a similitude is when homo pictus and homo verus are joined in similitude only.³²

The comparison of homo pictus and homo verus, however, becomes in Alcuin's anti-adoptionist writings synonomous with the comparison adoptivum and proprium, or with the comparison non verum and verum.³³

In Epistula ad Gundradam, discussed in more detail below, Alcuin plays with the notion of the medium in the context of the contrarietates of verum et non verum on the one hand, and homo verus et homo pictus on the other hand.

It must be asked (interrogandum est) what is the middle between true and not true according to the dialectical art, if one person can be both a true person and a picture of a person, who is not a true person. If one responds that it is not possible, it must be inferred (inferendum est) that neither in Christ, who is one person, can there be both true and not true in two natures, but rather whatever is in him is true, because he himself is completely God and completely Son of God and the truth in him is complete and he has no illusion in himself.³⁴

Clearly, the contrarietas of homo pictus and homo verus, originally meant to illustrate the variety of verbal predication, is here transformed into an effective polemical tool, forcing the opponent to identify homo verus with proprium filium, and homo pictus with adoptivum filium, which in turn becomes a figmentum if applied to Christ. Ironically, to follow the via regia in the context of Alcuin's anti-adoptionist writings is precisely to acknowledge that there is no medium between proprium and adoptivum.

Perhaps Epistula ad Gundradam (c. 800-802) is the single most important illustration of the character and continuity of Alcuin's dialectical development. Showing clear signs in this short letter of borrowing from his own De dialectica, Alcuin first defines the term proprium in the context of the adoptionist controversy, and then proceeds to list in skeletal form most of the syllogisms used in his anti-adoptionist treatises and letters. What is most striking about the letter is that his list of syllogisms, which he calls interrogationes, takes a question-and-answer format that anticipates the scholastic method of quaestiones.³⁵ Alcuin begins each question with the formula, interrogandum est, and then breaks down the main question into subsidiary questions, each of which he anwers with the formula inferendum est. Finally, he resolves the issue by a final objection which shows the error or absurdity of the earlier questions.

Epistula ad Gundradam indicates how far Alcuin had developed both his dialectical knowledge as well as his technique in communicating this still new discipline to his students. It is no accident, however, that this most condensed collection of syllogisms found in Alcuin's writings confronts the major issues of the adoptionist controversy. Since the letter was written only slightly later than Alcuin's most dialectical anti-adoptionist treatise, Septem Libri contra Felicem, which was composed in preparation for his first and only debate with Felix at the Council of Achen, it is likely that Alcuin was preparing for Gundrada a condensed outline of syllogisms originally worked out in the rigor of that same debate with Felix.³⁶ In contrast to the years between his composition of the Frankish Synodica of 794 and his subsequent Libellus against Felix of 798, when the quoting of authorities clearly took precedence over dialectical argumentation, debate at the Council of Achen of 799 would have provided an occasion for Alcuin to introduce dialectical argumentation on a scale not seen before in his or his opponent's letters or treatises. Thus, since Alcuin's letter educates Gundrada in the art of dialectic precisely by means of a small arsenal of dialectical responses to the full range of adoptionist positions as Alcuin saw them, it can be viewed as a dialectical microcosm of Alcuin's engagement with his adoptionist opponents. In many ways, therefore, Epistula ad Gundradam fulfills Alcuin's declaration in his well-known letter to Charlemagne, introducing De fide, of the necessity of dialectical argumentation in seeking theological truths.³⁷

With these few examples from Alcuin's De dialectica, it becomes clear that, by using and re-using the material in his De dialectica, Alcuin engages in an on-going glossing of his authorities, and in the process achieves a continuity of thought that has not been noticed by modern scholars. In order, therefore, to get a clear idea of Alcuin as both a master and practitioner of dialectic, his dialectical writings must be viewed as a whole, and in light of his entire theological corpus, rather than piecemeal, and on the basis of individual texts alone. It is to be hoped that the difficulty of evaluating an author who patches together verbatim quotations to the degree that Alcuin does will not dissuade scholars from taking a closer look at Alcuin's De dialectica.

