"Aelfred had me made"

A king who loved learning

I'd so like to meet Alfred, the only English king styled “the Great,” who saved learning in the 9th century and in so doing extended the scope and importance of the English language.

At the age of 40 he (extraordinarily!) learned Latin and actually made an English translation of Gregory the Great's Pastoral Rule (c. 590). In his preface, Alfred writes,

“I remember how, before it was all ravaged and burned [by the invading Danes], I'd seen how the churches throughout all England stood filled with treasures and books. And there was also a multitude of God's servants who had very little benefit from those books because they could not understand anything of them since they were not written in their language.”

So Alfred decided that Latin texts needed to be translated into the living language of English to jumpstart literacy throughout the kingdom. He had five books on religion, philosophy, and history translated, and twelve copies of each were painstakingly copied. He then send the copies to the twelve bishops in his realm, ordering them to use them as the basis for instructing all young men, regardless of their station, who were teachable.

Accompanying the books were beautiful gold, enamel, and crystal pointers for following the sentences on the pages (something like a synagogue yad). The head of one of them was discovered in a Somerset river in 1693. Known as Alfred's jewel, it has inscribed on one side - in English! - “Aelfred had me made.”

Alfred “made” more than this. He made his kingdom more literate: another exquisite work.

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