LIFE of S. EALDHELM
FIRST BISHOP OF SHERBORNE

^.B» WILDMAN

YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

1945

S. EALDHELM
From ,1 bronze figure on the Digby Monument
at Sherborne.

Life of S. Ealdhelm
FIRST BISHOP OF SHERBORNE,

BV
W. B. WILDMAN, M,A.
(Assistant Master in Sherborne School)
Aatbor of 'A Short History of Sherborne.

LONDON
CHAPMAN & HALL. Ltd.
SHERBOBNB
F. BENNETT, THE PARADE.
1905.

MeS5

for eallum Ealdbelmes folce.
and maest
for leofostum cnapum,
C.B.W. and fl.B.W.
mid tbe on Westseaxum
full^blitbe oft for Ic,
tbas Iptlan boc
ic macode.

aet Scira burnan.
mcmv.

/ record here my best
thanks to my friend and
neighbour, Mr. H. R. King,
for the help he has given me
in correcting proof sheets.
I owe to my friend, Mr.
James Rhoades' delightful
English version of Vergil's
' Georgics ' the quotations
given in pages 68 and 69
of this book, W.B.W.

CONTENTS.

I. Why the year 705 concerns Sherborne
more than any other place : : 1
II. The conquest of Wessex in 639 A.D., in
which year Ealdhelm was born :: 10
III. Dorset before the West-Saxon conquest
of it :: :: :: :: 16
IV. The Westward growth of Wessex, in
cluding the conquest of Dorset, down
to 705, when Ealdhelm became
Bishop of Sherborne :: :: 23
V. Ealdhelm's earlier life : : : : 31
VI. Ealdhelm's later Ufe :: :: 40
VII. Ealdh^m's miracles 52
VIII. Ealdhelm as a teacher and literary man.
His letter to Acircius : : 65
IX. Ealdhelm's treatise ' On Virginity.' His
letter to Geruntius. Other letters : 93
X. Obscurity of Ealdhelm's writings.
Chronology of his works 119

CHAPTER I.

Why the year W HAVE reason to think,
705 concems I that many of my neigh-
Sherbome more bours have no clear
than any other ideas about the growth and
place. limits of Wessex. They find
it hard to realize what the
look of it was in Ealdhelm's
time, what the condition of the English, who lived
in it, was, and what the condition of the West
Welsh then was, from whom the English had
gradually won the territory called Wessex. It
seems to me that my best course will be, to des
cribe these matters as briefly and clearly as I can ;
for, until we understand them, we must have but
a hazy idea of the great man, to whom Sherborne
and the old diocese of Sherborne owe so much.
In speaking of the people as Welsh, from
whom the West-Saxons won this land, I use the term
' Welsh ' advisedly, because it is the ordinary term,
which our forefathers used in speaking of them,

and it begs no question, as to whether they were
Brythons or Goidels or a mijrture of both. The old
English word ' Wealh ' means ' foreigner,' a man
whose language one does not understand ; and our
forefathers called those whom they dispossessed
' Wealas,' which is the plural of ' Wealh,' and they
called the district, in which these men lived, by the
name of the people ' Wealas ' or Wales, as the word
is in modern shape. Our word Welsh is the
adjective ' Wealisc,' formed by the English from
the word ' Wealh,' and means ' of or belonging to a
stranger ' ; a great authority on early English history
once said, that, if Englishmen would only talk about
English and Welsh instead of Saxons and Britons
they would get a much clearer idea of the times
we are going to deal with.
It is true that our old English writers, when
they wrote in Bok-leden, used the term ' Brittones '
of the Welsh, but the ordinary every-day word in
use was ' Wealas,' not only for the Britons but for
the Gauls also across the Channel ; and if they
wanted to distinguish between them, they called the
one people Bret- Welsh and the other Gal- Welsh.
I hope therefore that, not only for shortness'
sake but also for vividness' sake, I may be allowed
to use the term ' Welsh ' in the following narrative,
wherever it is convenient for me to do so.

That a Welshman or an Irishman or a High
lander should talk about ' Saxons,' when he refers
to the English, is quite permissible ; they have
consistently done so, and I noticed, in the Standard
of the 1st September, 1904, an account of a Panceltic
Congress at Carnarvon, at which there was a Band
of Irish Pipers, and a ' shillelagh ' of magnificent
make was presented to the President, Lord Castle
town, who delivered an Address on ' The Philistine
Saxon and the Inspired Celt.' It appeared to me,
that Lord Castletown had been studying a little
Treatise by Matthew Arnold on ' Celtic Literature ' ;
if his lordship's reading has been more extended in
the works of Matthew Arnold, he must be aware
that he belongs to the class whom that gifted writer
calls ' Barbarians.' Barbarians however may be
expected to be somewhat free with the shillelagh,
if they happen to have one handy.
It is commonly believed, if I may judge from
conversations with my neighbours about S. Ealdhelm,
that the Saint spent his life as a missionary, trying
to convert from Druidism the pagan Welshmen,
who were then not above indulging in human
sacrifices. This idea may have arisen in the minds
of these students from their misunderstanding the
famous letter, which Ealdhelm wrote to King
Geruntius of Dumnonia; it may even have been
emphasized in their minds by a remark of William

of Malmesbury, who makes an allusion to this letter
in his Gesta Pontificum, but who had never seen
it, thought it was lost, and quite misunderstood the
situation. But I have a suspicion that their idea is due
to another cause ; it is due perhaps to the belief
widely held by Englishmen, that they are and
always have been superior to those races, with
which they come into contact, not only in fighting
power, which perhaps is true, but in civilization
also. Before we can understand Ealdhelm's time,
we have to get it quite clearly into our heads, that,
when about the year 500 our English forefathers
landed in Southampton Water, the Welsh men, whose
land they were destined to seize, whose worship
and churches they were destined to destroy, had
been Christians for generations, while these English
were ferocious pirates and worshippers of Woden
and Thunder ; that nearly a century and a half after
this, when Ealdhelm was bom, the West-Saxon king
had only just been converted to Christianity by the
preaching of S. Birinus. S. Ealdhelm's father may
have been a pagan at the time of the Saint's birth;
at any rate he had been a Christian only for a year
or two. I can imagine the amazement, turning gradually
to indignation, which the West Welsh king Geruntius

must have felt, when he read E£ddhelm's famous
letter. He and his forebears had been Christians
for centuries, and he is now being told ' what he
ought to do ' by one whom he would be inclined to
regard as a pompous Professor, whose father had
worshipped Woden and Thunder.
Readers however must not gather from this,
that Ealdhelm was one, whose opinion, on the
matters of which he wrote, was of little importance;
for he was one of the most famous scholars of his
time in Westem Europe ; his reputation had spread
through England and Ireland and Northern Gaul,
and, as has been said with less truth of other famous
men,' what he did not know was not worth knowing.'
With this then by the way of introduction, I
shall now proceed to show why the year 705 is
peculiarly a Sherborne date. In this year Ealdhelm
was made first Bishop of Sherborne. In the year
1905 therefore, the twelfth centenary of this date,
we Sherborne people must be specially to the fore.
The town of Malmesbury has or should have an
abiding interest in S. Ealdhelm ; the bulk of his
mature life-time was certainly spent there, and there
he was buried.
But Ealdhelm's promotion from the Abbacy of
Malmesbury to the Bishop's seat at Sherborne cannot

be expected to arouse much enthusiasm in the
Malmesbury heart, though it surely must touch that
of Sherborne. We hope that the men of Malmesbury
and all Englishmen will rejoice with us at the honour
then done to Sherborne, and we would specially
welcome them and the men of Bristol and their
Bishop, if they will join in our celebration of this
event. But we must make it quite clear that, so
far as we know, there was in 705 no such place as
Bristol, and that, if it did exist, it was not in
Ealdhelm's diocese.
I read lately a very interesting little book called
' St. Ealdhehn, his Life and Times ' by Dr. G. F.
Browne, the Bishop of Bristol, wherein is written
as the first heading to the first chapter ' Connection
of the See of Bristol with St. Ealdhelm ' ; now we do
not grudge our Bishop to Bristol, but the See of
Bristol only dates from the times of Henry VIII.
The author however pointed out ' that until the year
1836 the See of Bristol had for 300 years included
the whole County of Dorset with Aldhelm's own
Abbey (ste) of Sherborne, eventually his bishop's seat
and title, his home for the last four years of his
life.' I hope the author will not think that I write
in any captious spirit, when I point out, that in the
tirst place the Cathedral Church of Sherborne was a

Church of Secular Canons in Ealdhelm's time, and
that it did not become a Benedictine Abbey till 998;
that in the second place the parish of Sherborne and
several others in this neighbourhood were until the
year 1836 a peculiar under the jurisdiction of the
Dean of Sarum, not under that of the Bishop of
Bristol. But there is a fact of which the author makes
no mention, viz : that S. Ealdhelm's own Cathedral
School, now-a-days known as Sherborne School, was
under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Bristol, as
visitor, from 1550 to 1871. In the library of Sher
borne School are preserved the first extant Statutes,
drawn up in 1592 for that School by Richard
Fletcher, Bishop of Bristol, better known perhaps as
that Dean of Peterborough, to whom fell the terrible
task of attending Queen Mary Stuart on the scaffold.
The date 705 then is peculiarly a Sherborne
date; in that year the name of Sherborne is first
mentioned in English history ; from 705 to 709
Sherborne is Ealdhelm's home, the centre of his
wider work, the place where he built that wonderful
church which William of Malmesbury had himself
seen, that wonderful church which the Norman
builders never touched till William's own day, when
Roger of Caen, Bishop of Salisbury and a foe to

8
Malmesbury, rebuilt it in the Norman style. We
have plenty of Roger's work still left in Sherborne,
both in the Abbey Church and in the Old Castle.
At p. 143 of this same book our author writes
in a foot-note : ' One of the Saxon doorways of this
' church is still to be seen in the North aisle. It is
' of Bradford stone.' By Bradford stone he means
stone from Bradford on Avon, not from Bradford
Abbas, as Sherbome folk might think. Again at
p. 234 he writes : ' Mr. E. A. Pouting informs me that
' the stone first worked was the Bradford stone 
' It is of this he tells me that . . . the Saxon arch still
' remaining in the Norman Church of Sherbome . . .
' is composed.' Now we cannot allow a claim like
this to pass unchallenged. The stone, of which our
Saxon doorway is built, comes from the great Bristol
Road quarry, which lies some few hundred yards
north of our Abbey Church, a quarry of enormous
extent which has been worked for centuries and
which extended down to Combe, where it used to
be called the Old Quarr. Again there is alas ! no
Saxon arch still remaining; very little more is left
of the doorway except the jambs. The rash Mr.
Ponting mistook the oolite of Sherbome, for that
which is quarried near Bradford, as any one might
have done, who did not look about him when he
was in Sherbome neighbourhood.

I hope however that the Bishop of Bristol will
find some consolation for having been thus misled,
in the thought that we call the Quarry, from which
the stone came out of which our Saxon doorway was
built, the Bristol Road Quarry.

CHAPTER II.

The Conquest of W SHALL try in this chap-
Wessex, to 639 I ter to give some account
A.D., in which of the West-Saxon realm
year Ealdhelm at the time of Ealdhelm's
was born. birth, ci'rc 639, to describe
very briefly how it had been
won from the Welsh, and
how this territory looked at that time.
I have long been thinking of doing this ; in the
course of years I have ridden on my bicycle all
about the various western frontiers which Wessex
has at different times possessed, and I have formed
a theory about the conquest of Dorset and of the
land of Exeter by the English, which I believe is
sound. The conquest of Dorset by the English is a
very obscure subject; there exists practically no
direct evidence on the point, as it is commonly
viewed. Any theory about it must be in the main
a matter of guess-work ; I think however that there
is a high degree of probability that mine is not far
wrong.

11
The West-Saxons began their settlement in the
neighbourhood of Southampton Water about the year
500. They called their settlement here their Home
town, and, in after time, that it might be distin
guished from another Home-town further north, it
was called Southampton.
The plain of Southampton and the New Forest
is inclosed on three sides by chalk uplands, for the
most part clear of wood ; from these uplands, through
this plain, to the East of the New Forest, flow two
streams the Itcheu and the Test. To the West of
the New Forest there flows a much larger river the
Avon, the Salisbury Avon I will call it for the sake
of distinction ; this river was navigable by the keels
of these settlers for many miles. Further west flows
the Dorset Stour, which enters the sea with the Avon
near Christchurch, Further west again and flowing
through Dorset, in a valley running mainly east and
west, are the streams Frome and Piddle, which
together form the inlet called Poole Harbour.
These water-ways must have suggested routes
into the interior; but I shall show further on, why
there were objections to following them.
The east and west sides of this plain of
Southampton were also hemmed in by two great
forest tracts; on the east was the Andredsweald, a

12
great forest stretching right away into Kent; on the
west lay what the Welsh called Coit Mawr, i.e. the
Great Forest, called by the English Selwood, con
sisting of what we now call the New Forest,
Cranborne Chase, Blackmore, Selwood, Braden
Forest and many other names, a forest stretching
from the English Channel in the shape roughly of a
crescent right up to Malmesbury and Cricklade,
with, so far as I can make out, only one passage
through it in those days, viz: that, the name of
which is preserved in Woodyates on the eastern
frontier of Dorset, where the Roman road from Old
Sarum to Dorchester enters the county.
It must be evident then that the West-Saxons,
if they wished to extend their settlement, would
push northward, rather than eastward or westward,
and that is what they did.
First they got possession of what is now
Hampshire, called in the old time Hamptonshire ;
to this they added Wilts, Berks and Surrey. Then
they crossed the Thames and won the territory, now
represented by the shires of Oxford, Bucks and
Bedford. These conquests are said to have been
made by the year 571.
Then in a few years followed the conquest of
what is now Gloucestershire, Worcestershire and

13
perhaps Herefordshire, with that part of Somerset
which we shall call the land of Bath. This land
was won by the victory of Deorham (Dyrham in the
Cotswolds) in 577.
In an attempt however to push their advance
northward to Chester the West-Saxons suffered a
severe check at Fethanleag, usually identified with
Faddiley in Cheshire; this check they suffered at
the hands of Brocmael, a Welsh King whose territory
may roughly be represented by the district of North
Wales, which was in later times called Powys.
The result of this check was far reaching; the
West-Saxons made no further effort to conquer the
district of the Upper Severn. Dissensions broke out,
it seems, among the members of the royal house;
and these West-Saxons, who had lately settled along
the lower Severn, in what is now Gloucestershire,
Worcestershire and Hereford, rose in rebellion
against the King-in-chief of the West-Saxons, Ceawlin.
They took for their King Ceol or Ceolric, son of
Cutha Ceawlin's brother, and, according to William
of Malmesbury who wrote more than 500 years after
the event, they formed an alliance with the Welsh.
Their combined forces defeated Ceawlin in 592, at
Wanborough on the edge of the chalk downs, south
east of Swindon.

14 Ceawlin died soon after, leaving the West-Saxon
Kingdom in a somewhat distracted condition. Ceolric,
who succeeded him, appears to have united the King
dom again ; but his brother Ceolwulf, who succeeded
him, had. according to the English Chronicle, to 'fight
incessantly with Angelcyn or with Walas or with
Peohtas or with Scottas.' This means that his reign
was troubled by Mercian and Welsh inroads ; though
how Picts and Scots got here is hard to see.
We must now trace the western frontier of
Wessex, as it was about 639 when Ealdhelm was
born. It ran along the eastern edge of what the
Welsh called Coit Mawr, and the English called
Selwood. Beginning at the English Channel we
follow the westem border of Hampshire till we
reach the southern border of Wilts ; thence we tum
westward along the Wilts border and then north
ward, keeping fairly near that border but to the
east of it, to Mere; thence by Maiden Bradley,
Warminster and Westbury to Devizes; thence, still
keeping Coit Mawr on our left hand we go by
Barbury Hill to Cricklade. Here by the head- waters
of the Thames we turn westward, and, passing close
by Malmesbury, we turn gradually south-westward
until we reach, what for the sake of distinction I
call, the Bath Avon somewhere about Bath. Here
we cross the Avon and making for the Mendips we

15
cross them and on reaching Wookey and the Somerset
Axe we follow that stream to the Bristol Channel.
To the west of this line which has just been
drawn all the country as far as Land's End was in
639 held by the Welsh and it was called by old
writers West Wales and in learned language
Dumnonia. Now this line is of rather peculiar
shape, for there runs into English territory a great
wedge, projecting north-eastward from West Wales ;
it is forest country, the northern end of Selwood.
The base of this wedge, where it joins the rest of
West Wales, is a line approximately drawn from
Penselwood to Wells, and its apex reaches as far
as Cricklade. It is a tract of country drained by the
Bath Avon and its tributaries ; this wedge I propose
to call, as others have done, the land of Malmesbury.
I have given no proofs of the general correct-,
ness of this boundary line, because they are well
known to all students of this period; these proofs
would take up considerable space and to many
they would be uninteresting. But I assure readers
who do not know them, that they are generally
admitted to be convincing by those who have taken
the trouble to examine them.

CHAPTER III.

Dorset before ^^HE time has now come
the West-Saxon ^ to say something of
conquest of it. the district known to
us as Dorset, the territory
of the Welshmen which was
called Dour or Dorn, the land of the Durotriges. I
see no reason to doubt that the modem boundaries
of the county practically correspond to those of this
territory at the time when the English assailed it.
For purposes of etymology the word Durotriges
naturally divides itself thus: Duro-trig-es, where es
is the Latin plural ending ; but what Duro and trig
mean is another matter, and I feel that Professor
Rhys is right, when he remarks that ' the meaning of
the name is obscure.'
Not one of our maritime shires is more
thoroughly cut off from the sea than Dorset. Taking
Weymouth as central point on its coast we find from
that point almost to Poole a line of high cliffs, and, if
we look westward, we see a great barrier, the

DOORWAY OF EALDHELM'S CATHEDRAL
circ. 705,

17
Chesil beach, extending for ten miles, with a back
water between it and the mainland. Neither the
vale at the end of which Weymouth lies, nor that
of Bridport extends far into the interior. There
seems to be a way opened by the valley of the
Dorset Stour and by those of the Frome and Piddle.
Let us see how far this is true.
Any one, who has studied the lower valleys of
the Frome and Piddle, can form some idea of what
the country was like long ago. Even now there are
places, where the streams split up into several
channels, where the banks are covered with thickets
and reeds and marsh plants. What must these
valleys have looked like long ago, when, if trees fell,
they lay holding back the water and accumulating
vegetable and other matter and so helping to turn
the lazy stream into a marsh; when there were no
water meadows and no embankments ? Except in
the neighbourhood of their mouths these streams
would fumish no easy way of advance. The same
may be taken as true of the Stour.
Again a good deal of north and east Dorset was
taken up by the forest of Selwood, and our county
therefore was a land well protected along its coast
and its eastern frontier. For this reason the English '
at first left it alone and preferred to push their
conquest in a northerly direction.

