Алдельм: Шерборн епископы, Малмсбери аббаты және қасиеттісі

8th century Bishop of Sherborne, Abbot of Malmesbury, poet, and saint

Aldhelm (, Aldhelmus Malmesberiensis) (c. 63925 May 709), Abbot of Malmesbury Abbey, Bishop of Sherborne, and a writer and scholar of Latin poetry, was born before the middle of the 7th century. He is said to have been the son of Kenten, who was of the royal house of Wessex. He was certainly not, as his early biographer Faritius asserts, the brother of King Ine. After his death he was venerated as a saint, his feast day being the day of his death, 25 May.

Aldhelm received his first education in the school of the Irish scholar and monk Máeldub (also Maildubh, Maildulf or Meldun) (died c. no – c. 675), who had settled in the British stronghold of Bladon (or Bladow) on the site of the town called Mailduberi, Maldubesburg, Meldunesburg, etc., and finally Malmesbury, after him. The Anglo Saxon building of St Laurence's Church, Bradford on Avon dates back to his time, and may safely be regarded as his. At Malmesbury he built a new church to replace Máeldub's modest building,

Aldhelm was deputed by a synod of the church in Wessex to remonstrate with the Britons of Dumnonia (Devon and Cornwall) on the Easter controversy. British Christians followed a unique system of calculation for the date of Easter and also bore a distinctive tonsure; these customs are generally associated with the practice known as Celtic Christianity. Aldhelm wrote a long and rather acrimonious letter to king Geraint of Dumnonia (Geruntius) achieving ultimate agreement with Rome. Aldhelm also personally visited Devon & Cornwall about this time, potentially on a diplomatic mission, which he recounts in his Carmen Rhythmicum.

In 705, or perhaps earlier, Hædde, Bishop of Winchester, died, and the diocese was divided into two parts. Sherborne was the new see, of which Aldhelm became the first bishop around 705. He wished to resign the abbey of Malmesbury which he had governed for thirty years, but yielding to the remonstrances of the monks he continued to direct it until his death. He was now an old man, but he showed great activity in his new functions. The cathedral church which he built at Sherborne, though replaced later by a Norman church, is described by William of Malmesbury. "a mighty instrument, with innumerable tones, blown with belows, and enclosed in a gilded case." (It is not clear from the source cited whether the device was innovative for the premises, the locale, or a fundamental advance on existing known technologies.)

Aldhelm was on his rounds in his diocese when he died at the church in Doulting village in 709, the Church of St Aldhelm and St Aldhelm's Well in the village are dedicated to him. The body was taken to Malmesbury, and crosses were set up by his friend, Egwin, Bishop of Worcester, at the various stopping places. He was buried in the church of St Michael at Malmesbury Abbey. His biographers relate miracles due to his sanctity worked during his lifetime and at his shrine. Aldhelm's flag may be flown in his celebration. The flag, a white cross on a red background, is a colour reversed version of England's St. George flag. Aldhelm is remembered in the Church of England with a commemoration on 25 May. In 2023, a pastoral area of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Clifton was named in honour of Aldhelm.

Aldhelm's collected works were edited by Rudolf Ehwald, Aldhelmi opera (Berlin, 1919). An earlier edition by J. A. Giles, Patres eccl. Angl. (Oxford, 1844) was reprinted by J. P. Migne in his Patrologiae Cursus, vol. 89 (1850).

Aldhelm's fame as a scholar spread to other countries. Artwil, the son of an Irish king, submitted his writings for Aldhelm's approval, and Cellanus, an Irish monk from Peronne, was one of his correspondents. Aldhelm was the first Anglo Saxon, so far as is known, to write in Latin verse, and his letter to Acircius (Aldfrith or Eadfrith, king of Northumbria) is a treatise on Latin prosody for the use of his countrymen. In this work he included his most famous productions, one hundred and one riddles in Latin hexameters. Each of them is a complete picture, and one of them, De creatura, runs to 83 lines. though eventually it came to be regarded as barbarous. His works became standard school texts in monastic schools, until his influence declined around the time of the Norman Conquest.

Modern historians have contrasting views of his writings. Peter Hunter Blair compares him unfavourably to Bede: "In the mind of his older contemporary, Aldhelm, learning of equal depth produced little more than an extravagant form of intellectual curiosity Like Bede he drank deeply from the streams of Irish and Mediterranean scholarship, but their waters produced in him a state of intellectual intoxication which delighted its beholders, but which left little to posterity." However, Michael Lapidge praises his immense learning, observing that his knowledge of Latin texts is greater than any other pre Conquest Anglo Saxon writer, and that "the originality and importance of his corpus of Latin writings well justifies his status as the first English man of letters".

De Laude Virginitatis (the prose De Virginitate), a Latin treatise on virginity addressed to the nuns of the double monastery at Barking, is Aldhelm's best known work. After a long preface extolling the merits of virginity, he commemorates a great number of male and female saints. Aldhelm later wrote a shorter, poetic version (see below). Epistola ad Acircium, a Latin treatise dedicated to one Acircius, understood to be King Aldfrith of Northumbria (r. 685 704/5). The chief source of his Epistola ad Acircium (ed. A. Mai, Class. Auct. vol. V) is Priscian. The acrostic introduction gives the sentence, 'Aldhelmus cecinit millenis versibus odas,' whether read from the initial or final letters of the lines. A long letter to Eahfrid, a scholar just returned from Ireland (first printed in Usher, Veterum Epistt. Hiber. Sylloge, 1632), is of interest as casting light on the relations between English and Irish scholars.

Ehwald, Rudolf (ed.). Aldhelmi Opera. MGH Scriptores. Auctores antiquissimi 15. Berlin, 1919. Scans available from the Digital MGH. Aldhelm: The Prose Works. Trans. Michael Lapidge and Michael Herren. D. S. Brewer, 1979. Aldhelm: The Poetic Works. Trans. Michael Lapidge and James L. Rosier. Boydell & Brewer, 1984. .

Gwara, Scott (ed. ), Aldhelmi Malmesbiriensis Prosa de virginitate: cum glosa latina atque anglosaxonica, 2 vols, Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina, 124, 124a (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001).

The Riddles of Aldhelm. Text and translation by James Hall Pittman. Yale University Press, 1925. Through a Gloss Darkly: Aldhelm’s Riddles in the British Library ms Royal 12. C. xxiii, ed. and trans. by Nancy Porter Stork, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Studies and Texts, 98 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1990). Saint Aldhelm's Riddles Translated by A. M. Juster, University of Toronto Press, 2015, .