§ 141. Alfred the Great, and Education in England.
§ 141. Alfred the Great, and Education in England.
Comp. the Jubilee edition of the Whole Works of Alfred the Great, with Preliminary Essays illustrative of the History, Arts and Manners of the Ninth Century. London, 1858, 2 vols. The biographies of Alfred, quoted on p. 395, and Freemann’s Old English History 1859.
In England the beginning of culture was imported with Christianity by Augustin, the first archbishop of Canterbury, who brought with him the Bible, the church books, the writings of Pope Gregory and the doctrines and practices of Roman Christianity; but little progress was made for a century. Among his successors the Greek monk, Theodore of Tarsus (668–690), was most active in promoting education and discipline among the clergy. The most distinguished scholar of the Saxon period is the Venerable Bede (d. 735), who, as already stated, represented all historical, exegetical and general knowledge of his age. Egbert, archbishop of York, founded a flourishing school in York (732), from which proceeded Alcuin, the teacher and friend of Charlemagne.
During the invasion of the heathen Danes and Normans many churches, convents and libraries were destroyed, and the clergy itself relapsed into barbarism so that they did not know the meaning of the Latin formulas which they used in public worship.
In this period of wild confusion King Alfred the Great (871–901), in his twenty-second year, ascended the throne. He is first in war and first in peace of all the Anglo-Saxon rulers. What 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.837 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.838
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.839
Gibbon (ch. 50) doubts this fact, related by Abulpharagius and other Mohammedan authorities; but Von Hammer, Silv. de Sacy, and other Oriental scholars accept it as well authenticated. See the note of Smith in his edition of Gibbon (vol. V. 358 sq.). The library was variously estimated as containing from four to seven hundred thousand volumes.
A library of 120,000 volumes, begun by Constantius and Julian the Apostate, was burned by accident under Basiliscus (478). Another Constantinopolitan library of 33,000 volumes perished in the reign of the iconoclastic Leo the Isaurian, who is made responsible for the calamity by Cedrenus and other orthodox historians.
Decline and Fall, Ch. LIII. (V. 529).
So called from being connected like chains, seiraiv, catenae. Other terms are: ejpitomaiv or sullogai; eJrmhneiw'n, glossae, postillae. Among Latin collections of that kind, the Catena Aurea of Thomas Aquinas on the Gospels is the most famous. See Fabricius, Biblioth. Graeca, vol. VII., and Noesselt, De Catenis patrum Graecorum in N. T. Hal., 1762. What these Catenae did for patristic exegesis, the Critici Sacri (London, 1660 sqq.; Frankfort, 1695 sqq.; Amsterdam, 1698-1732, with supplements, 13 vols.), and Matthew Poole’s Synopsis (London, 1669 sqq., an abridgment of the former) did for the exegesis of the reformers and other commentators of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Still indispensable to Greek scholars, and important to theologians and historians for the biblical glosses, the explanations of theological terms, and the biographical and literary notices of ecclesiastical writers. Best editions by Gaisford (Oxford, 1834), and Bernhardy (Halle, 1853, 4 vols.).
Dionysius of Corinth (d. 170) in Euseb., Hist. Eccl. III. 4; IV. 23. So also in Const. Apost. VII. 46. Nothing is said in these passages of his martyrdom, which is an uncertain tradition of later date. Quadratus, the oldest Christian writer of Athens, makes no mention of him. Suidas (eleventh century), in his Lexicon, sub Dionuvsio"oJjArewpagivth" (Kuster’s ed, Cambridge, 1705, vol. I. 598-600), says that Dionysius visited Egypt in the reign of Tiberius, witnessed with a friend at Heliopolis the extraordinary eclipse of the sun which occurred at the time of the crucifixion (comp. the 7th Ep. of Dion.); that he was converted by Paul and elected bishop of the Athenians; that he excelled in all secular and sacred learning, and was so profound that his works seem to be the productions of a celestial and divine faculty rather than of a human genius. He knows nothing of the French Dionysius.
