Editing Alfred the Great (section)

=== Advocacy of education in English ===
[[File:Alfred Jewel right way up.jpg|thumb|upright|Line drawing of the [[Alfred Jewel]], showing the socket at its base]]

Alfred's educational ambitions seem to have extended beyond the establishment of a court school. Believing that without Christian wisdom there can be neither prosperity nor success in war, Alfred aimed "to set to learning (as long as they are not useful for some other employment) all the free-born young men now in England who have the means to apply themselves to it".<ref name=":0">{{cite web |url=http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/english/courses/engl440/pastoral/translation.shtml |title=Translation of Alfred's Prose |website=Bucknell University |access-date=14 May 2017 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170514082708/http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/english/courses/engl440/pastoral/translation.shtml |archive-date=14 May 2017}}</ref> Conscious of the decay of Latin literacy in his realm, Alfred proposed that primary education be taught in English, with those wishing to advance to holy orders to continue their studies in Latin.{{Sfn|Keynes|Lapidge|1983|pp=125–126}}

There were few "books of wisdom" written in English. Alfred sought to remedy this through an ambitious court-centred programme of translating into English the books he deemed "most necessary for all men to know".{{Sfn|Keynes|Lapidge|1983|pp=125–126}} It is unknown when Alfred launched this programme, but it may have been during the 880s when Wessex was enjoying a respite from Viking attacks. Alfred was, until recently, often considered to have been the author of many of the translations, but this is now considered doubtful in almost all cases.{{Sfn|Godden|2007|pp=1–23}} Scholars more often refer to translations as "Alfredian", indicating that they probably had something to do with his patronage, but are unlikely to be his own work.{{Sfn|Bately|2014|pp=113–142}}

Apart from the lost ''Handboc'' or ''Encheiridio'', which seems to have been a [[commonplace book]] kept by the king, the earliest work to be translated was the ''Dialogues'' of [[Gregory the Great]], a book greatly popular in the [[Middle Ages]]. The translation was undertaken at Alfred's command by [[Wærferth]], [[Bishop of Worcester]], with the king merely furnishing a preface.{{Sfn|Plummer|1911|p=583}} Remarkably, Alfred – undoubtedly with the advice and aid of his court scholars – translated four works himself: Gregory the Great's ''Pastoral Care'', [[Boethius]]'s ''[[Consolation of Philosophy]]'', [[St. Augustine]]'s ''[[Soliloquies of Augustine|Soliloquies]]'' and the first fifty psalms of the [[Psalter]].<ref name="Bately">{{Harvnb|Bately|1970|pp=433–460}}; {{Harvnb|Bately|1990|pp=45–78}}.</ref> Alfred's psalms have credibly been attested as surviving in the [[Paris Psalter (Anglo-Saxon)|Paris Psalter]].<ref name="Emms">{{Cite journal |last=Emms |first=Richard |date=December 1999 |title=The scribe of the Paris Psalter |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/anglo-saxon-england/article/abs/scribe-of-the-paris-psalter/8BF4F8F084BEEA2B6E5A0A22FB4E8818 |journal=Anglo-Saxon England |language=en |volume=28 |pages=179–183 |doi=10.1017/S0263675100002301 |issn=1474-0532}}</ref>

One might add to this list the translation, in Alfred's law code, of excerpts from the [[Vulgate]] Book of Exodus. The Old English versions of [[Orosius]]'s ''Histories against the Pagans'' and [[Bede]]'s ''[[Ecclesiastical History of the English People]]'' are no longer accepted by scholars as Alfred's own translations because of lexical and stylistic differences.<ref name="Bately"/> Nonetheless, the consensus remains that they were part of the Alfredian programme of translation. [[Simon Keynes]] and [[Michael Lapidge]] suggest this also for Bald's ''Leechbook'' and the anonymous ''Old English Martyrology''.{{Sfn|Keynes|Lapidge|1983|pp=33–34}}

The preface of Alfred's translation of Pope Gregory the Great's ''Pastoral Care''<ref name=":0"/> explained why he thought it necessary to translate works such as this from Latin into English. Although he described his method as translating "sometimes word for word, sometimes sense for sense", the translation keeps very close to the original although, through his choice of language, he blurred throughout the distinction between spiritual and secular authority. Alfred meant the translation to be used, and circulated it to all his bishops.{{Sfn|Plummer|1911|p=584}} Interest in Alfred's translation of ''Pastoral Care'' was so enduring that copies were still being made in the 11th century.{{Sfn|Paul|2015|loc=MS Ii.2.4}}

