In Ælfric’s time, the most common textbooks in circulation were in fact grammar books written by Donatus and Priscian. In contrast, medieval grammars were intended above all as aids to learning a second language. They were primarily inquiries into the structure of language for the benefit of native speakers (Hurt, 1972). Aelfric’s GrammarĮarlier grammars of the major Greek and Roman grammarians were not generally pedagogical in nature.

Apart from this brief outline, not much else is known about his life. In 1005, Ælfric became the abbot of the newly built monastery at Eynsham near present day Oxford (Hurt, 1972), and it was there that he died in 1020 (Crystal, 1995). It is there between 993 and 995 that he wrote his Glossary, Colloquy and Grammar. Two years later, in 987 he went to the newly founded Cernel Abbey in present day Cerne Abbas near Dorchester to teach Latin. It was there that Ælfric was ordained at the age of thirty, the minimum age for ordination in those days. At the age of fifteen, he entered the Old Monastery at Winchester, a training school for monks, where he studied under Eathelwold. Ælfric was born somewhere in Wessex, England circa 955 A.D. By all accounts, the political and economic situation during Ælfric’s lifetime was a disaster (Hurt, 1972). While the strategy had succeeded a century earlier under Alfred, during Æthelred’s reign paying tributes served only to strengthen the Danes and weaken the English. His name was King Æthelræd, a 10-year old boy known by the epithet Æthelræd Unræd, meaning “Noble counsel, no counsel.” His troubled reign (978-1016) was characterized by renewed attacks by the Danish and the six enormous tributes paid to buy peace from them. The fourth in the list came to the throne when Ælfric was 23 years old. Today, Winchester has over a hundred and seven thousand (“National Statistics,” 2005)ĭuring Ælfric’s lifetime, four different kings occupied the English throne. Although London and Winchester were not mentioned in the Doomsday census, York, a city of comparable size to Winchester at the time had 8000 people living there (Hurt, 1972). Half of southern England was dense, virgin forest, and the total population of the island was only about one million. (Hurt, 1972).Īt the time of Ælfric’s birth, England was a very different place.

And it was only in 954, a year before Ælfric was born, that Alfred’s grandson Ædred managed to expel Eric Bloodaxe, the last of the Scandinavian kings, from England. Thirteen years later, in 899, after devoting his remaining years to the restoration of English learning and culture, and promoting translation of Latin texts into the vernacular, King Alfred died. He managed this by buying a five-year peace with a large tribute, fortifying the South, and then taking and occupying London in 886. However, the English enjoyed a short reprieve under King Alfred who did much to prevent further cultural and economic decline during his reign by halting the Danes at a line running northwest from London to Chester (Law, 1997). The principal cause for this decline was the constant harassment by the Danes during their prolonged campaign of incursion and occupation. In the two centuries leading up to Ælfric’s birth, Latin scholarship was in such decline in England that when King Alfred came to the throne in 871, he complained that almost no one south of the Humber could translate a letter out of Latin.

Aelfric colloquy