18 Many however hold that the English did make
an attempt on Dorset at an early stage in their career
of conquest. Trasting to a Welsh writer, Gildas, who was
bom circ. 516, they believe that the siege of the
Mons Badonicus in that year was a siege of Badbury
Rings by the English of Wessex, and that this siege
marks the first English attack on Dorset. The siege
failed, — through the heroic efforts of the mythical
Arthur, according to the much later account given in
the Annales Cambriae and a compilation known as
Nennius. I should like to be able to believe that Badbury
is the Mons Badonicus, and that the hero Arthur,
who owes so much to the imagination of the ' Inspired
Celt,' did really fight there. But I must confess that
Mr. Skene has persuaded me, that this Welsh victory
occurred, not in our part of Britain at all, but away
in the north, in Lothian perhaps, and that the people
who suffered defeat at the Mons Badonicus were,
not the West-Saxons, but the Northumbrians.
This however I ought to add that, if the West-
Saxons did at this early time make an attack on the
Welsh fortress of Badbury Rings, they advanced on
it, not up the valley of the Stour, but along the
Roman road which passes through Woodyates, the

19
gap in the Great Wood, which is treeless now as I
believe it was then.
The English Chronicle takes no notice of this
siege of the Mons Badonicus, and it is quite clear
that, even if this Mons is our Badbury, there was no
conquest of Dorset at that time.
And now we pass over something like a century,
during which, as we have seen, the West-Saxons
were busy elsewhere, till we come to the year 611,
when Cynegils succeeded Ceolwulf, the last West-
Saxon king whom I have mentioned. This Cynegils
is for us a very important person indeed, for he was
the first West-Saxon king that was a Christian.
In the English Chronicle for the year 614 we
read that ' Cynegils and Cuichelm (his son) fought at
' Beandune and slew two thousand Welshmen and
sixty-five.' It is not certain where Beandune is;
Mr. J. R. Green thought it was at Bampton in
Oxfordshire, and that we have here the record of a
great Welsh raid, which poured over the Cotswolds
from the west of the Severn, and thence passed by
Cirencester into Oxfordshire. It might equally well
have been a raid of the West Welsh pouring out
from the land of Malmesbury. Others however
think that Beandune is Bindon Hill in Dorset, not far
east of Lulworth Cove ; with these I am much inclined
to agree.

20 If Beandune is Bindon Hill, we may take a leaf
out of the book of the ' Inspired Celt,' who got so
unmercifully beaten on this occasion, and we may
imagine that here is a beginning of the conquest of
south-eastern Dorset ; we may imagine, what I may
call the land of Wimborne, as already in English
hands, and this battle as giving Purbeck also to the
English with perhaps the stronghold of Wareham.
If this is correct, no further results followed and
Dorset generally was still free from the English.
It may be said that I have been describing
Dorset as a desert land of fen and forest, and that
this is out of harmony with the position I took up
earlier about the civilization of the Welsh, as con
trasted with the pagan barbarism of their English
assailants. But there is in truth no inconsistency.
In the town of Wareham, in the greater town of
Dorchester, you would have found a fairly civilized
life going on; in the farms perched on the rising
ground in the vales and along the sides of the downs
you would have seen civilized men and women and
children with plenty of stock and ponies ; you would
have found blacksmiths at the anvil and millers
grinding com ; they would go to Church on Sunday,
perhaps in greater proportion than they do now-a-
days. They had the good Roman roads to travel on,
with sound bridges by which to cross the rivers;
and if one local chief did have a feud with

21
another, as doubtless happened, there were places
of refuge, Kraals so to speak, where wives and
children with the stock could take shelter till the
strife was over.
These places too would, if necessary, be
strongholds against the English. In the north of
Dorset, and beyond it, but still held in 639 by the
Welsh, were — to mention only the mightier strong
holds — Shaftesbury, Cadbury, Ham Hill, and Pilsdun ;
behind these again Hambledun, Rawlsbury, and
Eggardun, and again Badbury Rings, Crawford
Castle and Maiden Castle. In all this region of
Dom there were in 639 probably little more than
30,000 inhabitants.
I cannot do better than end this chapter with a
quotation from that happy gifted soul, William
Barnes, to whose tuneful genius it was given to voice
so really the scenes of this Dorset of ours, which are
now passing or have long passed away : ' The cattle
'are on the downs or in the hollows of the hills.
' Here and there are wide beds of fem or breadths
'of gorse, and patches of wild raspberry with
' gleaming sheets of flowers. The swine are roaming
'in the woods and the shady oak-glades, the nuts
' studding the brown-leaved bushes. On the sunny-
' side of some cluster of trees is the herdsman's round
' wicker house with its brown conical roof and blue

22
' wreaths of smoke. In the meadows and basins of
' the sluggish streams stand clustered tall old elms
' waving with nests of herons ; the bittern, coot and
' water-rail are busy among the rushes and flags of
' the reedy meres. Birds are " churming " in the
' wood-girt clearings, wolves and foxes slinking to
'their covers, knots of maidens laughing at the
'water-spring, beating the white linen or flannel
' with their washing bats ; the children play before
'the doors of the straw-thatched houses of the
'homestead, the peaceful abode of the sons of
' the oaky vale. On the ridges of the Downs rise the
* sharp cones of the barrows  green with the grass
' of long years.'
Dorset with its inhospitable coast, its fenny
valleys, and its mighty forest barrier, was no easy
country to assail, and it was not till the English got
at it from the North that it became part of the West-
Saxon land.

CHAPTER IV.

The westward
growth of Wessex,
including the Con
quest of Dorset,
down to 70S,
when Ealdhelm
became Bishop
of Sherbome.

as it is called by
formed.

I MUST endeavour to com
press into as short a
space as is consistent
with clearness the steps,
whereby Wessex in the
seventh century lost territory
on the north but increased
in size towards the west,
until Ealdhelm's diocese —
the diocese of Selwoodshire
an old English writer — was

In 628 a great Mercian king and warrior,
Penda, absorbed into his kingdom those West-
Saxons, who towards the end of Ceawlin's career
had settled in the lower Severn valley, the men who
rebelled against Ceawlin and beat him at Wan
borough. Some, who really know this period, doubt
whether Penda absorbed these West-Saxons as
early as 628, but they would admit that within
thirty or forty years afterwards this absorption had

24
taken place. In my opinion it certainly began in
628 and was complete in no long time.
In 643 Cynegils died and was succeeded by his
son Cenwealh. To Cenwealh belongs the glory of
wresting from the Welsh what we have called the
wedge, the land of Malmesbury ; this he succeeded
in doing after defeating them at Bradford-on-Avon
in 652. This success he followed up in 658 by
again defeating them ' aet Peonnum,' ' at the Hills '
and driving them to the Parrett.
' Now arises for us the very interesting question :
Where are the Hills ? The usual answer is that the
place is Penselwood near Stourhead, where a
modern tower on the borders of Wilts, Somerset
and Dorset rises high above the surrounding
country. And this view is supposed to be confirmed
by an entry in the English Chronicle under the year
1016, where we get the phrase ' aet Poennan with
Gillingaham ' ; hence, it is argued, the hills alluded
to in 658 must be the same as the hills near Gil
lingham alluded to in 1016! There are hills near
Gillingham and there are hills near Sherborne and
there are hills in many other places, notably near
the Butleigh Monument in Somerset, which would
suit equally well. But there are no hills by Pensel
wood which stand out alone so manifestly as do

25
Sutton Montis hill and Cadbury by Corton Beacon.
There you have your Peonnan; there you have
Cadbury, the great fortress which the English
stormed before they drove the Welsh to the Parrett ;
there you have your Sigwell, the well of victory,
rightly named from the events of that glorious day.
How any one who knows the two sites can hesitate
between them, I at any rate do not understand.
But whichever site we choose — and they are
not far apart — this at least is certain, that with this
victory began the conquest of North Dorset, of the
land of Sherborne; to that point we must hold.
Thus then by this victory the present county of
Somerset as far westward as the Parrett, together
with the vale towards the head of which Sherbome
lies, and, it may be, the whole of Blackmore, was
added to Wessex.
Now followed what might be described by a
Frenchman as a period of ' peaceful penetration ' ;
the English gradually pushed onwards up Taunton
Vale towards the upper waters of the Exe, and
through the land of Crewkeme into thc valley of the
Axminster Axe. On their left flank lay the bulk of
Dorset still in the main Welsh ; on their right flank
and right front the Quantocks and the wilder region
of Exmoor. But Dorset was being gradually cut off
from thc rest of West Wales, just as some spit of

26
sand is gradually isolated aud then overwhelmed by
the oncoming tide.
Finally in 682 the West-Saxon king, Centwine,
as the English Chronicle tells us, drove the Welsh
to the sea. Here we must ask another question:
What sea is it? In connection with this victory
William of Malmesbury wrote : ' The North Welsh
' then meditating rebellion, King Centwine thoroughly
' beat them with such heart-breaking slaughter, that
' they had no further hope (of successful rebellion).
' And so the beaten men had to submit to that worst
' of evils, the tributaria functio, (i.e. to become a
' tributary and subordinate race,) so that those, who
' hitherto were on sufferance in possession of the
' mere shadow of liberty, now were openly groaning
' under the yoke of subjection.' Where William of
Malmesbury got his information nobody knows, but
it looks like truth. Now comes the question: To
whom in this quotation does the term North Welsh
apply ? It cannot apply to the Welsh of what is
now the Principality, though it is their usual name,
as opposed to the West Welsh; all admit. this. Some
writers therefore have applied it to the Welshmen of
the Quantocks and Exmoor; but they were known
as West Welsh. It is obvious then that there is
something wrong about the words ' North Welsh,' or
to use William of Malmesbury's own spelling, the
' Norht Walaes.'

27
I think I know what the error is : the document
which William here copied no doubt had the words
' Norht Walaes,' but they are due to the carelessness
or ignorance of an earlier scribe, who misread ' Dom
Walaes ' or, it may be, ' Thorn Walaes ' as ' Norht
Walaes.' Now Dorn Walaes would mean Welshmen of
Dorset ; so here we have in a nutshell the story of
the conquest of the bulk of Dorset. By the advance
of the English along the vale of the Axe thence into
that of the Otter and over the low-hill ground which
separates the vale of the Otter from that of the Exe,
the Welsh of Dorset were gradually isolated from
their kinsmen in Dumnonia. Finding themselves
thus being isolated, they made a final effort
in 682 to stem the English flood, which had cut them
off and was gradually submerging them. They were
badly beaten and driven to the sea. The sea then
here meant is the English Channel. And thus partly
by way of Honiton partly by way of Taunton Vale,
Wellington, and Tiverton, through a process of
* peaceful penetration,' the English won the land of
the Exe and its tributaries even before 682, while in
that year they became complete masters of Dorset.
This theory is very strikingly supported by the
early life of S. Boniface. Winfrith, an Englishman,
the apostle of the Germans and first Archbishop of

28
Maintz, known ' in religion ' as Boniface, was born,
according to a fourteenth century authority, about
the year 680 at Crediton. His life, by his friend and
constant companion Willibald, records his education
as a boy in the monastery Adescancastrum, which
surely stands for the old English words ' aet
Exancaster,' i.e. Exeter. It is pretty clear then, that
about 680 the English of Wessex had secured a
footing in the land of the Exe. I do not think how
ever that they had as early as this subdued thoroughly
the Welsh of the Quantocks and Exmoor ; these men
were still causing trouble as late as 710, when King
Ine of Wessex built the fortress of Taunton with a
view to keeping them in order.
This conquest of West Somerset and of Dorset
and the land of the Exe was no doubt less of an
exterminating conquest — ^to use that word in its
literal meaning — than were those conquests of the
West-Saxons, which had been made before the year
634 ; it was probably a good deal gentler than that
of 652 or that of 658. For in 634 began the
conversion of Wessex to Christianity. The tendency
since 634 had been more and more, not to slay the
Welsh or drive them clean out of any newly gained
territory, but to let them remain, if they wished, in
an inferior position. This fact is evident, not only
from the history of Exeter, but also from the Laws

29
of Ine, Ealdhelm's kinsman. King of Wessex from
688 to 728.
I must now pass to another district of Wessex,
viz : to that part represented by the modern counties
of Oxfordshire, Bedfordshire, and Bucks. In 661,
according to the English Chronicle, Wulfhere, King
of Mereia, Penda's son, defeated West-Saxon
Cenwealh at Pontisbury, south-east of Shrewsbury,
ravaged Wessex as far as Ashdown, and thence
passed southward and took possession of the Isle of
Wight; Bede adds that he also seized that part of
Wessex called the Meanuari, whose name still
survives in the Hundreds of East and West Meon
in Hampshire. These two provinces, as Bede calls them,
Wulfhere gave to his friend and ally the South-
Saxon King. Bede however tells us that this transfer
took place ' not long before ' 681. If so, 661 is
perhaps too early a date for these events. Be that
as it may, this ravaging of northern and eastern
Wessex is the first step in the separation from Wessex
of the district north of the Thames containing
the counties of Oxford, Bedford, and Bucks ; it is
the beginning of its absorption by Mereia.
Bede tells us that between 663 and 670 Cenwealh
frequently suffered great losses at the hands of his

30
enemies ; I think therefore that as early as this the
district north of the Thames may fitly be described
as debateable ground, sometimes belonging to Mereia
sometimes to Wessex, until the time when Offa finally
secured it for Mereia by the victory of Benson in 777.
The West-Saxon King, Cadwalla, Ine's predecessor,
recovered the Isle of Wight for Wessex in 686.
We have thus completed the story of the growth
and limits of Wessex down to the time, when
Ealdhelm became Bishop of Sherbome.

CHAPTER V.
Ealdhelm's ^^ HOUGH we may know,
earlier life. ^ if we choose, a very
fair amount about S.
Ealdhelm, more a good deal
than we can know about S. Swithun, yet it must be
confessed that somehow the English world has not
taken that interest in him which his career merited.
Even in Dorset, where his name deserves special
honour, it is evident that he has been too much
forgotten. To the west of the Quarries of Purbeck there
projects boldly into the English Channel a headland,
rising some 360 feet above its racing tides ; below the
headland runs out like a giant arm a ridge of perilous
rocks. Even to those who dwell near it, this head
land is commonly known as S. Alban's Head, but it
is really S. Ealdhelm's. That is rather a reproach
to Dorset men. Whatever S. Alban's merits may
have been, it can hardly be said that Englishmen
owe anything to them ; but to S. Ealdhelm the debt
of the newer Wessex, Somerset, Dorset and Devon,
is very great, and we have no right to forget him.

32 In this age of advanced education, when we
eannot expect many to read the Gesta Pontificum of
William of Malmesbury for themselves, when sueh,
as can do, belong, according to a Birmingham
' Scientist,' to the uneducated class, there is nothing
for us but to tell in English the story of Ealdhelm's
life once again, much in the same way, as William of
Malmesbury has told it in Latin. Though Bede was
born not forty years after Ealdhelm, that great his
torian, writing in the north of England, unfortunately
for us, has not told very much about our hero ; and
we have to depend for the bulk of our material on
William of Malmesbury, who wrote 500 years after
Ealdhelm's death.
William was a good historian ; in the long
interval of time between Bede's days and his there
is no historian's name which stands higher; and so
neglected did he think Ealdhelm had been, that out
of the five Books, whieh his Gesta Pontificum contain
and which narrate the doings of great English
ecclesiastics from the earliest times down to the
first quarter of the 12th century, one whole Book is
devoted to the Life of S. Ealdhelm.
If then we may trust the Malmesbury writer,
Ealdhelm was born in 639 or 640, being the son of
Kenten, a near relative of King Ine. He was not the
King's nephew, as was stated by Faritius, a distin-

33
guished ecclesiastic who wrote a life of S. Ealdhelm,
still extant, some time before William of Malmesbury
wrote his more trustworthy account. Nor was
Ealdhelm, as has been suggested, the son of King
Centwine (though it is conceivable that Kenten might
stand for Centwine); for Ealdhelm mentions King
Centwine in his writings, without giving us the
slightest hint that the tender tie of father and son
existed between them. He mentions him under such
circumstances, that, if the tie existed, he must I
think have alluded to it, and there is no such allusion.
Moreover if he was his son, it seems strange that
Ealdhelm should be known to after-times, not as
King Centwine's son, but as King Ine's kinsman.
William of Malmesbury tells us that Alfred the
Great in his Handbook speaks of Ealdhelm as Ine's
kinsman, but he says nothing of his relationship to
King Centwine.
We cannot doubt that Sherbome owes its
existence to Ine and Ealdhelm ; it certainly owes to
them its status, as the old cathedral town of the
newer Wessex, the metropolis of Wells and Salisbury,
of Exeter and Truro.
What the site of Sherbome was like, when the
English won it in 658, no man can exactly say ; the
plain of Obome and the site of Sherbome Lake

34
formed a big morass through which the streams from
the Seven Sisters and from Bradley Head wandered
sluggishly to join just above Sherborne in forming
the Yeo ; to the west of us lay the moor of Lenthay,
to the east and south of us stretehed the great forest
of Selwood, the haunt of wolves, foxes, badgers,
otters, wild swine and deer; and the old trees in
Sherborne Castle Park are the representatives of it ;
the park is a fragment of a real old forest, a real
chase, which once extended far and wide. The
town and its cathedral stood, as they stand now, on
the hillside, on the outskirts of this Chase.
Sherborne had never been a Roman stronghold
like Dorchester or Ilehester, nor a Welsh town like
Cadbury or Shaftesbury. So far as we can tell, it
is, as its name is, purely English.
We cannot doubt that Ealdhelm's Sherbome
home stood on the site of the Old Castle, the home
for centuries of his successors, the Bishops of
Sherborne and Sarum.
Of the birthplace of Ealdhelm and of his boyish
life we know nothing; Birinus, a Frank sent to
Britain by Pope Honorius with what I may call a
roving commission, began his mission in Wessex in
634 ; it is therefore possible, that Ealdhelm's father
and mother were Christians at the time of his birth.

