Aldhelm of Malmesbury and High Ecclesiasticism in a Barbarian Kingdom

ALDHELM OF MALMESBURY AND HIGH ECCLESIASTICISM IN A BARBARIAN KINGDOM By G. T. DEMPSEY In 634, the freshly consecrated bishop Birinus, having promised Pope Honorius that he would spread the faith in "the remotest regions of England ," arrived in the territory of the West Saxons (or the Gewisse, as they were then still known).1 He found them so thoroughly pagan ("paganissimos ") that he opted to remain there to preach the gospel. The following year he baptized Cynegils, the first of the West Saxon kings to accept Christianity . The Brytenwalda, Oswald of Northumbria, stood sponsor.2 Together, the two kings endowed Birinus with the civitas of Dorchester-on-Thames as his see. Over the next few years, both Cynegils's son Cwichelm and his grandson Cuthred were baptized, the latter in 639 by Birinus in Dorchester. It would have been in or near this year that Aldhelm was born,3 though his native area was said by William of Malmesbury to have been Sherborne, in the southwest of Wessex, on the border with the British kingdom of Dum1 Note on names: the majority of personal names from this period have been received with now-standardized spelling — e.g., Bede, Wilfrid, Hadrian, and Aldhelm himself. In four cases, Maildubh (Aldhelm's Irish schoolmaster), Ehfrid (recipient of a famous letter from Aldhelm), Egwin (the bishop of Worcester who is said to have brought Aldhelm's body back to Malmesbury for burial), and Hlothhere (bishop of Wessex, 670-76), the spelling and even usage varies widely. For the first three, I adopt the spelling used by Rudolf Ehwald, Aldhelm's modern editor, and for Hlothhere I adopt the Kentish spelling of his name (as does Charles Plummer) to emphasize his Frankish origins. In direct quotations, of course, I leave the spelling as it stands. 2 For a succinct account of the determination of the title Brytenwalda (vice the longstanding modern usage Bretwalda), see Patrick Wormald, The Times of Bede. (Oxford, 2006), 131-32. ' The major source for Aldhelm's life is the biography, from ca. 1125, in Book 5 of William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum Anglorum, 2 vols. (Oxford, 2007); vol. 1 ed. and trans. M. Winterbottom, with the Commentary in vol. 2 by R. M. Thomson. (William knew, corrected, and greatly expanded on the earlier — ca. 1093-99 — vita by Faricius; "Vita S. Aldhelmi," ed. Michael Winterbottom, Journal of Medieval Latin 15 [2005]: 93-147.) Scott Gwara, in the introductory volume to his edition of Aldhelm's Prosa de virginitate , CCL 124 (Turnhout, 2001), 22 and n. 10, 23-24 and n. 16, 32-34 and n. 54, 38, and 47-55, addresses the reliability of William's factual assertions concerning Aldhelm's life and his use of evidence. Overall, he finds William more corroborated by other evidence than not. Aldhelm's works are in Aldhelmi Opera, ed. Rudolf Ehwald, MGH, Auctores Antiquissimi 15 (Berlin, 1919), and in Aldhelm: The Prose Works, ed. and trans. Michael Lapidge and Michael Herren (Ipswich, 1979), and Aldhelm: The Poetic Works, trans. Michael Lapidge and James L. Rosier (Cambridge, 1985). 48traditio nonia (Devon and Cornwall) and, thus, far from Birinus's episcopal seat in the upper Thames valley. Would this be an indication of the rapid spread of Christianity in the West Saxon kingdom? Notably, well within a generation a West Saxon became the first native-born archbishop of Canterbury when Deusdedit was consecrated in 655 (his Anglo-Saxon name was remembered as Friduwine).' But where Deusdedit received his ecclesiastical training is unknown; Bede can tell us only that he was a "West Saxon by race" ("de gente Oecidentalium Saxonum").5 Or was Aldhelm's being Christian due to his royal status? It may be that another of Cynegils's sons, Centwine, who became king in Wessex in 676, was Aldhelm's father.6 By this time, Aldhelm was a senior cleric in the West Saxon church.' 1 Nicholas Brooks, The Early History of the Church of Canterbury (London, 1984), 67-69, and Richard Sharpe, "The Naming of Bishop Ithamar," English Historical Review 117 (2002): 889-90. 5 Bede, Historia ecclesiastica 3, 20 (ed. Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors [Oxford. 1969], 278). b Aldhelm...