The monk Aelfric Bata is the only identifiable graduate of the school of Aelfric Grammaticus', the tenth-century Anglo-Saxon homilist whose Grammar, Glossary and Colloquyformed part of an educational plan for English boys. Bata's Colloquies, Latin conversations set in a monastic school, open a door into the world of Anglo-Saxon monasticism, revealing the details of daily activities: rising and dressing, studying the day's lesson, eating, bathing and tonsuring. Oblates ask a master's help in reading, bargain for a manuscript-copying job, obtain help in sharpening a pen. One colloquy depicts a...

When the famous Anglo-Saxon scholar AElfric wrote the first grammar in a European vernacular, he used as his direct source the Excerptiones de Prisciano excerpts from major curriculum authors of the medieval schools, including Donatus, Isidore and Priscian himself . The tenth-century text, probably of English origin, most probably compiled by AElfric, is an ambitious compendium of grammatical lore, and it is, with the exception of AElfric's own Grammar, arguably the most sophisticated Latin-learning text of the Anglo-Saxon age. Edited here for the first time, the Excerptiones appear with all...