Aldhelm of Malmesbury

Saint Aldhelm of Malmesbury, hierarch, was abbot of the monastery of Malmesbury, bishop of Sherborne and a Latin poet and scholar, who died in 709. He is commemorated on 25 May.

Beginnings and learning

Aldhelm was born before the middle of the seventh century, said to be a son of Kenten, of the royal house of Wessex; he was not, as an early biographer says, the brother of King Ine. He received his first education in the school of the Irish monk and scholar Máeldub, settled at Bladon, the place that came to be named after him Malmesbury. In 668 Pope Vitalian sent Theodore of Tarsus as archbishop of Canterbury, and the African scholar Hadrian became abbot of the monastery of Saint Augustine. Aldhelm was his disciple, for he calls him “venerable preceptor of my rude childhood”; he must then have been about thirty. He studied Roman law, astronomy, the art of reckoning and the difficulties of the calendar. Ill health forced him to leave Canterbury and he returned to Malmesbury, where he was a monk under Máeldub for fourteen years.

Abbot at Malmesbury

After the death of Máeldub, in 675, he was set at the head of the monastery, of which he was the first abbot, by Bishop Leuthere of Winchester. He introduced the Benedictine rule and obtained the right of the monks themselves to choose the abbot. The community grew and he founded two other monasteries, as centres of learning, at Frome and at Bradford-⁠on-⁠Avon. After a pilgrimage to Rome, he received from Pope Sergius I, in a bull of 701, permission to found the monastery at Frome, where he had built a church about 685. The church of Saint Laurence at Bradford-⁠on-⁠Avon dates from his time. At Malmesbury he built a new church in place of Máeldub’s simple one and received many lands for the monastery. He held this office until about 705.

The Easter dispute

A synod of Wessex sent him to urge the Britons of Dumnonia, that is, Devon and Cornwall, about Easter. The Britons had a way of their own of calculating the date of Easter and a distinct tonsure. Aldhelm wrote a long, rather sharp letter to King Geraint of Dumnonia, and in the end agreement with Rome was reached. He went himself to Devon and Cornwall, as he tells in his Carmen Rhythmicum.

Bishop of Sherborne

In 705, or earlier, Hædde, bishop of Winchester, died, and the diocese was divided in two; Sherborne was the new see, of which Aldhelm was the first bishop. He wished to leave the monastery of Malmesbury, which he had governed thirty years, but at the monks’ insistence kept it until his death. He was old, but he showed great activity. The cathedral he built at Sherborne was later replaced by a Norman one. It is told that he went to public places and sang hymns and passages of the Gospel, mixed with jokes, to draw attention to his message. One old account says he built an organ, “a mighty instrument, with innumerable tones, blown with bellows, and enclosed in a gilded case”.

His writings

Aldhelm wrote in Latin and, by some sources, also in English; he is regarded as the first Anglo-⁠Saxon poet to write poetry in Latin. His best-⁠known work is De Laude Virginitatis, a Latin treatise on virginity, addressed to the nuns of the mixed monasteries. He wrote also a hundred Riddles in hexameters, in letters to Aldfrith of Northumbria, on biblical, mythological, natural and human subjects. He kept up a lively correspondence with kings and scholars of England and Ireland, among them Boniface. Bede calls him a wonder of learning, and his fame reached Rome.

Repose

While on his rounds in his diocese, he died in 709 at the church at Doulting, where the church and well of Saint Aldhelm are today. The body was taken to Malmesbury, and his friend Egwin, bishop of Worcester, set up crosses at the places where the procession stopped. He was venerated as a saint soon after his death. The Catholic and Orthodox Churches commemorate him on 25 May.