According to the oldest authorities (Sulpicius Severus, d. 410, and Gregory of Tours, d. 595, see his Hist. Franc. I. 28), the French Dionysius belongs to the middle of the third century, and died a martyr either under Decius (249-251) or under Aurelian (270-273). Afterwards he was put back to the first century. The confusion of the French martyr with the Areopagite of the same name is traced to Hilduin, abbot of St. Denis, A.D. 835, who at the request of the Emperor Louis the Pious compiled an uncritical collection of the traditions concerning Dionysius (Areopagitica). Gieseler (II. 103) traces it further back to the age of Charlemagne and the Acta Dionys., which were first printed in the Acta Sanct. mens. Oct. IV. 792. After that time it was currently believed that Dionysius was sent by Pope Clement of Rome to Gaul with twelve companions, or (according to another tradition) with a presbyter Rusticus, and a deacon Eleutherius, and that he suffered martyrdom with them under Domitian. His identity with the Areopagite became almost an article of faith; and when Abélard dared to call it in question, he was expelled from St. Denis as a dangerous heretic. It has been conclusively disproved by Launoy, Sirmond, Morinus, Le Nourry, Daillé; and yet it still finds defenders among French Catholics, e.g. the Archbishop Darboy of Paris, who was shot by the Commune in May, 1871. The Abbé Dulac thus epigrammatically expresses this exploded tradition (Oeuvres de Saint Denis, 1865, p. 13): "Né dans Athènes, Lutèce d’Orient, il meurt à Lutèce, Athènes d’Occident; successivement epoux de deux églises, dont l’une possédera son borceau, et l’autre sa tombe. Montmartre vaudra la colline de Mars."
In Ep. VII. 3, where Agollophanes addresses him: "O Dionysius."
Hipler and Boehmer assume that those names do not refer to the well-known apostolic characters, but this is untenable.
See the Collatio Catholicorum cum Severianis in Mansi, VIII. 817 sqq., and an account of the conference in Walch’s Ketzergeschichte, VII 134 sqq.
Westcott asserts (p. 6) that the coincidences with Damascius, the second in succession from Proclus, and the last Platonic teacher at Athens, are even more remarkable. He was of Syrian origin.
Different conjectures as to the author, time and place of composition: 1) A pseudonymous Dionysius (of Egypt) at the end of the fifth century. Gieseler, Engelhardt, Dorner, and others. 2) Dionysius of Alexandria, d. 265. Baratier. 3) Another Dionysius of the fourth century. 4) During the Eutychian and Nestorian controversies. Le Nourry. 5) A Pseudo-Dionysius of the third century, who wished to introduce the Eleusynian mysteries into the church. Baumgarten Crusius. 6) Apollinaris the elder, d. 360. 7) Apollinaris the younger, d. 370. Laurentius Valla. 8) Synesius of Ptolemais, c. 410. La Croze. 9) Peter Gnapheus or Fullo, patriarch of Constantinople. Le Quien. 10) A writer in Edessa, or under the influence of the Edessene school, between 480 and 520. Westcott.—See the Prolegomena of Le Nourry, De Rubeis, Corderius, in the first vol. of Migne’s ed., and Lupton, l.c.
The Monothelites appealed to a passage in Ep. IV. ad Caium. See Hefele, III. 127 sq. Dorner (II. 196 sqq.) correctly represents the mystic Christology of Pseudo-Dionysius as a connecting link between Monophysitism and the orthodox dogma.
The first book which he notices in his "Bibliotheca" (about 845) is a defense of the genuineness of the Dionysian writings by a presbyter Theodorus, who mentions four objections: 1) they were unknown to the earlier fathers; 2) they are not mentioned in the catalogues of writing by Eusebius; 3) they are filled with comments on church traditions which grew by degrees long after the apostolic age; 4) they quote an epistle of Ignatius, written on his way to martyrdom under Trojan. Photius seems to think that the objections are stronger than the answers of Theodorus. See Neander, III. 170; Westcott, l.c. p. 4, and Hergenroether, Photius, III. 29 and 331.
