Constanttne of Fleury. 287 



Amalbert, Oilbodus' predecessor, had died in April, 985, and the 

 installation of a new abbot must have followed shortly afterward, 

 certainly within a year. A letter of Gerbert to Maieul of Cluny, 

 which is dated by Havet in February, 986, shows Oilbodus in pos- 

 session.i Why there was opposition to him we do not know. King 

 Lothaire may have forced him on the community, a somewhat im- 

 probable conjecture, resting only on the epithet quoted above.2 Or 

 Constantine, who had just arrived from Rheims, conscious of his 

 intellectual attainments and relying on Gerbert's friendship, may 

 have aspired to the pastorate in vain. What is certain is that 

 Constantine was hostile to Oilbodus, that Gerbert battled valiantly 

 for him, 3 or for his faction, and that both master and pupil did not 

 refrain from showing their joy when the " pervasor " departed this 

 mundane existence.^ An untimely rejoicing it proved, for the passing 

 of Oilbodus did not profit Constantine. His partisans were clearly 

 in the minority, and Abbo, the most talented of the older friars, a 

 staunch supporter of Oilbodus, who had been sent by him early 

 in 986 to instruct the monks of Ramsey, in England, at the request 

 of Archbishop Oswald, then recalled after a two years' mission by 

 his father superior, was elected to the abbacy towards the end 

 of 988.5 



Some inferences may be allowed at this point. Abbo must have 

 been the head of the Fleury school before he went to England, 

 and quite likely Constantine's first teacher. But Gerbert calls Con- 

 stantine scolasticus. Therefore he was Abbo's substitute for the time 

 being. Filled with zeal for the new learning he had acquired at 

 Rheims, it is more than probable that he gave a direction to the 

 instruction at Fleury which did not meet with Oilbodus' approval. 

 Abbo, an erudite man in his wa}', and a renowned educator, based 

 his courses on the Church Fathers and did not admit to his curric- 

 ulum Cicero, Virgil and the lyric poets of pagan Rome.^ The 



1 Letter 69. 



' See Lettres de Gerbert^ p. 65, n. 5. 



3 Lettres de Gerbert, UOS. 80, 87, 88, 95. 



* Op. cit., letters 142, 143. 



* Vita S. Abbonis, by Aimohi of Fleiiry inMigne, Patrologia Latina, vol. 139, 

 col. 590—593. Cf. F. Lot, I^tudes svr le regne de Hugiies Capet (in the 

 Bibliotheque de I'Ecole des Hautes Etudes series, no. 137), p. 13, n. 5. 



^ See Ch. Pfister's interesting comparison of the monkish idea of edu- 

 cation at this time with the tendencies of the bishops' schools, in his 

 Etiides sur le regne de Robert le Pieiix (Bibliotheque de I'Ecole des Hautes 

 Etudes series, n. 64), pp. 2 ff. 