35
In 652 the land of Malmesbury passed into
English hands, but it must not be forgotten that, ever
since Ceawlin's victory at Deorham in 577, Malmes
bury had been a border town, where English and
Welsh dwelt side by side, as is evident from the
Eulogium Historiarum, a M.S. of the thirteenth
century, quoted by Dr. Edwin Guest in the second
volume of his Origines Celticae. What the Eulogium
tells us bears the strongest marks of being based on
something like contemporary evidence.
Now as Ealdhelm is generally said to have
received his education as a boy at Malmesbury
under an Irish scholar called Maildubh or Maildulf
or Meldum — to quote only three different forms of
his name — it may be interesting to give some account
of Malmesbury at the time when Maildubh settled
there. There can be no doubt that in Ealdhelm's life
time Malmesbury was known to the leamed as
Maildufi urbs, for Bede tells us so. In spite then
of the ingenious suggestions of Dr. G. F. Browne, the
Bishop of Bristol, I feel no doubt that Malmesbury
owes its name, even in its present shape, to this
Irish scholar; though this present shape is best
explained by the ' contamination ' theory of the Rev.
Charles Plummer, which is contained in his Baedae
Opera Historica, Tom. H. pp. 310, 311.

36 The Eulogium tells us that Maildubh took up
his quarters ' under the Castellum of Bladon, which
' in the Saxon tongue is called Ingelboume Castle ....
' There had formerly been a city there, whieh was
' totally destroyed by the " alienigeni " (i.e. the
' English), but the Castellum being a fortified place
' maintained itself, and stood there a long time 
' without having any dwelling near it. The King's
* residence and the manor belonging to it were both
' in Pagan and Christian times at Kairdurburgh,
' whieh is now called Brukeburgh or otherwise
' Brokenberh. The hermit aforesaid by name
' Mailduf selected for himself a hermitage beneath
' the Castellum, having obtained permission from the
' men in charge of it ; for there was not much resort
' of people there ; and when the necessaries of life
' began to fail him, he collected round him scholars
' to teach, that by their liberality he might mend his
' scanty commons.'
Dr. Guest, commenting on this, points out that,
when Maildubh came, he found an English guard
posted in the Castellum, whieh was surrounded by
the ruins of Caer Bladon, which is the old name for
Malmesbury, the Welsh name: that Caer Bladon
still lay waste as the English had left it sixty years
or more before, that the brook flowing by neigh
bouring Brokenborough — which keeps that name to

37
this day — was known to the Welsh as the Bladon,
and to the English as the Ingelboume ; and hence
that the castellum built at its junction with the Avon
was called by the English Ingelboume Castle. He
further infers that the English sacked Caer Bladon
in 577. Ingelboume, according to Dr. Guest, means
the brook of the English.
Thus it would appear that at whatever date
Maildubh settled at Caer Bladon, whether before or
after 652, the English were his immediate neigh
bours. Since he would be unlikely to settle there, if
the English were still Pagans, we must put the date
of his arrival after, and even some time after, 634;
but we can say nothing more definite than this
about the date; we eannot even say that it must
have been earlier than 652, for the garrison may
perfectly well have been keeping watch and ward
against the Mercians. Indeed, I have a suspicion
that this is the real situation, that the West-Saxon
garrison is looking northward for attacks from
Mereia, not southward for attacks from Wrfshmen,
from whom since 652 there was nothing more to be
feared in the neighbourhood of Malmesbury.
The first point we know about the career of
Ealdhelm is, that he was sent by his father — not as
is generally held to Malmesbury — ^but to Canterbury,
to study under Hadrian, Abbot of the Monastery

38
dedicated to SS. Peter and Paul, commonly known
as S. Augustine's. Now Abbot Hadrian did not
come to England till the year 670, and he was
appointed Abbot of S. Augustine's in 671, so that
Ealdhelm must have been thirty-one years of age at
least before he went there. This is the reason for
the common statement that he owed his earlier
education to Maildubh. For this common belief
there is no sufficient authority.
It may be urged against me, that Hlothhere, the
Bishop of Wessex, in a Grant to Ealdhelm, made on
the 26th August, 675, describes him as having been
brought up ' at Maidulfesberg from the early flower
' of his infancy.' In answer to this I must point out
that the Grant bears some marks of being a spurious
document, and further that Ealdhelm himself, in a
letter to Hadrian, describes the Abbot of S. Augus
tine's as 'the venerable preceptor of my rude
' infancy.' Now since Ealdhelm was at least thirty-
one years of age when he came under the instruction
of Hadrian, it is clear that the word 'infancy'
refers, not to bodily, but to mental infancy in
Ealdhelm's letter and probably also therefore in the
spurious Grant of Hlothhere.
Ealdhelm was probably not more than two
years at Canterbury during his first course of study
there, after which he entered the brotherhood of

39
Malmesbury under Maildubh. After a short time he
returned to Hadrian's school again, but had soon to
leave Canterbury and retum to Malmesbury on
account of ill health.
If then we accept the date 675 — which is
usually given, depending though it does on the
doubtful Grant of Hlothhere — as that at which
Ealdhelm succeeded Maildubh as chief of Malmes
bury School, it follows that, after 671 and before
675, Ealdhelm and Maildubh were not much
together. It is true that an Irishman, who appealed
to Ealdhelm to take him as a pupil, believed he had
a claim on him, because he, Ealdhelm, was
' nourished by a certain holy man of our race ' ; but
that is literally the only evidence we have, except
the spurious grant, for regarding Ealdhelm as a
pupil of Maildubh. Still I give it for what it is
worth. If any man cannot see where else in Wessex,
except Malmesbury, Ealdhelm could have received
his early education, I could suggest Dorchester-on-
Thames. I however do not think the claim of
Malmesbury improbable ; I merely note that there
is only one piece of evidence in support of it,
and that is a sentence in a letter from an Irishman,
who is asking a favour.

CHAPTER VI.
Ealdhelm's 'I'l^HEN S. Birinus be-
later life. ^^w c^^^c Bishop of
Wessex in 635,
that kingdom consisted of
Hants, the bulk of Wilts, Berks, Surrey, Bucks,
Oxfordshire and Bedfordshire ; but the West-Saxon
settlement on the Lower Severn had by this time, I
believe, become Mercian.
In 650 S. Birinus died, and Agilberht, a man
from Gaul — but I should say from his name a
Frank — ^who had been educated in Ireland,
succeeded him.
In 660 King Cenwealh made an attempt to
divide the West-Saxon diocese into two parts, by
creating a see at Winchester, to which he appointed
a somewhat undesirable person called Wine. The
story goes that he could not understand the
(Frankish ?) talk of Agilberht, who was so offended
at this move of Cenwealh's, that he left his diocese
and retumed to Gaul, where he became Bishop of
Paris.

41
I think however that Cenwealh had perhaps
another reason for what he did. The site of
Dorchester-on-Thames was by this time in a very
critical case ; indeed it became, probably as early as
666 or 670, Mercian for a time. Cenwealh therefore
wanted to have a West-Saxon bishop, whose seat
should be safely West-Saxon ; hence his appointment
of Wine to Winchester.
Wine however, the undesirable, was driven out
of Wessex by the King in 666, and went off to Mereia,
and I shall say no more about him ; Wessex remained
without a bishop till 670, when Hlothhere, Agilberht's
nephew, was appointed to the diocese. He died in
676 and was succeeded by Haedde, who definitely
made Winchester the seat of the West-Saxon
bishopric and removed the body of S. Birinus from
Dorchester-on-Thames to the Old Minster, as it
was afterwards called, at Winchester.
By 682 this diocese was largely increased in
size by the addition to it of the whole of Dorset;
West-Somerset too, and the land of the Exe had
been added by the process of * peaceful penetration.'
It had now become quite an unwieldly diocese, and
there was a strong feeling that it ought to be divided.
In Mereia and in Northumbria, Archbishop
Theodore of Canterbury had succeeded in carrying

42
out the division of unwieldly dioceses ; but there is
a spurious document, professing to be a decree of
Theodore, which lays down that Wessex is not to be
divided during Bishop Haedde's lifetime; the date of
this spurious document purports to be 679.
The real truth however seems to be that neither
Haedde himself nor the West-Saxon King wanted a
division at the time when Theodore was mapping
out new dioceses elsewhere; for Wessex was then
in a critical position, owing both to Mercian
aggression and to intemal difficulties. But when
Haedde died in 705, the division of Wessex into two
dioceses was made.
Henceforward there were to be two bishops,
one for the older Wessex with his bishop's seat at
Winchester, the other for the newer Wessex with
his bishop's seat at Sherborne. What the exact
boundaries of this new diocese were, I shall now
describe. The bishop chosen to rule the newer Wessex
was Abbot Ealdhelm of Malmesbury, who had
succeeded Maildubh as chief of the School in 675, if
we may aecept the date of the spurious Grant of
Hlothhere. The date is probably about right.
Malmesbury, which was not an Abbey under
Maildubh, was certainly given that status under

43
Ealdhelm. What then were the limits of the new
diocese ?
In answering this question we must not allow
ourselves, as others have, to be misled by what
William of Malmesbury tells us. He declares that,
by an unequal and unfair division, only Hants and
Surrey were assigned to Winchester, while Sherborne
gofv^Wilts, Dorset, Berks, Somerset, Devon and
Cornwall'. And the absurdity of sueh a division has
struck many writers since his time. But Mr.
E. A. Freeman pointed out in 1874, in the ' Transae-
' tions of the Somerset Archaeological and Natural
' History Society,' that William herein was certainly
wrong. The English Chronicle, under the year 709,
distinctly states that the eastern boundary of Eald
helm's diocese was Selwood. It follows therefore that
all Wiltshire, except the wedge, the land of Malmes
bury, and all Berks were out of it, and belonged to
Winchester. We can actually point out, how
William eame to make his mistake ; in his own day,
in consequence of changes made in 1058, Berks,
Wilts, and Dorset were in the same diocese, and he
thought that they therefore must have been so in
Ealdhelm's day.
But the English Chronicle proves to us, that the
eastern boundary of Ealdhelm's diocese was the
eastern bounday of Selwood, and to that we must

44 hold. How far west did the diocese extend?
William of Malmesbury says, that it went as far
west as Cornwall. Here again he is wrong, for we
know that a Welsh diocese of Cornwall existed long
after Ealdhelm's time. We must therefore regard the
', western frontier of Wessex at this time as the westem
frontier of the diocese, that is to say, a line running
from the English Channel, somewhat west of the
Exe mouth, northward to Exmoor; a line that is,
whieh would form the western boundary of what we
have called the land of the Exe. Ealdhelm's diocese
• therefore consisted of Somerset, Dorset, the land of
, Malmesbury, and the land of the Exe. This is surely
' the true account of the matter.
King Ine succeeded to the West-Saxon crown in
688, and with Ealdhelm's help, while Ealdhelm was
still Abbot of Malmesbury, he set to work to provide
for the spiritual wants of his subjects of the newer
Wessex. It was by Ealdhelm's advice that the King
restored the monastery of Glastonbury, whieh had
suffered in the English conquest of East Somerset ;
and Ealdhelm himself not only built two Churches
at Malmesbury, one, perhaps two, at Bruton, and one
at Wareham where he had an estate, but also founded
two monasteries, one at Frome and another at
Bradford-on-Avon. The little church of S. Lawrence,
which is still standing at Bradford, is almostlcertainly

45
the ecclesiola, which William of Malmesbury knew
and whieh he believed to be of Ealdhelm's building.
He was right, I think, in that belief ; we may still see,
looking much as it looked 1200 years ago, this little
chureh of S. Lawrence, the most venerable building
of its kind that exists in England.
But Ealdhelm's greatest work was his cathedral,
whieh he began at Sherbome after he became bishop.
William of Malmesbury saw it, before it gave place
to the new Norman chureh built by Bishop Roger of
Sarum, so much of which still remains ; William
describes it as being of wonderful construction.
Very few of the buildings of Ine's time could have
been standing in the days of Henry I ; but Ealdhelm's
buildings, both at Malmesbury and at Sherbome,
escaped rebuilding till then, becanse they were so
good. In the days of King Eadgar, Edward the
Confessor, and William the Conqueror, many
churches were rebuilt, because they were not large
enough or fine enough for the growing taste of the
times. It was therefore owing to their excellence,
their unusual splendour for those early times, that
Ealdhelm's buildings were allowed to remain un
touched so long. Of Ealdhelm's church at Sherbome
nothing, as I have already pointed out, is left except
the jambs of a blocked-up doorway at the west end
of the north aisle of the nave with doubtless some
of the adjoining wall.

46 Ealdhelm was sixty-six years old when he
became bishop, and feeling that his time would be
short, he set about his episcopal task with unwearied
energy, never losing interest in it, though he was
somewhat tired of this world and eagerly longing
for the next. Perhaps I may be forgiven for quoting
the very words of William of Malmesbury ; they
are worth it :
Ista diuinus pontifex indefessus agebat, uicini
finis non nescius; sordebant enim iam terrena
uiro, inhiabatque caelestibus. Quapropter opti
mum factu ducebat, si metam uitae talibus
praecurreret, quae essent suae laudi memoriae,
subiectis emolumento et gratiae. Et licet annis
effeta caro labores perferre negaret, tamen
solida mens iamque foras eminens, et ipsis
caeli ianuis imminens, uincebat temporum
situm, Fragilem igitur corporis usum, non
longe post desertorem animi, spiritualibus
exercitiis subiciebat, in praedicationibus noctes
perinde ut dies continuans, dioceses non
segniter cireuiens, ipse integre et non minus
quam in uiridi aetate ieiunia ceteraque id genus
bona frequentans. Ducta denique uita homini
bus placida, Deo placita, post episcopatus
annos quattuor,
Ad superos superum cultor sociusque recessit;
alterat astra solo, mutat et arua polo :

47
halitus alta subit, fouet artus hospita tellus,
depositumque suum poscit uterque locus.
Almost on the line which we drew to mark the
base of the wedge which the Welsh so stoutly held
against the English from 577 to 652, within what
was once the northern part of Selwood, there lies a
village of the Mendips, two miles or less east of
Shepton Mallet. South of it from the slope fall two
small streams, which uniting, flow to join the Brue
near Castle Cary. There is nothing in this village
to make the wayfarer pause or feel that he is treading
on holy ground ; Doulting is the name of it.
Here 1200 years ago on the 25th May, 705,
Ealdhelm closed his victorious career. When the
call came to him, he like a good soldier of the great
army was in his harness, going round his diocese;
he bade those among whom he fell carry him into
the little wooden church of the village ; and there he
died, lying or sitting on a slab of stone which was
still to be seen in William of Malmesbury's day.
The site of the church in a country place is strtmgely
persistent, even when the church has quite vanished,
as is the ease at Clifton Maybank, which many
Sherbome folk must know. But there is still a
Church at Doulting, which is of course far more
modern than the stone building, which a monk of
Glastonbury, out of gratitude to Ealdhelm for all

48
he had done for that House, caused to be built in
place of the little wooden church. We can hardly
doubt that in Doulting church we stand where
Ealdhelm died.
The story goes that, when the saint was dead,
he appeared in a vision to his friend Ecgwine,
Bishop of Worcester, telling him of his death and
bidding him come to Doulting, Ecgwine came with
speed, and at once set to work making arrangements
for carrying his friend's body to Malmesbury, It was
bom on a bier, with the face apparently uncovered,
to the great consolation of the crowd that formed
the escort, and of the folk that lined the road, along
which the procession passed. Bishop Ecgwine tells
us that a space of fifty miles separates Doulting from
Malmesbury; as the crow flies, it is rather more
than thirty miles. But the procession did not march
straight on over hill and dale, it kept to the roads;
it halted at night, where shelter and food were to
be found. It would doubtless visit places like
Frome and Bradford-on-Avon, where Ealdhelm was
specially held dear, for they lay more or less on the
road, which the procession must naturally take.
There were six halting places on the road; I
take this to mean that the march lasted seven days.
At each nightly halting place a cross was set up, and
a seventh also by the Abbey Church of Malmesbury

49
itself to mark the end of the joumey. The pious
work of setting up these crosses was carried out by
the care of Ecgwine. In William of Malmesbury's
day the crosses were still standing, and time had
done them no injury. They are called, he says,
' biscepstane.' What then was the route of this last march of
Ealdhelm ? Before I read Dr. G. F. Browne's book,
to which I have so often referred, I mapped it out
as follows, without attempting to identify each
halting place, nor did I think it necessary that these
halting places should be exactly seven miles apart;
I mapped it out, I say, as follows : Doulting, Frome,
Bradford, Melksham, Chippenham, Malmesbury;
and I supposed a halt between Frome and Bradford,
and between Chippenham and Malmesbury. But
since I have read the Bishop of Bristol's book I am
persuaded, that he is probably right in holding that
the route from Bradford to Malmesbury was, not by
Chippenham, but along the Fosse Way.
There is nothing at Malmesbury except the site
of the place with its two streams to remind us of
Ealdhelm, not even a fragment of building, such as
we have at Sherbome. No one really knows the
whereabouts of his grave, and indeed his body was
translated to a shrine within a century and a half
after his death; all we can say is that it was buried

50
in S. Michael's Church, which he himself had caused
to be built. We cannot be sure of the position of
the bridge, on whieh he used to sing to the folk from
the country, who hurried away from mass and did
not care to listen to sermons; though one somehow
imagines that it must have been pretty well on the
site of the present bridge, by which wayfarers enter
Malmesbury from the south.
When I was at Malmesbury, about Easter 1904,
I gathered from a prominent licensed victualler that,
though there was no difficulty in working the
Education Bill in the town, there was no enthusiasm
apparent about Ealdhelm. I felt real pleasure in
noting the work of preservation, whieh has been
carried out on the exterior of the west end of the
church ; but a sensation of lamentation and mouming
and woe stole over me, as I looked on the interior of
what is still after all a splendid nave. The stilted
arches of the ruined transepts are just like those of
Sherbome, and they are the work of the same
strong genius, Roger, Bishop of Salisbury.
One longs to think that Ealdhelm's body was
not chopped up for relics; but I regret to mention
that a bone of his left arm was given by Abbot
Warin of Malmesbury to our own S. Osmund, the
Compiler of the Sarum Missal, the Chief of Sher
bome Abbey and School, who placed it in a silver

51
coffer ; here however it was instrumental in healing
the infirmities of two archdeacons, so that we may
say after all :
Sunt lacrumae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt.

CHAPTER VII.

Ealdhelm's WT would be absurd in a
miracles. I little book, such as this,
to attempt an investiga
tion of mediaeval miracles;
at the same time it would not be right in
dealing with the life of S. Ealdhelm, to omit all
mention of those miracles which he is said himself
to have wrought during his life-time. Concerning
the far more numerous and more striking miracles,
which were said to have been wrought by his
influence after his death, I shall say nothing.
At the very outset I feel constrained to protest
against a view which is sometimes put forward, that
mediaeval miracles were for the most part due to
imposture, though I know that some were. Nor do
I in the least understand the historical sense of those
who, like a writer whom I have lately been reading,
hold ' that the confident belief in the continuance of
'a miraculous power is one of the most difficult
' phenomena of the early Middle Ages.'

