They gave us the greatest of all Britons
“Without wisdom, nothing can be done to any purpose.” So wrote the most celebrated of all Anglo-Saxon monarchs, Alfred the Great. As Alcuin’s exploits in the eighth century demonstrate, the acquisition of knowledge was central to the Anglo-Saxon tradition. But by the time Alfred became ruler of the kingdom of Wessex in 871, that thirst for wisdom had been forced to play second fiddle to a quest for survival in the face of a Viking onslaught.
Viking raids on the British Isles began in the eighth century, growing in frequency until the sack of the monasteries of Lindisfarne and Jarrow in 793– 94. Then armies began to stay over winter. And finally, in the 870s, in the ominous words of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, “they divided the land, settled down and began to plough”. The royal families of the East Angles and Northumbrians ended. Mercia was partitioned. Wessex, ‘the Last Kingdom’, stood alone.
Alfred’s victories over the Vikings saved England and left him ‘King of the Anglo-Saxons’ – in other words, of the Mercians and West Saxons together. But no less important was his project to restore learning and education: “To translate into English the books most needful for men to know.”
For inspiration, Alfred turned to the Carolingian Renaissance and the idea that Christian kings should be patrons of learning. He gathered scholars from Wales, Germany and France. Working in a kind of seminar, as Alfred himself put it, they worried away at a text “word by word and idea by idea” till an English version could be written down, copied out and disseminated.
“It was a time,” Alfred said, “when everything was ruined and burned.” But Alfred planned for our future, all the same. That’s why, for me, he remains the greatest Briton.