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S T U D I E S
A M E R I C A N
I T A L I A N

NEOREALISM AND
THE “NEW” ITALY
A N D

Compassion in the Development

of Italian Identity
I T A L I A N

Simonetta Milli Konewko

Italian and Italian American Studies

Series Editor

Stanislao G. Pugliese
Hofstra University
Hempstead, New York, USA
Aims of the Series
This series brings the latest scholarship in Italian and Italian American
history, literature, cinema, and cultural studies to a large audience of spe-
cialists, general readers, and students. Featuring works on modern Italy
(Renaissance to the present) and Italian American culture and society by
established scholars as well as new voices, it has been a longstanding force
in shaping the evolving fields of Italian and Italian American Studies by
re-emphasizing their connection to one another.
 Simonetta Milli Konewko

Neorealism and the

“New” Italy
Compassion in the Development of Italian Identity
Simonetta Milli Konewko
University of Wisconsin Milwaukee
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA

Italian and Italian American Studies

ISBN 978-1-137-54132-1 ISBN 978-1-137-52416-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-52416-4

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016943534

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.

Cover image: © INTERFOTO / Alamy Stock Photo

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd. New York
Ai miei genitori e modelli di vita, Omero Milli e Lilia Busti Milli
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Through writing this book, I understood the significance of my experi-

ence in two different countries, Italy and the USA. There are individuals
in both places without whom this work would not have been written and
to whom I am significantly grateful.
I received different forms of support at the University of Wisconsin-
Milwaukee as this book took shape. I am especially thankful to Robin
Pickering-Iazzi for her insightful investigation of the argument and priceless
recommendations and to Gwynne Kennedy for her knowledgeable guid-
ance and assistance. This work would not have been conceivable without
their participation. I thank Michelle Bolduc, Peter Paik, Caroline Seymour-
Jorn, and Jenny Peshut for their treasured support during this progress, and
all the members of the Department of French, Italian, and Comparative
Literature for their inspiration. I want to extend my appreciation to Jeffrey
Merrick, former Associate Dean of Letters and Science, and Steve Atkinson
for their valuable support for this study. A University of Wisconsin-
Milwaukee Graduate School Research Committee Award (2011) funded
the research at the Cinecittà Archive and Biblioteca Nazionale in Rome.
I am thankful to Giorgio Alberti, Alastair Hamilton, Kristie Hamilton,
and Kathleen Woodward, who sparked my interest in literature, history,
and theories of compassion. I am deeply grateful to Daniela Guardamagna,
Marina Perez De Mendiola, and Lawrence Baldassaro, who sustained my
effort from the beginning. I am also grateful to Daria Valentini, Carol
Lazzaro-Weis, and Stefania Lucamante for supporting my research and for
providing invaluable guidance through their own work. I owe my debt of
gratitude to Elizabeth Cuneo, who inspired me to follow this adventure

vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

and offered unceasing reinforcement, and to Gerald Feldman for provid-

ing clarity and unending good humor.
I am appreciative of Henry Konewko for disclosing his shrewd view-
point on the war and generously providing caring assistance. I am thank-
ful to Ann Konewko, Erika Ozog, and the members of the Ozog and
Savoretti families for their encouragement.
I am strongly obliged to my parents, Omero Milli and Lilia Busti Milli,
who experienced and explained to me the terror of war and the meaning
of emotional accountability and attention for others. Their moral honesty
profoundly influenced my opinions and my existence. I thank them for
their unwavering faith in my capabilities. Special thanks also to my sister,
Nadia Milli, who shared her curiosity and knowledge of Italian history and
offered much support.
I am immensely in debt to my husband, Mark Konewko, for his generous
sustenance, endless suggestions, and endurance to cope with my work, and
to my sons, Sebastian and Leonardo, for their excitement, ideas, and cheer-
ful inspiration. Their trust in me has changed difficulties into possibilities.
I am appreciative of Palgrave Macmillan for providing the great series
“Italian and Italian American Studies” comprising this work and of its
expert editor, Stanislao Pugliese. I thank Brigitte Shull, Head of Editorial
and Author Services, Ryan Jenkins, Commissioning Editor, and Paloma
Yannakakis, Editorial Assistant, for their professional help during the dif-
ferent stages of this progression.
Some sections of this book have been published in different forms. Chapter
10 was published in Rivista di Studi Italiani, 29(1), 2011, as “Functions
of Compassion in Natalia Ginzburg’s Representation of Traditional Family
and Extended Communities.” Chapter 11 appeared in A. Fàvaro (Ed.)
Alberto Moravia e la ciociara. Letteratura. Storia. Cinema. as “La cioci-
ara: la funzione della compassione come critica sociale,” www.edizionisin-
estesie.it. Part of Chap. 12 was published in Forum Italicum 29(1), 2011,
as “L’Agnese va a morire and Meanings of Compassion in the Female
Partisans’ Struggle Against German Nazis and Italian Fascists.” Another
part of Chap. 12 appeared in Journal of Literature and Art Studies, 2(7),
2012, as “Rossellini’s Compassions as Social Evaluation.” Chapter 14 was
translated into Ukrainian and published in Holocaust and Modernity, Studies
in Ukraine and the World 1(9), 2011, as “Bиживaння в Aушвiцi тa узи
cпiвчуття у тaбopax” (“Survival in Auschwitz and Compassionate Bonds in
the Camps”). Chapter 15 was published in Rivista di Studi Italiani, 31(1),
2013, as “Smoke over Birkenau and Models of Female Compassion.”
 CONTENTS

1 Introduction 1

Part I Neorealism: What Is and Is Not 9

2 The Italian Roots of Neorealism 13

Cinematographic Origins 13
Literary Origins 17

3 Neorealism and Films 23

Melodrama and Genuine Authenticity 25
On-Location Shooting: War-Damaged Urban Centers 28
Nonprofessional Actors and Intergenerational
Sets of Characters 32

4 Neorealism and Literature 37

Local Identities 38
Female Voices in the Postwar Period 41

5 Emotions in Neorealism 47
Cinema and Emotions 48
Literature and Emotions 51

ix
x CONTENTS

Part II Compassion: What Is and Is Not 55

6 The Nature of Compassion 57

7 Compassion and Pity, Sympathy, and Empathy 65

8 Occurrences of Compassion 71

9 Rethinking Compassion in Light of Neorealism 77

The Three Beliefs of Aristotle and Nussbaum 77
Knowledge and Emotion 82

10 The Discourse of Compassion During Fascism 87

Mussolini 89
Carlo Bernari 97
Conclusions 108

Part III Charting Landscapes of Compassion

During World War II 111

11 Compassion in Ginzburg’s Depictions

of Family Relationships 117
Ginzburg’s Compassion Within the Family 119
Ginzburg’s Compassion Outside the Family 127
Conclusions 130

12 Moravia’s Representation of Compassion 133

Compassion and Social Conditions 137
Compassion and Concept of Nationality 139
Compassion in the Countryside and City 141
Compassion and Atrocity 145
Compassion and Gender Differences 149
Conclusions 153
 CONTENTS xi

13 Women, Compassion, and the Resistance

Movement in L’Agnese va a morire 159
Agnese as the Subject of Compassion 164
Agnese as the Object of Compassion 168
Conclusions 173

14 Compassion and the Construction

of Women’s Identity in Rome, Open City 179
Pina’s Compassion 181
Laura’s and Marina’s Compassion 192
Conclusions 195

Part IV Compassion and the Holocaust 201

15 Compassion in Survival in Auschwitz 205

Deceptive Compassion 207
Compassion 211
Conclusions 220

16 Compassion in Smoke over Birkenau 225

Gustine, Lili, Maria, and Bruna’s Compassion 228
Conclusions 239

Bibliography 243

Index 263
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Neorealism and the “New” Italy: Compassion in the Development of Italian

Identity centers on the investigation of the emotion of compassion the
neorealist artists express through their characters’ interactions. It proposes
compassion as an emotion that may be activated to unify certain individu-
als and communities and explores the meanings that compassion attains
in promoting emotional intelligence, influencing the formation of Italian
identity, and in redefining neorealism as a topic of investigation.
Specifically, the questions, textual examples, and theories of emotions that
this analysis addresses are aimed to produce a deeper understanding of neo-
realist representations of the “anguish of a nation,” and the forms of compas-
sion through which Italy is re-encoded and reconstructed. By analyzing the
overlooked roles that compassion plays in the development of Italian iden-
tity, and by redefining neorealism as a field of study highlighting representa-
tions of a particular period of Italian history, this work explores compassion
as an emotion that is constructed to connect individuals at many levels.
The book is divided into four parts focusing on the mechanisms that
allow compassion to operate during the postwar period. Part I presents
the contextual material to understand neorealism. Part II provides the
background to understand compassion and its functions during the Fascist
time. Part III deals with representations of compassion and the connec-
tion with different examples of female characters’ participation in the war.
Part IV centers on the depiction of compassion in the most horrifying
circumstances of the Holocaust.

