You know what's great about today? (Well, besides the fact that it's Monday and a lot of clergy -- and half of the Supreme Executive Committee -- have the day off). We begin an entire week of Saintly Sixteen match-ups! We kick things off with a 19th century laywoman taking on an 8th century deacon. Harriet Beecher Stowe and Alcuin vie for a spot in the Elate Eight.
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Harriet Beecher Stowe
Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, or Life among the Lowly, got an early start in her literary career. When she was 13, she graduated from the local girls' school in Litchfield, Connecticut. Her composition, entitled, "Can the immortality of the soul be proved by the light of nature?" was read aloud at the ceremony. Her father, Lyman Beecher, at the time the most famous preacher in the country, wanted to know who the smart aleck was, and was shocked to learn it was his daughter. Harriet was thrilled with herself.
Initially content to stay out of the argument over slavery in the mid-1800s, two events changed Harriet's mind. The first was the death of her 18-month-old son, in the Cincinnati cholera epidemic of 1849. Cholera was new to the United States at the time, so there was no medical treatment. Afterwards, Harriet wrote that she didn't think she could ever be reconciled to the child's death, unless it allowed her to do some great good for others -- but that the loss also helped her empathize with slave mothers who lost their children on the auction block.
When the Fugitive Slave Law was passed the next year, directly implicating even those in Northern states in the institution of slavery, Harriet knew she needed to do something. She said later: "I no more thought of style or literary excellence than the mother who rushes into the street and cries for help to save her children from a burning house, thinks of the teachings of the rhetorician or the elocutionist."
She approached the editor of the anti-slavery paper, the National Era, proposing that she write three or four short sketches, which grew into a serialized form of Uncle Tom's Cabin.
The intense popularity of the book enraged the slaveholding establishment, causing them to accuse Harriet of fabrication and lying through her teeth, but Harriet was prepared. She published A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, in 1854, in which she directed her white audience to the numerous slave narratives that she had used in her research for her novel, essentially arguing that, if she had lied, it had been to tone down the horrible truth about slavery. It had the added benefit of bringing the first-person slave narratives of Solomon Northrup (of “12 Years a Slave” fame), Frederick Douglass, and many others, to a wider audience.
"What makes saintliness in my view, as distinguished from ordinary goodness, is a certain quality of magnanimity and greatness of soul that brings life within the circle of the heroic," she wrote. Very appropriate for such a feisty character.
Alcuin
This quirky 8th Century teacher, theologian, liturgist, and bad poet was responsible for the Christian-based European renaissance that went hand-in-hand with the reign of Charlemagne, a program that was especially focused on educating the clergy so they could educate the people. One of his most notable achievements was to convince Charlemagne that forcing people to accept baptism or be executed was not good Christian policy.
He was also the inventor of the Carolingian miniscule, a form of writing that allowed so many ancient texts to be quickly and clearly reproduced. He may even have been the inventor of the question mark, which, in addition to inspiring the 60’s band ? & The Mysterians to challenge us all to cry 96 tears, was prominently featured in his discourses and other teaching documents.
Here is such an example, a discourse between Pippin, Charlemagne’s son, and Alcuin:
P. What is life?
A. A delight to the blessed, a grief to the unhappy, an experience of waiting for death.
P. What is death?
A. An inevitable happening, an unpredictable journey, the tears of the living, the coming into force of a testament, the robber of human beings.
P. What is a human being?
A. A slave to death, a traveller passing through, a stranger in the place.
P. To what is a human being similar?
A. To a fruit tree.
P. What is his or her situation?
A. Like that of a candle in the wind. (translated by Gillian Spraggs)
Alcuin wrote many textbooks, including the Propositions for Sharpening Youth that included problems like this one:
A certain man needed to take a wolf, a she-goat, and a load of cabbage across a river. However, he could only find a boat which would carry two of these [at a time]. Thus, what rule did he employ so as to get all of them across unharmed? (Translated from the Latin by Peter J. Burkholder) (Post your answer in the comments!)
His Bible translation (an update of Jerome’s Vulgate combined with the Northumbrian Ceolfrith Bible) was produced in volumes that contained both illumination (sometimes with gold letters on purple vellum) and illustration and text arranged in cartoon-strip-like registers, thus bringing the Irish tradition of illuminated Gospels to the European continent.
Toward the end of his life, he wrote this about his career:
In the morning, at the height of my powers, I sowed the seed in Britain, now in the evening when my blood is growing cold I am still sowing in France, hoping both will grow, by the grace of God, giving some the honey of the holy scriptures, making others drunk on the old wine of ancient learning…
-- Penny Nash
Vote!