Other Latin versions were made afterwards by Johannes Sarracinus in the twelfth century, by Ambrosius Camaldulensis in the fifteenth, by Corderius in the seventeenth.
St. Thomas, the "Angelic Doctor," is so full of quotations from Dionysius that Corderius says, he drew from him "totam fere doctrinam theologicam." Migne I. 96.
Paradiso, X. 115.
An eleventh letter which exists only in Latin (said to have been written by Scotus Erigena), and a Latin Liturgy of Dionysius (published by Renaudot and in Migne’s ed. I. 1123-1132), are spurious.
As for the three stages of spiritual ascent, kavqarsi", muvhsi", teleivwsi", and the verb ejpopteuvesqai,i.e. to be admitted to the highest grade at mysteries, to become an ejpovpth" or muvsth". For other rare words see the vocabulary of Dion. in Migne, I. 1134 sqq., and II. 23 sqq.
to ;o}n uJperouvsion, das ueberseiende Sein.
Or, in the descending order, they are:
(a) serafivm, ceroubivm, qrovnoi.
(b) kuriovthte", dunavmei" , ejxousivai.
(c) ajrcaiv, ajrcavggeloi, ajggeloi.
Five of these orders are derived from St. Paul, Eph. 1:21 (ajrchv, ejxousiva, duvnami", kuriovth"), and Col. 1:16 (qrovnoi, kuriovthte". ajrcaiv, ejxousivai); the other four (serafivm, ceroubivm, ajrcavggeloi, a[ggeloi) are likewise biblical designations of angelic beings, but nowhere mentioned in this order. Thomas Aquinas, in his doctrine of angels, closely follows Dionysius, quoting him literally, or more frequently interpreting his meaning. Dante introduced the three celestial triads into his Divina Commedia (Paradiso, Canto XXVIII. 97 sqq.):
"These orders upward all of them are gazing,
And downward so prevail, that unto God
They all attracted are and all attract.
And Dionysius with so great desire
To contemplate these orders set himself,
He named them and distinguished them as I do."
(Longfellow’s translation .)
They are not called bishop, priest, and deacon, but iJeravrch", iJereuv", and leitourgov". Yet Dionysius writes to Timothy as presbuvtero" tw'/ sumpresbutevrw/.
Peri; dikaivou kai ;qeivou dikaiwthrivou.
katafatikov", affirmative from katafavskw(katavfhmi), to affirm
ajpofatikov", negative, from ajpofavskw(ajpovfhmi), to deny.
See above p. 592, and Peri;qeivwnojnomavt. cap. III. 2. (ed. of Migne, I. 682 sq.) Comp. the lengthy discussion of Baronius, Annal. ad ann. 48. In this connection St. Peter is called by Dionysius korufaivakai;presbutavthtw'nqeolovgwnajkrovth" (suprema ista atque antiquissima summitas theologorum). Corderius (see Migne I, 686) regards this as "firmissimum argumentum pro primatu Petri d consequeenter (?) Pontificum Romanorumm ejusdem successorum."
Matt. 27:45; Mark 15:33; Luke 23:44. See the notes in Lange, on Matthew, p. 525 (Am. ed.).
The exclamation is variously given: oJa[gnwsto"ejnsarki;pavsceiqeov" by Syngelus); or h] to;qei'onpavscei, h] tw'/ pavscontisumpavscei ("Aut Deus patitur, aut patienti compatitur"), or, as the Roman Breviary has it: "Aut Deus naturae patitur, aut mundi machina dissolvitur," "Either the God of nature is suffering, or the fabric of the world is breaking up." See Corderius in his annotations to Ep. VII., in Migne, I. 1083, and Halloix, in Vita S. Dion., ibid. II. 698. The exclamation of Dionysius is sometimes (even by so accurate a scholar as Dr. Westcott, l.c., p. 8) erroneously traced to the 7th Ep. of Dion., as a response to the exclamation of Apollophanes.
