on account of its raised gold text.[86] Work of this grand character is the best testimony to the noble spirit of monachism in the days of Ethelwold.
One of Ethelwold’s pupils was Ælfric, who became Archbishop of Canterbury in 995. He was responsible for the canon requiring every priest, before ordination, to have the Psalter, the Epistles, the Gospels, a Missal, the Book of Hymns, the Manual, the Calendar, the Passional, the Penitential, and the Lectionary. On his death he bequeathed all his books to St. Albans.[87]
Another pupil of the same name is still more famous. This scholar’s grammar, with its translated passages, his glossary—the oldest Latin-English dictionary—and his conversation-manual of questions and answers, with interlinear translations, suggest that he must have done much to make the study of Latin easier and more congenial; while his homilies display his art in making knowledge popular, and prove him to be the greatest master of English prose before the Conquest.
Several other interesting and suggestive facts belonging to this period have been preserved for us. Abbot Ælfward, for example, gave to his abbey of Evesham many sacred books and books on grammar (c. 1035): here, at any rate, progress was real.[88] At a manor of the abbey of Bury St. Edmunds were thirty volumes, exclusive of church books (1044-65).[89] Bishop Leofric also obtained over sixty books for Exeter Cathedral about sixteen years before the Conquest, a collection to which we must refer later.