ABSTRACT
In modern Constantinian studies, the name of Aldhelm is not likely to be on everyone’s lips, even at a symposium on Constantine held on British soil. This Abbot of Malmesbury (d. 709), who later became the first Bishop of Sherborne in 705, was an outstanding representative of the so-called ‘Canterbury school’ of Archbishop Theodorus of Tarsus (sedit 669-90). He was also one of the earliest known British writers to have gathered material, possibly from Continental sources, on what was then seen as an important episode in the life of Constantine. As Jane Stevenson points out later in this volume, prior to the anecdotes related by Aldhelm, knowledge in post-Roman Britain of Constantine’s life-history appears to have been both meagre and superficial. The first Christian Roman emperor was, till then, mentioned mainly in missionary contexts. To cite Constantine as an example of a ruler whose fortune decidedly turned for the better after his conversion offered clear advantages to the Roman Church in its attempt to convert pagan and barbarian rulers.