© The Author(s) 2016 1

S. Milli Konewko, Neorealism and the “New” Italy, Italian and Italian
American Studies, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-52416-4_1
2 NEOREALISM AND THE “NEW” ITALY

Neorealist authors and filmmakers fashioned their works out of the

ruins of World War II and attracted global approval for their elaboration
of an aesthetic defining post-Fascist Italy. Neorealism was not an official
artistic school with rigid beliefs but it became noted for its literary and
cinematic attention toward events that characterized the ordinary lives of
common people during Fascism, the Nazi Occupation, World War II, and
the postwar period in Italy. Usually perceived as thriving from the mid-
1940s to the mid-1950s, the movement extended considerably during
the 1960s and 1970s as many authors and directors resumed the original
subjects of neorealism.
The neorealist movement has been connected mainly with leftist scholars
who hoped that a more democratic form of government would ultimately
succeed in Italy after the defeat of Fascism. Neorealist artists renounced the
verbal embellishments generally associated with the Fascist regime (1922–
1942) and shaped a documentary style, recounting the ruthless material
situations of postwar Italy in unpretentious and colloquial language. They
focused their consideration on social, economic, and political problems, and
developed the concept of social commitment of artists in order to renovate
Italy and Italians. Neorealism conveyed emotions, realities, and conflicts
formerly masked by the Fascists. To understand the expansion of the neo-
realist attitude and methods, theorists agree that it is central to acknowledge
the significance of the historic time in which these ideas started. Neorealist
artists lived through an exclusive period of transformation that inspired their
ways of perceiving and sharing present or past situations.
With the aim of offering the critical background for analyzing compassion
in neorealist representations, Part I offers an overview of the literary and cin-
ematographic origin of neorealism, the connection between the movement
and its cinematographic and literary productions, its main subjects, and the
methods used by neorealist artists to introduce emotional involvement.
Based on the models of Aristotle, M. Nussbaum, and Whitebrook,
compassion is considered as the affective participation in another’s experi-
ence, recorded through variations in affect or insight or through actions
to better the condition of another individual. It can be displayed in a
multiplicity of manners such as a reassuring word, a supportive action, or a
helpful gesture recognizing that the other person is facing a difficult time.
Compassion, which embraces sympathy in M. Nussbaum’s terms and pity
in Whitebrook’s, specifies both the manifestation of an emotional con-
dition and the immediate or evaluated involvement in another person’s
misfortune or anguish and the consequent expression of that realization.
 INTRODUCTION 3

Through the analysis of characters, circumstances, and plots, neoreal-

ist artists suggest a way to relate compassion with a rational progression
and to propose a new evaluation of this emotion. The depictions of char-
acters, which demonstrate comprehension of another individual’s plight,
present compassion as an emotion that can be generated by observing
the difficulties experienced by others and through active participation
in specific situations. These displays of compassion arise from reflective
consideration of a specific circumstance or as instant reactions to devas-
tating suffering.
Compassion can be distinguished by other similar emotions, such as
pity, empathy, and sympathy. Examining the intensity of the pain or the
point of view of the perception, specialists have struggled to underline
these differences. For this examination, it is significant to keep in mind
features of these similar emotions since here compassion could include
characteristics traditionally attributed to other similar emotions. The focus
of this work is not the examination of the degree of pain or the point of
view of the observation but rather the political and social repercussions
that emotional participation in others’ suffering may generate. Specifically,
this analysis focuses on the meaning and implications of different compas-
sionate behaviors on postwar Italian society. In that context, compassion
is activated in connection with the ability of mastering a new moral code
resulting from the struggle of dangerous circumstances such as the war,
the Fascist and Nazi occupation, and the Holocaust.
In order to provide a critical structure for analyzing compassion in neo-
realist representations, Part II briefly examines the functions that emotions
and particularly compassion exercised in the cultural discourse during
the Fascist time. It compares the usage of compassion in Mussolini’s and
Bernari’s works, recognizing that compassion achieved libratory as well as
punitive purposes. Mussolini, addressing women as objects of compassion
because of their sacrifice to the nation, conceives this emotion as a means
to impose disciplinary control. In his model, compassion is sacrificed
for political achievements. Bernari, unlike the political dictator, utilizes
compassion as a tool to better relationships and to offer individuals new
models of behavior. Through compassion shown by his characters, Bernari
proposes innovative manners to relating among individuals, highlighting
also the misery of the political and social conditions of that time.
Part III centers on four different models of neorealist texts, which under-
line diverse representations of women’s partaking in the fight against Fascists
and Nazis. The following texts have been examined: Natalia Ginzburg’s
4 NEOREALISM AND THE “NEW” ITALY

autobiography Family Sayings, Alberto Moravia’s Two Women, Renata

Viganò’s L’Agnese va a morire (Agnese Goes to Die), and Roberto Rossellini’s
Rome, Open City.
The works by Natalia Ginzburg and Alberto Moravia propose compas-
sion as an emotion often unused toward members of the same family or
middle class. Proposing different methods for individuals to create their
communities, the authors challenge previous standards proposed by the
Fascist culture. By questioning the patriarchal power of her Jewish family,
Ginzburg promotes an Italian identity respectful of gender differences and
minorities, thus encouraging less rigid gender divisions.
Demonstrating the importance of understanding the suffering of oth-
ers, Moravia employs compassion, triggered or denied among the char-
acters or toward the environment, to instill awareness of crucial cultural
elements, thus allowing Moravia to provide his own social statement. For
instance, he rejects a blind nationalism, suggesting a more inclusive Italian
identity, and enlarges the concept of neorealism through the promotion of
a consideration for the plight of others.
By questioning the connection between women and obedience and
passivity, Viganó challenges the supposition that during the war, women’s
involvement was merely at home. In contrast, she demonstrates that wom-
en’s abilities moved beyond the domestic sphere. Through their dynamic
contribution, they functioned efficiently in the more extended commu-
nity, helping in achieving the partisans’ political cause and demonstrating
women’s effort in exploring a new space for emancipation.
Rossellini, similarly to Viganó, uses compassion as a tool to propose
conflict resolution and to endorse the political and social involvement of
modern women. However, unlikely Viganó, the film also communicates
that those features are appreciated when females display the patriarchal
values worshiped by Fascism. This neorealist director denies any compas-
sionate reply toward female figures exemplifying manners in opposition to
the patriarchal description of women. Therefore, the commitment to the
roles of wife and mother associated with the domestic sphere are still an
important prerogative for Rossellini. The director suggests a less inventive
way of problem-solving and proposes an innovative postwar female Italian
identity but still connected to previous models.
The examination of compassion in the previous neorealist works displays
different ways of promoting individuals’ emotional ability perceived as a sig-
nificant element for the new Italian identity. Emotional ability allows indi-
viduals to reach knowledge and consequently mental well-being, self- and
 INTRODUCTION 5

cultural awareness, and conflict resolution. Ginzburg’s work confirms the

psychological importance of mental well-being as a central element in
human behavior. As affirmed by recent studies, this component is relevant
to permit individuals to value their emotions and use them to influence
their life and community positively.
Moravia uses self- and cultural awareness to reflect on the social condi-
tion, acknowledge the emotions of others, and connect with them. Self-
awareness is the individuals’ ability to consider both their individuality and
others’ standpoints. Cultural awareness is the skill of becoming receptive
to our cultural values. The author employs these traits to promote aware-
ness of individuals’ cultural values and similarities with others, thus facili-
tating communication among them.
Through the construction of idealized female characters’ representa-
tions of compassion, Viganó and Rossellini propose conflict resolution,
which is a human process associated with individuals’ emotional capability
and aptitude to recognize the value of significant elements for others. This
practice includes communication and motivation. Therefore, the neoreal-
ist authors teach that individuals’ capability to generate a change in oth-
ers is connected to the ability to understand their perspectives since this
approach opens pathways to creative problem-solving. Rossellini, unlike
Viganó, suggests that his emotional capability is anchored to previous
ways of thinking, which affect his way of proposing solutions.
Part IV focuses on the depiction of compassion in the brutalizing sur-
roundings created by the Italian anti-Semitic racial laws (1938) and con-
centration camps. It centers on two works: two testimonial narratives,
Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi and Smoke over Birkenau by Liana
Millu. This part explores the connections between compassion and iden-
tity, imagination, gender, national, and ethnic differences. Levi employs
compassion in numerous manners. By denying it, he underlines isolation.
By using it deceptively, he exemplifies the loss of trust consequential the
gaining of personal benefit. When he depicts the prisoners reinstating
recognition for others, he shows compassionate reactions as a tool for
controlling ethical standards. These various manifestations of compassion
offer ways to understand the dynamics of compassion and a manner to
challenge the positivist view that emotions are distinct from other modes
of learning.
The stories proposed by Millu and the compassionate reactions acti-
vated by her characters accentuate manners of contrasting dehumaniza-
tion. The author proposes stories that center on the anguish of Millu’s
6 NEOREALISM AND THE “NEW” ITALY

female companions and their emotional sustenance of one another during

their imprisonment at Birkenau. These stories underline the violence, the
resistance, and the compassion of these women. Millu’s work provides a
perspective on compassion and shows that this emotion offers a system
to refashion affectional bonds and impart support among the women.
Contrasting the Nazi regime that inflicts division, Millu recommends
coalition and family connections.
Levi and Millu, as Bernari during the Fascist time, encourage the prac-
tice of compassion to create relationships that prove to be crucial for indi-
viduals’ salvation in the camps. Even if extremely difficult to be triggered,
this ability allows individuals to influence others, communicate and build
bonds, and therefore help people to progress and expand their perspective
through a limited exercise of judgment. While Levi underlines the struggle
in establishing relationships among men in the camps, Millu depicts these
bonds as a common component of women’s relationships. Contrasting
the traditional male literature that has been gender neutral, she demon-
strates that women can offer a different perspective on the Holocaust, and
that their culture suggests diverse conditions through which to express
their opportunities and act powerfully.
Through the analysis of compassion, neorealist artists encourage the
employment of emotional capability, which, by encouraging social behav-
ior, helps increase inclusion in the postwar Italian identity enlarged by rec-
ognizing others’ perspectives and suffering and by cautiously practicing the
ability of judging others. Additionally, it enhances individuals’ ability to find
positive solutions, reject a blind nationalism, promote women’s relation-
ships, and understand their different sensibilities and ways of coping with
dramatic events. Hence, neorealism becomes a tool to encourage women’s
ability to be active participants in it. By recognizing the significance of oth-
ers’ emotions and standpoints, neorealist artists admit the relativity about
their methodology. Since emotional ability is culturally constructed, these
artists leave open the possibility for further explanations in the new Italy.
The compassionate reactions examined in this work highlight power-
ful ways to value individuals’ perspectives and women’s sensibilities in the
postwar period. Although they recognize morals that neorealist artists
propose to be part of the new Italian identity, these principles could be
further explored. For instance, women’s compassionate reactions prove to
be a powerful tool to enhance their active inclusion in the postwar Italian
identity; however, the subject is far from being exhausted. Further investi-
gation could be practiced to underline women’s situation and to examine,
 INTRODUCTION 7

