Ethelwold (c.912–84), Benedictine monk and reformer, bishop of Winchester. Born at Winchester, he served at the court of King Athelstan (924–39), but became a priest, being ordained by Alphege on the same day as his friend Dunstan. Not long afterwards he decided to join Dunstan at Glastonbury in his plan of reviving monastic life in England under the Rule of Benedict (c.941). Although he became prior, he was not, it seems, completely satisfied with Glastonbury, and asked if he could go to France to study the new reformed monasticism of Cluny. Instead, King Edred gave him the derelict abbey of Abingdon, which he restored with monks from Glastonbury and clerics from elsewhere; he sent his disciple Osgar to study at Fleury in his place. He built a new church (incorporating older elements) in the form of a double rotunda. When Dunstan was exiled by King Edwy (c.956), Ethelwold became the most important figure in the Reform and also was tutor to the future king, Edgar.
In 963 he became bishop of Winchester, the principal town of Wessex. The next year King Edgar and Ethelwold replaced the cathedral canons with monks from Abingdon, thus founding the first monastic cathedral, a specifically English institution which remained until the Reformation. From this change the monastic reform both gained momentum and changed direction. It became closely associated with the king, whose principal palace was but a stone's throw away from Winchester cathedral, but also with the diocesan and parochial needs of the Church. Strongly supported by the king, Ethelwold restored old monasteries such as Milton (Dorset) in 964, New Minster, and Nunnaminster in Winchester itself in 965, while new monasteries were founded and richly endowed at Peterborough (966), Ely (970), and Thorney (972), where he sometimes spent Lent living as a hermit and where he built a church with an apse at each end. His charter for the endowment of Peterborough with land, serfs, cattle, church plate, and twenty manuscripts survives.
In character Ethelwold was austere, able, and dynamic. The scribe of his Benedictional called him a Boanerges (= son of thunder). When he was prior at Glastonbury he used to urge the brethren to greater effort in their monastic observance; he never slept after Matins and would eat meat only once in three months, at Dunstan's express command. He also possessed considerable practical and artistic gifts. At Glastonbury he had been cook; at Abingdon he worked at the building until he broke his ribs falling off a scaffold; at Winchester he set the monks to work with the masons in the cathedral and built the most powerful organ of its time in England. It was played by two monks and had 400 pipes and 36 bellows. Bells and a crown of metal for candles in the sanctuary at Abingdon were also attributed to him. Even more important was the appearance in Ethelwold's monasteries of the new influential Winchester style of illumination, which soon surpassed in excellence the products of many scriptoria of continental monasteries. His school of vernacular writing at Winchester, of which Ælfric is the most famous example, was the most important of its time; its accurate translations, linguistically significant, were designed to meet the needs of bishops and clergy who were not themselves monks. In music Ethelwold's Winchester had the distinction of producing the first English polyphony in the Winchester Troper. His monastery at Winchester must have been large in personnel and outstanding in achievement. The rebuilt cathedral, which awkwardly incorporated older ele ments, was the setting for a wonderfully rich and varied liturgy. Nor were the needs of the town forgotten: Ethelwold built an aqueduct for it.
Three important events marked his episcopate. One was the Congress of c.970 when the Regularis Concordia, the characteristic statement of the monastic revival's observance, was promulgated as the norm of the thirty reformed monasteries in the southern half of England. Based on the practices of Ghent, Fleury, and Glastonbury, it was probably compiled by Ethelwold himself, who was also responsible for an important vernacular account of the aims of the reform and an OE version of the Rule of St. Benedict. The second event was the translation of the relics of Swithun of Winchester in 971. The third was the consecration of the cathedral in 980. Each occasion was marked by a large concourse of clergy and laity and was a sign of the success of the monastic reform movement, of which Dunstan and Ethelwold had been the pioneers. Their monasteries provided about three-quarters of the bishops of England until the Norman Conquest and a number of missionaries to Scandinavia; they were themselves centres of OE art and letters for many years to come.
Ethelwold was described by contemporaries as an outstanding counsellor of the king and as the benevolent bishop, the father of monks. These characteristics need to be recalled, as well as his ability and intransigence, for any final assessment of his personality. Feast: 1 August (2 August at Abingdon); translation, 10 September; Ely had a commemoratio on 8 October: Deeping and Thorney an exceptio on 23 October.
Bibliography
Click here for a list of abbreviations used in this bibliography.
- Lives by Wulfstan and by Ælfric ed. and trs. by M. Lapidge and M. Winterbottom (OMT 1991) and in M. Winterbottom, Three Lives of English Saints (1972); T. Symons (ed.), The Regularis Concordia (1953); E. John, ‘The Beginnings of the Benedictine Reform in England’ in Orbis Britanniae (1966); D. Parsons (ed.), Tenth-Century Studies (1975); see also M.O., pp. 31–56, 448–52, 528–37. For his artistic, literary, and musical importance see G. F. Warner and H. R. Wilson, The Benedictional of St. Ethelwold (facsimile edn., 1919) and F. Wormald, The Benedictional of St. Ethelwold (1958); H. Gneuss, ‘The Origin of Standard Old English and Æthelwold's school at Winchester’, A.S.E., i (1972), 63–83; M. Gretsch, ‘Æthelwold's translation of the Regula Sancti Benedicti and its Latin exemplar’, ibid., iii (1974), 125–52; W. H. Frere, The Winchester Troper (1894) and J. Handschin, ‘The Two Winchester Tropers’, J.T.S., xxxvii (1936), 34–9, 156–72. For a more recent assessment see also B. Yorke (ed.), Bishop Ethelwold: His Career and Influence (1988)