[poll id="95"]
160 comments on “Harriet Beecher Stowe vs. Alcuin”
Despite the riddle before sufficient coffee, I voted for Alcuin. Among the many reasons, because it appears Alcuin thought of the hook of one of my favorite songs several centuries before Bernie Taupin and Elton John.
I have serious doubts that anyone can transport a wolf in a boat. But voted for Alcuin anyway.
Thanks, Another Peg, I appreciate the clarification :-).
Can't vote for Alcuin because I don't like math before breakfast.
Alcuin of York "was responsible for the Christian-based European renaissance that went hand-in-hand with the reign of Charlemagne." Alcuin is a lynch pin figure in the development of Western Civilization. Depending upon how one looks at it, one of his greatest or lesser achievements was the gathering of scattered and localized liturgical materials from as many sources as he could find and not only preserving them for our eventual use but organizing them into a coherent liturgy which underlies the Eucharistic liturgies of the Western Churches to the present day and also writing prayers (Collects) still in use in our current Books of Common Prayer. His reorganization of the School Charlemagne produced not only clergy to teach royal children but more importantly to teach laity and train skilled scholars who copied ancient manuscripts from the Greek and Roman eras that otherwise might well have been lost to history. He was a Deacon and remained so, seeking no advancement in the Church and providing one of the primary models for the revival of the Order of Deacons in today's Church, melding administration, education, a keen sense of politics, and what we call social work in a ministry of service affecting people of all ranks and classes. For many of today's Deacons, including my spouse, Alcuin is a Patron Saint. When Charlemagne's empire fell apart after his death, the work of Alcuin survived, much of it preserved by the work of Benedictine scholars and teachers and artists. Without Alcuin of York's many works of genius in so many areas of human endeavor, much of what we take to be the best of Western Civilization, might not have come about or survived until the next great period of renaissance centered about the year AD 1200. As someone wrote above with the agreement of at least one other, Harriet Beecher Stowe was a a very good person; Alcuin of York is a Saint. However, it may well be that the factor of name recognition will win the day for Harriet Beecher Stowe. Alcuin? Isn't he one of the singing chipmunks? With gratitude for the work of HBS, my vote obviously has gone to the lesser known Deacon from York who was called to Charlemagne's court and proved a pivotal influence in the preservation and development of Western Civilization.
thanks, Robert and to all who illuminated - now wish I had voted for the Deacon of York!
A follow up thanks to Robert and Rodney from another who did not know enough about Alcuin.
No, no, no!! Alvin was one of those irritating chipmunks. Not Alcuin.
Love the ?, the illuminated gospels, baptism by choice and the riddle. If the answer is that only one 'thing' rides in the boat at a time with you, then I believe Rodney has the right answer. Y'all are cracking me up this morning! Nice way to start the day!
It seems that the global Lent Madness public is gripped by a wave of modernity. I am unquestionably an old fogy and my vote goes to Alcuin!
Alcuin is still "giving some the honey of the holy scriptures, making others drunk on the old wine of ancient learning…," and he's got my vote!
Plus, go deacons!
Interesting that the majority of the comments favor Alquin, but the actual vote appears to be favoring Stowe at the moment!
I offer my solution to the crossing. The boat can only carry two items. Take the goat across first. Go back for the wolf. Take the wolf across. Put the wolf on shore. Put the goat back in the boat. Go back to the original shore. Leave the goat and take the cabbage. Take it across and leave it with the wolf. Go back and retrieve the goat and bring it back to the shore with the wolf and the cabbage.
I apologize if this solution has already been offered. I did not have time to read through all of the comments. Props to my great-grandfather who ran a ferry acroos the Wansbeck River in Northumberland.
Take the goat over,go back and get the cabbage.Bring the goat back.Take the wolf over and then go back for the goat.
take the wolf, go back and get the goat AND the cabbage...hang on to the cabbage.
I think Alcuin will win my vote. Although I admire Harriet and appreciate the tremendous impact her writing has had on our own culture and the interpretation of scripture, would she have had the words and education and the ? to help her if Alcuin had not come first?
Hi Adelaide, I too am an old fogy and not ashamed of it.
FOGY POWER RULES!
Go Alcuin!!
To make the puzzle a real problem and not something with a trivial solution, the boat can take the man and one other item. I believe that is the way the original was written, although the write-up on Alcuin is misleading. The solution is take the she-goat over. Come back and get the wolf. Take the wolf over and bring back the she-goat. Take the cabbage over and leave it with the wolf. Go back and get the She-goat. That way neither the She-goat and cabbage nor the wolf and She-goat are left alone together!
While I love puzzles like that (I learned that one and could solve it when I was a very little boy). I don''t know what that has to do with this contest. Math and logic are very important, but that does not relate to Alcuin's saintliness, otherwise we would have to Decartes, Pythagoras, Pascal, and Euclid in these brackets!
