30 - Aldhelm’s library

Summary

When, in the course of his magisterial but not always wholly trustworthy history of early England, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, the Venerable Bede (who died in 735) depicted his elder contemporary Aldhelm, abbot Malmesbury, then bishop of Sherborne (who was born in 639/40 and died in 709/10) as ‘vir undecunque doctissimus’ (‘a man most learned in every way’), such a description, given Aldhelm’s extraordinary output and extensive influence, seems entirely appropriate even from so learned an authority. In deploying such a well-used phrase Bede would likely have realised that he was echoing the acclaim that Terentianus Maurus gave Varro, as reported by Augustine in the De civitate Dei; but he would also surely have spotted the fact that he himself had used the same words of King Aldfrith of Northumbria (686–705) only a few chapters previously. The association of Aldhelm with, on the one hand, a learned Roman widely celebrated in Continental sources and, on the other, a well-born Anglo-Saxon with exemplary Celtic connections, seems entirely appropriate; and in attempting to assess the extent of Aldhelm’s library it is important to remember not only his two-stage education at the hands of teachers from very different backgrounds, but also the extent to which Aldhelm himself decried and attempted to mask the one in exalting and promoting the other.