Disputation between Pepin, the most noble and royal youth, and Albinus the Scholastic Pippin: What is a document? - Alcuin: The preserver of history. Pippin: What is a word? - Alcuin: The revealer of the mind. Pippin: What generates the word? - Alcuin: The tongue. Pippin: What is the tongue? - Alcuin: The winnower of the breath. Pippin: What is breath? - Alcuin: The preserver of life. Pippin: What is life? - Alcuin: A delight to the blessed, a grief to the unhappy, an experience of waiting for death. Pippin: What is death? - Alcuin: An inevitable happening, an unpredictable journey, the tears of the living, the coming into force of a testament, the robber of human beings. Pippin: What is a human being? - Alcuin: A slave to death, a traveller pas... Tags: 718-843, Alcuin