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This entry gathers documents relating to Aldhelm and the abbey of Malmesbury. It opens with an excerpt from a later history of the abbey describing the Irish hermit Maildubh, who lived beneath an old fortress and gathered pupils to support himself, and the young Aldhelm’s education in his company. The charters that follow record grants to Aldhelm and to Malmesbury: Bishop Leuthere’s gift of the monastery to Aldhelm, grants of land by Æthelred, king of the Mercians, by Cædwalla and by Berhtwald, and a privilege of King Ine. One charter is dated 681 and attested by Æthelred and by Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury, with a curse on anyone who diminishes the gift.
The documents are a source for the early endowment of Malmesbury and for the career of Aldhelm. They should be read with caution: they are mostly preserved through later monastic cartularies and histories, and many early Malmesbury charters are regarded by historians as altered or forged in later centuries. Their witness lists name kings, bishops and nobles of the period. Even so, they show how the abbey remembered its founder and claimed royal patronage from several Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.
About this edition. The Latin text comes from Corpus Corporum, the Latin text repository of the University of Zurich (edition: Jacques-Paul Migne, Patrologia Latina, vol. 89, Parisiis 1850), reused with attribution for non-commercial purposes (CC BY-NC-SA). Every word has been analyzed with LatinCy, a neural language model for Latin — click or tap any word for its dictionary form, part of speech, and complete morphology, together with the full entry from Lewis & Short’s A Latin Dictionary.