Boethius's ''Consolation of Philosophy'' was the most popular philosophical handbook of the Middle Ages. Unlike the translation of the ''Pastoral Care'', the [[Metres of Boethius|Alfredian text]] deals very freely with the original and, though the late Dr. G. Schepss showed that many of the additions to the text are to be traced not to the translator himself{{Sfn|Schepss|1895|pp=149–160}} but to the glosses and commentaries which he used, still there is much in the work which is distinctive to the translation and has been taken to reflect philosophies of kingship in Alfred's milieu. It is in the Boethius that the oft-quoted sentence occurs: "To speak briefly: I desired to live worthily as long as I lived, and after my life to leave to them that should come after, my memory in good works."{{Sfn|Keynes|Lapidge|1983|p=133}} The book has come down to us in two manuscripts only. In one of these<ref>{{Citation |title=MS Bodley 180 |publisher=Oxford Bodleian Library}}</ref> the writing is prose, in the other<ref>{{Citation|title=Cotton MS Otho A.|volume=vi|publisher=British Library|mode=cs1}}</ref> a combination of prose and alliterating verse. The latter manuscript was severely damaged in the 18th and 19th centuries.{{Sfn|Kiernan|1998|loc=Alfred the Great's Burnt "Boethius"}}

The last of the Alfredian works is one which bears the name ''Blostman'' ("Blooms") or ''Anthology''. The first half is based mainly on the ''Soliloquies'' of St [[Augustine of Hippo]], the remainder is drawn from various sources. The material has traditionally been thought to contain much that is Alfred's own and highly characteristic of him. The last words of it may be quoted; they form a fitting epitaph for the noblest of English kings. "Therefore, he seems to me a very foolish man, and truly wretched, who will not increase his understanding while he is in the world, and ever wish and long to reach that endless life where all shall be made clear."{{Sfn|Plummer|1911|p=584}} Alfred appears as a character in the twelfth- or 13th-century poem ''[[The Owl and the Nightingale]]'' where his wisdom and skill with proverbs is praised. ''[[The Proverbs of Alfred]]'', a 13th-century work, contains sayings that are not likely to have originated with Alfred but attest to his posthumous medieval reputation for wisdom.{{Sfn|Parker|2007|pp=115–126}}

[[File:Alfred-jewel-ashmolean.jpg|thumb|The [[Alfred Jewel]], in the [[Ashmolean Museum]], Oxford, commissioned by Alfred; probably a pointer to aid reading]]

The [[Alfred jewel]], discovered in [[Somerset]] in 1693, has long been associated with King Alfred because of its Old English inscription AELFRED MEC HEHT GEWYRCAN ("Alfred ordered me to be made"). The jewel is about {{Convert|2.5|in|cm|abbr=off}} long, made of [[filigree]]d gold, enclosing a highly polished piece of quartz crystal beneath which is set in a cloisonné enamel plaque with an enamelled image of a man holding floriate sceptres, perhaps personifying Sight or the Wisdom of God.{{Sfn|Pratt|2007|pp=189–191}}

It was at one time attached to a thin rod or stick based on the hollow socket at its base. The jewel certainly dates from Alfred's reign. Although its function is unknown, it has been often suggested that the jewel was one of the ''æstels'' – pointers for reading – that Alfred ordered sent to every bishopric accompanying a copy of his translation of the ''Pastoral Care''. Each ''æstel'' was worth the princely sum of 50 [[mancus]]es which fits in well with the quality workmanship and expensive materials of the Alfred jewel.{{Sfn|Keynes|Lapidge|1983|pp=203–206}}

Historian Richard Abels sees Alfred's educational and military reforms as complementary. Restoring religion and learning in Wessex, Abels contends, was to Alfred's mind as essential to the defence of his realm as the building of the burhs.{{Sfn|Abels|1998|pp=219–257}} As Alfred observed in the preface to his English translation of Gregory the Great's ''Pastoral Care'', kings who fail to obey their divine duty to promote learning can expect earthly punishments to befall their people.{{Sfn|Keynes|Lapidge|1983|pp=124–145}} The pursuit of wisdom, he assured his readers of the Boethius, was the surest path to power: "Study wisdom, then, and, when you have learned it, condemn it not, for I tell you that by its means you may without fail attain to power, yea, even though not desiring it".{{Sfn|Sedgefield|1900|p=35}}

The portrayal of the West-Saxon resistance to the Vikings by Asser and the chronicler as a Christian holy war was more than mere rhetoric or propaganda. It reflected Alfred's own belief in a doctrine of divine rewards and punishments rooted in a vision of a hierarchical Christian world order in which God is the Lord to whom kings owe obedience and through whom they derive their authority over their followers. The need to persuade his nobles to undertake work for the 'common good' led Alfred and his court scholars to strengthen and deepen the conception of Christian kingship that he had inherited by building upon the legacy of earlier kings including Offa, clerical writers including Bede, and Alcuin and various participants in the [[Carolingian Renaissance]]. This was not a cynical use of religion to manipulate his subjects into obedience but an intrinsic element in Alfred's worldview. He believed, as did other kings in ninth-century England and Francia, that God had entrusted him with the spiritual as well as physical welfare of his people. If the Christian faith fell into ruin in his kingdom, if the clergy were too ignorant to understand the Latin words they butchered in their offices and liturgies, if the ancient monasteries and collegiate churches lay deserted out of indifference, he was answerable before God, as [[Josiah]] had been. Alfred's ultimate responsibility was the pastoral care of his people.{{Sfn|Abels|1998|pp=219–257}}