Page 25 - Alfred the Great And His Legacy

Reason Four – Improving Literacy And Promoting

Learning

• He established a court school to educate his own children (including interestingly

his daughters!), the sons of nobles and bright boys of lesser birth.

• He required a level of literacy in those who held offices of authority.

• He commissioned translations into the vernacular from Latin of works that he

deemed “most necessary for all men to know”.

• These included religious writings and parts of the Bible, including of St Gregory’s

st
Pastoral Care and St. Augustine’s Soliloquies, & the 1 fifty psalms of the Psalter.

• Also, philosophical works like Boethius’s “Consolation of Philosophy” & historical

texts like Bede’s works