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He was educated in the Benedictine monastery at Winchester under Æthelwold, who was bishop there from 963 to 984. Æthelwold had carried on the tradition of Dunstan in his government of the abbey of Abingdon, England, and at Winchester he continued his strenuous efforts. He seems to have actually taken part in the work of teaching.
Ælfric no doubt gained some reputation as a scholar at Winchester, for when, in 987, the abbey of Cernel (Cerne Abbas, Dorset) was finished, he was sent by Bishop Ælfheah ( Alphege), Æthelwold's successor, at the request of the chief benefactor of the abbey, the ealdorman Æthelmaer, to teach the Benedictine monks there. He was then in priest's orders. Æthelmaer and his father Æthelweard were both enlightened patrons of learning, and became Ælfric's faithful friends.
It was at Cernel, and partly at the desire, it appears, of Æthelweard, that he planned the two series of his English homilies (ed. Benjamin Thorpe, 1844- 1846, for the Ælfric Society), compiled from the Christian fathers, and dedicated to Sigeric , Archbishop of Canterbury (990-994). The Latin preface to the first series enumerates some of Ælfric's authorities, the chief of whom was Gregory the Great, but the short list there given by no means exhausts the authors whom he consulted. In the preface to the first volume he regrets that except for Alfred's translations Englishmen had no means of learning the true doctrine as expounded by the Latin fathers. Professor Earle (A.S. Literature, 1884) thinks he aimed at correcting the apocryphal, and to modern ideas superstitious, teaching of the earlier Blickling Homilies .
The first series of forty homilies is devoted to plain and direct exposition of the chief events of the Christian year; the second deals more fully with church doctrine and history, Ælfric denied the immaculate birth of the Virgin (Homilies, ed. Thorpe, ii. 466), and his teaching on the Eucharist in the Canons and in the Sermo de sacrificio in die pascae (ibid. ii. 262 seq.) was appealed to by the Protestant ReformationThe Protestant Reformation was a movement which began in the 16th century as a series of attempts to reform the Roman Catholic Church, but ended in division and the establishment of new institutions, most importantly Lutheranism, Reformed churches, and An writers as a proof that the early English church did not hold the Roman doctrine of transubstantiation.
His Latin Grammar and Glossary were written for his pupils after the two books of homilies. A third series of homilies, the Lives of the Saints, dates from 906 to 997. Some of the sermons in the second series had been written in a kind of rhythmical, alliterative prose, and in the Lives of the Saints (ed. W. W. Skeat, 1881- 19001900 is the common year starting on Monday. see link for calendar) For the film, see 1900 (film). Events January January 1 Nigeria becomes British protectorate January 2 John Hay announces the Open Door Policy to promote trade with China. January 2 Chicag, for the Early English Text Society) the practice is so regular that most of them are arranged as verse by Professor Skeat.
By the wish of Æthelweard he also began a paraphrase of parts of the Old TestamentThe Old Testament or the Hebrew Scriptures constitutes the first major part of the Christian Bible, usually divided into the categories law, history, poetry (or wisdom books) and prophecy. All of those books were written before the birth of Jesus. Canon o, but under protest, for the stories related in it were not, he thought, suitable for simple minds. There is no certain proof that he remained at Cernel. It has been suggested that this part of his life was chiefly spent at Winchester; but his writings for the patrons of Cernel, and the fact that he wrote in 998 his Canons as a pastoral letter for Wulfsige, the bishop of Sherborne, the diocese in which the abbey was situated, afford presumption of continued residence there.
He became in 1005Events Malcolm II succeeds Kenneth III as king of Scotland. Pomerania revolts against the church. Schaffhausen starts minting its own coins. Births Macbeth I of Scotland (approximate date) Deaths March 25 king Kenneth III of Scotland (in battle) Onmyoji ( the first abbot of Eynsham or Ensham, near OxfordThis is about the city of Oxford in England. See also other meanings, including other cities. Oxford is a city and local government district in Oxfordshire, England, with a population of 134,248 ( 2001 census). Its latitude and longitude are 51°45'07" N a, another foundation of Æthelmaer's. After his elevation he wrote an abridgment for his monks of Æthelwold's De consuetudine monachorum, adapted to their rudimentary ideas of monastic life; a letter to Wulfgeat of Ylmandun; an introduction to the study of the Old and New Testaments (about 1008Events Olof, king of Sweden, is baptized. Bruno of Querfurt and others try to establish a mission among the Prussians. Mohammed II succeeds Hisham II as caliph of Cordoba. Oldest known mention of the city of Gundelfingen. Births May 4: Henry I of France E, edited by William L'Isle in 1623Events August 6 Pope Urban VIII is elected to the Papacy. Change of emperor of the Ottoman Empire from Osman II (1618- 1622) to Murat IV ( 1623- 1640). The Safavids recapture Baghdad. England first colonizes Saint Kitts and Nevis. Wilhelm Schickard invent); a Latin life of his master Æthelwold; a pastoral letter for Wulfstan, archbishop of YorkThe Archbishop of York Primate of England, is the metropolitan of the Province of York, and the junior of the two archbishops of the Church of England, after the Archbishop of Canterbury. His cathedral is York Minster in central York and his official resi and bishop of Worcester, in Latin and English; and an English version of Bede's De Temporibus.
The Colloquium, a Latin dialogue designed to serve his scholars as a manual of Latin conversation, may date from his life at Cernel. It is safe to assume that the original draft of this, afterwards enlarged by his pupil, Ælfric Bata, was by Ælfric, and represents what his own scholar days were like. The last mention of Ælfric Abbot, probably the grammarian, is in a will dating from about 1020.
There have been three suppositions about Ælfric.
(1) He was identified with Ælfric (995-- 1005), archbishop of Canterbury. This view was upheld by John Bale (Iii. Maj. Bril. Scriptorum 2nd ed., Basel, 1557-1559; vol. i. p. 149, s.v, Alfric); by Humphrey Wanley (Catalogus librorum septentrionalium, &c., Oxford, 1705, forming vol. ii. of George Hickes's Antiquae literaturae septemtrionalis); by Elizabeth Elstob, The English Saxon Homily on the Birthday of St Gregory (1709; new edition, 1839); and by Edward Rowe Mores , Ælfrico, Dorobernensi, archiepiscopo, Commentarius (ed. G. J. Thorkelin, 1789), in which the conclusions of earlier writers on Ælfric are reviewed. Mores made him abbot of St Augustine's at Dover, and finally archbishop of Canterbury.
(2) Sir Henry Spelman, in his Concina ... ( 1639, vol. i. p. 583), printed the Canones ad Wulsinum episcopum, and suggested Ælfric Putta or Putto, archbishop of York, as the author, adding some note of others bearing the name. The identity of Ælfric the grammarian with Ælfric archbishop of York was also discussed by Henry Wharton, in Anglia Sacra ( 1691, vol. i. pp. 125-134), in a dissertation reprinted in JP Migne's Patrologia (vol. 139, pp. 1459-70, Paris, 1853).
(3) William of Malmesbury (De gestis pontificum Anglorum, ed. N. E. S. A. Hamilton, Rolls Series, 1870, p. 406) suggested that he was abbot of Malmesbury and bishop of Crediton.
The main facts of his career were finally elucidated by Eduard Dietrich in a series of articles contributed to C. W. Niedner's Zeitschrift für historische Theologie (vols. for 1855 and 1856, Gotha), which have formed the basis of all subsequent writings on the subject.
This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica. 1911 Britannica
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