Cuthbert of Wearmouth-Jarrow wrote the wonderful letter giving a moving eye-witness account of the calm death of Bede in 735. He later became abbot of Wearmouth-Jarrow for many years, during which time he corresponded with Anglo-Saxon missionaries working in Germany. Here are included the complete work on the death of Bede and a letter from Cuthbert to Lul, written some thirty years later, in which he notes that he is sending Lul Bede’s prose and verse works on Cuthbert of Lindisfarne, and he asks for a skilled glassmaker as well as a cithara player to come to Northumbria to teach him to play.

Hugeburc, an Anglo-Saxon nun who moved to Germany and became abbess of Heidenheim, undertook a biography of Willibald, who with his brother Wynnebald had travelled from England with his father on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Willibald eventually became bishop of Eichstätt in Bavaria. The heart of Hugeburc’s biography is concerned with Willibald’s experiences in the Holy Land, where he visited many sites mentioned in the Bible: he told Hugeburc of his adventures and she recorded them in a kind of diary form, which contrasts with the more elaborate style of the Latin she uses in the non-dictated sections.

This charter from Æthelbald of Mercia to abbess Eadburg of Thanet in Kent shows the high regard in which the abbess was held. She is granted remission on the tax due for a ship she has bought, perhaps indicating that she was involved in trade with the Frankish regions across the English Channel.

The Life of Gregory the Great, who died in 604 just a few years after sending Augustine to Canterbury to reintroduce Christianity among the Anglo-Saxons, was written around 705 by an anonymous writer apparently associated with the monastery of Whitby which was an important cultural centre in the seventh century. The work also provides some information about life in Britain. The Latin displays certain syntactical and orthographic idiosyncrasies which may be due to the author or the later scribe.

In this excerpt from St. Patrick’s Confession, the author writes in the first person, telling of his early years in Britain and his coming to Ireland. The work is of linguistic interest as being influenced by Biblical Latin but with possible influence from the spoken Latin of the fifth century.

As with Cuthbert, there are two lives of Ceolfrith, by an anonymous writer and by Bede. Ceolfrith was a great abbot of Wearmouth and Jarrow at around the time of Bede. He succeeded Benedict Biscop and indeed travelled with him to Rome before becoming abbot. This excerpt, in the Anonymous version and in Bede’s briefer version, shows Ceolfrith taking the decision to leave his monastery and travel to Rome where he wishes to die, but in fact he only reaches Langres in France where he dies

Asser’s biography of king Alfred gives a vivid portrait of the man. It combines the use of earlier Anglo-Saxon chronicles as sources with Asser’s own composition, often based on his personal acquaintance with the king. Here some excerpts are given from both categories, showing that Asser’s style changes somewhat depending on the source. For the chapters covering the period 874-8 which give an account of Alfred’s dealings with the Danes, relevant excerpts from the Old English version in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle are given in an appendix to the Section.

Alcuin of York, who ended his days at St. Martin’s, Tours, in France, after working for Charlemagne at Aachen, wrote a biography of Willibrord, an early missionary in Frisia, mentioned also in Eddi’s life of Wilfrid. Alcuin made both a prose and a verse version: excerpts from both are recorded here. Willibrord studied at Ripon and in Ireland before crossing to the Continent to work as a missionary in Frisia, as well as making a journey to Rome.

Eddi (or Stephanus) wrote a biography of Wilfrid, recounting the turbulent life of the controversial bishop and saint who worked for the Church and furthering his own career not only in the north of England but also for a time in Sussex. He also travelled on the Continent, visiting Rome on two occasions. In these excerpts we see him rebuilding churches at Ripon and York, on his travels, and at the centre of a conference at which Ælfflæd intervened, where a decision was taken as to Wilfrid’s future.

This work written in honour of Queen Emma, wife of Æthelred the Unready and then of king Cnut, and mother of king Edward the Confessor, contains much information about royal life and intrigue at the beginning of the eleventh century. Here an account of the murder of her younger son Alfred on his return to England is excerpted.

Bede’s great Ecclesiastical history of the English people is probably the most famous Latin work of the early Middle Ages in Britain. It covers the history from the Roman period, through the withdrawal of the Romans, the reintroduction of Christianity with Augustine of Canterbury, and the lives of saints and kings in different parts of Britain until the beginning of the eighth century. Here are excerpts recounting Gregory the Great’s mission and the spread of Christianity through England, the end of paganism under king Edwin and the story of Cædmon of Whitby and his Old English poems.

The Regularis Concordia was probably written by Æthelwold of Winchester as part of the reform of Benedictine monasteries in England in the late tenth century. It is based on the Rule of St. Benedict and gives guidelines for the monastic lives of monks and nuns. It contains an early example of theatre ritual or drama. An eleventh-century manuscript of the work Cotton Tiberius A. iii contains interlinear glosses in Old English. Here the official preface tells of king Edgar’s role in the Benedictine reform.