53
Whether miracles are believed or not, depends,
it appears to me, on the times and places wherein
they occur. Any one who read in the Century
Magazine, for September 1904, the account by an
eye-witness of the canonizing of a man called
Seraphim in Russia on the 1st August 1903, and the
list of his exploits, will understand what I mean.
In times and places where there exists among the
people generally no idea of a rational medical
science nor a rational view of causation, the belief
in miracles is perfectly natural; and it is our duty,
in trying to understand S. Ealdhelm's time, to
divest ourselves of instinctive habits, which are the
result of a purely rational education. S, Ealdhelm
had to work miracles, whether he was alive or
dead, whether he wished to do so or not, for they
were expected of him. Miracles are usually far
more the work of the public than of the man to
whom they are attributed,
I should not call Bede a credulous man, I
should call him a very shrewd, learned, and well-
balanced man; William of Malmesbury distinctly
disclaims any tendency to believe any miraculous
event, unless he can show good cause for believing.
Their views may be taken to be the views of at least
the average educated Englishman between the eighth
and the twelfth century. They both took the

54
marvels, which they relate, quite seriously; a
miracle in their opinion may not be of common
occurrence, but they do not feel that there is any
thing impossible or even improbable in its occur
rence, I do not remember that Bede ever states
that he himself had seen a miracle wrought, though
he had heard of many ; William of Malmesbury on
the other hand himself saw five miracles performed
at S, Ealdhehn's Shrine. All their Bible-study, all
their training, the spirit of their time, led them to
believe in the possibility, and, under certain circum
stances, the likelihood of miracles happening. But
no taint of imposture can possibly touch either their
names or that of Ealdhelm.
During his life-time our Saint is said to have
wrought four miracles : viz. those of the Beam, the
Babe, the Broken Altar Slab, and Stopping the
Storm ; while a fifth miracle, that of the Chasuble,
may in a sense be regarded as his. Now William of
Malmesbury admits that he has no contemporary
written evidence of the truth of these miracles ; he
points out however that there Wcis, what he considers,
an unbroken traditional belief in them, and that they
were represented on S. Ealdhelm's shrine within a
century and a half after his death; for it was
.£thelwulf, King of Wessex from 839 to 856, who
set up this shrine, which was still in existence in
William of Malmesbury's day.

55
We shall now take these miracles, one by one,
beginning with that of the Beam.
When Ealdhelm was building S. Mary's Chureh
at Malmesbury, and the workmen got as far as the
roofing of it, several large beams were being used to
carry the roof, whieh had been supplied at great
cost; for they had been brought a long distance.
These beams had all been cut to one size, except
one which, either through the carelessness of the
artificers or, as William prefers to think, through the
Divine will that the sanctity of the illustrious builder
might shine forth the brighter, was too short. That
the beam was too short was discovered by the
workmen only at the last moment, just before it was
to be hoisted into its place. No extra beam had
been provided and to obtain another would mean
immense labour. After some discussion they re
ported the matter to Ealdhelm, He, knowing what
an expensive business it would be to get another
beam, came, and, praying not aloud but solely with
the movement of his lips, with a slight effort of his
arms stretched the beam out till it was as long as the
others. Then, not wishing to cause any sensation,
he gently reproached the workmen for having tried
to persuade him into thinking that the beam had
been shorter than was necessary. They then
measured the beam and found that it was as long as
the others; and they rejoiced that they had been

56
overcome by the virtue of the Saint who was trying
to hide his miracle. This beam was twice spared
by fire, which destroyed the whole monastery, once
in King Alfred's reign and again in King Edward's;
but time and decay had destroyed it before William
of Malmesbury's day. Such is the legend of the
beam, whieh I have given in an almost literal trans
lation from William's Gesta Pontificum; it is not hard
to guess how this legend grew. When I was at Mal
mesbury, I was shewn the beam ; and when I ventured
to suggest that it had disappeared even before
William of Malmesbury's time, and he was older
than I am, I was treated as all sceptics deserve to be.
The miracles of the Chasuble, the Babe, and
the Broken Altar Slab, are connected with Eald
helm's visit to Rome, and so also is another miracle
which, though it was not in going order, if I may so
say, during Ealdhelm's life-time, yet, occurring as it
did in Dorset, should have a special interest for
Dorset folk. I shall therefore in this one instance
break the rule I laid down for myself and deal with
a posthumous miracle of Ealdhelm's.
The whole story of the visit to Rome has rather
a mythical look ; it reads somewhat like other
' Travellers' Tales ' ; yet there is no denying that the
visit took place, for not only do his biographers
mention it, but also in a contemporary letter,

57
addressed to Ealdhelm, occur the words: ' tu Romae
aduena fuisti.'
Ealdhelm's object in going to Rome was, accord
ing to William of Malmesbury, to secure apostolic
privileges for his monasteries of Malmesbury, Brad
ford and Frome. He communicated his plan to
King Ine of Wessex and, what is still more interest
ing, to King .£thelred of Mereia. Both Kings
consenting to his plan, he started off for Wareham
whence he intended to sail for Gaul. Near Wareham
he had an estate, and, while he was waiting there
for a favourable breeze, he caused a church to be
built of stone, wherein he might pray to God for a
safe outward ijourney and retum. The masonry of
this building was still standing when William wrote,
but the roof was gone, all but a small portion which
projected over the altar and protected the sacred
slab from being defiled by birds. Now the miracle
was this, that no matter how fiercely a storm of
rain might be raging overhead, not a drop ever fell
within the walls of this all but roofless Church. In
the neighbourhood of Wareham people had got so
used to this, that they had ceased to regard it as a
miracle. Not to believe it was a mark of great
impudence, when every shepherd could bear witness
to its truth. The chief men of Dorset had from time
to time tried to reconstruct the roof, but had always
failed, so that now they had ceased to try.

58 Thus runs the legend, and there is added in
William's own hand in the M.S. which he himself
wrote and whieh still exists these words : ' Locus est
' in Dorsetensi pago ii milibus a mari disparatus,
' iuxta Werham, ubi et Corf Castellum pelago prominet. '
I take this to mean, that the site of this church is in
Dorset near Wareham two miles from the sea, — i.e.
the inlet of Poole Harbour, — and that Corfe Castle
is in the same neighbourhood; not that the site of
the chureh is at Corfe Castle. That William should
mention Corfe, when he mentions Wareham, is quite
natural ; for the position of Corfe is so striking that,
it seems to me, the two places must be closely
associated in the mind of anyone, who usually
approaches them from any side but that of Purbeck.
I do not think that we can identify the site of Eald
helm's church, but I am quite sure that it was not in
Corfe Castle as has been suggested. It would take
the shepherds too long to get there for shelter.
Other shelter would be handier.
Now we come to the miracle of the Chasuble —
S. Ealdhelm, after apparently a somewhat lengthy
stay at Wareham, set off for Rome. The Pope at
this time was Sergius, who ruled from 687 to 701,
and the spurious bull of his, whieh Ealdhelm was
said to have brought back with him from Rome,
purports to be dated 701 ; so that we may fairly
assume the date of Ealdhelm's visit to be about 700.

59
The Pope gave Ealdhelm a very kindly welcome and
lodged him in the Vatican, being charmed with his
goodness and learning. No day passed without
Ealdhelm duly singing his mass ; and so it happened
that on one occasion, when the mass was over, he
pulled off and tossed behind him the vestment they
call a Chasuble, — uestem quam casulam nominant, —
expecting that the minister or server would be at
hand as usual to catch it. The server was at another
part of the altar, looking at something or other ; but
' He that watches over Israel slumbers not nor sleeps,'
and forthwith a sunbeam struck sharp and straight
through the glass of a window, and placing itself
under the chasuble held it suspended at some con
siderable distance from the ground. It is not clear
whether the Saint brought this chasuble from Eng
land or borrowed it in Rome for his use there.
Anyhow, the chasuble was still at Malmesbury in
William's day, where it was kept with great care.
The thread, of which it was woven, was most delicate ;
it was dyed scarlet and had small black circles
embroidered on it, containing representations of
peacocks. The size of the chasuble proved, that
Ealdhelm, though not ' a mass of a man,' was of
dignified height.
Now we eome to the Miracle of the Babe —
During Ealdhelm's stay in Rome a boy was born in
the house of a chamberlain of the Pope. The scan-

60
dalous report got about that the father of the child
was the Pope, and a nun its mother ; now the Pope
was an excellent man in every way, but he was not
popular in Rome at that time, and Ealdhelm remon
strated with the people in vain. To put a stop there
fore to this scandal Ealdhelm suggested, that the child
should be brought to him, that out of its own mouth
it might clear the Supreme Pontiff of the charge.
There were some who laughed at this suggestion;
nevertheless the child was brought ; it was barely
nine days old and had not been baptised. Ealdhelm
baptised it and then publicly demanded of it,
whether the common talk about the Pope being its
father was true. The infant replied in the most
absolute way, that Sergius was holy and unspotted.
Ealdhelm was then requested to discover who the
real father was ; but this he refused to do, declaring
that it was his work to free, if he could, the innocent
from condemnation, not to bring death on the guilty.
Pope Sergius is said to have granted all Ealdhelm's
requests as to apostolic privileges, and no wonder he
did. Such is the legend of the Babe.
Now we come to the Miracle of the Broken
Altar Slab — Ealdhelm, having got what he came for,
started home with his Bull and all sorts of precious
foreign merchandise, among whieh was an altar-slab
of splendid white marble, one-and-a-half feet thick,
four feet long, and three palms broad, with a

61
projecting lip, and having crosses beautifully worked
all round the edge. It was carried by a camel as
far as the Alps, for no animal of our eountry could
have borne the weight of it. Here the camel, or
whatever quadruped it was — for, says William, it
does not matter what sort of a beast carried it —
either because it felt hurt at the weight of its burden,
or because of the steepness of the road, fell down.
The crash of the fall smashed the camel and broke
the slab in two ; the saint, with a seeret murmur of
the heart and hand outstretched in blessing, repaired
both the smashed camel and the broken slab. The
fracture of the stone was not a straight fracture, and,
that the memory of the miracle might never pass
away, the sear of it was still to be seen in William's
day. Ealdhelm on landing in England had, what
would now be called, a magnificent reception ; the
' religious ' greeted him, some with sweet singing,
others with censers of sweet incense, while the cross
was bome before him. The laity too was not behind
hand ; in describing their joy William quotes Vergil :
pars pedibus plaudunt choreas,
while others shewed the joy that was in them by
various bodily gestures. All in common praised
God for bringing Ealdhelm, ' the light of Britain,'
back. Ealdhelm gave the altar-slab to King Ine,
who placed it in the church of S. Mary at Braton,

62
where there was also a church of S. Peter, said to
have been founded by Ealdhelm.
Now we come to the last Miracle, the Stopping
of the Storm — When Ealdhelm had been chosen
Bishop of Sherborne in 705, he went to Canterbury
to be consecrated by his old friend Archbishop
Berhtwald, with whom he had trod the paths of
leaming and religion. While he was on this visit to
Canterbury, Ealdhelm went to Dover hearing that
some ships from Gaul had put in there. We may
imagine a sort of ' Pack Monday ' Fair being held
there on this occasion. The Saint was walking by
the sea, keeping a sharp look out in case the mariners
from Gaul had brought with them anything, which
might be of use for his church — surely in this case
the church which he was going to build at Sherbome.
Now the mariners from Gaul used to bring, among
other treasures, books; and Ealdhelm noticed a copy
of the Old and New Testaments among their wares.
Knowing what he was about, he began to tum over
the leaves and tried to beat down the price amid the
caustic remarks of the vendors. ' Why should he,'
they said, 'thus depreciate other people's wares?
Let him puff his o'wn if he liked, and leave the price
of other people's alone.' To the insolence of their
words Ealdhem replied with a smile only; but as he
still haggled over the price, they drove him off, and
slackening their ropes they let their vessel fall off a

63
little from the shore. Straightway a hurricane
arose — an offshore squall — which is painted in the
most vigorous hues by William of Malmesbury.
The ropes cracked, the yardarm could not stand the
fury of the tempest, the ship's side was being smashed,
they were going to founder. The mariners perceived
that this was their punishment for the way in whieh
they had treated the Saint; they cried to him for
help and on their kness, as William tells us in the
words of Vergil, tendunt ad litora palmas.
They promised that they would never do it again.
The blessed bishop, who had felt no irritation at
their insolence, readily forgave their fault, and with
the sign of the cross he stilled the storm. The ship
was again hauled to the shore ; and Ealdhelm at the
urgent request of the penitents became possessor of
the book. They begged him to take it for nothing ;
but he did not want them to lose by their penitence,
at the same time he would not repudiate their
prayers. So he gave them a price halfway between
what they had originally asked and what he had
intended to give. This ancient book was still to be
seen in William's day, not, as one had fondly hoped,
at Sherborne, but at Malmesbury.
Aiter reading this story one naturally longs to
ask some questions: (a) Did this episode or

64 something like it ever happen? I think it did.
(b) What did Ealdhelm pay for the book? Alas !
we can never know that, (c) If it did happen, did
Ealdhelm really think, that he had anything to do
with the stopping of the storm ? I think that he may
have really thought so. He believed he had the best
authority for holding, that a servant of God could at
times command the elements and control the physical
world, just as John Wesley believed.

SEAL OF JOHN OF STALBRIDGE
(JOHANNES DE STAPELBRIGGE),
ABBOT OF SHERBORNE, 12S5— iS'o,

CHAPTER VIII.

Ealdhelm as a W HAVE at last come to
teacher and I what is to me, the most
literary man. interesting side of Eald-
His letter to helm's life, I mean the work
Acircius. he did for Wessex as a
teacher; with that of course
is connected most closely
his literary career.
By a teacher I do not mean a writer on educa
tion or a preacher, though Ealdhelm was both;
much less do I mean an ' educationist,' a man who
writes to the ' Papers ' to tell teachers ' What they
ought to do ' ; I mean one who has really known
the joys and drudgeries of teaching.
Now if any one were to do me the honour to
ask me, who was the first Headmaster of Sherborne
School, I should not hesitate to answer, S. Ealdhelm.
He had been a teacher most of his life, he was
starting at Sherborne a new centre of religion and
leaming, for the English of the newer Wessex;

66
teachers were not too common then, as indeed they
are not too common now, perhaps in consequence of
the somewhat unnecessary abundance of 'educa
tionists.' To tell me that Ealdhelm, who possessed
not only the powers but also the foibles which a
teacher is almost bound to develope, could start a
school — a bishop's school — without himself taking
some part in the teaching while he was at Sherbome,
and acting as the head of it, as the man who directed
its methods and started it on its long and honourable
career, is to tell me something which I cannot accept
as likely. The seventh century of our era was a period of
the utmost importance in English history; it is the
age of the conversion of our own people to
Christianity, and their introduction to literature and
intellectual training. This age begins with S.
Augustine and ends with Bede; Bede is indeed a
marvellous man, in him it culminates. But what
would Bede have been without the giants that
preceded him ?
Important though Augustine's mission to Kent
was, it can scarcely be called successful ; little pro
gress was made. Forty years afterwards came a
second Roman mission to Wessex, that of Birinus;
here too good work was done, more successful per
haps than Augustine's. But the new knowledge had

67
still to struggle for existence. We must not forget
however that this knowledge reached the English
from two different sources; in the south of England
it eame mainly from Rome and Gaul, in the north
mainly from lona and Ireland. These two forms of
Christian teaching and discipline were not identical ;
and the question arose, which was to prevail.
One point specially to be noted is this, that the
English Chureh was in no sense a development from
the Welsh ; indeed long after the English conversion
was completed the Welsh Christians held aloof from
the ' Saxon ' Christians ; it was not till 777 that these
Welshmen conformed to the' Catholic Easter,' and it
was only gradually in the course of the following
centuries, that they entered into fellowship with the
younger and stronger chureh.
The struggle in the north of England between
the Irish and the Roman systems was keen and
pathetic ; but the Roman won, as indeed it deserved
to win, and thus England, instead of remaining
isolated in religion and ideas, was, both for good
and for evil, brought within the influence of the
great Roman or Western system. I do not think
that anyone, who has studied the course of these
events, can feel anything but thankfulness that such
was the result.

68 Now among the great men, to whom we owe
this result, there is one whose name deserves to be
held in peculiar honour by us, as a pioneer in
literature and education, a valiant champion of the
Roman, as opposed to the Keltic, form of Christianity,
the first Englishman to open up to his countrymen
the intelligent study of Latin literature, Ealdhelm of
Malmesbury and Sherborne. Referring to his studies
Ealdhelm writes in his Letter to Acircius to this
effect : ' I feel sure,' he says, ' that no man of our
' race nurtured in the cradle of the German
¦ stock has, earlier than my humble self, worked
' so hard at this subject as I have  For
' saying this I do not think that I deserve to be
' wounded by the shafts of supercilious criti-
' cism .... if relying on the Lord I boast some-
' what of the gratuitous grace of that divine gift
' (mental power), whieh is conferred on each of
' us, not through the prerogative of previous
' merit, but by the munificence of heavenly
' goodness. I may make concerning myself that
' boast, which the illustrious Vergil made :
' Yea, I shall be the first, so life endures,
' To lead the Muses with me, as I pass
' To mine own country from the Aonian height ;
' I, Mantua, first will bring thee back the palms
' Of Idumea.'

