Rabanus Maurus

Rabanus Maurus was the outstanding scholar of the Carolingian age — a monk and abbot of Fulda, later archbishop of Mainz, and a pupil of the great Alcuin, who gave him his surname. So thoroughly did he gather and pass on the learning of the Fathers that Germany came to call him its teacher, Praeceptor Germaniae. He wrote commentaries on most of the Bible, largely woven from the earlier Fathers, an encyclopedia of the whole of knowledge, and hymns — among them, by long tradition, Veni Creator Spiritus.