In Ep. VII. 2, where Dionysius asks Polycarp to silence the objections of Apollophanes to Christianity and to remind him of that incident when be exclaimed: tau'ta, w\ kale; Dionuvsie, qeivwn ajmoibai; pragmavtwn, "Istae O praeclare Dionysi, divinarum sunt vicissitudines rerum." The same incident is alluded to in the spurious eleventh letter addressed to Apollophanes himself. So Suidas also gives the exclamation of Apollophanes, sub verbo Dion.
Brev. Rom. for Oct. 9, in the English ed. of the Marquess of Bute, vol. II. 1311. Even Alban Butler, in his Lives of the Saints (Oct. 9), rejects the fable of the identity of the two Dionysii.
In Migne’s ed., Tom. LXXIX. 159.
According to the terminology of Cave and others, the 7th century is called Saeculum Monotheleticum; the eighth, S. Eiconoclasticum; the ninth, S. Photianum; the eleventh, S. Hildebrandinum; the twelfth, S. Waldenses; the thirteenth, S. Scholasticum; the fourteenth, S. Wicklevianum; the fifteenth, S. Synodale; the sixteenth, S. Reformationis. All one-sided or wrong except the last. Historical periods do not run parallel with centuries.
Hallam (Lit. of Europe, etc., ch. 1, § 10) puts the seventh and eighth centuries far beneath the tenth as to illumination in France, and quotes Meiners who makes the same assertion in regard to Germany. Guizot dates French civilization from the tenth century; but it began rather with Charlemagne in the eighth.
In Migne’s Patrologia Latina the number of volumes which contain the works of Latin writers, is as follows:
Writers of the seventh century, Tom. 80--88 8 vols.
" " " eighth " " 89--96 7 "
" " " ninth " " 97--130 33 "
" " " tenth " " 131-138 7 "
" " " eleventh " " 139-151 12 "
" " " twelfth " " 152-191 39 "
" " " thirteenth " " 192-217 25 "
None of these centuries comes up to the Nicene and post-Nicene ages. Migne gives to Augustine alone 12, and to Jerome 11 volumes, and both of these were no compilers, but original writers. The contrast between the literary poverty of the middle ages and the exuberant riches of the sixteenth or nineteenth century is still greater; but of course the invention of the art of printing and all the modern facilities of education must be taken into account.
One of the most important uncial manuscripts of the Scriptures, the Codex Ephraem (C), is a palimpsest (codex rescriptus), but the original text can with difficulty be deciphered, and has been published by Tischendorf (Lipsiae, 1843). See Schaff’s Companion to the Greek Testament, p. 120 sq., and Gregory’s Prolegomena to Tischendorf’s eighth critical ed. of the Gr. Test. (Leipzig, 1884), I. 366 sq.
The oldest manuscript on cotton paper in the British Museum is dated 1049; the oldest in the National Library of Paris, 1050. The oldest dated specimen of linen paper is said to be a treaty of peace between the kings of Aragon and Castile of 1177.
The testimony of John of Salisbury in the twelfth century (c. 1172) is more than neutralized by opposite contemporary testimonies, and is justly rejected by Bayle (Diction.), Heeren (I. 66), Gregorovius, Neander (III. 150 sq. , Baur (Dogmengesch. II. 4), and Ebert (I. 525). Gieseler (I. 490 sq.) speaks of "the monkish contempt of Gregory for the liberal sciences;" but he adds that "the law traditions of his hostility to all literature are not to be fully believed."
Ep. ad Leandrum, prefixed to his Expos. of Job, and Ep. ad Desiderium, XI. 54 (Opera, ed. Migne, III. 1171).
