THE COMING MONTH, 3

Saint Aldhelm (25th May / 7th June) is one of the greatest scholar saints of Orthodox England.  He was a member of the Royal House of Wessex and was born in the mid-seventh century.  He was educated at Canterbury, in the school founded by St Adrian, who accompanied St Theodore of Tarsus when he came to England as Archbishop of Canterbury.  As an adult, Saint Aldhelm joined the monastic community that had been founded at Malmesbury, and which had a reputation for scholarly excellence.  Aldhelm’s own reputation as a scholar brought even more renown to the community, and scholars from as far away as Scotland and France came to study under his direction.  He was fluent in Greek, Latin and Hebrew, and was a gifted musician and poet.  In later generations, King Alfred the Great placed St Aldhelm in the first rank of the vernacular poets.  Aldhelm was appointed abbot of Malmesbury in c. 683 A.D. and under his rule the monastery continued as a centre of piety and of learning.  He rebuilt an ancient church in the town which he dedicated to Sts Peter and Paul, and founded two daughter houses at Frome and Bradford-on-Avon.  His renown reached the ears of Pope Sergius I in Rome, and he was invited to visit that City.  He journeyed there, accompanying King Caedwalla, who was baptised by the Pope and died while still in Rome.  On his return to England, Aldhelm participated in a synod called by King Ina of Wessex, which addressed the problem of those still adhering to what we now call the Celtic usages in Cornwall.  Saint Aldhelm, on the instructions of the council, addressed a letter to Geraint, the King of Cornwall, on the subject, which is still extant. In 705 A.D. Bishop Hedda died, and his huge diocese was divided into two: Winchester and Sherborne.  The saint was consecrated as the first Bishop of Sherborne, and as such continued and increased his apostolic labours.  He died in 709 A.D. at Doulting in Somerset, where to this day there is a holy well dedicated to him a little distance from the parish church.  His body was taken back to his monastery at Malmesbury for burial, and at every place where the procession rested overnight, a cross was set up.  A beautiful story is related of the saint: he observed that the peasants in church paid very little heed to the preaching and often wandered out (as happens to this day at Brookwood).  Realising that they would pay little heed to exhortations or threats, he used his musical and poetic skills to good effect.  He would stand on the town bridge, and sing to the people, when he had thus gained their attention, he would begin to speak to them of things profitable to their souls, and thus he brought many more to the love of Christ.  Many of his works have been handed down to us, and most famous among them is a treatise on Virginity which he addressed to the nuns at Barking, so even in his lifetime his influence spread far beyond his own diocese in the West Country.