for instance, if their compassionate effort was practiced to understand

or reduce men’s embarrassment as a consequence of their involvement
changing.
Another potential area of enquiry is the examination of the limit of
compassion. In fact, caring for people influences an individual emotionally
and might cause exhaustion. It would be relevant to examine if postwar
individuals had a limited capacity for compassion and if this emotion would
exhaust itself under specific circumstances. The quality of a compassionate
conduct orders that it should be done for its own sake and not with the
purpose of being rewarded; however, it would be interesting to evaluate
if people will set boundaries on compassion in order to avoid depletion
of their resources and if they can find subtle methods of recognition that
could potentially recharge their batteries.
A further topic of investigation would be to explore if compassion
is an unchanging capability or if it underwent a specific evolution from
the postwar period to now, as affirmed by the study by Goetz, Keltner,
and Simon-Thomas. Moreover, of equal interest it would be to research
if this emotion becomes easier with practice or if it would be beneficial
in specific situations not to trigger it. For instance, during the dramatic
events of a war, individuals might face the difficult position of sacrificing
a few individuals for the benefit of the majority. In this context, compas-
sion is sacrificed for the advantage of many. Further examination regarding
these features of compassion could provide additional clarifications on the
practices of this emotion, the degree people are willing to open themselves
to others under dramatic conditions, and the social impacts that this
procedure generates.
The examination through this book offered a new way to systemati-
cally examine how neorealism, praised for its compassionate characters,
employs compassion to reach its own objectives. By promoting compas-
sion and emotional intelligence, neorealist artists help us to realize how
people act and adjust themselves to their social surroundings. Additionally,
they highlight actions of bravery directed toward individuals and small
communities and denounce the need of translating this quality into larger
actions in the new Italy to promote social justice for many, diminish the
anguish of the nation, and prevent tragedies originated by human desire
for triumph.
 PART I

Neorealism: What Is and Is Not

Creating their works out of the ruins of World War II, authors and film-
makers such as Primo Levi, Alberto Moravia, and Vittorio De Sica attracted
international acclaim for their elaboration of neorealism as the aesthetic
defining post-Fascist, or “new,” Italy. Although not a formalized artistic
school with prescriptive tenets, Italian neorealism became noted for its
literary and cinematic focus on stories that arose from the everyday lives
of common people during Fascism, the Nazi occupation, World War II,
and the immediate postwar period. Generally viewed as flourishing from
the mid-1940s to the mid-1950s, the movement broadened significantly
during the 1960s and 1970s as several authors and directors returned to
the original themes of neorealism.1
The neorealist movement has been associated primarily with leftist intel-
lectuals who hoped that “communism or a more egalitarian form of gov-
ernment would eventually prevail” in Italy after the defeat of Fascism to
“transform Italian society” (Pastina 86). Thus, these artists renounced the
rhetorical flourishes generally associated with the Fascist regime (1922–
1942) and fashioned a documentary style, describing the often brutal
material conditions of postwar Italy in simple, colloquial language. They
devoted substantial attention to social, economic, and political problems,
giving rise to the concept of impegno sociale, or the “social commitment”
of artists to renewing Italy and its citizens.2
Neorealism made it possible to express emotions, realities, and problems
previously camouflaged by the Fascists (Leprohon). Theorists have attrib-
uted the international success of Italian neorealism to “the compassion
of its products,” as authors and filmmakers created “poignant syntheses
10 NEOREALISM AND THE “NEW” ITALY

of the anguish experienced by a whole nation” (Pacifici 241). They also

underscored the positive influence of this emotional component in the
context of postwar Italy: “If it is possible to generalize about such matters,
one might say that the ‘new’ Italy is at once more human and compas-
sionate, less rhetorical and provincial, than the ‘old’ Italy of Mussolini”
(Pacifici 16). However, these theorists have not elaborated on the nature
of compassion as communicated by neorealist novels and films, leaving us
with several questions to explore. What is the function of compassion in
neorealist works? What features of compassion are represented in neoreal-
ist literary texts and films? This study analyzes the ways in which neoreal-
ist characters show or do not show compassion toward one another. It
considers compassion as an emotion that may be triggered to unify indi-
viduals and communities in different ways, and it explores the function of
these artistic works in promoting emotional intelligence, shaping Italian
identity, and defining neorealism as a distinct field of study through their
depictions of a specific time in Italian history.
My study centers on the thematic motifs that recur in six neorealist
works: Natalia Ginzburg’s Lessico famigliare (Family Sayings), Alberto
Moravia’s La ciociara (Two Women), Renata Viganò’s L’Agnese va a morire
(Agnese Goes to Die), Roberto Rossellini’s Roma città aperta (Rome,
Open City), Liana Millu’s Il fumo di Birkenau (Smoke over Birkenau), and
Primo Levi’s Se questo è un uomo (Survival in Auschwitz). These works
offer a rich array of characters whose identities are shaped by their expo-
sure to suffering and compassion. Equally important is the representation
of Fascist models of identity, consistently rejected by the suffering char-
acters, in these literary works and films. As neorealist artists denounced
the horrors of life during the Fascist regime and World War II, they cre-
ated a binary opposition between Fascism as rhetorical, inauthentic, and
false, on the one hand, and postwar Italian national identity as authentic
and truly compassionate on the other hand. These artists’ representa-
tions of compassion—or lack thereof—indicate how gender, sexuality,
class, ethnicity, and geographic location determine inclusion in or exclu-
sion from the new Italy, using paradigms that the claim to compassion
may naturalize.
To investigate the significance of compassion in neorealist representa-
tions, it is important not only to explore the emotion of compassion (as I
will do in Part II), but also to examine how neorealist artists perceived the
circumstances that they experienced and how they subsequently narrated
 NEOREALISM: WHAT IS AND IS NOT 11

those experiences. To understand the development of the neorealist

approach and style, theorists agree that it is crucial to recognize the mean-
ing of the historic moment in which these ideas arose. Neorealist art-
ists lived through a unique period of change that influenced their ways
of observing and communicating present or past circumstances. For
instance, Millicent Marcus affirms that when neorealist artists explored
historical subjects, they did so with the purpose of associating the past
with the present (“Italian Film in the Shadow” 15). Mark Shiel, on the
other hand, underscores the significance of the moment of change: “One
of the most important ways of thinking about neorealism has been to see
it as a moment of decisive transition in the tumultuous aftermath of world
war which produced a stylistically a philosophically distinctive cinema…”
(1). These theorists, treasuring the specific moment in history that they
were experiencing, exhibit interest in the past in order to find a connection
with their current circumstances.
Similarly, the postwar enthusiasm for a renewed freedom of expres-
sion was also highlighted by the intellectuals at Il Politecnico, a literary
magazine created and directed by Elio Vittorini in 1945, in their plea for
cultural rejuvenation. Peter Brand and Lino Pertile describe these intel-
lectuals’ intent to initiate a ground-breaking project of “ …new think-
ing and writing, addressing both cultural and more strictly scientific, even
technical, as well as sociological and other issues, and aimed at informing
and educating the working class, as well as addressing a more intellectual
readership…” (544). But although very innovative in impact, the neo-
realist artists’ approach did not suggest a radical discontinuity with the
past. On the contrary, the origins of their methodology dug deep into the
works of writers and directors in Italy and elsewhere who could be seen as
forebears of the themes and stylistic inventions that neorealist artists were
embracing and disseminating.
To examine the neorealist works mentioned above and to convey their
primary implications, particularly in connection to the emotion of com-
passion, we must examine a multiplicity of topics and related schools of
thought. For instance, it will be important to consider the cinemato-
graphic and literary origins of the movement, the association between the
movement and its cinematographic and literary productions, their main
themes, and the ways in which neorealist works established emotional
involvement.
12 NEOREALISM AND THE “NEW” ITALY

NOTES
1. Laura E. Ruberto, in Italian Neorealism and Global Cinema, affirms that
European movies about immigration, such as Gianni Amelio’s Lamerica,
(1994) also adopted the style of postwar Italian neorealism (242).
2. In contrast, Giorgio Agamben underscores the reflective aspect of art:
“Politics and art are neither tasks nor simply ‘works’: they name, rather, the
dimension in which the linguistic and corporeal, material and immaterial,
biological and social operations are made inoperative and contemplated as
such” (72).
 CHAPTER 2

The Italian Roots of Neorealism

Shortly after the war, Italian narrative literature attracted the attention of the
reading public abroad, including the American public, in a way that, accord-
ing to some critics, had been seen previously only during the time of Gabriele
d’Annunzio. This phenomenon took the Italians completely by surprise, since
they were unaware of the success that certain Italian authors had achieved
abroad. Authors such as Silone (whose successful books were first published
abroad), Moravia, Levi, and Vittorini won a new respect for Italian literature.
At the same time, a significant number of motion pictures and a uniquely
Italian style of movie-making based on attentiveness to the most unpreten-
tious details of everyday life made Italian scenery familiar to movie viewers all
over the world. The term neorealism, coined in Italy to indicate a new group
of film directors, was utilized abroad to indicate a new school of narrators as
well. As emphasized by such critics as Nicola Chiaromonte, this use of the
term may produce misinterpretations. In fact, for Chiaromonte, it may indi-
cate that “Italians had created a new kind of realism or that they had at last
discovered the century-old tradition of narrative realism” (237). A clarifica-
tion on the cinematographic and literary origins of the movement is needed.

