Baring-Gould’s sources: Roman and Anglican Martyrologies. His translation on March 31st. Authorities: — A life by William of Malmesbury, written towards the middle of the 12th century; another life written in the latter years of the nth century, by Faricius, a foreign monk of Malmesbury, who became abbot of Abingdon in 1 100, and died in 1 1 17. A copy of the first is preserved in MS., Cotton., Claudius A. v., written in the 12th cent.; fuller copies have been printed by Wharton and Gale from very modern MSS. Bede, though he speaks of the works of Aldhelm in terms of admiration, gives a very brief account of him. Malmesbury had before him a kind of common-place book written by King Alfred, which he quotes more than once for circumstances relating to Aldhelm, who seems to have been a favourite writer with that great monarch. Faricius says that there were, among the materials he used, some English documents, which he, as an Italian, calls “barbarice scripta.”] Aldhelm was born in Wessex, about the year 656. His father’s name was Ken ter, a near kinsman of King Ina; but a comparison of the dates is enough to show that Aldhelm was not, as Faricius states, King Ina’s nephew. When but a boy (flusio), Aldhelm was sent to Adrian, abbot of Canterbury (Jan. 9), and soon excited the wonder even of his teachers by his progress in the study of Latin and Greek. When somewhat more advanced in years ( majusculus ), he returned to his native land of Wessex. Near the beginning of the same century, an Irish monk named Maeldhu, which the Anglo-Saxons transformed into Meildulf, a voluntary exile from the land of his nativity, had taken up his abode among the solitudes of the vast forests which then covered the north-eastern districts of Wiltshire. He seems to have formed himself a cell amongst the ruins of an ancient British town. Maeldhu, after living for a short time as a hermit, found it necessary to secure for himself a less precarious subsistence by instructing the youths of the neighbouring districts; and thus the hermitage became gradually a seat of learning, and continued to be inhabited by Maeldhu’s scholars after his death. People gave to the place the name of Meildulfes-byrig, which, softened down into Malmesbury, it still retains. After his return to Wessex, Aldhelm joined this community of scholars, in imitation of whom he embraced the monastic life. His stay was not, however, of long duration; he made a second visit to Kent, and continued to attend the school of S. Adrian, until sickness compelled him to revisit the country of the West Saxons. He again sought the greenwood shades of Malmesbury; and after a lapse of three years he wrote a letter to his old master Adrian, describing the studies in which he was occupied, and pointing out the difficulties which he still encountered. This was in 680. From being the companion of the monks in their studies, Aldhelm soon became their teacher; and his reputation for learning spread so rapidly that the small society he had formed at Malmesbury was increased by scholars from France and Scotland. He is said to have been able to write and speak Greek, to have been fluent in Latin, and able to read the Old Testament in Hebrew. At this period the monks and scholars appear to have formed only a voluntary association, held together by similarity of pursuits and the fame of their teacher; and they do not appear to have been subjected to rules. How long they continued to live in this manner is uncertain; at a subsequent period, either at their own solicitation, or by the will of the West Saxon monarch and the bishop, they were formed into a regular monastery, and Aldhelm was appointed their abbot Under Aldhelm the abbey of Malmesbury continued long to be the seat of piety as well as learning, and was 1 A charter by Leutherius exists authorizing the foundation and appointing Aldhelm as its abbot, dated according to William of Malmesbury 675, according to the Malmesbury Chronicle 680; but it is almost certainly a forgery. See Wright: Biographia Brit. Literaria, I. p. 212.

…enriched with many gifts by the West-Saxon kings and nobles. Its abbot founded smaller houses at Frome and Bradford, in the neighbourhood. At Malmesbury he found a small but ancient church, then in ruins; this he rebuilt or repaired, and dedicated it to SS. Peter and Paul, in that age the favourite saints of the Anglo-Saxons. His biographers have preserved the verses which Aldhelm composed to celebrate its consecration.