69
' and farther on the same poet writes :
' I love
' To walk the heights, from whence no earlier
track
' Slopes gently downward to Castalia's spring.'
It is worth mentioning here, that William of Malmes
bury in his Gesta Pontificum quotes a less exuberant
version of this passage. Can it be that Ealdhelm
himself made the alteration, and that we have the
good fortune to possess two versions of his elaim to
be the first English student of Latin poetry, each
written by himself?
There were two systems of education at this
time in England, the Canterbury system and the
Irish system. Of the Canterbury system the great
founders and exponents were Abbot Hadrian of S.
Augustine's and Archbishop Theodore; Ealdhelm
was an ardent disciple of these teachers and thought
little of the Irish scholars, such as Maildubh for
instance, his own predecessor in the headmastership
of the Malmesbury School. This point he makes
very prominent in his Letter to Eafrith, an old pupil
of his, who had just returned from a period of
six years' study in Ireland. Ealdhelm eannot under
stand why Englishmen should go to Ireland for
instruction, when they can get taught so much better
at Canterbury, and he goes on to complain of the

70

uproarious conduct of those Irish students ' Seotiei
Seioli,' who occasionally eame to Canterbury, and
tells how Archbishop Theodore got the better of
them. Nevertheless Ealdhelm had many admirers
among the Irish scholars ; Artwil, the accomplished
son of an Irish King, submitted to him all his
numerous literary compositions, in order that Eald
helm ' by the file of his perfect genius might rub off
their Irish roughness.' Even from the land of the
Franks, even from Peronne, where the Irish saint
and scholar Furseus, who had for some time taught
in East Anglia, was buried, a letter eame to Eald
helm from another Irish scholar and exile Cellanus,
who thus addressed him :
' To my Lord, richly gifted with literary tastes and
' adorned with mellifluous and elegant lucubrations,
' to Ealdhelm the Abbot who is marvellously acquir-
' ing in the land of the ' Saxons ' what some scarce
' win by labour and sweat in foreign air, Cellanus a
' native of Ireland, an exile now hiding in the furthest
' corner of the territory of the Franks, a mean and
' very humble servant of a famous Christian colony,
¦ wishes health in the entire and protecting Trinity.'
Cellanus then proceeds to ask Ealdhelm to lend him
some sermons. William of Malmesbury gives us a
short extract from Ealdhelm's answer:

71
' I am surprised that, from the famous country of
' the Franks where literature flourishes, you my
' brother, a man of fruitful industry, address one so
' insignificant as myself, who come of the Saxon stock,
' and from my tender infancy have been brought up
' under the northern sky.'
Another Irishman, ' ignoti nominis,' of no repu
tation, as he describes himself, writes to Ealdhelm,
begging him to take him as a pupil, because he
would rather learn Latin and Greek from Ealdhelm
than from anyone else. He begs Ealdhelm to lend
him a book, and sends him some rather good Latin
hexameters to examine ; he finishes his letter by
expressing the hope that Ealdhelm will have the
protection of the Divine Grace, so long as he prays
for him. In this letter we have what may be an
allusion to Maildubh as I have already noted, for
this Irishman gives as a reason why Ealdhelm should
take him as a pupil the fact that he, Ealdhelm, was
himself nourished by an Irish scholar. We have
two letters of Ealdhelm's to old pupils, .ethelwald
and Wihtfrith, whose name is by mistake printed
Wilfrid in Migne's Patrologiae Cursus Completus ;
both these letters contain good advice as to study and
behaviour. It is curious that one form of dissipation,
against whieh .ethelwald is warned, is too much
horse-exercise — ' equitandi uagatio eulpabilis ' ; it
surely cannot refer to trespassing!

72 Ealdhelm's great work, however, on education
is his Letter to Acircius, otherwise described as a
' Treatise on the number Seven, on Metres, Riddles
and Rules of Metrical Feet.' It consists of about
seventy-nine pages of fifty-nine lines each. This
work is addressed to an old pupil and friend of
twenty years standing, the famous Scholar-King of
Northumbria, Ealdfrith.
Why Ealdhelm calls him Acircius, I cannot
discover; Bede, who knew Ealdfrith well and
recognised this letter as addressed to him, does not
tell us. What the meaning of the name Acircius is,
I cannot discover. Ealdfrith was a great friend of
S. Cuthbert, and well acquainted with, though not so
friendly towards S. Wilfrid, to whom, in spite of his
antagonism to Archbishop Theodore's views about
the division of the northern dioceses, the church in
the north of England owed a heavy debt of gratitude.
The salutation at the beginning of the work
describes Ealdfrith as the most illustrious and
glorious Acircius, knit long ago to Ealdhelm by the
bonds which join faithful master and pupil, the
wielder of the sceptre of the northern empire.
Ealdhelm reminds his pupil how twenty years ago,
when Ealdfrith was confirmed by the bishop, he,
Ealdhelm, took him for his adopted son. Allusion
is of course made to the sevenfold gifts of the Spirit

73
/
and to the sev^n sacraments, and then Ealdhelm
plunges into his discussion of the importance of the
number Seven; for Ealdhelm was an astrologer
among his other accomplishments and could cast
horoscopes^as he hints in a letter which he writes to
Bishop Hiedde of Wessex. He goes through the
records of the Old and New Testament to shew the
importance of this number, and the results of this
investigation are more curious than instructive. He
points out however, what I dare say every one has
not noted, that there are seven petitions in the Lord's
Prayer, and eleven times seven generations in the
pedigree of Jesus, as given by S. Luke.
Having dealt with the importance of the number
Seven, Ealdhelm returns to the old ties of affection,
which bind him and Ealdfrith together, but he now
treats them as ties of fraternity, whereas before he
spoke of himself as ' adopted father.' He hopes
that their long absence from one another has caused
no loosing of these ties; so far as he himself is
concerned, he thinks that the reverse is the case.
He then makes reference to the poet Sym-
phosius, who was famous for his poetic riddles, one
hundred and five in number, of three lines each;
Ealdhelm proposes to send Ealdfrith some similar
riddles, whieh are to consist of four, five, six, seven,
and even more lines each. These shall be in

74
hexameter verse, and shall illustrate his views on
that metre. In these riddles he will represent in
animate things as talking, but this is surely quite
permissible, seeing that in the Bible vines, fig-trees,
thistles and other such things are represented as
speaking, while rivers clap their hands.
First then he will deal with the ' Schemes ' or
shapes which metres may take; such a course is
necessary, for, though inspiration makes a poet, a
study of metrical laws is required for a critical
estimate of poetry.
There are twenty eight legitimate metrical feet,
with whieh he will deal one by one later ; from these
feet arise eight genera and about one hundred species
of metres. These he will explain in accordance with
the principles put forward by previous grammarians,
but with fuller illustrations. Syllables may be of
three quantities long, short or common, and hence
arise the different schemes of metres.
Every sort of hexameter verse rests on this
threefold division of the quantity of syllables, and
the influence of synaloepha must be carefully noted ;
this he explains and illustrates by several instances,
e.g. from Juvenal, xiii. 118,
Omenta ut uideo nullum discrimen habendum est.

75
It is scanned thus : omen spondee, tut uide dactyl
by synaloepha, o nul spondee, lum dis spondee,
crimen ha dactyl, bend est spondee by synaloepha.
He then draws a distinction, which we now-a-
days do not observe, between synaloepha and
eclipsis — each of whieh he calls a metaplasm. If,
when two vowels eome together, the former is ex
ploded, you have synaloepha ; if the latter, eclipsis.
I believe that Ealdhelm here wrote eethlipsis, but
Migne's text reads eclipsis. According to him the
following line from Vergil A. vii. 123, contains two
synaloephae and one eclipsis :
Nunc repeto, Anchises fatorum arcana reliquit.
Here we fail to follow him, for there are only two
elisions in the verse, and either there are two
synaloephae or one synaloepha and one eclipsis.
Having now made clear what would otherwise
be a disturbing influence in scansion, he proceeds to
discuss the hexameter line, and he thinks the dis
cussion will be clearer, if he, following the example
of the blessed Augustine in his Treatise on Free
Will and other works, throws his treatise also into
the shape of a Catechism, in whieh the pupil, marked
D (discipulus), asks the questions, and the master,
marked M (magister), answers them.

76 D. How many genera of verses are there in
dactylic metre? — M. Five. — D. Tell me their
names. — M. Hexameter, Pentameter, Tetrameter,
Trimeter and Dimeter. — D. Of what feet does the
dactylic metre consist ? — M. Of dactyls and
spondees. — D. If so, why do some verses end in a
; trochee ? — M. Because the last syllable is common
or indifferent; nevertheless a hexameter should con
sist of twenty-four tempora, since each foot contains
four tempora or beats ; for a short syllable equals
fone beat and a long syllable two. Therefore a
hexameter which ends in a trochee is a versus
colophos. And so the Catechism goes on; the master
points out that you can say either hexametrus or
hexameter, the former is the Greek form, the latter
the Latin. A hexameter verse may consist of six
spondees, as for instance.
Hi producuntur legati Minturnenses.
Such a verse is called a spondiazon, nevertheless
the metre is dactylic, because lines of this sort only
occur in what we call dactylic metre.
The fifth foot of the verse should always be a
dactyl, for a line is heavy, which has a spondee in
the fifth foot, as for instance in Vergil A vii. 634,
Aut leues ocreas lento dueunt argento.

77
So therefore we may lay down the general rule that
the fifth foot must always be a dactyl, the sixth a
spondee, and the first four either dactyls or spondees.
A hexameter may contain any number of syl
lables from twelve up to seventeen. Verses will be
found however containing eighteen, nineteen and even
twenty syllables, as for instance in Vergil A vi. 128.
Sed reuocare gradum superasque euadere ad auras,
but we must remember that syllables, whieh suffer
the metaplasmus of synaloepha, are never reckoned.
A verse of twelve syllables would consist of
spondees only, a verse of thirteen would contain one
dactyl and five spondees and so on, till we eome to
a verse of seventeen syllables, which would contain
five dactyls and one spondee. There are then in all
thirty-two Schemata of dactylic hexameter verse ; in
a twelve syllable verse one scheme, in a thirteen
syllable verse five schemes; in a fourteen syllable
verse ten schemes, for the two dactyls may be
in the first and second feet, or in the first and
third, or in the first and fourth, or in the first and
fifth, or in the second and third, or in the second
and fourth, or in the second and fifth, or in the third
and fourth, or in the third and fifth, or in the fourth
and fifth. But really only four of these are admiss-

78
ible, namely those in which a dactyl occurs in the
fifth foot.
He goes through all these possible schemes, and,
as any one who knows the hexameter metre will
easily see, he shews that these possible schemes are
thirty-two in number but only seventeen are
admissible. The pupil then asks, why the sixth foot is never
a dactyl ? And he is told that it can be so, but not
in a verse in which all the other feet are dactyls, as
for instance in Vergil G. iii. 449
Aut spumas miscent argenti uiuaque sulpura,
but he adds that some by a slight change make this
verse correct by reading et sulpura uiua for uiuaque
sulpura. Again in Vergil A vi. 33 we find
Bis patriae cecidere manus quin protinus omnia
Here he says that some regard omnia as a spondee
by synaloepha, but this he will not accept ; omnia
in Vergil is, he declares, always a dactyl, as for
instance omnia fert aetas, omnia uincit amor. It
never occurs to Ealdhelm that i in omnia might
occasionally have the y sound. Ealdhelm says
nothing about hypermeter.

79
He next points out that there are four kinds of
caesura in hexameter verse; thus we get the uersus
districtus, diuisus, mistus and priapeius. In a
versus districtus, the words do not coincide with the
feet, as for instance in Symphosius,
Dulcis odor nemoris, fiamma fumoque fatigor.
In a versus diuisus the words coincide with the feet,
as for instance
Die mihi, Clio, quisnam primus fingere uersus,
but a hexameter verse demands that there should be
a penthemimeral or a hephthemimeral caesura,
therefore such a verse is inadmissible. In a versus
mistus part is districtus and part diuisus. This he
illustrates by quoting a line of his own,
Petrus Apostolicae qui culmina praesidet arcis.
It is scanned thus : Petrus Ap, pstoli, cae qui ; here
you have the districtus; culmina, praesidet, arcis ;
here you have the diuisus. The priapeian caesura
is a caesura between the first three and the last
three feet of a verse, for instance in Vergil
Eel. vi. 66,
Vt puero Phoebi chorus | assurrexerit omnis.
It is called priapeian, because many verses of this
sort have been made in honour of Priapus, i.e.
such a rhythm is suitable for Bucolic verse.

80 There are six irddn or passiones in dactylic
hexameter verse, viz. acephalon, procephalon,
lagaron, procylon, duticheron, miuron or spicodium.
An acephalon is a verse without a head, i.e. a verse
beginning with a short syllable as for instance in
Vergil A i. 2. Italiam fato profugus.
Here by a barbarism the poet admits a tribrach
for a dactyl. I need not comment on this, for every
school boy knows what to say about it. The pupil
now says that he will not trouble Ealdhelm to discuss
all the passiones, but asks to be informed about the
miuron or spicodium. The master tells him that
miuron comes from the Greek word for a mouse, in
Latin mus or sorex; from this word we get, he says,
a derivative miurus i.e. miurinus (mouselike). Here
Ealdhelm has gone far astray, for miurus is the
Greek /luovpoe, i.e. curtailed; the term was applied
by the Greeks to a hexameter, in which the first
syllable of the fifth or sixth foot is short. The pupil
then learns that spicodium is derived from the
Greek word for a wasp, hence comes spicodis (wasp
like); a versus miurus and spicodis are the same, he
says, because both wasps and mice have a slender and
graceful termination, for he adds a verse so called
ends in a pyrrhic. Here again Ealdhelm is wrong ;
a spicodis is described by Greek grammarians as a
wasp-waisted verse, i.e. a verse with a short syllable,

81
where there should be a long syllable, in the middle
as in Hom. II, ii, 731 and in Od, x, 60, The truth is
that Ealdhelm has got into a muddle here, for a
lagaron and a spicode are the same, i.e. they both
have a short syllable where they should have a long
one in the second, third or fourth foot, while an
acephalon has this short syllable in the first foot,
and a miuron in the fifth or sixth.
Ealdhelm does not explain the terms lagaron,
procylum, procephalon, dulichaeon; nor need we.
The master then defines penthemimeral or
semiquinarian caesura as occurring when after two
feet a syllable follows which terminates a word, as
for instance, Truncum | terra te | git.
The hephthemimeral occurs, when after three feet a
syllable follows and terminates a word, as for
instance, Musa mi | hi cau | sas memo | ra.
The tritotrochaic caesura occurs, when the third foot
is a dactyl and ends a word, as for instance.
Hoc nolo I nee Icui | ter mihi | syllaba prima
legatur.
The tetartitrochaic or tetartebucolic caesura occurs,
when there is a! caesura at the end of the fourth foot

82
and that foot is a dactyl, as for instance in Vergil
Ec. i. 3,
Nos patri | ae f i | nes et | dulcia | linquimus
araa.
This caesura is particularly common in Bucolic
verse, but the pupil must note that Vergil in his
Bucolics does not generally observe it, for that
would increase very considerably the difficulty of
versification. The pupil now suggests that it is time to have
some riddles, and the master says ' certainly.'
Here follows the Aenigmatum Liber, which
consists of a Prologue, nineteen riddles of four lines
each, fifteen of five lines each, seventeeir of six,
nineteen of seven, ten of eight, eleven of nine, four
of ten, four of eleven lines each, one of twelve lines,
one of thirteen, one of fifteen, one of sixteen and
one of eighty three lines ; to which are added in the
Paris Codex of Ealdhelm's works five lines which
have no business there. We have therefore one
hundred and four riddles, consisting, exclusive of
the prologue, of seven hundred and eighty eight
hexameter lines. The prologue is made up as
follows : first we have the line,
Aldhelmus cecinit millenis uersibus odas;
next follow thirty six lines, each of which begins
and ends with the successive letters of this key-line;

83
thus the first line of these thirty six begins and ends
with A,
A rbiter, aetherio iugiter qui regmine sceptr A ;
the second begins and ends with L, the last begins
and ends with S. These thirty six lines are hard to
translate, they consist of an appeal to the Deity to
grant Ealdhelm help in his task.
I now propose to give a dozen of these riddles
as specimens of Ealdhelm's work in this form of
literature. Where I have borrowed a version, I
have stated this; in other eases the versions are
my own, and I crave forgiveness for daring to
print them. 1 ,0
Once was I water, full of scaly fish;
My nature changed, by changed decree of fate ;
I suffered torments torrid by the flames;
My face now shines like whitest ash or snow.
(Dr. G. F. Browne.)
The answer is salt, as produced by boiling sea-
water. ._ j
Forth from thc fruitful turf I spring unsown.
My head gleams yellow with its shining flower;
At eve I shut, at sunrise ope again;
Hence the wise Greeks have given my name
to me.
The answer is sunflower, the Greek heliotropion.

84 Though the war trumpet bray with hollow brass,
The lutes throb sweetly and the bugles call.
My inward parts give forth a hundred notes,
And, when I roar, men hear no other sound.
The answer is an organ.
Of furrrowed body and blue steel am I,
By rubbing I the shapeless metal form.
Gold I can polish and make rough things smooth ;
I have no voice, yet can I chatter well.
And with hoarse screeching raise a hideous din.
The answer is a file. ^
The force of nature, nay the Lord himself,
Gave me a power the old world never knew;
I can suspend in air an iron bar.
And so undo the iron laws of fate;
But Cyprian adamas cancels all my powers.
The answer is a magnet. What Cyprian adamas is,
I do not know.
My coat is black and made of wrinkled bark,
And yet within I have a marrow white ;
At royal dinners, in the soup and stews
And other meats I play a proper part.
But still no virtue would you find in me.
Were not my inside pounded very fine.
The answer is Pepper.

85
Of willow wood and tough bull-hide am I,
And I can stand the shrewdest knocks of war ;
With my own frame I guard my warrior's frame
And shield him from death's grip. Who like
myself
Has felt as oft the deadly blows of war
And known as many wounds, a soldier bold ?
The answer is a shield. <
From the cold body of the earth I came,
Not from the fleece of any woolly fold.
No yarn was spun for me nor whistling thread,
No silk-worm wove me from his yellow store.
No shuttle held me nor the weaver's comb
Passed through me, and yet, garment as I am,
I fear no arrow from a quiver dra'wn.
The answer is a corselet, i i
Twin sisters we, that share a common lot.
And by our labour fumish food for all ;
Equal our toil, unequal is our task.
One sister runs, the other never moves ;
And yet we feel no envy, each for each.
Both chew our food, but it we never swallow,
We break it up and give it freely back.
The answer is a pair of millstones.
A faithful guard I watchful keep the house,
In gloomy night I walk the dusky shades,

86 Scarce lose the sight of eyes in darkest caves.
For hated foes, who waste the heaps of com,
I silent plan the crafty means of death.
On hunting bound I search the wild things' dens.
Not I with dogs will hunt the flying crowds.
For barking dogs wage cruel wars on me ;
To hated race it is I owe my name.
(Dr. G. F. Browne).
The answer is a cat or mouser.
From cracks of stone I came in molten flood,
While flames were shattering the rocky core,
And the loud-roaring furnace brightly glowed.
Now clear as ice am I, capacious too.
And very brittle ; men might break my neck.
Taking my slippery body in their hands.
Yet wits I alter, when I kiss men's lips.
And fill their cheeks with bacchic sweets, and
make
Their tottering footsteps bring them to the
ground.
The answer is a glass drinking-cup. f ^--
High on the cliffs that front the thunderous seas.
While the salt surf goes whistling down the
breeze,
Upreared was I, solid in mighty mass,
To show tbe sea-ways to the ships that pass.