CINEMATOGRAPHIC ORIGINS
Several theorists have investigated the origin of this new narrative form in
Italy. Some of them trace its roots back to a naturalistic impulse charac-
terizing the Neapolitan cinema before and during World War II, and to

© The Author(s) 2016 13

S. Milli Konewko, Neorealism and the “New” Italy, Italian and Italian
American Studies, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-52416-4_2
14 NEOREALISM AND THE “NEW” ITALY

a realist or verismo style cultivated in Italian cinema between 1913 and

1916 (Perry 3). Others contend that the origin of neorealism is to be
found in the literary movement called Strapaese, which developed dur-
ing the Fascist period and generated rural and regional images offered
in a naturalistic style. As Mark Antliff points out, this movement origi-
nated in the area of Tuscany and Emilia Romagna, and it acknowledged
the spirit of Fascism in the ingenuous, rural life of peasants. These artists
wished to maintain regional variances against the standardizing effects of
state domination and mass culture (141). The intellectuals of the Strapaese
movement promoted the uniqueness of each region through depictions of
unsophisticated, rustic life.
For James Hay, this myth is echoed in some neorealist films after the
war, particularly those of Visconti and De Santis. He states that despite the
similarities between prewar and postwar films, Italian film output after the
war lacked the need to venerate or preserve cultural tradition, which was
common during the 1920s and 1930s. The postwar films establish their
dramatic struggle in Italian society itself, whereas their 1930s counterparts
explore imaginary and mutual conflicts. Peter Bondanella, in his renowned
work Italian Cinema: From Neorealism to the Present, points out the close
relationship between early Italian neorealist cinema and literature, which
was influenced by the prose style of American writers such as Hemingway
and Steinbeck. For Bondanella, the creative encounter with a number of
foreign cultures, including those of the USA, Russia, and France, together
with the advent of talkies and a number of important cultural and artis-
tic developments, set the stage for the appearance of neorealism (33).
Although closely associated with Italian historic and social circumstances,
neorealist films also appear to be linked to international perceptions.
Other critics share Bondanella’s view. Mark Shiel notes the impact of the
(not widely known) Soviet montage school of the 1920s on neorealism’s
documentary tendency in depicting daily life (17). For Brunetta (Il cinema
del regime 167–174), this influence was especially facilitated through the
translation of Russian film theory by Umberto Barbaro and the teaching
of Russian filmmaking techniques at the national film school, the Centro
Sperimentale di Cinematografia led by Luigi Chiarini. Film scholar Simona
Monticelli also recognizes the impact of French and Hollywood cinemas
(457). In fact, the poetic realism of Jean Renoir, which was extremely suc-
cessful in Italy and provided some of the most important filmmakers with
their first involvement in filmmaking, was exceptionally significant for the
development of neorealism. Likewise, Hollywood cinema, which before its
 THE ITALIAN ROOTS OF NEOREALISM 15

rejection by the Fascist authorities in 1938 received extensive popular

approval in the Italian market, exercised a significant influence.
Notwithstanding the strong influence accorded to French and American
film and literature, theorists agree in affirming that the Fascist political
regime and its cinematographic apparatus exercised a considerable influence
on neorealist production. The Fascist authorities recognized the significance
of film production in fashioning and preserving the political strength of the
regime, enhancing the cult of its leader, legitimizing its power, and motivat-
ing its members (Bornigia 127). Although Mussolini, as Ruth Ben-Ghiat
affirmed, never endorsed a precise aesthetic style and was more tolerant than
other dictators toward artistic production (Fascist 9), he sought to control
any kind of behavior that opposed his government and therefore prohib-
ited any attempt by film directors or other artists to use their opinions to
incite the public against his authority. As Steven Ricci put it, Fascist cinema
was “…unworthy of enlightened critical scrutiny” (1). The Fascist govern-
ment created political organizations and censorship boards in an attempt
to organize the film industry.1 For instance, the LUCE Institute (L’Unione
Cinematografica Educativa, or Educational Cinematographic Institute) was
established in 1924 to control all cinematic operations; it aimed to cre-
ate educational films and documentaries to promote awareness of the link
between film and politics. Mussolini also opened the first Italian studio,
called Cinecittà, in 1937 to help filmmakers to produce films with Fascist
messages and ideas. Most of these were war-based films with a story line
and a substantial amount of propaganda, and they did not induce reflec-
tive introspection. As elucidated by Jacqueline Reich in “Mussolini at the
Movies: Fascism, Film, and Culture,” the film industry of the time gener-
ated “the basis for a cultural politics of evasion” (3); furthermore, “[t]he
task of directors, scriptwriters, and performers involved was not to make the
spectator think, but rather to induce him or her to forget” (3). The attempts
by the government to create a powerful national cinema produced apparent
results; as Shiel declares, “The effort of the fascist regime to influence the
character of Italian film production, distribution and exhibition transformed
the Italian film industry into the fifth largest in the world by 1942” (23).
Even though critics underline the Fascist authority’s system to avoid any
kind of self-examination through film, they recognize the power that film
production gained during the fascist time.
Despite the tight control exercised by the regime and its impact on
the artists involved, it is significant to acknowledge the important accom-
plishments of Fascist cinema and, as I will investigate in later chapters, its
16 NEOREALISM AND THE “NEW” ITALY

influence on neorealism. Notably, in order to deny any possible influence

of Fascist cinema on later productions, critics, especially before the 1970s,
often excluded it from intellectual discussions. As Steven Ricci explains,
“…having articulated an evidently fundamental discontinuity between
the cinema under fascism and contemporary Italian filmmaking, very few
studies ever sought neorealism’s cinematic antecedents” (23). In order to
facilitate a separation between films produced during and after the Fascist
time, scholars, especially before 1970s, rarely underlined the connections
in the films between the two periods.
Fascist cinema production, though delimited within the ideological
boundaries imposed by the regime, was extensive. Historical epics and
war films reinforced the principle of national superiority. They expressed
militarism, male heroism, and female subservience, as in Scipio Africanus,
produced in 1937 by Carmine Gallone following Italy’s invasion and sub-
jugation of Ethiopia in 1935. This historical film was utilized as propaganda
to justify the Fascist desire to occupy North Africa. Many critics highlight
the association that Gallone proposed between the power of Fascist Italy
and Imperial Rome. According to Federico Caprotti, “Gallone’s focus on
Roman events through the figure of Scipio at the height of the Second
Punic War was a metaphorical reworking of historical colonial discourse
into fascist imperial ambitions” (382). Other than a limited number of
films produced by Alessandro Blasetti, such as Sole (Sun, 1929) or Vecchia
guardia (The Old Guard, 1937), most of the productions belong to a
more amusing genre; as Julie Gottlieb states, “Escapist films, melodramas,
and sentimental and often frivolous comedies for the most part, which
bore a striking similarity to Hollywood features of the same era, dominated
Italian Fascist cinema” (43). These productions, which were complicit
with Fascist politics, include the comedies of Mario Camerini, who, col-
laborating with Vittorio De Sica and often using him as the main protago-
nist in the films, exhibited what some critics consider a strong tendency
toward cinematic realism. Camerini’s comedies, such as Gli uomini, che
mascalzoni (What Rascals Men Are! 1932), Darò un milione (I’ll Give a
Million, 1936), and Il Signor Max (Mister Max, 1937), focused on lower-
middle-class individuals and their visions of self-improvement in the city
environment. The thematic connection between his films starring Vittorio
De Sica and De Sica’s later neorealist production discloses, according to
Carlo Celli, a continuity between prewar and postwar Italian cinema (4),
underscoring a bond that has often been ignored.
 THE ITALIAN ROOTS OF NEOREALISM 17

LITERARY ORIGINS
Although, in accord with specific developments in Italian culture and society,
the new trend proposed a fresh approach to circumstances; it is generally
recognized that realism was not a new phenomenon within the Italian cul-
tural tradition. Scholars find a prominent realist component dating back
to Italian literary folktales. According to several texts, realism in Europe
started with Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron, in which the description
of fourteenth-century Tuscan life and customs is sufficiently harsh and
pointed to fit within the category of realism as understood today. Francesco
De Sanctis emphasizes the earthy components of Boccaccio’s comedy in
contrast with the seriousness of Dante and Petrarca’s works.2 Others note
the daily occurrences that characterize Decameron’s narrative. For instance,
folklorist Jack Zipes states that Boccaccio’s tales, also called novelle, focus
“on surprising events of everyday life and the tales (influenced by oral won-
der tales, fairy tales, fabliaux, chivalric romances, epic poetry, and fables)
were intended for the amusement and instruction of the readers” (12).
Boccaccio’s work greatly influenced later folktales in Italy and overturned
modern stereotypes of the Middle Ages by conferring upon the characters
in his stories a varied set of realistic incentives and purposes. For instance,
while he reveres the cultural significance of ideas about chivalry, he also
challenges these concepts by recognizing their falseness, thus undermin-
ing the application of chivalric ideas. Boccaccio described the full range of
medieval culture, extracting the realities that people experienced beneath
the affirmed appearances of gallantry and trust.3
Although this rich tradition of realistic narrative comprises old fairy
tales recorded from oral tradition and medieval narratives, it is ordinarily
considered that realism in Italian literary art did not reassert itself after
Boccaccio until the Romantic Age. The father of this renewal of real-
ism has been definitively identified as Alessandro Manzoni, author of
I promessi sposi (The Betrothed, 1827) among other works. Regarded as a
masterpiece of world literature and a foundation for the modern Italian
language, this novel provides a genuine depiction of the tyrannical Spanish
rule in 1628. It is believed to have been written to condemn the Austrian
empire, which controlled the area around Milan at the time when the
book was written. In his introduction to the work, Manzoni affirms his
belief that historical novels are the best aesthetic method of transmitting
the truth and of teaching the educational significance of history. The story
contains unaffected portrayals of events and explanations of characters
18 NEOREALISM AND THE “NEW” ITALY

