HIST-102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 38: Byzantine Iconoclasm, Libri Carolini, Alcuin
10 Oct 2020
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He came from york, and he was a product of the vigorous northumbrian monastic tradition that had produced earlier scholar-monks like bede and st. boniface. Apart from overseeing the activities of all the court scholars, alcuin devoted himself particularly to the enormous task of producing a new, corrected edition of st. jerome"s. Thousands of scribal errors had crept into the text over the centuries. Alcuin gathered and collated as many manuscripts as possible, from all over europe, and combed over the texts word by word. His mastery of latin enabled him to eradicate obvious errors; and in the process he not only produced a wholly new and accurate bible, but he also introduced an entirely new way of writing. In ancient times reading was an oral activity: one pronounced the words as one read them. If you look again at the collapsed sentence above, you will find it is much easier to read aloud than silently.
