Aldhelm's collected works were edited by Rudolf Ehwald,
Aldhelmi opera (Berlin, 1919). An earlier edition by
J. A. Giles,
Patres eccl. Angl. (Oxford, 1844) was reprinted by
J. P. Migne in his
Patrologiae Cursus, vol. 89 (1850).
Contemporary reputation Aldhelm's fame as a scholar spread to other countries.
Artwil, the son of an Irish king, submitted his writings for Aldhelm's approval, and
Cellanus, an Irish monk from
Peronne, was one of his correspondents. Aldhelm was the first
Anglo-Saxon, so far as is known, to write in
Latin verse, and his letter to Acircius (
Aldfrith or Eadfrith, king of
Northumbria) is a treatise on Latin
prosody for the use of his countrymen. In this work he included his most famous productions,
one hundred and one riddles in Latin hexameters. Each of them is a complete picture, and one of them,
De creatura, runs to 83 lines. though eventually it came to be regarded as barbarous. His works became standard school texts in monastic schools, until his influence declined around the time of the Norman Conquest.
Modern reputation Modern historians have contrasting views of his writings.
Peter Hunter Blair compares him unfavourably to Bede: "In the mind of his older contemporary, Aldhelm, learning of equal depth produced little more than an extravagant form of intellectual curiosity...Like Bede he drank deeply from the streams of Irish and Mediterranean scholarship, but their waters produced in him a state of intellectual intoxication which delighted its beholders, but which left little to posterity." However,
Michael Lapidge praises his immense learning, observing that his knowledge of Latin texts is greater than any other pre-Conquest Anglo-Saxon writer, and that "the originality and importance of his corpus of Latin writings well justifies his status as the first English man of letters".
Prose •
De Laude Virginitatis (the prose
De Virginitate), a Latin treatise on virginity addressed to the nuns of the double monastery at
Barking, is Aldhelm's best-known work. After a long preface extolling the merits of virginity, he commemorates a great number of male and female saints. Aldhelm later wrote a shorter, poetic version (see below). •
Epistola ad Acircium, a Latin treatise dedicated to one Acircius, understood to be King
Aldfrith of Northumbria (r. 685-704/5). The chief source of his
Epistola ad Acircium (ed. A. Mai,
Class. Auct. vol. V) is
Priscian. The acrostic introduction gives the sentence, 'Aldhelmus cecinit millenis versibus odas,' whether read from the initial or final letters of the lines. • A long letter to
Eahfrid, a scholar just returned from Ireland (first printed in Usher,
Veterum Epistt. Hiber. Sylloge, 1632), is of interest as casting light on the relations between English and Irish scholars. ==Churches dedicated to St Aldhelm==