Charles Plummer, FBA (1851–1927) was an English historian and cleric, best known as the editor of Sir John Fortescue's The Governance of England, and for coining the term "bastard feudalism". He was the fifth son of Matthew Plummer of St Leonards-on-Sea, Sussex. He matriculated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford in 1869, graduating B.A. and S.C.L. in 1873 and becoming a Fellow. [1]
Plummer was an editor of Bede, and also edited numerous Irish and Hiberno-Latin texts, including the two volume Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae (1910), a modern companion volume to which is Richard Sharpe's Medieval Irish saints' lives: an introduction to Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae. [2]
Plummer edited John Earle's Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel (1865), producing a Revised Text with notes, appendices, and glossary in 1892. This work presented the A and E texts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle .
Plummer delivered the Ford Lectures at Oxford University in 1901.
Bede, also known as Saint Bede, the Venerable Bede, and Bede the Venerable, was an English monk, author and scholar. He was one of the greatest teachers and writers during the Early Middle Ages, and his most famous work, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, gained him the title "The Father of English History". He served at the monastery of St Peter and its companion monastery of St Paul in the Kingdom of Northumbria of the Angles.
Theodore of Tarsus was Archbishop of Canterbury from 668 to 690. Theodore grew up in Tarsus, but fled to Constantinople after the Persian Empire conquered Tarsus and other cities. After studying there, he relocated to Rome and was later installed as the Archbishop of Canterbury on the orders of Pope Vitalian. Accounts of his life appear in two 8th-century texts. Theodore is best known for his reform of the English Church and establishment of a school in Canterbury.
Ælfric of Eynsham was an English abbot and a student of Æthelwold of Winchester, and a consummate, prolific writer in Old English of hagiography, homilies, biblical commentaries, and other genres. He is also known variously as Ælfric the Grammarian, Ælfric of Cerne, and Ælfric the Homilist. In the view of Peter Hunter Blair, he was "a man comparable both in the quantity of his writings and in the quality of his mind even with Bede himself." According to Claudio Leonardi, he "represented the highest pinnacle of Benedictine reform and Anglo-Saxon literature".
The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, written by Bede in about AD 731, is a history of the Christian Churches in England, and of England generally; its main focus is on the conflict between the pre-Schism Roman Rite and Celtic Christianity. It was composed in Latin, and is believed to have been completed in 731 when Bede was approximately 59 years old. It is considered one of the most important original references on Anglo-Saxon history, and has played a key role in the development of an English national identity.
Kevin is an Irish saint, known as the founder and first abbot of Glendalough in County Wicklow, Ireland. His feast day is 3 June.
Acta Sanctorum Hiberniae is the abbreviated title of a celebrated work on the Irish saints by the Franciscan, John Colgan.
Iarlaithe mac Loga, also known as Jarlath, was an Irish priest and scholar from Connacht, remembered as the founder of the monastic School of Tuam and of the Archdiocese of Tuam, of which he is the patron saint. No medieval biography of Jarlath is extant, but sources for his life and cult include genealogies, martyrologies, the Irish Lives of St Brendan of Clonfert, and a biography compiled by John Colgan in the 17th century.
Saint Ailbe, usually known in English as St Elvis (British/Welsh), Eilfyw or Eilfw, was regarded as the chief 'pre-Patrician' saint of Ireland. He was a bishop and later saint.
Thomas Messingham was an Irish hagiologist born in the Diocese of Meath. Stephen White, Henry Fitzsimon, and Messingham were "forerunners in searching for manuscripts containing Lives of Irish saints." His contributions to liturgical modernisation, history, and hagiography were significant.
Richard Sharpe,, Hon. was a British historian and academic, who was Professor of Diplomatic at the University of Oxford and a fellow of Wadham College, Oxford. His broad interests were the history of medieval England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. He had a special concern with first-hand work on the primary sources of medieval history, including the practices of palaeography, diplomatic and the editorial process, as well as the historical and legal contexts of medieval documents. He was the general editor of the Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, and editor of a forthcoming edition of the charters of King Henry I of England.
Saint Laisrén mac Nad Froích, or Laisrén of Devenish and Lasserian, known as Mo Laisse, was the patron saint of Devenish Island in Lough Erne, near Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, Ireland, in the present diocese of Clogher. Laisrén is the subject of both a Latin and an Irish Life, which offer loose narratives in which a number of miscellaneous anecdotes and miracles have been grouped together.
St. Begnet, also Begneta, Begnete, Begnait or Becnait is a patron saint of Dalkey, Ireland. She is noted as a "virgin, not a martyr." Her feast day is November 12. Two ruined churches in Dalkey are named for Begnet, one on Dalkey Island, and the other near the 14th-century stone townhouse now serving as Dalkey Castle and Heritage Centre, in the area known as Kilbegnet. A holy well located near the martello tower on the island is also associated with her; as the Irish playwright Hugh Leonard observed:
A few yards away are the ruins of a church supposedly built by the town's patron saint, St. Begnet. Like St. Patrick himself, St. Begnet may never have existed: There is even uncertainty as to whether he or she was male or female. No one bothers to argue about this: In Dalkey, when it is a question of sainthood, sex is hardly likely to have much relevance.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a collection of annals in Old English, chronicling the history of the Anglo-Saxons.
Áed mac Bricc was an Irish bishop and saint.
Abbán of Corbmaic, also Eibbán or Moabba, was a saint and abbot. He is associated, first and foremost, with the Mag Arnaide. His order was, however, also connected to other churches elsewhere in Ireland, notably that of his alleged sister Gobnait.
Samthann, modernised spelling Samhthann or Samthana, is an Irish folk saint, purportedly a Christian nun and abbess in Early Christian Ireland. She is one of only four female Irish saints for whom Latin Lives exist. She died on 19 December 739.
John Earle (1824–1903) was a British Anglo-Saxon language scholar. He was twice Rawlinsonian Professor of Anglo-Saxon in the University of Oxford.
Declán of Ardmore, also called Déclán, was an early Irish saint of the Déisi Muman, who was remembered for having converted the Déisi in the late 5th century and for having founded the monastery of Ardmore in what is now County Waterford. The principal source for his life and cult is a Latin Life of the 12th century. Like Ailbe of Emly, Ciarán of Saigir and Abbán of Moyarney, Declán is presented as a Munster saint who preceded Saint Patrick in bringing Christianity to Ireland. He was regarded as a patron saint of the Déisi of East Munster.
Michael Lapidge, FBA is a scholar in the field of Medieval Latin literature, particularly that composed in Anglo-Saxon England during the period 600–1100 AD; he is an emeritus Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, a Fellow of the British Academy, and winner of the 2009 Sir Israel Gollancz Prize.