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Updated: July 15, 2025
Dee was specially interested in mathematics, alchemy, and, as everyone knows, converse with spirits, but his library was not confined to books on these subjects; he had some excellent historical, literary, and theological MSS. One of them was the best copy of Alfred's translation of Orosius.
By the help of these discoveries we are able to reconstruct a fairly detailed picture of English civilization in the age preceding the invasion of Britain. AUTHORITIES. Bede, Hist. Ecc. i. 15: King Alfred's version of Orosius, i. 1. §§ 12, 19; Æthelweard's Chronicle, lib. i.
Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English, the highest product of that memorable burst of Saxon intellect which followed the conversion, and a work, not untainted by miracle and legend, yet most remarkable for its historical qualities as well as for its mild and liberal Christianity, is balanced in the king's series of translations by the work of Orosius, who wrote of general and secular history, though with a religious object.
And as for Latin books, no doubt Alfred thought that the writings of Christians would be more edifying to his people than those of the old heathens. He chose the History of Orosius, as a general history of the world, and that of Basda, as a particular history of England.
According to Orosius, our ancestors divided the whole world which is surrounded by the ocean, which we call garsecg , into three parts, and they named these divisions Asia, Europe, and Africa; though some authors only admit of two parts, Asia and Europe.
Anglo-Saxon Version of Orosius, by Alfred the Great, translated by Daines Barrington, p. 9. Langebeck, Script. Dan. Forster, Voy. and Disc. in the North, p. 53.
Orosius tells us that a traveler named Aethicus spent a considerable time in Ireland early in the fifth century "examining their volumes", which tends to prove that there was writing in Ireland before St. Patrick. But the native bard must have made writing superfluous.
For him all that the decadent Roman civilization needs is to copy some of the virtues of these fresh young barbarian people. There is the familiar figure of Orosius, defending the barbarians with the argument that when the Roman empire was founded it was founded in blood and conquest and can ill afford to throw stones at the barbarians; and after all the barbarians are not so bad.
As a specimen of the Anglo-Saxon, or the language of England near a thousand years ago, we have given the first sentence of this geographical chapter in the ordinary Roman letters, with a literal translation. Anglo-Saxon. Ure yldran calne thysne ymbhwyrft thyses middangeardes, cwaeth Orosius, swa swa Oceanus ymbligeth utan, wone man garsecg hatath, on threo todaeldon. Literal Translation
Thomas Aquinas, Albertus Magnus, Gratian the Benedictine, Pietro Lombardo, Solomon, Saint Dionysius the Areopagite, Paulus Orosius, Boetius, Isidore, the Venerable Bede, Richard of St. Victor, and Sigebert of Gemblours. St. Thomas was the namer of them to Dante.
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