ALDHELM (c. 64o-709), bishop of Sherborne, English scholar, 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, but who was certainly not, as Aldhelm's early biogra pher Faritius asserts, brother of King Ine. He received his first education in the school of an Irish scholar and monk, Mail dulf, Maeldubh, or Meldun (d. c. 675), who had settled in the British stronghold of Bladon or Bladow on the site of Malmesbury. Aldhelm was a pupil of Hadrian, abbot of St. Augustine's, Canter bury, whom he addresses as the "venerable preceptor of my rude childhood." He must, nevertheless, have been 3o years of age when he began to study with Hadrian. His studies included Roman law, astronomy, astrology, the art of reckoning, and the difficulties of the calendar. He learned, according to the doubtful statements of the early lives, both Greek and Hebrew. Ill-health compelled him to leave Canterbury, and he returned to Malmesbury. When Maildulf died, Aldhelm was appointed in 675 to succeed him, and became the first abbot. He introduced the Benedictine rule, and secured the right of the election of the abbot to the monks them selves. The community at Malmesbury increased, and Aldhelm was able to found two other centres of learning at Frome and at Bradford-on-Avon. The little church of St. Lawrence at Brad ford may safely be regarded as his. At Malmesbury he built a new church to replace Maildulf's modest building, and obtained considerable grants of land for the monastery. His fame as a scholar rapidly spread into other countries. Aldhelm was the first Englishman, so far as we know, 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, ioi riddles in Latin hexameters. Each of them is a complete picture, and one of them runs to 83 lines. That his merits as a scholar were early recognized in his own country is shown by the encomium of Bede (Eccl. Hist. v. 18), who speaks of him as a wonder of erudition. His fame reached Italy, and at the request of Pope Sergius I. (687-701) he paid a visit to Rome, of which, however, there is no notice in his extant writings. He was deputed by a synod of the church in Wessex to remonstrate with the Britons of Dom nonia (Devon and Cornwall) on their differences from the Roman practice in the shape of the tonsure and the date of Easter. This he did in a long and rather acrimonious letter to their king Geraint (Geruntius), and their ultimate agreement with Rome is referred by William of Malmesbury to his efforts. In 705 Aldhelm became bishop of the new see of Sherborne. He wished to resign the abbey of Malmesbury which he had governed for 3o years, but yielding to the remonstrances of the monks he con tinued to direct it until his death. The cathedral church which he built at Sherborne, though replaced later by a Norman church, is described by William of Malmesbury. He was on his rounds in his diocese when he died in the church of Doulting on May 25, log. He was buried in the church of St. Michael, Malmesbury. Aldhelm wrote poetry in Anglo-Saxon also, and set his own com positions to music, but none of his songs, which were still popular in the time of Alfred, have come down to us.
Aldhelm's works were collected in J. A. Giles's Patres eccl. Angl. (1844) , and reprinted by J. P. Migne in his Patrologiae Cursus, vol. lxxxix. (185o) . The letter to Geraint, king of Domnonia, was supposed to have been destroyed by the Britons (W. of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificidm, p. 361) , but was discovered with others of Aldhelm's in the correspondence of St. Boniface, archbishop of Mainz. A long letter to Eahfrid, a scholar just returned from Ireland (first printed in Usserii Veterum Epistt. Hiber.–Sylloge, 1632), is of interest as casting light on the relations between English and Irish scholars. Next to the riddles, Aldhelm's best-known work is De Laude Virginitatis sive de Virginitate Sanctorum, a Latin treatise addressed about 705 to the nuns of Barking, in which he commemorates a great number of saints. This was afterwards turned by Aldhelm into Latin verse (printed by Delrio, Mainz, 16oI) . The chief source of his Epistola ad Acircium sive liber de septenario, et de metris, aenigmatibus ac pedum regulis (ed. A. Mai, Class. Auct. vol. v.) is Priscian. For the riddles included in it, his model was the collection known as Symposii aenigmata. The acrostic introduction gives the sentence, "Aldhelmus cecinit millenis versibus odas," whether read from the initial or final letters of the lines. His Latin poems include one on the dedication of a basilica built by Bugge (or Eadburga), a royal lady of the house of Wessex.
N. E. S. A. Hamilton, 187o, for the Rolls Series, pp. 330-443.) The life by John Capgrave in his Legenda Nova (1516) is chiefly an abridgement of Malmesbury's narrative. Consult also L. Bonhoff, Aldhelm von Malmesbury (1894) ; G. F. Browne, bishop of Bristol, St. Aldhelm: His Life and Times (1903) ; and W. B. Wildman, Life of S. Ealdhelm, first Bishop of Sherborne (1905) , containing many in teresting local details. For some poems attributed to Aldhelm, and printed in Dummler's edition of the letters of St. Boniface and Lul in Monumenta Germaniae Historica (epistt. torn. iii.), see H. Bradley in Eng. Hist. Review, xv. p. 291 (190o), where they are attributed to Aldhelm's disciple Aelthelwald. The very varied sources and the chronology of Aldhelm's work are discussed in "Zu Aldhelm and Baeda," by Max. Manitius, in Sitzungsberichte der kaiserlichen Akad. der Wissenschaften (1886) .
An excellent account of his ecclesiastical importance is given by W. Bright in Chapters on Early English Church History (1878) .
For his position as a writer of Latin verse consult A. Ebert, Allge meine Geschichte d. Literatur des Mittelalters im Abendlande, vol. i. new edition (1889) ; M. Manitius, Geschichte der christlichlateinischen Poesie, etc. (Stuttgart, 1891), pp. 487-496; also H. Hahn, Bonifaz and Lul ihre angelsdchsischen Korrespondenten, chap. i. (Leipzig, 1883) . The two last-named works contain many further bibliographical references.