The Library
1774 works catalogued century by century, from the literature the Bible was written among to the present — each with a note on what it is, why it lasted, and where to read it.
901–1000
73 works
c. 965–975
Old English
Æthelwold of Winchester · c. 904–984
Benedict's rule in English, made so that nuns and monks without Latin could hear their own rule and understand what they had promised.
c. 960–980
Old Church Slavonic
Anonymous
The young Bohemian duke raised a Christian by his grandmother and murdered at his brother's door, with the older Slavonic and later Latin versions differing sharply.
c. 971
Old English
Anonymous
Nineteen anonymous sermons, more apocalyptic and more willing to use legendary material than Ælfric would allow, including a vision of hell close to one in Beowulf.
c. 973
Latin
Regularis Concordia
Æthelwold of Winchester · c. 904–984
A single customary imposed on all English monasteries, including the earliest description of the Easter sepulchre ceremony in which monks act out the visit to the tomb.
c. 974
Latin
Vita Mathildis Reginae Antiquior
Anonymous
Written for her grandson within a decade of her death: the widow of Henry the Fowler, her almsgiving, her monastic foundations, her quarrel with her sons over what she was giving away, and her deathbed distribution of everything left.
c. 970–987
Arabic
Severus ibn al-Muqaffa · d. c. 987
An account of the church councils from a Coptic standpoint, explaining to an Arabic-speaking congregation why their church rejected Chalcedon.
c. 975
Old English
Anonymous
A manuscript of homilies and religious poems, including Andreas, Elene on the finding of the cross, and the fullest text of The Dream of the Rood.
c. 970–1000
Greek
Anonymous
Thirty thousand alphabetical entries on words, authors, and events, compiled from earlier lexica and scholia by editors who often did not understand their sources.
c. 960–990
Old English
Anonymous
The largest surviving collection of Old English poetry: the Christ poems, The Wanderer, The Seafarer, and ninety-odd riddles ranging from the devout to the frankly obscene.
977
Armenian
Gregory of Narek · c. 950 – c. 1003
Written at twenty-seven at a king's request, reading the Song as the marriage of Christ and the church and defending, at length, the right to read a love poem as scripture at all.
c. 978–984
Latin
John of Saint-Arnoul · 10th century
The life of a monastic reformer, including his long embassy to the caliph at Córdoba, where he was warned that repeating his message would cost him his head.
c. 965–990
Georgian
Ioane Zosime · 10th century
Liturgical hymns and calendars compiled at Sinai and Mar Saba, including a celebrated praise of the Georgian language as a tongue laid in the tomb until the last day.
c. 975–990
Greek
Symeon Metaphrastes · 10th century
The lives of the saints for every day of the year, rewritten in a uniform and polished Greek from older texts of uneven quality.
c. 970–990
Greek
John Geometres · c. 935–c. 1000
Epigrams and hymns by a soldier turned monk, including verses on the Virgin and a lament for the defeats of the empire.
c. 985–987
Latin
Abbo of Fleury · c. 945 – 1004
The killing of the East Anglian king by a Danish army in 869, written a century later from a story Dunstan had heard from Edmund's own armour-bearer as an old man. The head, thrown into brambles, calls out to the searchers until they find it, guarded by a wolf.
987
Arabic
Al-Fihrist
Ibn al-Nadim · d. c. 995
A Baghdad bookseller's index of every book he knew to exist in Arabic, with notes on the authors. It covers scriptures and sects at length — Christians, Jews, Sabians, Manichaeans — and lists the titles of Mani's own writings one by one.
989 onward
Latin
The Councils of Charroux and Le Puy
Councils of bishops, backed by crowds and relics, excommunicate anyone who robs a church, strikes an unarmed cleric, or seizes a peasant's livestock.
c. 983–997
Latin
Gerbert of Aurillac · c. 946–1003
The correspondence of the age's best mathematician — hunting manuscripts, arranging the copying of Cicero, explaining the abacus, and steering imperial politics.
c. 980–998
Greek
Symeon the New Theologian · 949–1022
Talks to his monks insisting that a Christian must consciously experience the Holy Spirit — that grace received without awareness of it is no use — with accounts of his own visions of light.
c. 989–992
Greek
Leo the Deacon · c. 950–after 992
An account of the Byzantine wars in Bulgaria, Syria, and against the Rus, written by a court cleric who accompanied one campaign himself.
c. 990–995
Old English
Ælfric of Eynsham · c. 955–c. 1010
Two series of sermons for the church year in clear rhythmic English, written because the author had seen much error in English books read by unlearned men.
c. 982–993
Latin
Gerhard of Augsburg
The bishop who organised the defence of Augsburg against the Magyars in 955 and rode out among the walls in his stole, written by a priest of his household who had watched him work.
c. 992–1002
Old English
Ælfric of Eynsham · c. 955 – c. 1010
Latin grammar explained in English for boys who had none, with a glossary of some three thousand words grouped by subject — parts of the body, birds, tools, church furnishings — and a preface saying he wrote it because the teaching had decayed.
c. 995–1005
Latin
Ælfric of Eynsham · c. 955–c. 1010
A Latin conversation practice in which a teacher questions boys playing a ploughman, a shepherd, a fisherman, a hunter, and a merchant about their work.
c. 994–996
Latin
Abbo of Fleury · c. 945–1004
A defence of monastic exemption from episcopal control, arguing from canon law that monasteries answer to Rome and describing the three orders of Christian society.
c. 997
Old English
Ælfric of Eynsham · c. 955 – c. 1010
Ælfric explains that he translated Genesis reluctantly and only as far as Isaac, and why: unlearned readers will see the patriarchs with several wives and conclude they may live so too, since they cannot tell what the old law permitted from what the new law requires.
c. 996–1002
Old English
Ælfric of Eynsham · c. 955–c. 1010
Saints' lives in rhythmical alliterative prose for the feasts kept by monks, including English saints alongside the martyrs of the early church.
c. 998
Latin
Odilo of Cluny · c. 962–1049
An order that on the day after All Saints every Cluniac house shall offer prayers and alms for all the faithful departed without exception.
c. 991–998
Latin
Richer of Reims
A monk of Reims on the last Carolingians and the Capetian accession, written for his teacher Gerbert and preserving a long account of Gerbert's own schooling — the abacus, the armillary sphere, the organ, and a public disputation lasting a full day.
c. 999
Latin
John Canaparius · d. 1004
The bishop who twice abandoned his see in despair at his flock and was killed preaching to the Prussians, written within two years of his death.
c. 1000; poems earlier
Old English
Anonymous
Four biblical poems in alliterative verse: Genesis, Exodus, Daniel, and Christ and Satan. The interpolated Genesis B gives Satan a long speech of defiance from hell, and makes the tempter a subordinate demon in disguise who deceives Eve with an apparent vision of heaven.
c. 985–1028
Georgian
Euthymius the Athonite · c. 955–1028
Greek scripture, liturgy, and patristic works rendered into Georgian at the Iviron monastery on Athos, along with a Greek version of an Indian Buddhist tale reworked as a Christian romance.
c. 1000
Latin
Epitaphium Adelheidae
Odilo of Cluny · c. 962 – 1049
The abbot of Cluny on an empress he had known: imprisoned by one king, married to another, twice regent, a founder of monasteries, and in old age travelling between courts trying to keep her son and grandson from war.
41–73 of 73 matching · 1774 in the Library