The author of this commentary represents it as a device of the evil spirit to dissuade Christians from liberal studies, "ut et secularia nesciant et ad sublimitatem spiritualium non pertingant."
The Vatican library, which can be traced back to Pope Nicolas V., is perhaps the most valuable in the world for manuscripts (e.g. the Cod. B. of the Greek Bible) and important ecclesiastical documents, but also one of the most inaccessible to outsiders. The present Pope Leo XIII. has liberalized the management, but under the exclusive direction of cardinals and in the interest of the Roman church (1883).
"Boëtius barbara verba miscuit Latinis." Opera ed. Migne, II. 578.
De Consolatione Philosophiae Libri V., first printed, Venice, 1497; best ed. by Theod. Obbarius, Jenae, 1843, in Migne’s ed., I. 578-862. Boëthius translated also works of Aristotle, and wrote books on arithmetic, geometry, rhetoric, and music; but the theological works which bear his name, De sancta Trinitate, De duabus naturis et una persona Christi, Fidei Confessio seu Brevis Institutio religionis Christianae, based upon the Aristotelian categories and drawn in great part from St. Augustin, are not mentioned before Alcuin and Hincmar, three centuries after his death, and are probably the production of another Boëthius, or of the martyr St. Severinus, with whom he was confounded. The most complete edition of his works is that of Migne in two vols. (in the "Patrol. Lat.," Tom. 63 and 64). Comp. Fr. Nitzsch, Das System des Boëthius und die ihm zugeschriebenen Theol. Schriften (Berlin, 1860); Dean Stanley’s article in Smith’s "Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography," I. 496; and Jourdain, De l’origine des traditions sur le christianisme de Boèce, Paris, 1861.
De Institutione Divinarum Literarum, in 33 chps., in Migne, Tom. 70, col. 1106-1150. Cassiodorus wrote also a work on the Liberal Arts, twelve books of Varieties (letters, edicts, and rescripts), a Tripartite Church-History from Constantine to his time (an epitome of Sozomen, Socrates, Theodoret), and commentaries. Best edition is that of Migne, "Patrol. Lat." in 2 vols. (vols. 69 and 70.) He will be more fully discussed in the next chapter, 153.
Paradiso, X. 125-129. Cieldauro or Cieldoro is the church San Pietro in Ciel d’oro at Pavia, where Liutprand, King of the Lombards, erected a monument to Boëthius, about 726. So says Karl Witte, in Dante Allighieri’s Goettliche Komoedie (1865), p. 676.
As angelica virtus, coaeternus, purgatoria clementia.
Some suppose that he reserved this for a sixth book which he was prevented from writing; others read Christianity into the work by allegorical interpretation, or supplement it by theological works falsely ascribed to him.
Decline and Fall, Ch. 39 (vol. IV. 138). Ebert (Gesch. der christl. lat. Lit. I. 472) assumes a partial influence of Christianity upon this work. "Boëtius," he says, "war nur ein Namenchrist, aber doch immerhin ein solcher; die erste christliche Erziehung war keineswegs spurlos an ihm voruebergegangen. Sein Werk ruht zwar seinem ganzen Gehalt nach auf der heidnisch-antiken Philosophie, hauptsächlich dem Platonismus, und zwar in der neuplatonischen Form, wie schon eine sehr fluechtige Kenntniss desselben alsbald zeigt, und in allen Einzelheiten, freilich nicht ohne einige Uebertreibung, von Nitzsch nach gewiessen worden Werk erhält nicht bloss durch das starke Hervortreten stoischroemischer Ethik einen christlichen Anschein, sondern diesenimmt hier auch mitunter in der That eine specifisch christliche Färbung an, wie es denn selbst auch an Reminiscenzen aus der Bibel nicht ganz fehlt. Hoechst merkwuerdig ist, wie in diesem Werke des letzten der roemischen Philosophen, wie Zeller ihn mit Recht nennt, diese verschiedenen, zum Theil ganz heterogenen Elemente sich durchdringen zu einer doch einigen Gesammtwirkung in Folge des sittlichen Moments, worin seine, wie ueberhaupt des römischen Eklekticismus Stärke beruht."
