SOME INPORTANT FIGURES CONCERNING OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE


SOME INPORTANT FIGURES:

1)       Augustine of Canterbury, Saint (d.604):-

He was the first Archbishop of Canterbury. He was sent from Rome in 596 by Pope Gregory I, at the head of a 40-strong mission. Arriving in Kent in 597, Augustine converted King Ethelbert and introduced Roman ecclesiastical practices into England. This brought him into conflict with the Celtic monks of Britain and Ireland whose traditions had developed in isolation from the continent. The Synod of Whitby (663) settled disputes in favour of Rome. His feast day is May 28(May 26 in England and Wales).


2)       Bede, Saint (673?-735) (Venerable Bede):-

      He was an English monk and scholar and the most learned Briton of his day. Bede’s works were profoundly influential across early medieval Europe. His most important work is the Ecclesiastical History of the English People, a vital source for early English history (54 BC-AD 697). His combination of his own work with that of earlier chroniclers is made particularly valuable by his care in mentioning his sources rare in mediaeval scholarship. Bede’s other works covered biblical commentary, science, music and chronology, and he also pioneered an early form of Anno Domini dates. He spent his life in the Northumbrian monastery of Jarrow, and is buried in Durham cathedral.

3) Gildas:-

  He is claimed to be the ‘first national historian of Britons’. He gives the eye-witness accounts of the slaughter and massacre and large scale of plunder of the British Towns.

4) Asser:-

    He was a Welsh Scholar. King Alfred invited him and he came to study with him. He met Alfred in 884 A.D. and since then his visit became a regular feature almost every year. Though Alfred’s association with great books began in early childhood and later on when he went to Rom to absorb the magnificent beauty and grandeur of an empire that had begun its count-down, Asser’s impact on consolidating and reinforcing those influences was the most crucial. He is considered as the biographer of Alfred.

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