ABSTRACT
The late-ninth-century West Saxon translation of Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum ‘Ecclesiastical History of the English People’ (c. 734) became a useful adjunct to Alfred’s programme to rebuild English learning. The four extant manuscripts that contain this all show, however, that the fi rst West Saxon text was copied from a translation originally in Mercian. Which Mercian king could have wanted this great work of Bede’s is less clear, although a letter from c. 793 to King Offa (ruled 757-96) survives in which Alcuin, Charlemagne’s theologian courtier in York or Aachen, refers the old king to his own copy of Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica, presumably in Tamworth (Lehmann 1920: 32). It is tempting to believe that either Offa or King Cenwulf (ruled 796-821) ordered the Mercian translation of Bede’s work. In style this work differs from the other Alfredian translations. Although the translator has a job on his hands to keep up with Bede’s polished Latin syntax, he tries valiantly with sentences that are longer and have plenty of abstract nouns, a style that must have seemed fl orid to the nobles around him.
