Aldhelm and Sherborne: Essays to Celebrate the Founding of the Bishopric

by Nicholas Brooks

This collection of papers follows on from a conference, held in Sherborne in June 2005, marking the thirteen-hundredth anniversary of the founding of the bishopric by Aldhelm of Malmesbury. This volume looks at the work of Aldhelm and the foundation of the see of Sherborne in the wider context of his career and his world. At the Sherborne symposium, Katherine Barker commissioned a performance of Aldhelm's Carmen rhythmicum by a rune-singer and an instrumentalist. The large audience at Sherborne were transfixed by the experience of listening, with the text and a translation before them, to a musical recitation and performance of this long Latin poem, which - perhaps for the first time in a thousand years - conveyed something of its emotional power. The rhythms and message of Aldhelm's poem came alive in a remarkable way and readers of this volume can gain much of the same experience by listening to the accompanying CD, with the text and translation of the Carmen rhythmicum before them.

Table of Contents

1. Usque the setting of Aldhelm’s Carmen rhythmicum, literature, language and the liminal ( Katherine Barker )
2. Usque Sherborne, Glastonbury and the Expansion of Wessex ( Katherine Barker )
3. New light on Aldhelm’s letter to King Gerent of Dumnonia ( Duncan Probert )
4. Aldhelm and the Epinal-Erfurt Glossary ( Michael Lapidge )
5. Aldhelm’s Irish Connections ( Barbara Yorke )
5. Faricii Abbatis Meldvnensis vita sancti Aldhelmi , Faricius’ ‘Life of St Aldhelm’ ( David Howlett )
7. Church dedications ‘west of Selwood’ ( Graham Jones )
8. The Carmen rhythmicum : Aldhelm, poet and composer of carmina ( Katherine Barker )
9. Aldhelm’s Carmen rhythmicum ( with translations by Michael Lapidge, David Howlett and Katherine Barker )

A parallel translation of the Carmen rhythmicum ( Nicholas Brooks )

An introduction to the musical performance given in June 2005 by Vonkale of the Kaustinen Institute, Finland ( Katherine Barker )

A CD of the performance given in June 2005 may be found inside the back cover

208 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2009

About the author

Nicholas Peter Brooks, FBA was an English medieval historian.