against the background of gang scenes and the eruption of the plague in
Milan. The author provides a further clarification of the significance of his
novel, which, in his opinion, “give[s] an adequate picture of a period in
our country’s history which, although famous enough in a general way, is
very little known in detail” (564). As a result, Manzoni perceives his work
as an unpretentious way to communicate authentic aspects of that historic
time in Milan that would otherwise have remained unknown.
In contrast to Manzoni’s historical attention, Giovanni Verga’s work
does not present the past as its framework but deals directly with the
events and their characters. He is considered one of the initiators of the
verismo school, or literary realism. Verga, like other nineteenth-century
European novelists such as Luigi Capuana and Émile Zola, created his
works deliberately following a number of precise rules, agreements, and
practices—roughly called realism—the abundant subdivisions of which
share in common the artist’s purpose of exhibiting the representation of
life as it is. Verga, born in Sicily in 1840, traveled to Florence and Milan,
where the philosophy and thoughts of other writers greatly inspired his
work. He wrote patriotic novels but later diverted his attention to the con-
ditions of peasants in Sicily, developing the masterpieces for which he is
recognized all over Europe: the short stories of Vita dei campi (Life in the
Fields, 1880) and Novelle rusticane (Little Novels of Sicily, 1883), and his
great novels, including I malavoglia (The House of the Medlar Tree, 1881),
Mastro don Gesualdo (1889), and Cavalleria rusticana (Rustic Chivalry,
1884), which became very popular as an opera.
As underscored by many intellectuals over the years, such as Luigi
Russo and Riccardo Bonavita, Verga’s writing, designed to illustrate the
simple human condition or a family of poor Sicilian fishermen, employed a
unique style in which the story is told through direct and indirect dialogue
among the characters. For Russo, Verga proposes the writer’s impersonal-
ity (4), whereas Bonavita stresses Verga’s ability to express the author’s
presence only through the plot and in the structure of the events (110).
The document that best clarifies Verga’s literary approach can be found in
the introduction to the short story “L’amante di gramigna” (“Gramigna
Mistress”), which appeared in 1880 in Rivista Minima. In a letter to
Salvatore Farina, director of this journal, Verga specifies the principles of
his approach, stating that a literary work should be expressed in the lan-
guage commonly used by the protagonists and must faithfully represent
the facts. In his opinion, this method allows the reader to gain a genuine
impression of the circumstances (192).
Another random document with
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afraid? Hear my crying, O Lord; incline thine ear to my calling, my
King and my God, for unto Thee do I make my prayer.’ With these
and other verses of the Psalms the enemy was at length put to flight;
Albinus completed his prayer and went to rest.[64] At that time only
one of his disciples, Waltdramn by name, who is still alive, was
watching with him; he saw all this from a place of concealment, a
witness of this thing that took place.”
St. Martin himself once had a meeting with the devil[65]. There
came into his cell a purple light, and one stood in the midst thereof
clad in a royal robe, having on his head a diadem of gold and
precious stones, his shoes overlaid with gold, his countenance
serene, his face full of joy, looking like anything but the devil. The
devil spoke first. “Know, Martin, whom you behold. I am Christ. I am
about to descend from heaven to the world. I willed first to manifest
myself to thee.” Martin held his tongue. “Why dost thou doubt,
Martin, whom thou seest? I am Christ.” Then the Spirit revealed that
this was the devil, not God, and he answered, “The Lord Jesus did
not predict that He would come again resplendent with purple and
diadem. I will not believe that Christ has come, except in the form in
which He suffered, bearing the stigmata of the Cross.” Thereupon
the apparition vanished like smoke, leaving so very bad a smell that
there was no doubt it was the devil. “This account I had from the
mouth of Martin himself,” Sulpicius adds.
“The father used a little wine, in accordance with the apostle’s
precept, not for the pleasure of the palate, but by reason of his bodily
weakness.[66] In every kind of way he avoided idleness; either he
read, or he wrote, or he taught his disciples, or he gave himself to
prayer and the chanting of Psalms, yielding only to unavoidable
necessities of the body. He was a father to the poor, more humble
than the humble, an inviter to piety of the rich, lofty to the proud, a
discerner of all, and a marvellous comforter. He celebrated every day
many solemnities of masses[67] with honourable diligence, having
proper masses deputed for each day of the week. Moreover, on the
Lord’s day, never at any time after the light of dawn began to appear
did he allow himself to slumber, but swiftly preparing himself as
deacon with his own priest Sigulf he performed the solemnities of
special masses till the third hour, and then with very great reverence
he went to the public mass. His disciples, when they were in other
places, especially when they assisted ad opus Dei, carefully studied
that no cause of blame be seen in them by him.
“The time had come when Albinus had a desire to depart and be
with Christ. He prayed with all his will that if it might be, he should
pass from the world on the day on which the Holy Spirit was seen to
come upon the apostles in tongues of fire, and filled their hearts.
Saying for himself the vesper office, in the place which he had
chosen as his resting-place after death, namely, near the Church of
St. Martin, he sang through the evangelic hymn of the holy Mary with
this antiphon[68], ‘O Key of David, and sceptre of the house of Israel,
who openest and none shutteth, shuttest and none openeth, come
and lead forth from the house of his prison this fettered one, sitting in
darkness and the shadow of death.’ Then he said the Lord’s Prayer.
Then several Psalms—Like as the hart desireth the water-brooks. O
how amiable are Thy dwellings, Thou Lord of hosts. Blessed are
they that dwell in Thy house. Unto Thee lift I up mine eyes. One
thing I have desired of the Lord. Unto Thee, O Lord, will I lift up my
soul.
“He spent the season of Lent, according to his custom, in the most
worthy manner, with all contrition of flesh and spirit and purifying of
habit. Every night he visited the basilicas of the saints which are
within the monastery of St. Martin,[69] washing himself clean of his
sins with heavy groans. When the solemnity of the Resurrection of
the Lord was accomplished, on the night of the Ascension he fell on
his bed, oppressed with languor even unto death, and could not
speak. On the third day before his departure he sang with exultant
voice his favourite antiphon, ‘O key of David,’ and recited the verses
mentioned above. On the day of Pentecost, the matin office having
been performed, at the very hour at which he had been accustomed
to attend masses, at opening dawn, the holy soul of Albinus is[70]
released from the body, and by the ministry of the celestial deacons,
having with them the first martyr Stephen and the archdeacon
Laurence, with an army of angels, he is led to Christ, whom he
loved, whom he sought; and in the bliss of heaven he has for ever
the fruition of the glory of Him whom in this world he so faithfully
served.”
The Annals of Pettau enable us to fill in some details of Alcuin’s
death. Pettau was not far from Salzburg, and therefore the
monastery was likely to be well informed. Arno of Salzburg, Alcuin’s
great admiration and his devoted personal friend, would see to it that
in his neighbourhood all ecclesiastics knew the details. The seizure
on the occasion of his falling on his bed was a paralytic stroke. It
occurred, according to the Annals from which we are quoting, on the
fifth day of the week on the eighth of the Ides of May, that is, on May
8; but in that year, 804, Ascension Day fell on May 9, so that for the
eighth of the Ides we must read the seventh of the Ides. The seizure
took place at vesper tide, after sunset. He lived on till May 19,
Whitsunday, on which day he died, just as the day broke.
“On that night,” to return to the Life, “above the church of the holy
Martin there was seen an inestimable clearness of splendour, so that
to persons at a distance it seemed that the whole was on fire. By
some, that splendour was seen through the whole night, to others it
appeared three times in the night. Joseph the Archbishop of Tours
testified that he and his companions saw this throughout the night.
Many that are still sound in body testify the same. To more persons,
however, this brightness appeared in the same manner, not on that
but on a former night, namely, on the night of the first Sunday after
the Ascension.
“At that same hour there was displayed to a certain hermit in Italy
the army of the heavenly deacons, sounding forth the ineffable
praises of Christ in the air; in the midst of whom Alchuin[71] stood,
clothed with a most splendid dalmatic, entering with them into
heaven to minister with perennial joy to the Eternal Pontiff. This
hermit on that same day of Pentecost told what he had seen to one
of the brethren of Tours, who was making his accustomed way to
visit the thresholds of the Apostles.[72] The hermit asked him these
questions,—‘Who is that Abbat that lives at Tours, in the monastery
of the holy Martin? By what name is he called? And was he well in
body when you left?’ The brother replied, ‘He is called Alchuin, and
he is the best teacher in all France. When I started on my way hither,
I left him well.’ The solitary made rejoinder, with tears, that he was
indeed enjoying the very happiest health; and he told him what he
had seen at day-break that day. When the brother got back to Tours,
he related what he had heard.
“Father Sigulf, with certain others, washed the body of the father
with all honour, and placed it on a bier. Now Sigulf had at the time a
great pain in the head, but being by faith sound in mind, he found a
ready cure for his head. Raising his eyes above the couch of the
master, he saw the comb[73] with which he was wont to comb his
head. Taking it in his hands he said, ‘I believe, Lord Jesus, that if I
combed my head with this my master’s comb, my head would at
once be cured by his merits.’ The moment he drew the comb across
his head, that part of the head which it touched was immediately
cured, and thus by combing his head all round he lost the pain
completely. Another of his disciples, Eangist by name, was
grievously afflicted with immense pain in his teeth. By Sigulf’s advice
he touched his teeth with the comb, and forthwith, because he did it
in faith, he received a cure by the merits of Alchuin.
“When Joseph, the bishop of the city of Tours, a man good and
beloved of God, heard that the blessed Alchuin was dead, he came
to the spot immediately with his clerks, and washing Alchuin’s eyes
with his tears, he kissed him frequently. He advised, moreover, using
wise counsel, that he should not be buried outside, in the place
where the father himself had willed, but with all possible honour
within the basilica of the holy Martin, that the bodies of those whose
souls are united in heaven should on earth lie in one home. And thus
it was done. Above his tomb was placed, as he had directed, a title
which he had dictated in his lifetime, engraved on a plate of bronze
let into the wall.”[74]
The simple epitaph, apart from the title, ran thus:—
“Here doth rest the lord Alchuuin the Abbat, who died in peace on
the fourteenth of the Kalends of June. When you read, O all ye who
pass by, pray for him and say, The Lord grant unto him eternal rest.”
 CHAPTER III
The large bulk of Alcuin’s letters and other writings.—The main dates of his life.
—Bede’s advice to Ecgbert.—Careless lives of bishops.—No parochial system.—
Inadequacy of the bishops’ oversight.—Great monasteries to be used as sees for
new bishoprics, and evil monasteries to be suppressed.—Election of abbats and
hereditary descent.—Evils of pilgrimages.—Daily Eucharists.

