The other night I was listening to Notker the Stammerer’s book, The Life of Charlemagne, on my Audio Books app.
In case you were wondering, the book is not narrated by Notker the Stammerer.
Notker died like twelve hundred years ago, they didn’t know how to digitally record audio then, and besides, I’m guessing from Notker’s name that he stammered. It was a difficult time.
So, I’m listening to the book and learn Charlemagne was discipled by Alcuin, who was discipled by Bede.
As a student of medieval history, I had heard of all three, but I did not know they were all connected by discipleship relationships.
Bede the Venerable, an English monk, was considered the most learned man of his time. He wrote nearly sixty books at a time long before typewriters, word processors, or the printing press. Alcuin of York was also English but became the leading scholar in Charlemagne’s court in Aachen (today, Germany) and through Charlemagne helped spawn the Carolingian Renaissance.
Of course, discipleship was not a new concept. Jesus discipled John, and John discipled Polycarp. Polycarp was martyred in 156 A.D. under Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, but was so cool in refusing to sacrifice to the Roman pagan gods, that we are still talking about his martyrdom 2,000 years later. Continue reading “On Discipleship”
