Charlemagne was for Germany and France, Alfred was for England. He conquered the forces of
the Danes by land and by sea, delivered his country from foreign rule, and introduced a new era of
Christian education. He invited scholars from the old British churches in Wales, from Ireland, and
the Continent to influential positions. He made collections of choice sentences from the Bible and
the fathers. In his thirty-sixth year he learned Latin from Asser, a monk of Wales, who afterwards
wrote his biography. He himself, no doubt with the aid of scholars, translated several standard
works from Latin into the Anglo-Saxon, and accompanied them with notes, namely a part of the
Psalter, Boëthius on the Consolation of Philosophy, Bede’s English Church History, Pope Gregory’s
Pastoral Theology, Augustin’s Meditations, the Universal History of Orosius, and Aesop’s Fables.
He sent a copy of Gregory’s Pastoral Theology to every diocese for the benefit of the clergy. It is
due to his influence chiefly that the Scriptures and service-books at this period were illustrated by
so many vernacular glosses.
He stood in close connection with the Roman see, as the centre of ecclesiastical unity and
civilization. He devoted half of his income to church and school. He founded a school in Oxford
similar to the Schola Palatina; but the University of Oxford, like those of Cambridge and Paris, is
of much later date (twelfth or thirteenth century). He seems to have conceived even the plan of a
general education of the people.^836 Amid great physical infirmity (he had the epilepsy), he developed
an extraordinary activity during a reign of twenty-nine years, and left an enduring fame for purity,
and piety of character and unselfish devotion to the best interests of his people.^837
His example of promoting learning in the vernacular language was followed by Aelfric, a
grammarian, homilist and hagiographer. He has been identified with the archbishop Aelfric of
Canterbury (996–1009), and with the archbishop Aelfric of York (1023–1051), but there are
insuperable difficulties in either view. He calls himself simply "monk and priest." He left behind
him a series of eighty Anglo-Saxon Homilies for Sundays and great festivals, and another series
for Anglo-Saxon Saints’ days, which were used as an authority in the Anglo-Saxon Church.^838
CHAPTER XIV.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF ECCLESIASTICAL WRITERS.
[This chapter, with the exception of the last four sections, has been prepared under my direction by the Rev. Samuel M. Jackson, M. A.,
from the original sources, with the use of the best modern authorities, and has been revised, completed and adapted to the plan of the work.—P.
S.
§ 142. Chronological List of the Principal Ecclesiastical Writers from the Sixth to the Twelfth
Century.
I. Greek Authors.
St. Maximus Confessor
(^836) In the preface to Gregory’s Pastoral, he expresses his desire that every freeborn English youth might learn to read
English. The work has also great philological importance, and was edited by H. Sweet in 1872 for the "Early English Text
Society."
(^837) Freeman calls Aelfred "the most perfect character in history," a saint without superstition, a scholar without ostentation,
a conqueror whose hands were never stained by cruelty. History of the Norman Conquest, I. 49, third ed. (1877)
(^838) They were edited by Thorpe. See Wright’s Biograph. Britan. Lit. (Anglo-Saxon Period), p. 485, 486; and article
"Aelfric" in Leslie Stephen’s "Dictionary of National Biography." London and New York, 1885, vol. I. 164-166.