87
I never stirred with oars the watery plain,
I never ploughed with sinuous share the main,
And yet by signal from my lofty scaur
I guide the wave-tossed wanderers to the shore ;
While murky clouds blot out the stars of night,
Flaming afar I stand a tower of light.
The answer is a Lighthouse. S. Ealdhelm's (Alban's)
Head may have had one in those, old days.
The pupil now asks the master to explain to him
the rules of metrical feet. To this the master replies,
that there are altogether one hundred and twenty-
four possible feet, but only twenty-eight need be
dealt with, for it is not necessary to deal with feet of
more than four syllables.
Of two syllables there are four kinds of feet,
the pyrrhic uu, the iambus u — , the trochee — u,
and the spondee  ; of three syllables there are
eight kinds of feet, the tribrach wuu, the molossus
 , the anapaest yjv — , the dactyl — vi^J, the
amphibrach i> — u, the amphimacer — v» — , the
bacchius u  , and the palimbacchius  u ; of
four syllables there are sixteen feet, the proceleus-
matic oOwv/, the dispondee  , the diiam-
bus u— O— , the ditrochee — vz-'-o, the antispast
\j — ^ u, the choriambus — ot>— , the ionic minor
uu  , the ionic maior  uu, the paeon primus
— yjvv, the paeon secundus u-^uu, the paeon

1;

88
tertius uu — u, the paeon quartus uuu — , the
epitritus primus u  , the epitritus secundus
— u  , the epitritus tertius  u — , and the
epitritus quartus  u. The pupil then asks,
how many feet besides do rhetoricians recognise for
prose-writing ; the master answers, ninety-six, which
are called by the Greeks synzygiae ; of five syllables
thirty-two feet are formed, and of six syllables
sixty-four.
^^ There are seven accidentia of feet, viz. arsis and
thesis, number of syllables, time of syllables,
resolution, figure, and measure. The distinction
between arsis and thesis is given ; next we are told
that feet are in themselves either equal, double or
sescuple. A pyrrhic is an equal foot, so is a
spondee, because one half equals the other; an
iambus is a double foot, because one half is double
the other ; a bacchius is a sescuple foot, because one
half is one and a half times the other. The twenty-
eight feet are now treated one by one ; a great amount
of grammatical lore is shown ; we are told into what
feet the terminations of the various moods and tenses
fall, how the student must note certain changes of
quantity, as for instance sedeo with short e, sedi
with long e, and the like ; he is warned to distinguish
between liquor with short i, and liquor with long i,
and similar instances. Impersonal verbs are called
by Ealdhelm uerba defectiua; he warns his pupil

89
not to confuse carex (sedge or rushes) with carica (a >
dried fig), as a certain writer did, who told how a
hermit in the east sustained his exhausted and
emaciated limbs by eating five rushes a day, as
though he were a fasting ox or stag, while all the
time he really meant that this poor man lived on
five dried figs.
In dealing with the word coniunx he notes
that the letter n is present only in the nominative
and vocative singular, and he mentions that he has
discussed this matter in the Sixth Book of his
Treatise De Nomine — a book no longer extant. He
notices the relation between sueh forms as lateo and
latesco. He quotes a line from the Paedagogus of
Vergil, Reddetur tituius purpureusque nitor, /
and warns his pupil not to confuse nitor with short i
and nitor with long i. He declares that the accent of a
tribrach is paroxytone, and that igitur must there
fore be pronounced with an acute accent on the second
syllable ; he marks castigo with a short i, forgetting his
Vergil, and camera with long e. I have made a
collection of Ealdhelm's false quantities, bnt pietas
forbids me to publish it.
While dealing with the ionic minor he goes off
into a long digression on the sounds that various
animals make, but he carefully warns his pupil not

90
to assume that these noises are all ionici minores;
the list of sounds is so interesting that I will give a
few instances from it : bees ambizant or bombizant ;
birds minuriunt or uernant or uernieant ; asses oneant ;
horses hinniunt ; a jug, when water is poured from
it, bibilit ; hens cacillant ; cocks cantant or cucurriunt ;
wolves ululant; sheep balant; partridges cacabant;
young pigs gninniunt ; old pigs grundiunt ; chickens
and boys pipant ; men loquontur ; yokels iubilant.
Ealdhelm declares, that Vergil uses the proceleus-
matic, i.e. a foot of four short syllables, in the ease
of the words tenuia and ariete ; and yet he tells us
only a few lines down, that the digamma is littera u
loco consonantis posita ; this should surely have
given him the key to tenuia and ariete.
He goes very carefully into the changes made
in prepositions and verbs, when they come together
in composition, and shows that there may be three
results: (a) the verb may suffer, (b) the preposition
may suffer, (c) both may suffer; and this suffering
takes four different shapes, all of which he illustrates
fully. He then deals with accentuation, which he
jsays the Greeks call prosodia, and next he gives a
short account of the synzygiae or rhetorical feet,
which he names as follows: proxilius, diprolius,
diopros, trampus, cribussus, namprossimalus, phy-
marus, atrorbus, riuatus, pranulus, linuatus, macbans.

91
matrimus, phynulus, and febrinus. The proxilius
he explains thus,  woo ; the diprolius thus,
ouo  ; the diopros thus,  owow ; the
trampus thus, wow  ; the rest he leaves un
explained, and he ends this part of his subject with
following jest : ' moreover there exists the name of a
' synzygia used for a compound word, which in the
' genitive plural is found to consist of nine syllables
' and twenty letters, e.g. Constantinopolitanus —
' suppose one were mentioning the patriarch of
' Constantinople (pontifex Constantinopolitanus), of
'which the genitive plural would be pontificum
' Constantinopolitanorum.' But the reader should
note that Constantinopolitanorum contains more
than twenty letters, and, if he dabbles in the so-called
' higher criticism,' he can bring this instance forward
to show, how easily numbers get altered in transcrip
tion, and moreover he ought to be able to see, what
caused the alteration here. Ealdhelm does not give
us the name of this synzygia ; perhaps it was too long.
After boasting that he is the first Englishman to
study and teach Latin metres, Ealdhelm points out
what a worthy study it is, and how the great
Emperor Theodosius, with the cares of almost all
the world upon his shoulders, daily spent some time
iri it, and copied out and had at his fingers' ends the
eighteen volumes of the grammarian Priscian-

92 Ealdhelm ends the work with the following
partly riming prayer :
Vtinam nobis praesentium rerum possessio
non sit futurarum remuneratio!
Vtinam caduearum copia
non sit seeutarum inopia!
Vtinam lenocinantis mundi oblectamenta
aetemae beatitudinis non gignant detrimenta !
Quin potius, transacto fragilis uitae interuallo,
succedant suffragante Christo perpetua praemia
meritorum! Quod Ipse praestare dignetur. Qui pro
nobis in patibulo pependit, cum Aetemo Patre
uiuens ac regnans cum Spiritu Sancto per infinita
semper saeeula saeculorum. Amen.

CHAPTER IX.
Ealdhelm's ^HE next work, I shall
Treatise ' On ^ deal with, is that
Virginity. ' ' On Virginity ' ; which
His Letter to Ealdhelm wrote in prose, and
Geruntius. then produced a version in
Other Letters. hexameter verse, to which he
added a poem ' On the eight
principle vices.'
The prose work is entitled De Laudibus
Virginum siue de Virginitate Sanctorum; it consists
of about sixty five pages of fifty nine lines each, and
contains short biographies both of men and women,
who have distinguished themselves by their moral
purity, as shown in having no dealings with the
opposite sex. This is such a delicate subject, that I
do not propose to discuss it as fully as Ealdhelm
does. This prose treatise is dedicated to the Abbess
Hildelith and nine other nuns of the convent of
Barking in Essex, recently founded by Bishop
Earconwald of London. Of all God's creatures,

94
except perhaps human beings, there were none
dearer to Ealdhelm than bees; they were to him the
very pattern of all that is clean and clever and
industrious, and all their good qualities were made
the more worthy by the way in which he, like a
faithful student of Vergil, believed them to come
into existence and propagate their race (Vergil, G iv.
197 — 202); they were the true type of virginity.
Their courage, their loyalty, their discipline moved
him to ecstasies of admiration, and this appears all
through his writings, but especially in this treatise
' On Virginity.' I shall here quote a short extract
to make this clear, and to indicate the style of writing,
in which Ealdhelm indulges, when he means to
' show off,' so to speak. He exhorts the nuns of
Barking to imitate the industry of the most sagacious
bees, ' which, when the dewy morn appears and the
' beams of the most limpid sun arise, pour thick
' armies of their dancing crowds from the hive over
'the open fields; now lying in the honey-bearing
' leaves of the marigolds or in the purple flowers of
' the mallows they suck the nectar drop by drop ;
'now flying ronnd the yellowing willows and the
' golden tops of the broom they carry their plunder
' on numerous thighs and burthened legs, from which
' they fashion their waxen castles ; now crowded
' about the rounded berries of the ivy and the light
' shoots of the flourishing linden tree they construct

95
' the multiform machine of their honeycombs with
' angular and open cells.'
This passage in the Latin is full of alliteration, it
is somewhat over-burdened with epithets and there
is a roundabout way of saying simple things;
consequently modern writers on Ealdhelm, ever since
Sharon Turner's days, have been inclined to sneer at
him, partly I think because they find him hard to
translate and will not take the trouble to find out
the meanings of the out-of-the-way words he often
uses; and yet they should know that Boniface and
Alcuin show the same faults ; and if their reading has
ever taken them to Sidonius and other writers of what
Professor Freeman called the Latin Renaissance,
they will surely recognise, whence Ealdhelm's ' grand
style ' comes. Again the love of alliteration was
natural in an Englishman; the fragments of ver
nacular poetry of this time are full of it, and so too
are the old English law-terms. When Ealdhelm gets
angry he writes often in quite simple telling phrases ;
if any of my readers have a prejudice against him
because of his style, let them remember what a
tyrant style is. Who has not read pages and pages
of Ruskinesque and Carlylese ?
After encouraging the nuns to study the Holy
Scriptures and grammar, Ealdhelm shows how the
life of the cloister is nearer heaven than any other.

96
At the same time he warns his readers against
spiritual pride and points out that of the ten Virgins
in the Gospel only five were wise.
He does not wish to throw any slight on
matrimony ; indeed it is a necessity, even the greatest
saints have to be bom ; but he draws a trenchant
contrast between a wife and a virgin. A wife, he says,
likes to have her neck adomed with crescents (lunulis),
and her arms with bracelets and her fingers with
rings; a virgin longs to shine in the fair garb of
modesty and to be decked with the white pearls of
good deeds. A wife is busy plaiting her hair and
curling it with irons, and tinting her cheeks with
rouge ; a virgin prefers to let her hair be unkempt
and her locks unbrushed, while she carries the palm
of chastity and wears on her head a crown of glory.
All nuns alas ! are not like this ideal of Ealdhelm's,
as he shows in chapter Iviii. of this treatise, for he
laments that the ' religious ' of both sexes are often
much too fond of dress, ' contrary to the decrees of
Jhe canons and the rules of the regular life ' ; he has
actually seen nuns dressed in the following fashion :
they wore a purple imder-dress (subucula), a red
tunic or body (tunica), with a stomacher (capitium)
and long sleeves trimmed with silk stripes (manicae
sericis dauatae); their shoes were of red leather;
the hair of their forehead and temples elegantly
(cjoncinne) curled with irons ; instead of a black veil

97
they wore a coloured and white head-dress (mafors),
which, being attached to ribbons (uittae) passing
round the hair, hung down to their ankles, and their
nails were pared to a point like the claws of a
falcon. If any lady does me the honour to read this, I
would have her understand, that the subucula
was a complete dress covering the whole body,
and was visible, perhaps at the neck, and also as
a skirt below the tunica, which I imagine to have
been rather more than the body of a dress ; so that
the general effect must have been something like
that of the dress, in which Dolly Varden is repre
sented in the old illustrations of Barnaby Rudge.
This style of dress shocked Ealdhelm exceed
ingly ; even yet the horror and shame of it throbs
through the sentences, in whieh he describes it.
Ealdhelm now points out, that in a certain
volume an angel is made to explain the difference
between virginity, chastity and married life. By
chastity he here means that condition, in which man
and wife live together as brother and sister.
Virginity, the angel says, is gold, chastity silver,
married life brass; virginity is riches, chastity a
moderate competence, married life poverty ; virginity
is peace, chastity ransom, married life slavery;

98
virginity is the sun, chastity the moon, married life
darkness ; virginity is dry land, chastity a harbour,
married life the open sea, (Ealdhelm was clearly a
poor sailor) ; virginity is life, chastity a fainting fit,
married life death; virginity is purple clothing,
chastity is rediuiua (I wonder what this is), married
life flannel. Ealdhelm next proceeds to illustrate the virgin-
life by instances taken from the Old Testament, the
New Testament and Christian Hagiology ; from the
Old Testament he gives us short biographies of
Elijah, Elisha, Jeremiah, Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach,
and Abednego ; from the New Testament he gives us
S. John the Baptist, S. John the Evangelist, to whom
he attributes some apocryphal miracles, S. Thomas,
S. Paul and S. Luke. The collect for S. Luke's day,
written in 1549, reads like an echo of this passage
from Ealdhelm : ' Lucas, qui apud Antiochiam
' medicinale cataplasma procurans, primo purulentas
' corporum ualetudines et aegrotas uiseerum fibras,
' ae deinde spiritales animarum incommoditates
' torrido dogmatum cauterio seu Diuini Verbi
' phlebotomo salubriter sanabat.' Next we have
accounts of the following holy men : Clement ' the
first successor of the doorkeeper of heaven and
second bishop of the Roman Church ' ; Sylvester,
who baptised Constantine and so cured him of
leprosy ; Ambrose of Milan ; Martin of Tours ;

99
Gregory of Nazianzus ; Anthony of Egypt, patriarch
of Monks ; Hilarion of Palestine, who used to keep
his recalcitrant body sternly in subjection : ' Ego te,
inquit, asellum faeiam, ut non calcitres ' ; Benedict,
Ealdhelm's own great patron, of whom he writes:
Primo qui statuit nostrae certamina uitae,
Qualiter optatam teneant coenobia normam.
Malehus, Narcissus, Athanasius, Babylas, Cosmas
and Damian, Chrysantus and Daria, Julianus of
Cilicia, Amos of Nitria, and Apollonius.
Next follow short biographies of holy women ;
the Blessed Virgin, Caecilia, Agatha, Lucia, Felicitas,
Anastasia, Justina, Eugenia, Agnes, Thecla and
Eulalia, Scholastica S. Benedict's sister, Christina,
Dorothea, Constantina, Attica and Artemia, Eustochia,
Demetrias, Chionia, Irene and Agape, Rufina and
Secunda, Anatolia and Victoria.
Only once in dealing with these instances of his
favourite virtue does Ealdhelm venture to lapse into
a humorous mood, and this is when he relates what
befell Dulcitius, an officer of the Emperor Diocletian,
to whom was committed the task of examining the
three maidens, Chionia, Irene and Agape, to see if
they would offer incense to the gods or not. So
attracted was he by their fresh beauty, whieh owed
nothing to rouge or curling irons, that he became

100
like wax in front of a stove and was so ' consumed
by the blind fire of love,' that in the dead of night
he made his way into the scullery, in which for the
sake of safe custody he ordered the maidens to be
locked. The scullery was full of pots and kettles
and other cooking utensils which had not been
cleaned, and Dulcitius hearing the maidens singing
psalms in the darkness tried to catch them, but
only succeeded in embracing and kissing the dirty
pots and kettles. When he was well blackened
with this unsatisfactory lovemaking, his body as
filthy as his mind, he withdrew, and, uelut Aethio-
pica nigritudine fuscatus, looking, that is, like a
' Nigger Minstrel,' presented himself to his parasites
and domestics, who failed to recognise him.
It may be as well here to give the poetic
version of this incident; it will do, for those who
can translate Latin, as a specimen of Ealdhelm's
usual style of verse; those, who cannot, already
know the story:
Sed noetuma quies eum fessos oecupat artus,
Dulcia dum famulae cecinissent carmina Christo,
Odis Psalmorum pulsantes ostia caeli,
Audet atrox sanctam spurco flammatus amore
Audacter cellam stolidis inrumpere plantis.
Sed praestante Deo caecatur corde malignus,
Basia cacabis dum stultus tradidit atris :

101
Sic ollis niger et funia sartagine teter
Per totam noctem praeses deluditur amens,
Defensante Deo sacrasque tuente puellas.
Egreditur tandem infelix gurgustia linquens,
Quem scelerum socii nequeunt cognoscere fronte,
Sed procul abseedunt uasto crepitante tumultu,
Linquentes laruam, — furu^m phantasma puta-
bant. VL j
The poetic version ' On Virginity ' entitled De
Laude Virginum consists of 2347 lines and is
dedicated Ad Maximam Abbatissam, the same lady
Hildelith, no doubt, whom Ealdhelm greets in the
prose version. The persons, whose praises are sung,
are the same as those of the prose version, with the
following exceptions: there is no mention of S.
Thomas in the poem, on the other hand a certain
John of Egypt is commemorated who was apparently
a philosopher and physician; Malehus too is
omitted in the poem, while Gervasius and Protasius
are commemorated instead. Felicitas and Anastasia
are omitted in the poem; so are Christina and
Dorothea, while Chionia, Irene and Agape, though
their tale is told, are not/ mentioned by name,
but are described as the maidens whom Anastasia
befriended. This poem like the ' Riddles ' has an acrostic
preface, and it was evidently published, if I may so

102
say, at the same time as the prose version and as a
part of it, for the first line of the preface runs thus :
M etrica tirones nunc promant carmina casto S,
that is to say, now that we have finished the prose
version let us write in verse of these examples of
chastity. The acrostic consists of thirty eight lines corres
ponding to the thirty eight letters of the line just
quoted, i.e. the second line begins with E and ends
with O, the third begins with T and ends with T,
and so on. The last line is the first line written
backwards ; the first line therefore must be such, that
it will scan when it has been made to stand upon its
head. Here it is :
S otsac anim ractna morpcnun senorit acirte M
One may divide the syllables, as one likes, to get a
caesura. Bishop Browne thinks that Ealdhelm
simply got tired of making this acrostic, and wrote
the first line backwards from indolence ; I am sure
this is not the case. That Ealdhelm could have any
difficulty in writing a line beginning with S and
ending with M, is absurd. The truth is, I believe,
that to wind up with the first line written backwards
is ' part of the game.' It would have been a greater
feat of course to make the first line so artfully, that
it would be equally intelligible standing on its head,

