Preface
No attempt has been made to correct the various forms of many of the proper names so as to make the spelling uniform. It is true to the period to leave the curious variations as Alcuin and others wrote them. In the case of Pope Hadrian, the name has been written Hadrian and Adrian indiscriminately in the text.
While Alcuin’s style is lucid, his habit of dictating letters hurriedly, and sending them off without revision if he had a headache, has left its mark on the letters as we have them. It has seemed better to leave the difficulties in the English as he left them in the Latin.
The edition used, and the numbering of the Epistles adopted, is that of Wattenbach and Dümmler, Monumenta Alcuiniana, Berlin 1873, being the sixth volume of the Bibliotheca Rerum Germanicarum.