Nothing that could be effected by a prince thus gifted and disposed, was
left untried by Charlemagne. He drew to him the celebrated Alcuin, Peter
of Pisa, Paul Warnefrid, and many other distinguished literary
characters: he heaped favours upon them; and a marked distinction was
always shewn them at his court. He formed them into a literary society,
which had frequent meetings. Their conversation was literary, he often
bore a part in it; and, what was at least equally gratifying, he always
listened with a polite and flattering attention while others spoke. To
establish perfect equality among them, the monarch, and, after his
example, the other members of this society, dropt their own and adopted
other names. Angelbert was called Homer, from his partiality to that
poet; Riculphus, archbishop of Mentz, chose the name of Damétas, from an
eclogue of Virgil: another member took that of Candidus; Eginhard, the
Emperor's biographer, was called Calliopus, from the Muse Calliope;
Alcuin received, from his country, the name of Albinus; the archbishop
Theodulfe was called Pindar; the abbot Adelard was called Augustine;
Charlemagne, as the man of God's own heart, was called David.

[Sidenote: 800-911]

The Emperor corresponded with men of learning, on subjects of
literature; they generally related to religion. In one of his letters,
he requires of Alcuin an explanation of the words Septuagesima,
Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima, which denote the Sundays which
immediately precede, and the word Quadragesima, which denotes the first
Sunday which occurs in Lent. The denominations of those Sundays give
rise to two difficulties; one, that they seem to imply that each week
consists of ten, not of seven days; the other, that the words sound as
if Septuagesima were the seventieth, when it is only the sixty-third day
before Easter Sunday; Sexagesima, as if it were the sixtieth, when it is