Editing Alcuin (section)

=== Literary influence ===
Alcuin made the abbey school into a model of excellence and students flocked to it. He had many manuscripts copied using outstandingly beautiful [[calligraphy]], the [[Carolingian minuscule]] based on round and legible [[uncial]] letters. He wrote many letters to his English friends, to [[Arno of Salzburg|Arno, bishop of Salzburg]] and above all to Charlemagne. These letters (of which 311 are extant) are filled mainly with pious meditations, but they form an important source of information as to the literary and social conditions of the time and are the most reliable authority for the history of [[humanism]] during the [[Carolingian]] age. Alcuin trained the numerous monks of the abbey in piety, and in the midst of these pursuits, he died.

Alcuin is the most prominent figure of the [[Carolingian Renaissance]], in which three main periods have been distinguished: in the first of these, up to the arrival of Alcuin at the court, the Italians occupy a central place; in the second, Alcuin and the English are dominant; in the third (from 804), the influence of [[Theodulf of Orléans]] is preponderant.

Alcuin also developed manuals used in his educational work – a [[grammar]] and works on [[rhetoric]] and [[dialectics]]. These are written in the form of a [[dialogue]], and in two of them the interlocutors are Charlemagne and Alcuin. He wrote several [[theological]] treatises: a ''De fide Trinitatis'', and commentaries on the Bible.{{sfn|Page|1909|p=15}} Alcuin is credited with inventing the first known [[question mark]], though it did not resemble the modern symbol.{{sfn|Truss|2003|p=76}}

Alcuin transmitted to the [[Franks]] the knowledge of Latin culture, which had existed in [[History of Anglo-Saxon England|Anglo-Saxon England]]. A number of his works still exist. Besides some graceful epistles in the style of [[Venantius Fortunatus]], he wrote some long poems, and notably he is the author of a history (in verse) of the church at York, ''Versus de patribus, regibus et sanctis Eboracensis ecclesiae''. At the same time, he is noted for making one of the only explicit comments on [[Old English poetry]] surviving from the early [[Middle Ages]], in a letter to one Speratus, the bishop of an unnamed English [[Episcopal see|see]] (possibly [[Unwona]] of Leicester): {{lang|la|"verba Dei legantur in sacerdotali convivio: ibi decet lectorem audiri, non citharistam; sermones patrum, non carmina gentilium. Quid [[Hinieldus]] cum Christo?"}} ("Let God's words be read at the episcopal dinner-table. It is right that a reader should be heard, not a harpist, patristic discourse, not pagan song. What has [[Ingeld]] to do with Christ?").<ref>Donald A. Bullough, "What has Ingeld to do with Lindisfarne?", ''Anglo-Saxon England'', 22 (1993), 93-125 (p. 93 for the Latin [quoted from ''Epistolae Karolini Aevi II'', ed. by E. Dummler, ''Monumenta Germaniae Historica'', Epistula 4 (Berlin, 1895), p. 183 (no. 12)]; p. 124 for the translation); {{doi|10.1017/S0263675100004336}}.</ref>

==== Perceived homoeroticism ====
Some historians, including the queer historian [[John Boswell]], have identified what they consider to be a [[homoerotic]] or homosexual [[subtext]] in Alcuin's writings.{{sfn|Boswell|2015|p=189}}{{sfn|Bromell|2002|p=16}}{{sfn|Coon|2011|p=18}} Others, like [[Allen Frantzen]], have disputed this characterisation of his work; Frantzen identifies Alcuin's language with that of medieval Christian ''amicitia'' or friendship.{{sfn|Frantzen|1998|p=198}}{{efn |See also {{harvnb|Jaeger|1991}} }} Douglas Dales and [[Rowan Williams]] say "the use of language drawn [by Alcuin] from the ''[[Song of Songs]]'' transforms apparently erotic language into something within Christian friendship – 'an ordained affection{{'"}}.{{sfn|Dales|Williams|2013|p=228}} According to David Clark, passages in some of Alcuin's writings can be seen to display homosocial desire, even possibly homoerotic imagery, though he argues that it is not possible to necessarily determine whether they were the result of an outward expression of erotic feelings on the part of Alcuin.{{sfn|Clark|2009|p=80}}