Notes

1. Carl Prantl, Geschichte der Logik im Abendland (Leipzig, 1927), I, 17; Prantl describes Alcuin's citations from Boethius' De differentiis topicis as “eine armselige Auswahl einiger Beispiele von hypothetischen Schlüssen, welche Boethius dort entwickelt …”

2. A. van de Vyver, “Les étapes du développement philosophique du Haut Moyen-Age,” Revue belge de philosophie et d'histoire, 8 (1929), 431: “Si le De dialectica est considéré avec raison comme le plus médiocre traité d'Alcuin, c'est que son époque ne possédait encore qu'une connaissance bien rudimentaire de la logique. Par le nombre et l'importance de ses sources—le premier usage des commentaires de Boèce au Moyen-Age—on doit continuer à reconnaître au maître du Palais le rôle d'initiateur, en logique plus encore que dans d'autres domaines.”

3. AIthough it is not possible to date De dialectica precisely, it is generally agreed that it was written no later than c. 796-797, which is the approximate date of the De rhetorica, the text most closely associated with De dialectica in the manuscript tradition. See Max Manitius, Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur tea Mitelalters 1 (1911), 282-283; and Donald Bullough, “Alcuin and the Kingdom of Heaven,” in Carolingian Essays: Andrew W. Mellon Lectures in Early Christian Studies, ed. Uta-Renate Blumenthal (Washington D.C: Catholic Univ. of America Press, 1983), p. 37.

4. De dialectica: PL 101,966: a latitudine substantiae primo haec incipit diffinitio; quia quidquid naturarum est, substantia dici potest.

5. Ibid., 965A-C: [I]deo major terminus justitia est quam homo, quia latius patet. See Boethius, De differentiis topicis: PL 64,1175C. According to Van de Vyver, p. 431, there is no question of Alcuin's having used Boethius' text, but rather a lengthy citation from Boethius' text in the second redaction of Cassiodorus' Institutiones: PL 70,1176A-1177D, which Alcuin popularized. For this to be the case, however, one would have to explain why Alcuin paraphrases a passage from Boethius' text that is not in Cassiodorus' citation of the De differentiis topicis:

   De differentiis topicis, 1176: Conditionalium vero propositionum, quas Graeci hypotheticas vocant partes, sunt simplices propositiones, cujus quidem ea pars quae prius dicitur antecedens, quae posterius consequens appellatur, ut in hac propositione quae dicit: si rotundum est, volubile est. Rotundum esse antecedit, volubile esse consequitur.

   De dialectica, 965C: A. Sunt enim aliae propositiones argumentorum hypotheticae, id est, conditionalis. C. Quomodo conditionales? A. Quibus conditio aliqua supponitur; et sunt duplices, hoc modo, ut Omnis homo, si bonus est, justus est; ita tandem justus est homo, si bonitatem habet. Item: Coelum, si rotundum est, volubile est; ita tandem [Coelum] volubile est, si rotundum est.

   Since Van de Vyver gives no reason for the inaccessibility of the De differentiis topicis to Alcuin, I suggest that, because of the above close paraphrase of a portion of Boethius' text not in the Institutiones, one may assume that Alcuin could have had access to Boethius' text as well as Cassiodorus'.

6. Ibid., 965B: C. Mirum mihi est, quomodo accidens major sit quam substantia. A. Quid enim, candela vel lux, quae de candela emicat, major vel melior? C. Utique lux. A. Nonne lux accidens est candelae, et candela substantia est? C. Est, et agnosco in eo accidens posse esse substantia melius et majus.

7. Ibid., 973B: A. Nam omne nomen aliquid significat, visible vel invisibile, substantiale vel accidens. C. [Quomodo substantiale, vel accidens]? A. Omnis enim natura, quae substantia dici potest; ut homo. Et omni igitur naturae, praeter Dei solius, aliquid accidit; ut homini in corpore calor, in animo disciplina C. Nunquid non Deo accidit bonitas, justitia, et caeterae virtutes? A. Non accidit ei bonitas et justitia; sed [Al., quia] ipse est bonitas et justitia: ita est de aliis virtutibus sententiendum est. See Alcuin's De fide sanctae et individuae trinitatis: PL 101,24B, for a quotation very similar to this one. The quotation in the De fide is taken from the Ps. Augustine, De locutione divina: PL 67,l256.