103
but that would have been very difficult. Sidonius
gives us two lines of this nature, which I quote:
Roma tibi subito motibus ibit amor,
and Sole medere pede ede perede melos.
The former of these is distinctly ingenious, the latter
contains a false quantity and a hiatus, and has no
satisfactory meaning. Very few lines, I imagine, if
written backwards will scan and still fewer will
have meaning, much less the same meaning as they
have when written in the usual way.
The poem De Octo Principalibus Vitiis consists
of four hundred and sixty six lines and is a con
tinuation of the De Laudibus Virginum, as the
opening line shows. These vices are: excess in
eating and drinking, impurity, love of money, anger,
gloominess, indifference, conceit, and pride. This
list is distinctly interesting; Ealdhelm's word for
gloominess is tristitiae, he means by it sulking, a
tendency to despair and want of faith ; his word for
indifference is acedia, the vice of people who take
no interest in life, never study, sleep too much and
talk nonsense; his word for conceit is kenodoxia, it
was in consequence of this vice that our first parent
was led to eat the apple, it produces foolish disputa
tions, heresy, boastfulness, and presumption; his word
for pride is superbia ; it is a fierce and crael vice and

104
makes men undisciplined, ready to flout superiors,
contemptuous towards equals ; it is the vice of Cain.
The poem De Basilica aedificata a Bugge
consists of eighty five lines, and is full of interest ;
further, we shall find it of the utmost help when we
come to settle the chronological order of Ealdhelm's
works. Bugge was a relative of Ealdhelm, she was the
daughter of King Centwine; I have already pointed
out that Ealdhelm was not Centwine's son, as some
have imagined. If he had been, we must have
learnt it from this poem ; Ealdhelm could not write
just as he does here of Centwine, if he were his
father; the tender relationship of father and son
would come out somehow. The church that Bugge
built was at Withington in Gloucestershire, not very
far from Malmesbury.
I cannot do better than quote, what Bishop
Browne writes about this lady's name :
' The Old-English word Bugge came to mean a
' thing of terror. Coverdale's Bible renders Ps.
'xe(i). 5 aff rayed for eny Bugges by night.
' Speed, in his History of Great Britain, says of
'the opponents of the married clergy, that
' " women in those days were great bugs in their

105
' eyes." A humbug, or hum bug, is a sham
' bogie. The use of the word as a personal
' name for ladies makes it clear that it had
' originally a complimentary sense ; probably it
' meant a fairy, a sprite, and thence a ghost,
' this being the meaning of the Welsh bwg.'
The Lowland Scotch ' bogie,' really ' bogle,' has
of course the same origin, and in the North of
England I have heard a ghost called a ' boggart.'
In this poem we are told that King Centwine
had retired into a Monastery and is now dead, so
also is his successor Cadwalla, and King Ine is now
on the throne. Ealdhelm then goes on to describe
the church ; it contains twelve altars dedicated to the
Apostles, besides one in the apse, i.e. behind the
high altar, dedicated to the Virgin. On this dedica
tion-feast hymns shall be sung to Christ and sweet
anthems ; brethren and sisters shall join together in
this singing and there shall be an accompaniment of
instrumental music, for this day is a high day, it is
the 15th of August, the birthday of the Blessed
Virgin, says Ealdhelm. What are we to make of
this statement ? Now-a-days the 15th of August is
the feast of the Assumption, and the 7th of September
is the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin. On this point
Bishop Browne has some interesting remarks.

106 Gifts, says Ealdhelm, glitter upon the altars;
the church is all glorious within, the sun streaming
through the windows of glass, — then a novelty in
England. The pallia are woven of cloth of gold and
form fair coverings or curtains for the sacred altar ;
the golden chalice sparkles with gems, the broad
paten is of silver, bearing ' the divine medicine of
our life,' for we are ' nourished by the Body and
Sacred Blood of Christ.' The altar cross is formed
of plates of gold and silver decked with gems, and
from the roof hangs a thurible surrounded with
capitals and pouring forth incense-smoke, while the
priests are bidden offer the mass. This thurible
was evidently made in the shape of a pillared edifice,
probably polygonal.
The poem, which follows this, De aris Beatae
Mariae et Duodecim Apostolis aedificatis, is simply a
continuation of it. It tells us that Bugge's church is
dedicated to the Virgin, and then goes on to celebrate
the Virgin and the Apostles whose altars the church
contains. The poem consists of three hundred and
twenty three lines. When we count the number of
Apostles, whom Ealdhelm mentions, we find that
there are thirteen, and this is the order in which
they are noted : Peter, Paul, Andrew, James, John,
Thomas, James ' the son of the maternal aunt of
Jesus,' Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Simon Zelotes,
Thaddeus, and Matthias>

107
I recommend this description of the worship
of the Chureh of England in the 7th century,
to those clergy, ' numbering nearly 3000, ' who
'have signified their adherence to the principle
' of the Appeal to the First Six Centuries.' I eannot
think, that they, with their wide historical knowledge
and respect for times of primitive purity, will lightly
neglect the style of worship used by the Church of
England in the first century of her existence, a style
which must differ little, if at all, from that used by
the Western Church in the previous century.
No doubt such a glorious church, as Bugge's,
would have an organ, though Ealdhelm does not
mention it among the instruments which accompanied
the singing ; he does however describe an organ in
the De Laudibus Virginum, as follows:
Si uero quisquam chordarum respuit odas
Et cantu gracili refugit contentus adesse.
Maxima millenis auscultans organa flabris
Mulceat auditum uentosis foUibus iste,
Quamlibet auratis fulgescant cetera capsis.
Ealdhelm was himself a skilful player on the
lute, as we know, and it seems to me that here is a
little sarcasm concerning those, who are not content
with the 'graceful music of stringed instruments'
but prefer to ' soothe their ears 'with the blasts of

108
the great organs with their gusty bellows and
thousand pipes glittering in their gilded cases.
Ealdhelm also wrote a short poem, of twenty
one lines according to the version of Faritius in his
Vita Aldhelmi, of nineteen lines according to that of
William of Malmesbury; this poem is entitled In
honorem Apostolorum Petri et Pauli. It is of no
importance, but a question arises about the occasion
on which it was written. Faritius says that Eald
helm wrote it on entering the Church of S.S. Peter
and Paul at Rome ; William says that he wrote it for
the dedication of the Church which he built at
Malmesbury in honour of these Apostles. I have no
doubt the latter account is the true one.
I shall now deal with a work of Ealdhelm's,
which from the purely historical point of view must
be regarded as among the most interesting of his
writings, I mean the letter whieh he wrote in the
spring of 705 to Geraint, King of West Wales. It is
much too long for me to give in full ; the extracts,
that I shall make, will be such as will prove most
worth reading.
In the spring of 705, while Ealdhelm was still
Abbot of Malmesbury, a synod of the English chureh
met in Wessex, at which it was decided that he, as
being the man most fit for the task, should address a

109
letter to the king of the West Welsh, remonstrating
with them for their errors in matters concerning the
Catholic Faith. The points to be laid before these
Welshmen were four: (a) they were at variance
among themselves ; (b) they wore the wrong form of
tonsure; (c) they observed a wrong cycle in settling
the date for Easter, nay, they were even quarto-
decimani; (d) they treated English Christians in a
most contemptuous and unbrotherly fashion.
Now a word or two may be said on these four
points; first, these Welshmen might retort that the
English occasionally were at variance among them
selves, as witness the case of the unhappy S. Wilfrid ;
second, they might have suggested that the question
of the form of tonsure was one rather for hairdressers
than for theologians, but I fear that in these early
days we could hardly expect so crude a view ; third,
they might have pointed out that the cycle they used
was once in use among the Romans; it was the
Romans who had departed from ' primitive purity,'
not the Welsh, and the Welsh certainly were not
quarto-decimani, though S. John the Evangelist was ;
fourth, they might have pointed out that the English
had not been specially kind to them, they had driven
them further and further back towards the west and
taken much that was precious from them ; indeed,
they might have raised the cry against ' alien
immigration ' and the flooding of the country by

110

' undesirables.' Unfortunately we have not got
Geraint's reply to Ealdhelm, supposing he ever
made one.
Concerning this letter Bede says, that it was the
means of bringing to a right view in these matters
many of the West Welsh, whom the West Saxons
had subdued, i.e. many of the Welsh inhabitants of
Dorset, Somerset, and the land of the Exe, but he
does not tell us what effect it had on Geraint and
his subjects, to whom it was addressed.
William of Malmesbury had never seen this
letter and he did not know that it was addressed to
Geraint ; following what Bede writes, he thought it
was addressed to the Welsh subjects of King Ine, and
he adds, ' to this day the Welsh owe their correction
' (in the matter of keeping Easter) to Ealdhelm ; and
' yet, owing to their inborn wickedness they are
' ungrateful to his memory and have destroyed his
' letter.' The letter is still with us, and I now proceed
to give some extracts from it.
To the most glorious Lord, who wields the
sceptre of the Western realm, whom I, as the
Decerner of hearts and affairs of men is witness,
embrace with fraternal affection, to Geruntius
the King, and with him to all priests of God

Ill

ministering throughout Domnonia, I, Ealdhelm,
unworthily exercising the office of Abbot, wish
desirable health in the Lord.
When I was lately at a council of bishops —
where from almost the whole of Britain an
innumerable company of the priests of God was
eome together, gathered especially for this
purpose, that because of their anxiety for the
churches and the safety of souls, the decrees
and statutes of the Fathers might be studied by
all and maintained in common under the
protection of Christ, these matters therefore
being duly accomplished, — the whole priestly
council constrained your humble servant
with like precept and similar expression,
that to your pious presence I should address
a letter and should intimate in writing their
paternal petition and wholesome suggestion,
that is to say, concerning the unity of the
Catholic Church and the concord of the
Christian religion  We have heard and
discovered by information from various sources
that your priests do not agree among themselves
in the rule of the Catholic Faith according to
the teaching of Scripture, and that through their
quarrels and strife of words grave schism and
cruel scandal is produced in the Church of
Christ  How widely indeed is the foUow-

112 ing conduct at variance with the Catholic Faith
and Apostolic Tradition! The priests of Dyfed
on the other side of the Severn Sea, boasting of
their peculiar and special cleanliness of living,
exceedingly abominate our communion, so much
so that they do not deign to celebrate the offices
with us in chureh, nor to partake with us of food
at table in social friendliness. Nay more, any
broken meat that we leave they toss forth to be
devoured by greedy dogs and filthy swine;
vessels too and drinking cups they insist on
being scrubbed with sand and grit or ashes, so
that they may be purified. The salutation of
peace is not given us, nor the kiss of fraternal
affection offered, though the Apostle bids us
' Greet one another with a holy kiss.' Nor is
soap and water and towel provided for our
hands nor bath for our feet, though the Saviour
girt himself with a towel and washed his
disciples' feet, handing down to us this rule
for our imitation, ' Even as I have done to you,
so do ye to one another.' Yes indeed, and if
our people go to these parts with a view to
settling there, they do not allow them to be
admitted to their society, until they have been
forced to pass a space of forty days in penance.
One can feel the good man's anger rising as he thinks,
how these Welshmen, whom the English had chased

113
from many a field, treat with indignity and suspicion
the ' Imperial race,' as we English in expansive
moments call ourselves.
Here are two letters of quite another sort ; the
first is to his old friend and teacher. Abbot Hadrian
of Canterbury, and runs thus :
To Hadrian, the most reverend father and
venerable preceptor of my rade childhood,
I, Ealdhelm, a servant of Christ's family and
humble disciple of your goodness, wish health,
etc. My dearest friend, whom with the thank
fulness of pure affection I embrace, I confess
that, since I left Kent and was parted from your
friendly society about three years ago, I, humble
as I am, have bumed even to this day with an
ardent longing to be with you again ; and this
too, as my desire is, I should long ago have
planned to carry out, if the course of events and
the chances of the times had permitted it, and
if divers obstacles had not prevented me, and
especially if I had not been hindered by ill
health, which is parching my wasting limbs even
to the marrow. This same ill health it was,
which, while I was a second time with you after
my first course of study, forced me to retum
home.

114
The second letter is to his sister Osgith, who had
evidently consulted him about a nun, concerning
whose baptism there was some doubt; it runs as
follows : To my most beloved and dearest sister,
whom with sincere affection I venerate, I,
Ealdhelm, unworthily exercising the duties of
an Abbot, wish health in the Lord.
You must know, dear sister, that I have
asked the bishop about the baptism of our sister,
and that he has given leave for that nun to be
baptised, but privately only and not in public.
I salute you, Osgith, in love from the inmost
chamber of my heart, beseeching you with
earnest prayers not to cease occupying your
mind with assiduous meditation on the Scrip
tures, that so you may carry out the advice of
the Psalmist : ' In his law will he exercise him
self day and night ' ; and the same Psalmist in
another place testifies thus : ' How sweet are thy
words unto my mouth,' ete. Christ says by his
apostle, ' the effectual fervent prayer of a
righteous man availeth much ' ; therefore tell all
the sisters through Christ to remember to pray
for me. Farewell! ten times beloved, yea, a
hundred and a thousand times. God keep you.
I have already mentioned very briefly a letter from
Ealdhelm to a certain £thelwald, a favourite pupil ;

115
we possess also a letter from .Ethelwald, a pupil,
and I believe the same .Ethelwald, to Ealdhelm, in
which E^thelwald tells his master that he is sending
him three poems, the first in hexameter verse con
sisting of seventy lines, the third not in a classical
metre but in rimed octosyllables and dedicated to
Ealdhelm himself, the second also in rimed octo
syllables and dedicated to one Winfrith, ' meo tuoque
clienti,' a pupil of Ealdhelm and E^thelwald, which
describes Winfrith's voyage over sea. I do not
believe that this Winfrith is S. Boniface of Maintz,
though it is just possible that he might be.
Of the hexameter poem we have no trace, but
there are, printed by Migne at the end of Eald
helm's works, four poems in octosyllable metre;
the second of which concems a voyage over sea
and a pilgrimage to Rome; the third poem is
dedicated to Ealdhelm, and the pun on his name
priscus cassis occurs twice in it. I will quote a few
lines from it: Aldelmum nam altissimum
Cano atque clarissimum,
Alto nostratum nomine
nuncupatum, et numine
pollentem per caelestia,
potentem ac terrestria.

116 The fourth poem is by E^thelwald, as is evident
from the eighth line, and it gives us a glowing des
cription of Ealdhelm ; it begins thus :
Vale uale, fidissime
Phile Christi carissime,
Quem in cordis cubiculo
Cingo amoris uinculo.
It describes how Ealdhelm is of virile shape, and sage
in word and deed, of noble raee and dignified
stature, agile, with white or bright hair, ' Caput
candescens erinibus,' keen eyes, red cheeks, excellent
hearing, wonderful hands as we should expect a good
lute-player to have, graceful and strong legs, ' tibiae
eursu teretes ; in short, says .Ethelwald, such are
Ealdhelm's perfections that they can hardly be
counted, and so he ends by wishing him a happy life
under God's protection, and everlasting joy in the
heavenly country hereafter.
The first poem may very well be by Ealdhelm
himself. It describes a tour through Devon and
Cornwall, and therefore was written some years after
682 ; it tells how the party took refuge in a cottage
during a heavy storm, and left it just before it was
struck by lightning; finally they found shelter in a
church ; it begins thus :
Lector caste catholice
Atque obses athletice,

117
Tuis pulsatus precibus
Obnixe flagitantibus
Hymnista carmen ceeini
Atque responsa reddidi,
Sicut pridem pepigeram,
Quando profectus fueram
Vsque diram Comubiam
Per carentem Dumnoniam
Florulentis cespitibus
Et fecundis graminibus.
I suppose they went over Dartmoor, or at any rate
along the Roman road immediately to the south of it.
Migne prints these four poems with lines all out of
order, and it took me some time to arrange them
in their proper sequence. I afterwards found that
in Dr. Giles's edition of Ealdhelm they were in the
right order.
The letter printed at the end of Ealdhelm's
works and entitled Anonymi Epistula ad sororem
Anonymam is written by a man, who knew Eald
helm's works and had been a pupil of S. Boniface of
Maintz, An alphabet is printed at the end of this
letter, but has nothing to do with it ; it runs thus :
asc, bere, can, dour, ehu, feli, gip, ha, gal, is, ker,
lagu, man, not, os, pert, quirun, rat, suigil, tac, ur,
ile, ian, zar. Bishop Browne, quoting I fancy Mr.
Manitius, says that this is the Runic Futhorc ; Mr.

118
Manitius says that Professor Wiilcker told him so.
But surely it is not; where are the characteristic
Rune letters? What Mr. Manitius calls the
Alliterationspielereien, which follow, may be Eald
helm's — or anybody's ; they are of no importance or
interest, except R.R.R. which is interpreted: Rex
Romanorum Ruit. But who on earth bore the title
Rex Romanorum in Elaldhelm's days ?
The poem entitled Fragmentum de die ludicii
in hexameter verse, also printed by Migne at the end
of Ealdhelm's works, is by Cyprian.

CHAPTER X.

Obscurity of WT is true that much of the
Ealdhelm's B writings of Ealdhelm is
writings. obscure — at any rate to
Chronology of us ; but if a decent text of his
his works. works were made we should
find, I have no doubt, that
there would be less obscurity
than now appears to be the case. We must, how
ever, be always on the look-out for allusions, brought
in without any warning, especially to the Old and
New Testaments.
For instance, in his letter to Winberht, Eald
helm begins thus :
Domino in dominorum Domino dileetissimo
Winberhto Aldhelmus, seruos seruorum Dei, in
angulari duorum testamentorum lapide de
summis montium uerticibus abscisso, qui
statuam quaterno metallorum genere fabrica-
tam, quaterna populorum regna signantem,
crura tenus, aurato capite, oppressit, salutem.

