Identifiable books from the pre-Conquest library of Malmesbury Abbey

Abstract

The Benedictine abbey at Malmesbury in Wiltshire was one of that select group of English houses which could trace its history back to the golden age epitomized and chronicled by Bede. To Bede's older contemporary Aldhelm (ob. c.709) belongs most of the credit for setting the recently founded community on its feet and for making it a by-word throughout the British Isles for the pursuit of divine and secular learning.2During his abbacy Malmesbury eclipsed the reputations of the Irish schools and of Hadrian's Canterbury. At only one other point in its long history did the abbey attain a comparable reputation for learning, when it housed the monk William (c.1095–1143), whose career, intellectual interests and writings were consciously modelled upon the examples of Bede and Aldhelm.