We in the diocese of Bristol have a special right to study and to

make much of the letters of Alcuin. Our own great historian, William
of Malmesbury, had in the library of Malmesbury from the year 1100
and onwards an important collection of these letters, from which he
quotes frequently in support of the historical statements which he
makes. More than that, we know of some of the letters of Alcuin only
from the quotations from them thus made by William in this diocese
some 800 years ago. This is specially stated by Abbat Froben, of
Ratisbon, who edited the letters of Alcuin 140 years ago.
The letters of Alcuin are addressed to an emperor, to kings,
queens, popes, patriarchs, archbishops, dukes, and others; so that
of Alcuin’s political importance there can be no question. As to his
learning, William of Malmesbury pays him the great compliment of
naming him along with our own Aldhelm and with Bede. “Of all the
Angles,” he says,[75] “of whom I have read, Alcuin was, next to the
holy Aldhelm and Bede, certainly the most learned.”
Alcuin was born in Northumbria in or about the year 735. He left
England to live in France in 782, returned for a time in 792, and left
finally in 793. He died in 804. We can thus see how he stands in
regard of date to those with whom we have dealt in former lectures.
Aldhelm and Wilfrith died in 709, only about a quarter of a century
before Alcuin’s birth. Bede died, according to the usual statement[76],
in 735, the year of Alcuin’s birth. Boniface was martyred in Holland in
755, when Alcuin was twenty years old.
 As in the case of Gregory and of Boniface, who have been the
subjects of the last two courses of lectures, the letters of Alcuin are
the most important—or among the most important—sources of
information for the history of the times. The letters are 236 in
number, and they fill 373 columns of close small print in the large
volumes of Migne’s series. The letters of Boniface are not half so
numerous, and they occupy considerably less than one-third of the
space in the same print.
The letters of Alcuin, great as is their number and reach, form but
a small part of his writings. His collected works are six times as large
as his letters. His commentaries and treatises on the Holy Scriptures
are much more lengthy than his collected letters, more than two-
thirds as long again. His dogmatic writings are not far from half as
long again as his letters. His book on Sacraments and kindred
subjects is about two-thirds as long as his letters. His biographies of
saints, his poems, his treatises on teaching and learning, are all
together nearly as long as the letters; and there is almost the same
bulk of works which are attributed to him on evidence of a less
conclusive character.
Put briefly, this was his life. He was a boy at my own school, the
Cathedral School of York, a school which had the credit of educating,
800 years later, another boy who made a mark on history, Guy
Fawkes. The head master in Alcuin’s time was Ecgbert, Archbishop
of York and brother of the reigning king of Northumbria; and the
second master was Albert, Ecgbert’s cousin, and eventually his
successor in the chief mastership and in the archbishopric. Alcuin
succeeded to the practical part of the mastership on Ecgbert’s death
in 766, the new archbishop, Albert, retaining the government of the
school and the chief part of the religious teaching. In 778 Alcuin
became in all respects the head master of the school, and in the end
of 780 Albert died, leaving to Alcuin the great collection of books
which formed the famous library of York.
Alcuin had for some years travelled much on the continent of
Europe, and he was well acquainted with its principal scholars. They
were relatively few in number, learning having sunk very low on the
continent, while in Northumbria it had been and still was at a very
high level. Alcuin had also made acquaintance with Karl, not yet
known as Karl der Grosse, Carolus Magnus, Charlemagne, the son
of Pepin, king as yet of the Franks, emperor in the year 800, a man
about seven years younger than Alcuin. On a visit to the continent in
781 he again met Karl, who proposed to him that he should enter his
service as master of the school of his palace, and practically minister
of education for all parts of the vast empire over which Karl ruled. In
782 he joined Karl, having obtained leave of absence from the
Northumbrian king Alfweald, Archbishop Ecgbert’s great-nephew,
and from the new archbishop, Eanbald I. From that time onwards he
was Karl’s right-hand man, in matters theological as well as
educational; and in some matters of supreme political importance
too. The leave of absence lasted some nine or ten years; at the end
of that time Alcuin came back for a short time, but he soon after
terminated his official connexion with York, and spent the rest of his
life in the dominions of Karl.
Archbishop Ecgbert, Alcuin’s master, had been a friend of the
venerable Bede. The only occasion on which we know that Bede left
his cloister was that of a visit to Ecgbert at York, shortly before
Bede’s death, if he died in 735. We have it from Bede himself that he
had promised another visit to York in the following year, but was too
ill to carry out his promise. Failing the opportunity of long
conversations on the state of the Province of York, which
corresponded to the bishoprics of York, Lindisfarne, Hexham, and
Whithern, Bede set down his thoughts on parchment or tablets, and
sent them to his friend. This Letter of Bede to Ecgbert is by very far
the most important document of those times which has come down
to us; both because of the remarkable mass of information contained
in it, which we get from no other source, and because of the large
and broad views of ecclesiastical policy which it sets forth. It was no
doubt the advice and warnings of Bede that led Ecgbert to create the
educational conditions which developed the intellect of the most
intellectual man of his times, the subject of these lectures. Inasmuch
as it seems probable—indeed, is practically certain—that the
distressful state of Northumbria was the final cause of Alcuin’s
abandonment of his native land, it will be well to summarize the main
points of Bede’s dirge. We should bear in mind the fact that we are
reading a description by an ecclesiastic, a man keenly devoted to the
monastic life; and that the date is that of the year of Alcuin’s birth. It
tells us, therefore, something of the setting in which Alcuin found
himself in early boyhood.
Ecgbert had only become Bishop of York in the year of Bede’s visit
to him, 734. York was not as yet an Archbishopric; it was raised to
that dignity in Ecgbert’s time. Some writers call Paulinus Archbishop,
because a pall was sent to him by Gregory; but the pall did not reach
England till after Paulinus had run away from York.
Bede thinks it necessary to urge Ecgbert very earnestly to be
careful in his talk. He does not suppose that Ecgbert sins in this
respect, but it is matter of common report that some bishops do; that
they have no men of religion or continence with them, but rather
such as indulge in laughter and jests, in revellings, drunkenness, and
other pleasures of loose life; men who feast daily in rich banquets,
and neglect to feed their minds on the heavenly sacrifice.
There were in 735 sixteen bishops’ sees in England, held in the
south by Tatuin of Canterbury, Ingwald of London, Daniel of
Winchester, Aldwin of Lichfield, Alwig of Lindsey, Forthere of
Sherborn, Ethelfrith of Elmham[77], Wilfrid of Worcester, Wahlstod of
Hereford, Sigga of Selsey, Eadulf of Rochester; and in the north by
Ecgbert of York, Ethelwold of Lindisfarne, Frithobert of Hexham, and
Frithwald of Whithern. We may, probably, narrow Bede’s censure to
Lindisfarne and Hexham, if he really did, as some assume, refer to
his own parts. As a Northumbrian myself, I think that a long-headed
man like Bede, a Northumbrian by birth, more probably referred to
bishops of the parts which we now know as the Southern Province.
Alcuin’s letters, however, show that in his time there was much that
needed improvement in the case of northern bishops as well as
southern.
A bishop in those days had to do the main part of the teaching,
and preaching, and ministering the Sacraments, throughout the
diocese. Bede points out that Ecgbert’s diocese was much too large
for one man to cover it properly with ministrations. He must,
therefore, ordain priests, and appoint teachers to preach the Word of
God in each of the villages; to celebrate the heavenly mysteries; and
especially to attend to sacred baptism[78]. The persons so appointed
must make it their essential business to root deep in the memory of
the people that Catholic Faith which is contained in the Apostles’
Creed, and in like manner the Lord’s Prayer. Those of the people
who do not know Latin are to say the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer
over and over again in their native tongue; and this rule is not for the
laity only, but also for clergy and monks who do not know Latin. For
this purpose, Bede says he has often given translations of these two
into English to uneducated priests; for St. Ambrose declared that all
the faithful should say the Creed every morning, and the English
practice was to chant the Lord’s Prayer very often. How much we of
to-day would give for just one copy of Bede’s Creed and Lord’s
Prayer in English![79]
Ecgbert’s position in the sight of God, Bede says, will be very
serious if he neglects to do as he advises, especially if he takes
temporal gifts or payments from those to whom he does not give
heavenly gifts. This last point Bede presses home with affectionate
earnestness upon the “most beloved Prelate”. “We have heard it
reported,” he says, “that there are many villages and dwellings, on
inaccessible hills and in deep forests, where for many years no
bishop has been seen, no bishop has ministered; and yet no single
person has been free from the payment of tribute to the bishop; and
that although not only has he never come to confirm those who have
been baptized, but there has been no teacher to instruct them in the
faith or show them the difference between good and evil. And if we
believe and confess,” he continues, “that in the laying on of hands
the Holy Spirit is received, it is clear that that gift is absent from
those who have not been confirmed. When a bishop has, from love
of money, taken nominally under his government a larger part of the
population than he can by any means visit with his ministrations in
one whole year, the peril is great for himself, and great for those to
whom he claims to be overseer while he is unable to oversee them.”
Ecgbert has, Bede tells him, a most ready coadjutor in the King of
Northumbria, Ceolwulf, Ecgbert’s near relative, his first cousin, whom
Ecgbert’s brother succeeded. The [arch]bishop should advise the
King to place the ecclesiastical arrangements of the Northumbrian
nation on a better footing. This would best be done by the
appointment of more bishops. Pope Gregory had bidden Augustine
to arrange for twelve bishops in the Northern Province, the Bishop of
York to receive the pall as Metropolitan. Ecgbert should aim at that
number. It may here be noted that in this year of grace 1908 there
are still only nine diocesan bishops in the Northern Province, besides
the archbishop, and five of these nine have been created in the
lifetime of some of us. Bristol knows to its heavy cost that Ripon was
the first of the five.
But Bede points out, and here we come to very interesting matter,
that the negligence of some former kings, and the foolish gifts of
others, had left it very difficult to find a suitable see for a new bishop.
The monasteries were in possession everywhere. It may be
remarked in passing that all over the Christian parts of the world
monasteries existed, even in those early times, in very large
numbers. We know the names, and the dates or periods of
foundation, of no less than 1481 founded before the year 814, in
various parts of the world; and the actual number was very much
larger than that, from what we know of the facts, especially in the
East. In the time of Henry VIII, besides the monasteries which had
been suppressed by Wolsey, Fisher, and others, as also the large
number of alien priories suppressed at an earlier date, and besides
all the ecclesiastical foundations called hospitals and colleges, more
than 600 monasteries remained in this land to be suppressed.
There being, then, no lands left to endow bishoprics, there was, in
Bede’s opinion, only one remedy; that was, the summoning of a
Greater Council, at which an edict should be issued, by pontifical
and royal consent, fixing upon some great monastery for a new
episcopal seat. To conciliate the abbat and monks, the election of the
bishop-abbat should be left to them. If it should prove necessary to