120
This may be translated as follows :
To Lord Winberht, in the Lord of lords most
beloved, I, Ealdhelm, servant of the servants
of God, in the corner stone of the two testa
ments split off from the moimtain tops, which
brake in pieces as far as the legs the image with
head of gold fashioned of four different sorts of
metal signifying four kingdoms, wish health.
Now this simply means ' To Winberht, Ealdhelm
wishes health in Christ,' as a reference to the prophet
Daniel chapter ii. clearly shows.
In Ealdhelm's poetry, certainly, lines are occa
sionally printed in the wrong order ; this is the case,
I think, towards the end of the poem on the ' Eight
Principal Vices,' and I know it is the case in thc
octosyllable poems printed in Migne's edition at the
end of his works, as I have already noted. An
instance will show this clearly. At the end of
Poem i. there is the following doxology :
Doxa Deo ingenito,
Atque Gnato progenito,
Simul cum Sancto supera
Flatu regente saeeula.
Perhaps I shall not be believed when I state that
the first line of this Doxology is printed as line 174
of the poem, the second line as line 199, the third
line as line 175, and the fourth as line 200; and all

121
the lines throughout this poem have to be rearranged
before any sense can be made of them.
The letter to Eahfrith is peculiarly hard to
construe ; it contains a preface, beginning ' Primitus
pantorum procerum,' which has maddened some and
amused other students of Ealdhelm; at the same
time its meaning is not so hard to make out as some
other clauses in the letter. The letter, however,
ends with four lines, three of which are to be found,
with some alterations, in Ealdhelm's own poem on
the 'Eight Principal Vices.' By referring to this
poem one can get these three lines correct and make
out the writer's meaning, but the remaining line,
which comes first in the quotation, is given thus :
Digna fiat fante glingio gurgo fugax fambulo.
There is no attempt to make the line scan, and, as it
stands, it is nothing but ' gibberish.' I have tried to
find the key to what it is meant to represent in the
poem, and have failed. But it throws some light on
the capacity of the Scribes and Editors, who have
dealt with Ealdhelm's writings.
A man of leisure and experience, with a little
money to spare and plenty of patience, should edit
' Ealdhelm ' ; it would bring to the right sort of
capable man immense pleasure, and he would win
for himself a dignified niche in the Wessex ' Temple

122
of fame.' As things now are, we cannot do Ealdhelm
justice. Whatever some of the moderns may say of
Ealdhelm, the men of old time knew his worth. I
have already told what his pupils have written of
him; let me now tell what Bede, a man of thirty-
seven years of age when Ealdhelm died, has added
to that testimony. ' He was a learned man in every
' way, for he was brilliant in his language and
' admirable because of his erudition in all literature
both sacred and liberal.' Now Bede's name stands
among the very highest of the great names of the
world, and to be praised by him is praise indeed.
In the following century another famous man,
a kinsman of Ealdhelm, one whose name is very
dear to Englishmen, an excellent judge of men and
letters, King Alfred himself, in his Hand-book, tells
us of Ealdhelm's English poetry, how the' song he
sang on the bridge of Malmesbury was still enchant
ing to West Saxon ears. Ealdhelm's English songs
and Alfred's Hand-book are both lost, and we should
never have known what Alfred thought of him, but
for William of Malmesbury.
William of Malmesbury, as a monk of that house
over which Ealdhelm had ruled so faithfully, no
doubt had a very tender place in his heart for him.
In his eyes our great bishop, his great abbot, loomed

123
larger, it may be, than he would have in the eyes of
monks of other houses. Yet among all the great
Scholars and Divines, of whom William has written,
no one stands out in his pages more prominent than
Ealdhelm. William is no mean authority, he is our
greatest historian of early times, after Bede.
William tells us, that the Greeks are involved in
their language, the Romans brilliant, and the English
pompatic. By this word ' pompatic ' he does not
mean pompous, but dignified or stately. He says
that • if you will study Ealdhelm carefully, you will
' find that in his acumen he is Greek, in his brilliancy
' he is Latin, in his dignity he is English.' What he
says of Ealdhelm's prose is true; difficult as it
sometimes is to construe, it moves with a magnificent
swing, like the march of a battalion of the Guards.
I shall now attempt to fix, at any rate
approximately, the chronological order of Ealdhelm's
writings. In connection with this matter I must
confess how much I am indebted to the work of Mr.
M. Manitius, entitled ' Zu Aldhelm und Baeda,'
published at Vienna in 1886. At the same time I
must note, that wider knowledge of the West-Saxon
history of this period would have saved him from
one or two errors.
The industry shown by Manitius in tracing
Ealdhelm's quotations to their sources and in

124
discussing these ' Quellen ' is beyond all praise ; but
his work is, and is intended to be, that of the
dissecting room ; we get from him no notion of the
living Ealdhelm ; but perhaps he will give it us some
day. First then, for the convenience of my readers, I
give a complete list of the undoubted works of
Ealdhelm, dividing them as Migne does, into three
classes, (a) Letters, (b) Prose works, (c) Poems.
(a) We possess ten letters of Ealdhelm, i. to Abbot
Hadrian of S. Augustine's, ii. to his sister Osgith,
iii. to Winberht, iv. to Cellanus, v. to Elthelwald, vi. to
Wihtfrith, vii. to Bishop Haedde, viii. to Eahfrith,
ix. to the clergy of S. Wilfrid, x. to Geraint King of
West Wales. At the end of these letters Migne
prints a Grant of Ealdhelm to his monks (of
Malmesbury, Frome and Bradford-on-Avon), of the
privilege of having him for their Abbot during his
lifetime, though he is now Bishop of Sherborne, and
of the right, in the case of each monastery, freely to
elect its Abbot for the future. This grant is
generally regarded as spurious, but, though it is in a
somewhat unusual shape, I do not feel sure fhat it is
so. It is dated 705.
(b) We possess also two Treatises in prose,
i. the Epistula ad Acircium, siue Liber de
Septenario, de Metribus, Aenigmatibus et Pedum

125
Regulis, ii. De Laudibus Virginitatis siue de
de Virginitate Sanctorum.
(c) We possess five poems, i. Versus in
honorem Apostolorum Petri et Pauli, ii. De
Basilica aedificata a Bugge, iii. De aris Beatae
Mariae et duodecim Apostolis dedicatis, iv. De
Laudibus Virginum, v. De octo principalibus
Vitiis. Seeing that the two poems, De Basilica
aedificata a Bugge, and De aris Beatae Mariae et
duodecim Apostolis dedicatis, are really one work,
I shall refer to them, in the following discussion,
under one title, as ' the poem on Bugge's Church ' ;
seeing also that De Laudibus Virginum and De
octo principalibus Vitiis are one work, I shall refer
to them as ' the poem on Virginity.'
In the ' verses in honour of SS. Peter and Paul '
we find a line whieh rans thus, according to Faritius :
Clauiger aetherius, portam qui pandis in aethra.
This same line, with slight variations, is found in
four other places in Ealdhelm's works, viz. in the
poem on Bugge's Church, in the prose version ' On
Virginity,' in the Letter to Acircius, and in the Letter
to Geraint. It follows therefore that the prose
version ' On Virginity,' the Letter to Acircius, and
the Letter to Geraint are later than one of the poems,

126
whichever it may be, which contains this line. And
since the poetic version ' On Virginity ' was written
later than the prose version, that poem too must be
later than one of these poems, which contains this
line. The question therefore, which we have to
decide, is, whieh is the earlier poem, that on Bugge's
Church, or that in honour of SS. Peter and Paul.
Now this latter poem consists of only twenty-one
lines, whereas the former consists of five hundred and
eight lines ; moreover, the short poem contains eight
other lines whieh, with small variations, occur in the
longer poem. Hence we have a short poem of
twenty-one lines, nine of which are contained in a
larger poem by the same author. Which poem
would be written first ? In my opinion it would be
the short poem. Manitius decides the other way.
I shall assume then, that the earliest poetic
work of Ealdhelm, we possess, is the Versus in
honorem Apostolorum Petri et Pauli.
We can determine very nearly the date, at
which the poem on Bugge's Church was published.
Bugge got the land on which to build her church, as
Bishop Browne tells us, from Oshere a Mercian
under-king who is known to have ruled the Hwiccas
in 680 and in 693. Further, Ealdhelm tells us, in
this poem on Bugge's Church, that King Cadwalla of
Wessex is dead, and we know that Cadwalla died in

127
Rome not long after the 10th April, 689. It seems
to me that unless this death had recently occurred,
Ealdhelm would hardly have alluded to it here as he
does. I have therefore come to the conclusion, that
Bugge's Church was dedicated in 690, and that the
poem therefore belongs to that year. Hence we
infer that the poem on SS. Peter and Paul is
probably earlier than 690.
Ealdhelm in his letter to Eahfrith quotes lines
from the poetic version 'On Virginity.' In this
letter Archbishop Theodore is spoken of as still living,
though he is called ' beatae memoriae Theodoras ' ;
the archbishop died in 690. Therefore the whole
treatise on Virginity, prose and poetry, was finished
by 690 and possibly some time before. Therefore it
is probably earlier than the poem on Bugge's church,
and so probably is the letter to Eahfrith.
With reference to the letter to Acircius, we must
note that it is dedicated to King Ealdfrith, who
began to reign in 684 and died in the first half of
705. We are told that he had been Ealdhelm's
friend and adopted son for twenty years when this
letter was published; one can hardly imagine Eald
helm calling anyone his adopted son, while he
(Ealdhelm) was uuder thirty or forty years of age,
therefore I suggest that the letter to Acircius was

128
published between 690 and 700, probably nearer the
later date.
The letter to Abbot Hadrian tells us that three
years have passed since Ealdhelm finished his
second course of study at Canterbury; he caimot
have begun his first course till 671 at the earliest,
therefore I think we may fairly date this letter circ
680. The letter to Winberht we may date circ 688,
for a spurious charter, based on this letter, purports
to be dated that year.
The letter to Osgith was written before Eald
helm became bishop, i.e. earlier than summer, 705.
The same may be said of the letter to Cellanus, for
Cellanus in his letter to Ealdhelm, which calls forth
this reply, calls Ealdhelm Archimandrite, i.e. Abbot ;
.Ethelwald addresses Ealdhelm as Abbot, therefore
if Ealdhelm's letter to Elthelwald is in answer to
this same Ethelwald, the same may be said of its
date. Ealdhelm's letter to Bishop Haedde was written
before he published the letter to Acircius, and while
he was busy on it, probably therefore between 690
and 700.
The Letter to the Clergy of S. Wilfrid may
belong to the year 686 or to 704; Bishop Browne

129
prefers the earlier date; Haddan and Stubbs, as
well as Canon W. Bright, the later. I think the
probability is that the later date is the right one.
The letter to Wihtfrith gives us no hint of the
date at which it was written, but there is no sugges
tion in it that Ealdhelm is a bishop ; therefore I
suppose we may infer that it was written before
summer, 705.
The letter to Geraint was written, as we know,
in the spring of 705, and the grant to Ealdhelm's
monks of liberty to elect an Abbot, in the autumn of
the same year. Of course if this grant is not genuine,
its date does not matter.
As a result of the above discussion I venture to
put forth the following list of Ealdhelm's more
important writings in chronological order :
Epistula ad Hadrianum, circ. 680. \
De Laudibus Virginitatis (prose version), I before
De Laudibus Virginum (poetic version), [ ^^®-
De octo principalibus Vitiis, /

lecim >•

De Basilica aedificata a Bugge,
De aris Beatae Mariae et duodecim \ eire. 690
Apostolis dedicatis
Epistula ad Acircium, circ. 698,
Epistula ad Gerantium Dumnoniae Regem, 705.

130 I have written this book as simply as I eould,
and in sueh a way that it will, I hope, be intelligible
to those who are not familiar with Latin ; in most
eases where I have not translated a Latin quotation,
my reason has been that I wished my readers to hear
the sound and swing of the Latin rather than to get
the meaning of it ; this they can do by reading the
quotations aloud for themselves. I have consistently
all through spelt Ealdhelm's name as it was spelt by
the English of his own time, Eald is the Old
English form of old, and helm is of course helmet.
Aldhelm is the Latin shape of his name without any
case-ending; but why we should spell the name
Aldhelm, when we are writing in English, I cannot
understand. If anyone thinks we should now-a-days
call him Oldhelm, he might have a case for argument.
The name was pronounced pretty nearly Yaldhelm.
It has given me great pleasure to write this
little book, and I hope that many of my friends and
neighbours will find some at any rate in reading it.
Here, above all places in West-Wessex, we are in
duty bound to know something of Ealdhelm ; for here
the work he began for it, especially as a teacher of
the young, has had its most conspicuous and abiding
home.

INDEX.

Acircius, see also Ealdfrith ;
letter to, 68, 72-92, 127.
Acrostic Prefaces, 82, 83, loi.
102.
.(Ethelred. King of Mereia,
57-
iEthelwald, 71, ii4-:i6, 128.
iEthelwulf, King, 54.
Agilberht, 40,
Aldhelm, see Ealdhelm.
Alfred, King, 33, 122.
Alphabet, see Futhorc.
Altar Slab, miracle of, 60, 61.
Augustine's Mission to
Kent, 66,
Arthur, King, 18.
Artwil, 70.
Axminster, 25.
Babe, miracle of, 59, 60,
Badbury Rings, 18,
Badonicus mons, iS, 19.
Barnes, William, 21,
Bath, land of, 13, 53,
Beam, miracle of, 55, 56,
Beandune, 19.
Bede, 32, 66, 122.
Bedfordshire, 12, 29.
Bees, 94, 95.

Berhtwald, Archbishop, 62.
Berkshire, 12.
Bindon Hill, 19.
Birinus, 34, 40, 41, 66.
Blackmore, 25.
Boniface (Winfrith), 27.
Bradford-on-Avon, 8, 24, 44.
45. 57-
Bristol, Bishop of, 7. See
also Browne.
Bristol, Town of, 6,
Brocmael, 13.
Brokenborough, 36.
Browne, Dr., G. F., 6,35, 49,
passim .
Bruton, 44, 61,
Bucks, 12, 29.
Bugge, 104. De Basilica,
104-108, 126.
Cadbury (Somerset), 21, 25,
34-
Cadwalla, 29, 105.
Caer Bladon, 36, 37.
Camel, miracle of, 61.
Canterbury, 37, 38, 62.
Ceawlin, 13, 14.
Centwine, 26, 33. 104,
Cenwealh, 24, 29.

132

Ceolric, 14.
Ceolwulf, 14, 19.
Chasuble, miracle of, 58, 59.
Chronicle, English, 43.
Coit Mawr, see Selwood.
Corfe, 58.
Crediton, 28.
Crewkerne, 25.
Cynegils, 19, 24.
Deorham (Dyrham), 13, 35,
Dorchester (Dorset), 20, 34,
Dorchester (Oxford), 39, 41,
Dorn (Thorn), 27,
Dorset (Durotriges), 16-22,
Conquest of, 23-28.
Doulting, 47, 48.
Dulcitius, 99.
Dumnonia (Domnonia), 3, 15,
III.

Eahfrith, letter to, 69, 121.
Ealdfrith, 72, 73. See also
Acircius.
Ealdhelm : birth, 32 ; educa
tion, 37-39 ; Abbot of
Malmesbury, 39; Bishop
of Sherborne, 42 ; death,
47; burial, 48, 49 ; shrine,
54 ; miracles, 52-64 ;
teacher and literary man,
65-71 ; obscurity of style,
119-122 ; list of writings,
124-125 ; chronology of
writings, 125-129 ; pro
nunciation and spelling of
name, 130.
Easter, date of, 67, 109.
Ecgwine, Bishop, 48.
Exe, land of, 25, 27.
Exeter, 28, 33.

Faritius, 32, 33, 108.
Fethanleag (Faddiley), 13.
Freeman, E. A., 43.
Frome, 44, 57.
Furseus, 70.
Futhorc, 117.
Geruntius or Geraint, King,
letter to, 3, 5, 108.
Gesta Pontificum, 32, 56, 69.
Gildas, 18.
Gillingham (Dorset), 24.
Glastonbury, 44.
Gloucestershire, 12, 13.
Green, J. R., 19.
Guest, Edwin, 35.
Hadrian, Abbot, 37, 38, 69,
113, 128.
Haedde, Bishop, 42, 73, 128.
Herefordshire, 13.
Hildelith, 93, loi.
Hlothhere, Bishop, 38.
Ilehester, 34.
Ine, King, 29, 44.
Inglebourne, 37.
Ireland, 6g.
Irish, 70, 71.
Maildubh, 35, 38, 39, 69, 71.
Malmesbury Abbey, 44, 49,
55. 57-
Malmesbury Town, 12, 14,
15. 35. 39. 50,
Malmesbury, William of, see
William.
Manitius, M., 118, 123.
Migne, J.P,, 71, 102, 118, 124.
Miracles, mediaeval, 52-54,

133

Noises of animals, 90,
Nuns' dress, 96, 97,
Organs, 84, 107.
Osgith, letter to, 114, 126,
Osmund, Bishop, 50,
Oxfordshire, 12, 29.
Parrett, 24.
Peaceful penetration, 27,
Penda, King, 23.
Penselwood, 24.
Petri et Pauli, uersus in
honorem, 108, 125.
Plummer, Charles, 35.
Priscian, 91.
Purbeck, 31,
Quantocks, 25.
Quarto-decimani, 109.
Riddles, 73, 82-87.
Roger of Caen, Bishop, 7,
50.
Rome. Ealdhelm's visit to,
58-60.
S. Alban's (Ealdhelm's)
Head, 31.
Salisbury (Sarum), 33, 34.
Selwood, forest of, 12, 14, 23.
Sergius, Pope, 58-60.
Shaftesbury, 21, 34,
Sherborne, Diocese of, Extent,
42-44,
Sherborne, School, 7, 65, 66,
Sherborne, Town, 25, 33, 34,
45-
Sidonius, 95, 103,
Sigwell, 25,

Somerset, conquest of. East,
24, West, 27.
Southampton, 11,
Storm, stopping of, 62, 63.
Surrey, 12.
Symphosius, 73,
Synzygiae, 90, 91,
Taunton, 28.
Theodore, Archbishop, 41,69.
Theodosius, Emperor, 91.
Tonsure, 109.
Truro, 33.
Virginitatis, de laude, loi,
102, 127.
Virginum, de laudibus, 93-
100, 127.
Vitiis, de octo principalibus,
103.
Wales, West, 15.
Wanborough, 13.
Wareham, 20, 44. Chtirch
near, where no rain fell ,
57. 58,
Wells, 15, 33,
Welsh, meaning of the word,
1, 2.
Welsh Church, 67, 109-112.
Welsh, North, 26.
Welsh, West, 26.
Wessex, conquest of, 10-15,
23-30. Converson of, 28.
Extent of, in a.d. 635, 40.
Wihtfrith, letter to, 71.
Wilfrid, S., 71, 72, 124, 128.
William of Malmesbury, 26,
32. 43. 53. 54. 70. 122,
123, passim.

134

Wilts, 12.
Wimborne, 20.
Winberht, letter to, 119, 128.
Winchester, Sec of, 41, 43.
Wine, Bishop, 40, 41.
Winfrith, see Boniface ; also
115

Woodyates, 12, i8.
Worcestershire, 12, 13.
Worship, character of, in the
Church of England in the
7th century, 105-107.
Wulfhere, King, 29.

S|^%)^

Bennett's Printing Works, Sherborne.

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