Identifier: Fragmenta Manuscripta 002

Date: 800-899

Contents: De orthographia

Language: Latin

Location: Wales?

Bede (673-735) was an Anglo-Saxon scholar and teacher from Jarrow, Northumbria. His best-known work Ecclesiastical History of the English People earned him the sobriquet “father of English history.” He also wrote commentaries on scripture and grammatical treatises, like de Orthographia, featured in FM 002. He was influenced by many Greek writers in de Orthographia including Diomedes, Caper, and Agroecius. The first part of the work contains what is known today as orthography—the conventions for spelling within a language. The rest of the rest of the work contains an alphabetical handbook of usage.[1]  

NOTES
[1] W.F. Bolton, History of Anglo-Latin Literature, 597-740 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967); Martin Irvine, The Making of Textual Culture: “Gramatica” and Literary Theory 350-1100 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); “St. Bede the Venerable. Anglo-Saxon Historian,” Encyclopedia Britannica, last updated May 2020, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Bede-the-Venerable; Norman F. Cantor, (general editor), “Bede the Venerable,” in The Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages, (New York: Viking, Published by the Penguin Group, 1999), 70; for the text see Heinrich Keil, Grammatici latini, vol. 7, Scriptores de Orthographia (Leipzig: Teubner, 1880), 262-265.