Comp. Cramer, De Graecis medii aevi studiis, and the pamphlet of Lumby quoted on p. 584.
E.g. in De Artibus, etc., cap. 1 (in Migne’s ed. II. 1154): "Nominis partes sunt:
Qualitas, poiovth".
Comparatio, suvgkrisi".
Genus, gevno".
Numerus, ajriqmov".
Figura, sch'ma.
Casus, ptw'si"."
In the same work he gives the divisions of philosophy and the categories of Aristotle in Greek and Latin, and uses such words as h\qo", pavqo", parevkbasi", ajnakefalaivwsi", stavsi", ajntevgklhma, ajntivstasi", pragmatikhv, ajpovdeixi", ejpiceirhvmata, etc.
See Hefele, IV. 385 sq.
Bede (Hist. Eccl. IV. 1) calls him "vir et saeculari et divina literatura et Graece instructus et Latine." Pope Zachary speaks of Theodore as "Athenis eruditus" and "Graeco-Latinus philosophus."
William of Malmesbury calls this Hadrian "a fountain of letters and a river of arts."
L.c. V. c. 2, and V. 8, 23.
He quotes e.g. In Luc. 6:2 the Greek, for Sabbatum secundum primum (deuterovprwton). Opera, ed. Migne, III. 392.
De Arte Metrica Opera, I. l50-176. He explains here the different metres of Greek poetry.
Lumby (l.c., p. 15) mentions his allusions to Eusebius, Athanasius, and Chrysostom, and a few familiar words, as ejpivskopo", parabavth", and a[nqrwpo".
As paradeigma, gazophylacia, paraclitus.
Comp. besides the Lit. already quoted in this vol. §134, the following: Heppe: Das Schulwesen des Mittelalters. Marburg, 1860. Kämmel: Mittelalterliches Schulwesen in Schmid’s "Encykl. des gesammten Erziehungs und Unterrichswesens." Gotha. Bd. IV. (1865), p. 766-826.
The division is expressed in the memorial lines:
"Grammatica loquitur, Dialectica verba docet, Rhetorica verba colorat;
Musica canit, Arithmetica numerat, Geometria ponderat, Astronomia colit astra."
De Ordine, II., c. 12 sqq., in Migne’s ed. of Augustin, Tom. l. 1011 sqq. Augustin connects poëtica with musica.
Or, De Artibus ac Disciplinis Liberalium Literarum, in Migne’s ed. of Cassiodori Opera, II. 1150-1218. It is exceedingly meagre if judged by the standard of modern learning, but very useful for the middle ages.
"However we may be disposed to treat the labors of Isidore with something of contempt, it is probably not possible to overrate the value and usefulness of this treatise to the age in which he lived, and indeed for many ages it was the most available handbook to which the world had access." Smith & Wace III. 308. Comp. this vol. § 155.
See this vol. § 169.
Comp. this vol. §§ 123 and 175.
See this vol. §§ 128-130.
From ajnagwgikov", exalting, lifting up; ajnagwghv, a leading up, is used in ecclesiastical Greek for higher, spiritual interpretation.
"Toutes les provinces de l’occident," says Ozanam, "concoururernt au grand ouvrage des écoles carlovinggiennes."
"per villas et vicos."
A similar school had existed before under the Merovingians, but did not accomplish much.
Comp. Oebeke, De academia Caroli M. Aachen, 1847. Philips, Karl der Gr. im Kreise der Gelehrten. Wien, 1856.
The Histoire litteraire de France, Tom. III., enumerates about twenty episcopal schools in the kingdom of the Franks.
837 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."
838 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)
839 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.