v.]
Carrying his hypocrisy still further, Offa, feigning to be directed by
a vision from heaven, discovered at Verulam the relics of St Alban, the
martyr, and endowed a magnificent monastery in that place.[*] Moved by
al these acts of piety, Malmsbury, one of the best of the old English
historians, declares himself at a loss to determine[**] whether the
merits or crimes of this prince preponderated. Offa died, after a reign
of thirty-nine years, in 794.[***]
This prince was become so considerable in the Heptarchy, that the
emperor Charlemagne entered into an alliance and friendship with him;
a circumstance which did honor to Offa; as distant princes at that time
had usually little communication with each other. That emperor being a
great lover of learning and learned men, in an age very barren of that
ornament, Offa, at his desire, sent him over Alcuin, a clergyman
much celebrated for his knowledge, who received great honors from
Charlemagne, and even became his preceptor in the sciences. The chief
reason why he had at first desired the company of Alcuin, was that he
might oppose his learning to the heresy of Felix, bishop of Urgel, in
Catalonia; who maintained that Jesus Christ, considered in his human
nature, could more properly be denominated the adoptive than the natural
son of God.
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