Aldhelm and Sherborne

Nicholas Brooks, Katherine Barker

• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN: 9781842178720
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European Medieval History
• Index: History

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

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Usque Domnoniam: the setting of Aldhelm’s Carmen rhythmicum, literature, language and the liminal
• Chapter 2: Usque Domnoniam: Sherborne, Glastonbury and the Expansion of Wessex
• Chapter 3: New light on Aldhelm’s letter to King Gerent of Dumnonia
• Chapter 4: Aldhelm and the ‘Epinal-Erfurt Glossary’
• Chapter 5: Aldhelm’s Irish and British Connections
• Chapter 6: Faricii Abbatis Meldvnensis vita sancti Aldhelmi, Faricius’ ‘Life of St Aldhelm’
• Chapter 7: Church dedications ‘west of Selwood’
• Chapter 8: Th e Carmen rhythmicum: Aldhelm, poet and composer of carmina
• Chapter 9: Aldhelm’s Carmen rhythmicum with translations by Michael Lapidge
• Index