loses with Alfred, who, with the aid of the
Welsh monk, Asser, produced a series of free translations from Latin
texts, including Boethius and Orosius and Bede, and the _Cura
Pastoralis_ of Gregory the Great.

In the 10th century learning flourished at Aachen under Bruno, brother
of Otto I. and archbishop of Cologne (953-965), who had himself learned
Greek from certain Eastern monks at the imperial court, and who called
an Irish bishop from Trier to teach Greek at the imperial capital. He
also encouraged the transcription of Latin MSS., which became models of
style to Widukind of Corvey, the imitator of Sallust and Livy. In the
same century the monastery of Gandersheim, south of Hanover, was the
retreat of the learned nun Hroswitha, who celebrated the exploits of
Otho in leonine hexameters, and composed in prose six moral and
religious plays in imitation of Terence. One of the most prominent
personages of the century was Gerbert of Aurillac, who, after teaching
at Tours and Fleury, became abbot of Bobbio, archbishop of Reims, and
ultimately pope under the name of Silvester II. (d. 1003). He frequently
quotes from the speeches of Cicero, and it has been surmised that the
survival of those speeches may have been due to the influence of
Gerbert. The most original hellenist of this age is Luitprand, bishop of
Cremona (d. 972), who acquired some knowledge of Greek during his
repeated missions to Constantinople. About the same time in England
Oswald of York, who had himself been educated at Fleury, invited Abbo
(d. 1004) to instruct the monks of the abbey recently founded at Ramsey,
near Huntingdon. At Ramsey he wrote for his pupils a scholarly work
dealing with points of prosody and pronunciation, and exhibiting an
accurate knowledge of Virgil and Horace. During the same half-century,
AElfric, the abbot of Eynsham (d. c. 1030), aided Bishop AEthelwold in
making Winchester famous as a place of education. It was there that he
began his _Latin Grammar_, his _Glossary_ (the earliest Latin-English
dictionary in existence), and his _Colloquium_, in which Latin is taught
in a conversational manner.

In France, the most notable teacher in the first quarter of the 11th
century was Fulbert, bishop of Chartres (d. 1029). In and after the
middle of that century the Norman monastery of Bec flourished under the
rule of Lanfranc and Anselm, both of whom had begun their career in
northern Italy, and closed it at Canterbury. Meanwhile, in G