medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
The monk Alphege (also Elphege; in Anglo-Saxon, Ælfheah) the Bald succeeded St. Birstan (d. 931) in the see of Winchester. A leading early figure in English Benedictine reform (P. H. Sawyer called him "the prime mover of the monastic renaissance"), he is now seen only rather dimly through his surviving charters, through the Vitae of Sts. Dunstan and Æthelwold (Ethelwold), and through brief mentions in later eleventh- and twelfth-century English ecclesiastical historians. He died on this day in the year 951. The best known anecdote about Alphege concerns his ordaining to the priesthood on the same day Dunstan (said to have been his kinsman), Æthelwold, and a third monk named Æthelstan and then, gathering them together, correctly predicting how each would finish his ecclesiastical career. Alphege is called "the Elder" to distinguish him from his martyred homonym of 19. April (who prior to his translation to Canterbury had also been bishop of Winchester).
Best,
John Dillon
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