ALFRED THE GREAT. — King of England, son of Ethelwulf and Osburga, born at Wanading, in Berkshire, in 849, died on 28 October 901. As an adolescent, he went several times to Rome to visit the Pope. He was elected after the death of his brother Etelredo in 871. From the first year of his reign, he had to fight against the pagan Danes: after defeating them, following various vicissitudes, at Aeshendune, he consented to spare the life of King Guthrum and the other principal leaders, provided that they converted to Catholicism. By the peace treaty of Wedmore, concluded shortly afterwards, the Danes remained masters of eastern and northern England, while A. was able to reign over the lands situated to the south. In 893 he was attacked once again by the Danes, whom he succeeded in driving from London and defeating definitively only three years later.
A. carried out a great deal of work within his kingdom, both in the military and in the cultural sphere. He transformed the army, obliging the possessors of a certain quantity of land to perform military service; he greatly expanded the fleet that had recently been created; he promulgated a code of laws; he founded schools and mona-
steries; he ordered the commencement of an Anglo-Saxon chronicle listing the principal events of each year. He himself translated from Latin Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica, Orosius’s Historia adversus paganos, Boethius’s De consolatione Philosophiae, and Pope Gregory’s Regula Pastoralis, of which he sent a copy to each bishop in his kingdom. A. is also credited with translations of psalms, fragments of Sacred Scripture, and a collection of proverbs.