34 - King Alfred and his circle

Summary

The author of the preface to the Old English translation of Gregory the Great’s Regula pastoralis, writing during the reign of King Alfred (871–99), laments the destruction of the books that were once in abundance in England: ‘I recollected how – before everything was ransacked and burned – the churches throughout England stood filled with treasures and books.’ Only a couple of hundred from the probably thousands of pre-Alfredian books have come down to us, and unfortunately the extant Anglo-Saxon booklists do little to supplement the surviving manuscripts. Given that the evidence that remains is inevitably fragmentary, we shall probably never know how many books were in existence in England in Alfred’s day, but the texts that are thought to have been produced during his reign, and possibly under his patronage, suggest that a significant number of volumes were still available to the Anglo-Saxons. The specific works that make up the Alfredian canon have changed over the years and the most recent scholarship on the subject has questioned whether Alfred himself was responsible for writing anything. For the purpose of reconstructing the books available to Alfred and his circle, therefore, I shall consider the collective body of writings associated with the ninth-century court of Alfred.