Aldhelm may be considered the father of Anglo-Latin poetry. But he also composed in Anglo-Saxon. King Alfred placed him in the first rank of the vernacular poets of his country; and we learn from William of Malmesbury, that, even so late as the 12th century, some ballads he had composed continued to be popular. To be a poet, it was then necessary to be a musician also; and Aldhelm’s biographers assure us that he excelled on all the different instruments then in use, the fiddle and the pipes, &c. Long after he became abbot of Malmesbury, he appears to have devoted much of his leisure to music and poetry. King Alfred entered into his note-book an anecdote which is peculiarly characteristic of the age, and which probably belongs to the period that preceded the foundation of the abbey. Aldhelm observed with pain that the peasantry, instead of assisting as the monks sung mass, ran about from house to house gossiping, and could hardly be persuaded to attend to the exhortations of the preacher. He watched the occasion, and stationed himself in the character of a minstrel on the bridge over which the people had to pass, and soon collected a crowd of hearers, by the beauty of his verse. When he found that he had gained possession of their attention, he gradually introduced, among the popular ballads he was reciting to them, words of a more serious nature, till at length he succeeded in impressing upon their minds a truer feeling of religious devotion; “ Whereas if,”.S'. Aldhelm.

as William of Malmesbury observes, “he had proceeded with severity and excommunication, he would have made no impression whatever upon them.” 1 Few details of the latter part of Aldhelm’s life have been preserved. We know that his reputation continued to be extensive. After he had been made abbot of Malmesbury, he received an invitation from Pope Sergius I. to visit Rome, and he is supposed to have accompanied Coedwalla, king of the West Saxons, who was baptized by that pope, and died at Rome in 689. Whether this be true, or not, Aldhelm’s visit to Rome cannot be placed earlier than 688, because Sergius had been raised to the papal chair only in the December of the preceding year. Aldhelm did not long remain at Rome. In 692, he appears, from his letter on the subject quoted by his biographers, to have taken part to a certain degree, though not very decidedly, with S. Wilfrid [bishop of York (d. 709)], in his great controversy against the Keltic usages of the Northumbrian Church. Soon after this, we find him employed in the dispute about the celebration of Easter with the Britons of Cornwall. A synod was called by King Ina, about 693, to attempt a reconciliation between the remains of the ancient British Church in the extreme west with the Anglo-Saxon Church, and Aldhelm was appointed to write a letter on the subject 1 In after times Stephen Langton did something of the same sort. He sang a dancing-song and then moralized on it as his text. The sermon is preserved in the British Museum. This was the song, somewhat modernized in spelling “ Belle Alez matin leva Son corps vesti et para Enz un verger s’en entra Cinq fleurettes y trouva, XJn chapel et fit en a de rose fleurie Par Dieu trahex vous en la vous hinc aimez mie.”

The mediaeval preacher Maillard did much the same thing when preaching at Toulouse, singing at the top of his voice as a text the ballad “ Bergeronette Savoisienne.”

to Geraint, king of Cornwall, which is still preserved. We hear nothing further of the abbot of Malmesbury till the year 705, when, on the death of Hedda, the bishopric of Wessex [the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of southern England] was divided into two dioceses, of which one, that of Sherborne, was given to S. Aldhelm, who appears to have been allowed to retain at the same time the abbacy, and the other, Winchester, to one named Daniel. Four years afterwards he died at Dilton, near Westbury, in Wiltshire, on the 25th May, 709. His body was carried to Malmesbury, where it was buried in the presence of Egwin, bishop of Worcester.

S. Aldhelm was not a voluminous writer. The works which alone have given celebrity to his name, are his two treatises on Virginity and his zEnigmata. It is impossible to admire their style. Even so far back as the 12th century, William of Malmesbury felt himself obliged to offer an apology for him, grounded on the taste of that age in which he lived. “The Greek language is involved, the Roman splendid, and the English pompous,” is Malmesbury’s account of the characteristics of these three languages. Certainly Aldhelm made English pomposity transpire through the splendour of Latin, which he involved like Greek.