8. Idem.,967C-D: [I]tem fit diffinitio quaedam per privantiam, ut si quaeratur quid sit substantia, dicatur quod neque qualitas est neque quantitas, neque aliquod accidens; hoc enim genere diffinitionis et Deus utcunque intelligi potest; dum enim, quid sit Deus, nullo modo comprehendere valeamus, id est, naturam ejus, ut est, nullus effari potest; sed ex eo, quod non est, secundum philosophos, definiendus est; ut si dicamus: Deus neque corpus est, neque animal, neque ullum elementum, neque sensus noster, neque intellectus, neque aliquid, quod ex his capi possit.

9. Ps. Augustine Categoriae decem, in ed. L. Minio-Paluello, Aristoteles Latinus I,1-5 (Bruges, 1961), p. 146: … neque in subiecto est neque de subiecto significatur.

10. This letter to Arno should probably be dated closer to 802 rather than earlier, since his statement that God should properly be called essence closely matches his statement in the De fide: PL 101,24: Cui profecto ipsum esse, unde essentia nominata est, maxime ac verissime competit.

11. MGH [Monumenta Germanide Historica] Epp. 4, no. 148, p. 426: Quod vero me interrogare vestram sancitatem placuit, quid sit inter substantiam, essentiam et subsistentiam? aut si dici fas sit sanctam Trinitatem esse naturam, sciendum est, quod essentia proprie de Deo dicitur, qui semper est, quod est, qui Moysi ait: Ego sum, qui sum. Deus enim solus fere est, quia incommutabilis est; quicquid enim mutabile est, quodammodo vere non est, quia esse poterit, quod non est, vel non esse, quod est.

12. Ibid.: Substantia vero commune est nomen omnium rerum, quae sunt: caelum, sol, tuna, terra, arbores, herbae, animalia viventia quaeque, homines etiam, substantiae dicuntur.

13. De dialectica: PL 101,966D: [Q]uidquid naturarum est, substantia dici potest.

14. MGH Epp. 4, no. 148, p. 426: [Nam] quod nulla substantia est, nihil omnino est, substantia ergo aliquid esse est. Deus igitur substantia est.

15. Ibid.: [E]t summa substantia et prima substantia, et omnium substantiarum causa, quia omnium rerum creator est.

16. Ibid., p. 427: … nam substantia dicitur, quia subsistit.

17. De dialectica: PL 101,954D: Substantia dicitur, quia subsistit, ut est unaquaeque natura in sua proprietate.

18. De trinitate ad Fredegisum quaestiones XXVIII: PL 101,59C: Quia Deus et omnipotens, et magnus, et bonus, et aeternus, substantialia nomina sunt, et ad se dicuntur: ideo non licet ea plurali numero dicere, sed singulari; et omne nomen, quod substantiam Dei vel essentiam significat, semper singulari numero proferendum est. Pater, et Filius, et Spiritus sanctus, relativa sunt nomina, et ideo tres personae recte dicuntur.

19. De dialectica: PL 101,961A: Nam usiae proprium est, ut sit singularis atque una numero, … ut puta, homo singularis usia est atque unius numeri … See Categoriae decem, p. 164.

20. De trinitate ad Fredegisum quaestiones XXVIII: PL 101,59D: Secundum dialecticam relativa nomina sunt, quae ad aliud aliquid referuntur, sicut dominus ad servum, et servus ad dominum, pater ad filium, et filius ad patrem. Prorsus cum dico Pater, Filium [simul] signifo, quia non est Pater nisi Filius sit cui sit Pater. Item non est Filius nisi sit Pater cui sit Filius.

21. De dialectica: PL 101,959A: Tunc ergo et vere et proprie ad aliquid dicitur, cum sub uno ortu atque occasu et id quod jungitur, invenitur; ut puta, servus et dominus, utrumque vel simul est, vel simul non est. Etenim cum dominum dixeris, necessario existet et servus; cum vero dominum tuleris, nec servus apparet.

22. MGH Concilia 2, 1, 155: Si igitur mox a tempore conceptionis verus Deus Dei filius conceptus est, quando fuit, ut homo esset sine Deo, unde adoptaretur in filium? Sicut enim numquam fuit, ut Deus pater esset sine Deo filio, de quo dictum est: In principio erat verbum, ita numquam fuit, ut homo Iesus esset sine Deo … Sicut enim Arrius filium separavit a patre dicendo: Erat, quando non erat Dei filius, ita per adoptionem vos separatis hominem Christum a Deo filio. See Luitpold Wallach, Alcuin and Charlemagne, Studies in Carolingian History and Literature (Ithaca, NY, 1959), p. 147 ff., for the dating of the letter to 794, and its attribution to Alcuin.

