Godden, Malcolm and Michael Lapidge (eds) 1991. Caedmon was recognised for his worth and on the recommendation of Saint Hilda became a lay brother at the monastery of Whitby and continued to compose poetry on biblical themes, none of which has been definitively identified among that which was assumed later to be by Caedmon.Ĭaedmon’s Hymn with present-day portrait of CaedmonĪlexander, Michael 1983. This was supposedly the impetus for the poem about the creation known as Caedmon's Hymn which Bede recorded and which is available in several dialect versions in Old English. According to Bede Caedmon was an uneducated cowherd who had a vision in which a voice admonished him to sing the praises of the creation. The only information about Caedmon is what is noted in the Ecclesiastical History of the English People (731) by the English theologian saint the Venerable Bede. He was an accurate and reliable observer and compiler of historical information and it is to him that we know of when and how the initial Germanic invasion of Britain took place.Ĭaedmon (650?-680?) Regarded as the earliest of the Old English Christian poets.
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Bede is known to posterity as the author of Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum ‘Ecclesiastical history of the English people’ which is the main historical source for the Old English period. Bede was born in Northumbria and became a monk at Jarrow where he remained for the remainder of his life. Alfred was also concerned with the reform of monastic life and had a number of translations made which are importants monuments of (early West-Saxon) Old English.īede, The Venerable (673?-735) English monk and historian. He was a West-Saxon and assumed the leadership of his community in 871 and was immediately confronted by difficult military engagements with the Vikings who were pressing south. Ælfric worked as a monk in the Benedictine monastery of Winchester and later at Eynsham (near Oxford) where he became abbot around 1006.Īlfred, King (849-899) The most famous of Old English kings, called ‘Alfred the Great’.
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His Colloquy was intended to improve knowledge of Latin among his pupils. Apart from his Catholic Homilies and Lives of the Saints we have a Latin grammar with glossary which was compiled in English. Ælfric (955?-1020?) A monk of the late Old English period who wrote prolifically, often on linguistic matters.