in Anglo-Saxon circles, where they were imitated in
Latin (by Tatwine, archbishop of Canterbury 731–34,
Eusebius, and Boniface) and OE (in the Exeter Book
Riddles).
Aldhelm’s longest and most notable work was a
treatise on chastity, De virginitate, composed for Abbess
Hildelith and her nuns at Barking Abbey. The topic was
a favorite patristic subject, and the method of composi-
tion was also traditional, with one version in prose and
another in verse, a procedure (termed opus geminatum
or stilus geminus, “twinned work” or “twin style”)
practiced by late Latin writers like Juvencus and Caelius
Sedulius and subsequently by Bede, Alcuin, and Hraba-
nus Maurus. But Aldhelm’s texts are most unusual, for,
unlike other authors whose poetic versions were much
more ornate than the prose counterparts, Aldhelm’s
dazzling prose is if anything more obscurantist, recher-
ché, and artifi cial than the poetic version, which is also
highly embellished. After an elaborate introduction on
the nature, value, and diffi culties of virginity the prose
text presents a catalogue of male virgins from the Old
Testament to the Church Fathers; this is followed by
a catalogue of female virgins similarly ordered, with
some further considerations of Old Testament patriarchs;
before ending, Aldhelm denounces showy dress worn
by ecclesiastics.
The poetic twin shares the general structure of the
prose version, with the sequence of male and female
exemplars, but it ends quite differently, with a long al-
legorical confrontation between the virtues and vices.
Although the poem’s hexameters are metrically limited
and tiresomely repetitious, his vocabulary is formidably
extensive. This 2,904-line carmen is the fi rst full-scale
Latin poem to be composed in the British Isles; Ald-
helm, who compared himself to Virgil, was aware of
its signifi cance and his achievement.
The infl uence of Aldhelm’s writings on his con-
temporaries and on the following generation can be
measured by their imitation of his style. His student
Æthilwald produced four poems in continuous octosyl-
lables, clearly modeled on Aldhelm’s Carmen rhythmi-
cum. Alcuin, whose soberer style refl ects the writing
of Bede, also owes something to Aldhelm. Many short
Latin poems from the Anglo-Saxon period are noth-
ing more than centos woven from Aldhelm’s poetry.
Aldhelm’s dense prose had even more imitators. Felix
of Crowland is surely indebted to him for the elaborate
and verbose prose style of his Life of St. Guthlac (ca.
740). The great missionary Boniface and his coterie of
English correspondents write Aldhelmian prose, as does
Boniface’s biographer, Willibald, and the biographer
of Sts. Willibald and Wynnebald, the nun Hygeburg.
Later Latin writings of the time of King Alfred and
especially of the time of the Benedictine Reform (late
10th and early 11th centuries) likewise reveal Aldhelm’s
infl uence, diminished fi nally only after the Norman
Conquest.
See also Alcuin; Boniface VIII, PopeFurther ReadingPrimary Sources
Ehwald, Rudolf, ed. Aldhelmi opera omnia. MGH: Auctores
antiquissimi 15. Berlin: Weidmann, 1919
Lapidge, Michael, and Michael Herren, trans. Aldhelm: The Prose
Works. Cambridge: Brewer, 1970
Lapidge, Michael, and James Rosier, trans. Aldhelm: The Poetic
Works. Cambridge: Brewer, 1985
Pitman, J.H., trans. The Riddles of Aldhelm. New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1925. Repr. Hamden: Archon, 1970 [based
on Ehwald’s text of the Aenigmata].
Secondary Sources
Browne, G.F. St. Aldhelm. London: SPCK, 1903
Godman, Peter. “The Anglo-Latin Opus geminatum: From Ald-
helm to Alcuin.” MÆ 50 (1981): 215–29
Lapidge, Michael. “The Hermeneutic Style in Tenth-Century
Anglo-Latin Literature.” ASE 4 (1975): 67–111
Lapidge, Michael. “Aldhelm’s Latin Poetry and Old English
Verse.” Comparative Literature 31 (1979): 209–31
Wieland, Gernot R. “Feminus stilus: Studies in Anglo-Latin Ha-
giography.” In Insular Latin Studies, ed. Michael W. Herren.
Toronto: Pontifi cal Institute, 1981, pp. 113–33
Winterbottom, Michael. “Aldhelm’s Prose Style and Its Origins.”
ASE 6 (1977): 39–76.
George Hardin BrownALEXANDER OF HALES (ca. 1185–1245)
Theologian. Alexander’s early life is conjectural: born
probably in Hales (now Hales Owen), in the English
Midlands, he studied arts, then theology, in Paris, from
around the turn of the century. From 1226 to 1229,
he was a canon of Saint Paul’s, London, although he
remained in Paris. He was one of four masters sent to
Rome by the University of Paris in 1230 to represent
its case in the famous dispute (which led to strike and
dissolution) with the French king. Gregory IX’s bull
Parens scientiarum (1231), arising out of the dispute,
was partly Alexander’s work. In 1231, he was made
canon of Lichfi eld and archdeacon of Coventry. At the
height of his career, in 1235, he joined the fl edgling
Franciscan order (apparently breaking off a sermon he
was preaching, taking the habit, and returning to fi n-
ish the sermon), thus giving the Franciscans their fi rst
holder of a magisterial chair in the University of Paris.
He was active in teaching for the Franciscans and as an
adjudicator of disputes until his sudden death, probably
of an epidemic disease, in Paris in 1245.
The catalogue of Alexander’s works is unclear. He
is best remembered today for introducing commentary
on Peter Lombard’s Sententiae into the Paris theology
syllabus. His own Sententiae gloss, the earliest weALEXANDER OF HALES