On Thursday 29 October, Dr Rebecca Stephenson (University College Dublin) delivered a lecture in Vitoria on ‘Educating the multilingual scribe: the evidence of Ashmole 328’. Through a close examination of the sole extant complete manuscript of Byrhtferth’s Enchiridion, Dr Stephenson was able to cast new light on multilingualism in eleventh-century England. In particular, she showed that Ashmole 328 offers exceptional evidence for the role of the English language in late Anglo-Saxon education. Being ‘literate’ did not simply mean possessing Latin skills; English also possessed an important instructional function.
Dr Stephenson’s latest book is The Politics of Language: Byrhtferth, Ælfric, and the Multilingual Identity of the Benedictine Reform.
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