ETHELWOLD OF WINCHESTER, ST.

Leader of English monastic revival; b. c. 908; d. Aug. 1, 984. He was tonsured and ordained by alphege "the bald" of winchester, who prophesied Ethel-wold's succession to Winchester. Having been a Benedictine

of glastonbury, Ethelwold (Æthelwold) was given abingdon abbey (c. 954), which he refounded, introducing Continental, especially Fleury practices (see saint-benoÎt-sur-loire), and creating a model for the monastic revival (see dunstan of canterbury, st.; oswald of york).

In 963 Ethelwold was consecrated bishop of winchester, where he expelled the worldly clerics and substituted monks at the Old and New Minsters. His harsh methods were perhaps justified by the decayed conditions they met and were supported by King edgar the peaceful, for whom he was tutor and adviser. The "Father of the Monks," Ethelwold restored or founded monasteries at peterborough (966), ely (970), thorney (972), and perhaps Chertsey, Milton, crowland, and St. Neot's. Austere but generous and of immense energy, he rebuilt his cathedral, restored ruined minsters, taught and translated, and reformed Church music. He prepared the Regularis Concordia (ed. and tr. T. Symons, London 1953) a customary for English religious. A skillful craftsman, he stimulated the Winchester School of manuscript production. The best sources for his life are the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and biographies by Wulfstan of Winchester (Patrologia Latina 137:79) and aelfric grammaticus, in the Chronicon Monasterii de Abingdon (Rerum Brittanicarum medii aevi scriptores ), translated by S. H. Gem (1912).

Feast: Aug. 1.

Bibliography: wulfstan of winchester, The Life of St. Aethelwold, ed. m. lapidge and m. winterbottom (Oxford 1991). w. hunt, The Dictionary of National Biography from the Earliest Times to 1900 (London 1885–1900), 6:901–904. j. a. robinson, The Times of Saint Dunstan (Oxford 1923). d. j. v. fisher, "The Early Biographers of St. E.," English Historical Review 67 (1952) 381–391. d. knowles, The Monastic Order in England 943–1216 (Cambridge, Eng. 1962). m. winterbottom, Three Lives of English Saints (Toronto 1972). g. b. bryan, Ethelwold and Medieval Music-Drama at Winchester: The Easter Play, its Author, and its Milieu (Berne 1981). r. deshman, The Benedictional of Æthelwold (Princeton, N.J. 1995). m. gretsch, The Intellectual Foundations of the English Benedictine Reform (Cambridge, U.K. 1999).

[w. a. chaney]