23. Ibid., 959B: Ita de patre et filio. Ac ideo secundum hanc categoriae regulam miranda est Arii, vel magis miseranda, et ejus quoque sociorum stulta caecitas; asserentes Filium secundum tempus Patri esse posteriorem. Dum omnino constat secundum dialecticam simul consempiternum esse Filium cum Patre. Et si Deus Pater … aeternus est, utique et Filius aeternus est secundum dialecticae rationis necessitatem.

24. MGH Epp. 4, no. 166, p. 273: [I]ntelligentes alia nomina in Christo deo propria esse, alia significativa; et discernite, quid cui rei conveniat. Propria nomina sunt in Christo: unigenitus, primogenitus, deus, Dei filius, et dominus Iesus Christus. Significativa nomina sunt propter quasdam actiones, quae conplete sunt in illo: leo, lapis, ovis, vitulus, vermis, et alia plurima quae ratione discernenda sunt.

25. Alcuin should be excused here for the ambiguity in his use of the term substance. His intent is more logical than theological insofar as he is working from the logical notion of substance in relation to accidents, rather than from the technical, Trinitarian meaning of the term. His purpose is to differentiate Christ from other men, and not from the other Persons of the Trinity.

26. De dialectica: PL 101,967A-B: … quae substantiam cuiuslibet naturae propriae demonstrat …

27. Ibid.: … actum hominis significat, non substantiam.

28. Ibid., 963C-D: Etiam secundum philosophos, qui virtutes semper medias esse dixerunt, et ex utraque parte habere vitia. Et hoc reor Apostolum significasse, dum dicit via regia nobis gradiendum, neque ad dexteram, neque ad sinistram declinandum: ut plus justum, et minus justum.

29. See Luitpold Wallach, Alcuin and Charlemagne, Studies in Carolingian History and Litterature (Ithaca, NY, 1959), pp. 67-72.

30. MGH Epp. 4, no. 137, p. 211: Per apostolicae doctrinae publicam pergite stratam, nec per diverticula cuiuslibet novitatis in dexteram vel in sinistram a via regia declinate.

31. Ibid.,955B: Omonyma sunt, cum suae res commune accipiunt nomen, rei vero interpretatione separantur; ut, homo pictus et homo verus. In his namque unum nomen est, ratio vero vel interpretatio diversa. See Categoriae decem, p. 135.

32. Ibid.,955D: Similitudo, ut homo pictus et verus sola in similitudine copulantur … See Categoriae decem, p. 136.

33. See Luitpold Wallach, “Libri Carolini and Patristics,” in The Classical Tradition, Literary and Historical Studies in Honor of Harry Caplan, L. Wallach ed., (Ithaca Cornell Univ. Press 1966), p. 457, for a comparison of the opposition homo pictushomo verus in Alcuin's De dialectica and the Libri Carolini. Wallach also discusses other logical terminology that the two texts share. See also Donald Bullough, p. 37, n. 80, for a criticism of Wallach's view that the Categoriae decem influenced the author of the Libri Carolini through the medium of Alcuin's De dialectica.

34. MGH Epp. 4, no. 204, p. 339: quid sit medium inter verum et non verum secundum artem dialecticam, interrogandum est, si una persona possit esse homo verus et homo pictus, qui est non verus homo. Si dicit, non posse, inferendum est nec in Christo, qui est una persona, in duabus naturis verum esse potest et non verum, sed quicquid in eo est, verum est, quia ipse totus est Deus et totus verus filius Dei et tota veritas in eo est et nihil habet figmenti in se.

35. Ibid., p. 338: Quia novi prudentiam vestram optime in dialecticis subtilitatibus eruditam esse, placuit paucas interrogationes dialecticae disciplinae huic nostrae cartulae iniungere, quibus evacuari possit adsertio adoptionis vel nuncupationis in Christo.

36. See Bullough, p. 54-55.

37. MGH Epp. 4, no. 257: [N]ecnon, ut convincerem eos, qui minus utile aestimabant vestram nobilissimam intentionem dialecticae disciplinae discere velle rationes, quas beatus Augustinus in libris de sancta Trinitate ad prime necessarias esse putavit, dum profundissimas de sancta Trinitate quaestiones, non nisi categoriarum subtilitate explanari posse probavit.