As a boy, Aldhelm was sent to study at canterbury under Adrian, the Abbot of St. Augustine's, where he excelled in Latin and Greek.
He returned to Wessex for a short period to join a community of scholars at Malmesbury in Wiltshire under St. Maeldulph before returning to Canterbury. Illness compelled him to return to Wessex and Malmesbury where he became a leading scholar and attracted a small community from as far afield as France and Scotland. In about 683, the loose religious community at Malmesbury was formed into a regular Benedcitine abbey with Aldelm as its first abbot.
|
|
| | Aldelm is reputed not only to have been fluent in Greek and Latin but also to be able to read the Old Testament in Hebrew.
|
| |
|
|
|
The abbey at Malmesbury prospered under St Aldhelm as a seat of learning and piety attracting many gifts from the nobles and kings of Wessex. St Aldhelm established smaller religious houses at nearby Frome and Bradford-on-Avon. In Malmesbury itself, he rebuilt and repaired the small ruinous but ancient church and dedicated it to Saints Peter and Paul.
|
|
| | The church founded by St Aldhelm at Bradford-on-Avon still survives and is almost completely intact.
|
| |
|
|
|
St Aldhelm was invited by Pope Sergius I to visit him in Rome. He is said to have accompanied King Caedwalla of Wessex to Rome where the king was baptized by the Pope and died in 689.
The Bishopric of Wessex was split into two dioceses by King Ine in 705AD and St Aldhelm was made the first bishop of Sherborne and allowed to retain the Abbacy of Malmesbury.
As bishop, he rebuilt the church at Sherborne,
established the nunnery of St. Mary at Wareham,
built churches at Langton Matravers
and the royal palace at Corfe. Popular legend also ascribes a Saxon
predecessor to the present Norman chapel standing in the middle of an early hristian enclosure on the isolated promontory of St. Aldhelm's Head to the saint.
|
|
| | Aldhelm died at Doulting in Somerset on May 25th, 709. His body was carried to the Abbey which he had founded at Malmesbury and crosses were erected wherever his coffin along the route. The coffin passed through Bath and it is possible that the fragments of a cross which was excavated near the Hot Bath there and is exhibited in the Abbey at Bath may have been one of these crosses. 0-7134-0078-1.35
|
| |
|
|
|