provide more property still for the bishop, Bede pointed out that there
were many establishments calling themselves monasteries which
were not worthy of the name. He would like to see some of these
transferred by synodical authority for the further maintenance of the
newly-created see, so that money which now went in luxury, vanity,
and intemperance in meat and drink, might be used to further the
cause of chastity, temperance, and piety. Here in Bristol, with
Gloucester close at hand, we need no reminder of the closeness of
the parallel between Bede’s advice in 735 to King Ceolwulf and the
actual course taken in 1535 by King Henry, and carried to completion
by him in 1540-2, in the foundation of six new bishoprics on the
spoils of as many great monasteries. Nor need it be pointed out that
Bede’s proposal to suppress small and ill-conditioned monasteries
was a forecast of the original proposal of Henry VIII.
Bede then proceeds to speak with extreme severity of false
monasteries. It appears that men bribed kings to make them grants
of lands—professedly for monasteries—in hereditary possession,
and paid moneys to bishops, abbats, and secular authorities, to ratify
the grants by their signatures; and then they made them the
dwellings of licentiousness and excess of all kinds. The men’s wives
set up corresponding establishments. Bede urged the annulment of
all grants thus misused: again we seem to hear a note prophetic of
eight hundred years later. To so great a pitch had this gone, that
there were no lands left for grants to discharged soldiers, sons of
nobles, and others. Thus it came to pass that such men either went
beyond sea and abandoned their own country, for which they ought
to fight, or else they lived as they could at home, not able to marry,
and living unseemly lives. If this was allowed to go on, the land
would be unable to defend itself against the inroads of the
barbarians. Bede’s prophecy to that effect came crushingly true in
Alcuin’s time, not fifty years after it was written. And here again we
have a remarkable forecast of Henry VIII’s avowed purpose in the
suppression of monasteries, that he must have means to defend his
land against invasion. Thus the three arguments of Henry VIII,
namely, that lands and money were needed for more soldiers and
sailors, that lands and money were needed for more bishoprics, and
that many of the religious houses did not deserve that name, were
carefully set out by one whom we may call a High-Church
ecclesiastic, eight hundred years before Henry.
On two of the points mentioned by Bede in connexion with
monasteries, it may be well to say a little more by way of illustration.
The two points are, the hereditary descent of monasteries, and the
principle on which the election of the abbat should proceed. To take
the second first,—Bede is very precise on this point. He says that
when a monastery is to be taken as the seat of a bishop, licence
should be given to the monks to elect one of themselves to fill the
double office of abbat and bishop, and to rule the monastery in the
one character and the adjacent diocese in the other. We should have
thought it would have been better to leave them free to elect some
prominent churchman from the outside, than to limit their choice to
one of themselves. And the exception for which arrangement was
made points in the same direction of limitation. If they have not the
right man in their own monastery, at least they must choose one
from their own family, or order, to preside over them, in accordance
with the decrees of the Canons. This strictness was traditional in
Northumbria. The great founder of monastic institutions in the
Northern Church, Benedict Biscop, who founded Monk Wearmouth
in 674 and Jarrow in 685, was very decided about it. He would not
have an abbat brought in from another monastery. The duty of the
brethren, he said, when speaking to his monks on his own imminent
decease, was, in accordance with the rule of Abbat Benedict the
Great, and in accordance with the statutes of their own monastery of
Wearmouth—which he had himself drawn up after consideration of
the various rules on the Continent from the statutes of the seventeen
monasteries which he liked best of all that he had seen—to inquire
carefully who of themselves was best fitted for the post, and, after
due election, have him confirmed as abbat by the benediction of the
bishop. There is a great deal to be said in favour of this course, and
there is a great deal to be said for more freedom of election. The
case which comes nearest to it in our English life of to-day is that of
the election of the Master of a College in one of the two Universities.
In Cambridge the election—in two cases the appointment—is in
every case open, in the sense that it is not confined to the Fellows of
the College, and in very recent times there have been several cases
of the election of a prominent man from another College, to the great
advantage of the College thus electing.
The other point is of much wider importance, namely, the
hereditary descent of monasteries and of their headship. Our
Northumbrian abbat Benedict was very decided here also. The
brethren must not elect his successor on account of his birth. There
must be no claim of next of kin. He was specially anxious that his
own brother after the flesh should not be elected to succeed him. He
would rather his monastery became a wilderness than have this man
as his successor, for they all knew that he did not walk in the way of
truth. Benedict evidently feared that a practice of hereditary
succession to ecclesiastical office might spring up. No doubt he had
seen at least the beginning of this in foreign parts. It was no
visionary fear, for in times rather later we have examples of
ecclesiastical benefices, and even bishoprics, going from father to
son, and that in days of supposed celibacy. We have plenty of
examples of monasteries descending from mother to daughter later
on in England; and in Bede’s own time he mentions without adverse
remark that the Abbess of Wetadun (Watton, in East Yorkshire)
persuaded Bishop John of Hexham to cure of an illness her
daughter, whom she proposed to make abbess in her stead. Alcuin
himself, as we have seen,[80] tells us quite as a matter of ordinary
occurrence, not calling for any remark, that he himself succeeded
hereditarily to the first monastery which he ruled, situated on Spurn
Point, the southern promontory of Yorkshire. We cannot doubt that
the evils naturally arising, in some cases at least, from hereditary
succession to spiritual positions, had much to do with the
intemperate suppression of the secular clergy and the enforcement
of clerical celibacy. In considering the question as it concerned the
times of Alcuin, we must bear in mind that we are dealing with times
very long before the development of the idea of feudal succession.
It is interesting to note that the earliest manuscripts of the Rule of
St. Benedict which are known to exist do not definitely lay down the
precise rule that the person elected to an abbacy must be a member
of the abbey or at least of the same order. The Rule was first printed
in 1659 by a monk of Monte Cassino; and this print was carefully
collated throughout with a manuscript of the thirteenth century at Fort
Augustus for the edition published by Burns and Oates in 1886.
Chapter 64 is as follows, taking the translation annexed to the Latin
in that edition, though it does not in all cases give quite the force of
the original.
“In the appointing[81] of an abbot, let this principle always be
observed, that he be made abbot whom all the brethren with one
consent in the fear of God, or even a small part of the community
with more wholesome counsel, shall elect. Let him who is to be
appointed be chosen for the merit of his life and the wisdom of his
doctrine, even though he should be the last of the community. But if
all the brethren with one accord (which God forbid) should elect a
man willing to acquiesce in their evil habits, and these in some way
come to the knowledge of the bishop to whose diocese that place
belongs, or of the abbots or neighbouring Christians, let them not
suffer the consent of these wicked men to prevail, but appoint[82] a
worthy steward over the house of God, knowing that for this they
shall receive a good reward, if they do it with a pure intention and for
the love of God, as, on the other hand, they will sin if they neglect it.”
We hear a good deal in our early history of kings and great men
renouncing the world and entering the cloister. Bede shows us the
darker side of this practice. Ever since king Aldfrith died, he says,
some thirty years before, there has not been one chief minister of
state who has not provided himself while in office with a so-called
monastery of this false kind, and his wife with another. The layman
then is tonsured, and becomes not a monk but an abbat, knowing
nothing of the monastic rule. And the bishops, who ought to restrain
them by regular discipline, or else expel them from Holy Church, are
eager to confirm the unrighteous decrees for the sake of the fees
they receive for their signatures. Against this poison of covetousness
Bede inveighs bitterly; and then he declares that if he were to treat in
like manner of drunkenness, gluttony, sensuality, and like evils, his
letter would extend to an immense length.
It may be well to mention here another religious practice which
had two sides to it, the practice of going on pilgrimage. Anglo-Saxon
men and women had a passion for visiting the tombs of the two
princes of the Apostles, Peter, whose connexion with Rome is so
shadowy up to the time of his death there, and Paul, their own
Apostle, the teacher of the Gentiles, whose connexion with Rome is
so solid a fact in the New Testament and in Church history. Bede
tells us that in his times many of the English, noble and ignoble,
laymen and clerics, men and women, did this. As a result of the
relaxed discipline of mixed travel, a complaint came to England,
soon after, that the promiscuous journeyings on pilgrimage led to
much immorality, so that there was scarcely a town on the route in
which there were not English women leading immoral lives.
There is one striking passage in Bede’s unique letter which shows
us how great were the demands of the early Church upon the
religious observances of the lay people; while it shows with equal
clearness the inadequacy of the response made by the English of
the time. The passage will complete our knowledge of the state of
religion among our Anglian forefathers towards the end of Bede’s
life. It refers to the bishop’s work among the people of the world,
outside the monastic institutions. The bishop must furnish them with
competent teachers, who shall show them how to fortify themselves
and all they have against the continual plots of unclean spirits, by the
frequent use of the sign of the Cross, and by frequent joining in Holy
Communion. “It is salutary,” he says to Ecgbert, “for all classes of
Christians to participate daily in the Body and Blood of the Lord, as
you well know is done by the Church of Christ throughout Italy, Gaul,
Africa, Greece, and the whole of the East. This religious exercise,
this devoted sanctification, has, through the neglect of the teachers,
been so long abandoned by almost all the lay persons of the
province of Northumbria, that even the more religious among them
only communicate at Christmas, Epiphany, and Easter. And yet,” he
continues, “there are innumerable persons, innocent and of most
chaste conversation, boys and girls, young men and virgins, old men
and old women, who without any controversy could communicate on
every Lord’s Day, and indeed on the birthdays of the holy apostles
and martyrs, as you have seen done in the holy Roman and
Apostolic Church.” The Church History of early times has a great
deal of practical teaching for the church people of to-day.
If the life of religious people in the monasteries and in the world
was thus tainted and slack, we can imagine what the ordinary
secular life was likely to be. There was terrible force in Bede’s
suggestion that a nation so rotten could never withstand a hostile
attack of any importance. Archbishop Ecgbert certainly did all that he
could to bring things into order; and he wisely determined that the
very best thing he could do to pull things round was to get hold of the
youth of the nation, and train them with the utmost care in the way
that they should go. This leads us on to the rise or revival of the
Cathedral School of York.
 CHAPTER IV
The school of York.—Alcuin’s poem on the Bishops and Saints of the Church of
York.—The destruction of the Britons by the Saxons.—Description of Wilfrith II,
Ecgbert, Albert, of York.—Balther and Eata.—Church building in York.—The
Library of York.