I found neither of these write-ups very helpful in distinguishing why these two are particularly saintly. I have studied the slavery issue and the abolitionist movement, having written on the Dred Scott decision (an article I couldn't get published, not because it wasn't worthy, but because editors were inundated with such articles on the 150th anniversary of the decision in 2007. Oh, well .....) It is not that Harriet Beecher Stowes book is not important, but I find it difficult to see that as saintly compared to many others. Harriet Tubman risked her very life for the underground railroad. Frederick Douglass was certainly more prolific and outspoken. Senator Brooks from Massachusetts was savagely beaten on the floor of the United States Senate for his views, and so on! I ended up voting for her, but I am just not sure of that vote at all. Alcuin seems just as likely a candidate to move on.
First, ask yourself why you think you need to carry a wolf across the water. Then take the goat. By the time you get back, the wolf will have run off looking for food somewhere else. If you have so much cabbage that it would not fit in the boat with you and the goat, you probably don't have anything to carry it in, so you may as well leave it; your goat will eat almost anything, so it won't starve. Take the goat and leave the rest behind.
Oh, and don't forget to vote wither of these worthy candidates.
Interesting solution, but being the cabbage lover that I am, I would have,absconded with the cabbage and left everything else. Single minded, that's me......
I'll go for a good writer over a bad poet any day. Seriously, I admire Stowe for her commitment to help others after she lost her child.
I voted for HBS because I decided that sex would be my "tie breaker" given the over representation of men in the calendar of Saints and the reluctance formally to adopt Holy Women, Holy Men....
Good point!
This was tough; they both spoke truth to power. In the end, I saw that Alcuin was slightly behind, and voted for him to keep the overall vote as close as possible for two impressive saints. And in honor of Scott Elliott and Dennis Lietz, St. Gregory's deacons!
Alcuin standing up to Charlemagne on the propriety of forced conversions won my support. God wants friends, not slaves. Plus, his dialogues are a paradigm of effective teaching!
This was a very hard choice. I love Harriet Beecher Stowe, who also advocated for the rights of married women under the law. But, today I am voting for the Saint I knew nothing about before Lent Madness. I hope that Alcuin’s advancement through the bracket will help to educate those of us who grew up in a tradition that did not include the Saints of the Church. Besides... I will be wondering all day about the description of death as "the coming into force of a testament". Beautiful!
The crossing is easy enough to solve, but the question is "what RULE did he employ?" Darned if I know the name of the "rule".
As a librarian, I have to vote for the man who invented Carolingian miniscule and the question mark, and was such a huge influence on Western civilization; as a student of philosophy and religion, I have to vote for the man who wrote such gorgeous discourses. But I'm torn, because Stowe wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin and was such a powerful voice against slavery, and she should have a librarian's vote, too.
I voted for Alcuin, but I wouldn't be upset if Stowe took it.
yay for you, Jude....linda
I think there are 2 possible answers to Alcuin's riddle are these: Put the goat and wolf in the boat, then put the load of cabbage in the water (I think cabbage floats!) and take all 3 across that way; OR put the goat and the load of cabbage in the boat and have the wolf swim across.
Alcuin was so multi-dimensional and affected many peoples over a length of time. Stowe, though important, was about a single issue at her time. Alcuin for me.
ALCUIN! You need a late surge!!! LET'S GO EDUCATION!!!
Alcuin for me. In addition to all his other qualities, his fearless persuasion of a powerful Emperor "to convince Charlemagne that forcing people to accept baptism or be executed was not good Christian policy" is compelling, in my view. Alcuin today!
Exactly the thing that convinced me to give him my vote! 😉
Wolf/Goat/Cabbage riddle:
Goats can swim, apparently (I googled "Can goats swim?" and found this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhqfvckaD2A ).
Tie the goat to the back of the boat, put the wolf in the boat, hold the cabbage in the boat. The goat can swim behind the boat. This would work for anyone who can row with one hand.
As for what rule Alcuin follows, here are a few possibilities:
Learn to row a boat with one hand.
Goats can swim.
Keep your friends close. your enemies closer, and your food closest.
Three's a crowd.
Don't rock the boat.
Miniscule may be considered acceptable (as is, apparently, the dreaded "alright" for "all right"). However, careful writers, as well as wikipedia, use minuscule.
Indeed, Janelle, they do. Mea culpa.
Alcuin whose voice and actions still sound through the centuries. I agree that the bios didn't really do justice to our day's candidates . I also agree that without Alcuin there may not have been the literary works of HBS.
Harriet embodied Matthew 25 for me. My vote goes to her.