It is usual to reckon the year 735 as the beginning of the great

School of York, and Archbishop—or rather, as he then was, Bishop
—Ecgbert as its originator. But it seems clear that we must carry its
beginnings further back, and count as its originator a man who filled
a much larger place in the world than even Ecgbert, archbishop as
he became, and brother of the king as he was. When Wilfrith, the
first Englishman to appeal to Rome, was put into the see of York by
Theodore of Canterbury in 669, his chaplain and biographer,
Stephen Eddi, tells of four principal works which, between that year
and 678, his chief accomplished. The first was the restoration of the
Cathedral Church of York, which had fallen into decay during the
time when Lindisfarne was the seat of the Bishop of Northumbria.
The second was the building of a noble church at Ripon for the
people of the kingdom of Elmete, which Edwin, the first Christian
king of Northumbria, had conquered from the Romano-Britons;
corresponding to the West Riding of Yorkshire and parts of
Lancashire, a portion of the great British kingdom of Rheged, at the
court of which the bard Taliessin had sung. The fourth was the
building of a still more noble church at Hexham, to be the
ecclesiastical centre of the northern part of Northumbria, replacing
Lindisfarne in that character. And the third in order was the
establishment of a School, no doubt at York, as that was his
episcopal seat, and he himself was the chief teacher. The world
credits William of Wickham with the invention of the idea of a public
school in the modern sense of the word; but seven hundred[83] years
before him Wilfrith had grasped the idea and put it into practice at
York. This is what his chaplain tells us. The secular chiefs, the
noblemen, sent their sons to him to be so taught that when the time
of choice came they would be found fit to serve God in the ministry, if
that was their choice, or to serve the king in arms if they preferred
that career. We must certainly reckon the year 676, or thereabouts,
as the date of foundation of the school at York, Wilfrith as its founder,
and its principle that of the modern public school, which is supposed
to give an education so liberal that whatever career its alumnus
prefers he will be found fitted for it. The first scholars of the school of
York entered, some of them, the ministry, as learned clerks; others,
the army, as fit to be soldiers. It was still so when I went to that
school sixty-four years ago. The school is older than Winchester by
seven hundred years, and older than Eton by seven hundred and
sixty-five.[84] Bede’s strong appeal to Ecgbert led to the revival of the
school after the natural decay from which good institutions suffer in
times of ecclesiastical and civil disorder, and we date the continuous
life of the school from him. It was an interesting coincidence, that
men saw in the year 735 the revival of the school and the birth of its
most famous pupil, assistant master, and head master. We may now
turn to that man, whose early lot was cast in a state of society, lay
and clerical, such as that described in scathing terms by Bede; and
who was the first-fruits of the remedy which Bede had suggested. As
a link between Bede and Alcuin we may have in mind a pretty little
story about Bede which we find in a letter of Alcuin’s some fifty or
sixty years after Bede’s death.
Alcuin is writing to the monks of Wearmouth. He Ep. 274. Before
tells them how well he remembers what he saw at a.d. 793.
Wearmouth long years ago, and how much he was
pleased with everything he saw. He encourages them to continue in
the right way by reminding them of the virtues of their founders. “It is
certain,” he writes, “that your founders very often visit the place of
your dwelling. They rejoice with all whom they find keeping their
statutes and living right lives; and they cease not to intercede for
such with the pious judge. Nor is it doubtful that visitations of angels
frequent holy places; for it is reported that our master and your
patron the blessed Bede said, ‘I know that angels visit the canonical
hours and the congregations of the brethren. What if they should not
find me among the brethren? Would they not have to say, Where is
Bede? Why does he not come with the brethren to the appointed
prayers?’”
To us in England, and especially to those of us who are North-
countrymen, nothing that Alcuin wrote has a higher interest than his
poem in Latin hexameters on the Bishops and Saints of the Church
of York. By the Church of York Alcuin evidently meant the Church of
Northumbria, although his account of the prelates dwells chiefly on
the archbishops of his time. Considering his long sojourn in France,
it was fitting that the manuscript of this famous poem should be
discovered at a monastery near Reims, the monastery of St.
Theodoric, or Thierry according to the later spelling. A great part of
the poem is in the main a versification of Bede’s prose history of the
conversion of the North to Christianity, and an adaptation of Bede’s
metrical life of St. Cuthbert. On this account the French transcriber
from the original omitted about 1100 of the 1657 lines of which the
poem consists, and only about 550 lines were originally printed by
Mabillon in the Acta Sanctorum. When our own Gale was preparing
to publish it, he got the missing verses both from the St. Theodoric
MS. and also from a MS. at Reims itself. Both manuscripts
disappeared long ago, probably in the devastations of the French
Revolution[85].
The poem describes the importance of York in the time of the
Roman occupation of Britain, the residence, as Alcuin tells us, of the
dukes of Britain, and of sovereigns of Rome. York was, in fact, the
imperial city; it shared with Trèves the honour of being the only
imperial cities north of the Alps. He speaks eloquently of its beautiful
surroundings, its flowery fields, its noble edifices, its fertility, its
charm as a home. This part of the poem inclines the reader to settle
in favour of York the uncertainty as to the place of Alcuin’s birth. One
graphic touch, and the use of a special Latin name for the river Ouse
which flows through the middle of the city, goes to the heart of those
who in their youth have fished in that river—

Hanc piscosa suis undis interluit Usa.

 He goes on to speak of the persistent inroads of the Picts after the
withdrawal of the Roman troops. Inasmuch as the sixth legion was
quartered at York, and all of the other three legions in Britain were
withdrawn before the sixth, it may be claimed that York was the last
place effectively occupied by the Roman troops. This indeed is in
itself probable, since York was in the best position for checking the
attempts of the Picts to reach the central and southern parts of
Britain. He describes how the leaders of the Britons sent large bribes
to a warlike race, to bring them over to protect the land, a race, he
says, called from their hardness Saxi, as though Saxons meant
stones.[86] The eventual conquest of the Britons by the Saxons
evidently had Alcuin’s full sympathy. The Britons were lazy; worse
than that, they were wicked; for their sins they were rightly driven
out, and a better race entered into possession of their cities. We
would give a great deal to have had from Alcuin a few words of
tradition about some details of the occupation of York by the Angles,
and of the fate of the British inhabitants. Alcuin’s words would
suggest that their fate was a cruel one, but we do not know anything
of it from any source whatsoever. One of his remarks strikes us as
curious, considering that the Britons were Christians and their
conquerors were pagan: the expulsion, he says, was the work of
God, that a race might enter into possession who should keep the
precepts of the Lord. Clearly Alcuin held a brief for his ancestors of
some five generations before his birth. He writes also in a rather
lordly way of the kingdom of Kent, as though Northumbria was the
really important province in the time of King Edwin, as indeed it
unquestionably was. Edwin was the most prominent personage in
England, the Bretwalda, at the time of the conversion of
Northumbria. All that Alcuin says of Edwin’s young wife Ethelburga,
and of the kingdom of Kent whence she came, is this: “He took from
the southern parts a faithful wife, of excellent disposition, of
illustrious origin, endowed with all the virtues of the holy faith.” We
shall have, at a later stage, to remark upon the silence with which
Wessex also was treated by Alcuin.
It is quite true that the facts of the greater part of the poem are
taken from Bede. But it is of much interest to note the selection