training afforded at Aldershot; of greater importance is the
field and musketry training, for the carrying out of which a
considerable extent of land is essential. The land required
for these purposes extends at present over an area about 9 1/4
m. in extreme length by 7 3/4 m. in extreme width. In addition
to this there is the land at Sandhurst and the Staff College
(Camberley) about 6 1/2 m. distant, and at Woolmer Forest, 12 m.
distant. The musketry practice of the troops at Aldershot
is carried out at the Ash ranges, 2 m. east of the barracks,
while the Pirbright ranges, alongside those of the National
Rifle Association at Bisley, are utilized by the Household
Cavalry and Guards, who are encamped there in succession.
Suitable grounds in the vicinity of the barracks, of which
Caesar's Camp, the Long Valley and Laffan's Plain are best
known, are utilized for company, battalion and brigade training
of infantry, while the mounted branches work over a wider
area, and the engineers carry out their practices where most
convenient. For the field-days of the combined arms, the
whole of the war department property is available. Aldershot
is the headquarters of the ``Aldershot Army Corps,'' which is
the largest organized force maintained in the United Kingdom.
Besides the troops in barracks, during the drill season there
is often a considerable force in camp, both regular troops from
other stations and militia and volunteer units, so that, including
the regular garrison, sometimes as many as 40,000 troops have
been concentrated at the station for training and manoeuvres.
ALDHELM (c. 640-709), bishop of Sherborne, English
scholar, was born before the middle of the 7th century. He
is said to have been the son of Kenten, who was of the royal
house of Wessex, but who was certainly not, as Aldhelm's
early biographer Faritius asserts, the brother of King Ine.
He received his first education in the school of an Irish
scholar and monk, Maildulf, Maeldubh or Meldun (d. c. 675),
who had settled in the British stronghold of Bladon or Bladow
on the site of the town called Mailduberi, Maldubesburg,
Meldunesburg, &c., and finally Malmesbury,1 after him. In
668 Pope Vitalian sent Theodore of Tarsus to be archbishop of
Canterbury, and about the same time came the African scholar
Hadrian, who became abbot of St Augustine's at Canterbury.
Aldhelm was one of his disciples, for he addresses him as
the ``venerable preceptor of my rude childhood.'' He must,
nevertheless, have been thirty years of age when he began
to study with Hadrian. His studies included Roman law,
astronomy, astrology, the art of reckoning and the difficulties
of the calendar. He learned, according to the doubtful
statements of the early lives, both Greek and Hebrew. He
certainly introduces many Latinized Greek words into his
works. Ill-health compelled him to leave Canterbury, and he
returned to Malmesbury, where he was a monk under Maildulf
for fourteen years, dating probably from 661, and including
the period of his studies with Hadrian. When Maildulf
died, Aldhelm was appointed in 675, according to a charter
of doubtful authenticity cited by William of Malmesbury, by
Leutherius, bishop of Dorchester from 671 to 676, to succeed
to the direction of the monastery, of which he became the first
abbot. He introduced the Benedictine rule, and secured the
right of the election of the abbot to the monks themselves.
The community at Malmesbury increased, and Aldhelm was able to
found two other monasteries to be centres of learning at Frome
and at Bradford on Avon. The little church of St Lawrence at
Bradford dates back to his time and may safely be regarded as
his. At Malmesbury he built a new church to replace Maildulf's
modest building, and obtained considerable grants of land for the
monastery. His fame as a scholar rapidly spread into other
countries. Artwil, the son of an Irish king, submitted his
writings for Aldhelm's approval, and Cellanus, an Irish monk
from Peronne, was one of his correspondents. Aldhelm was the
first Englishman, so far as we know, to write in Latin verse,
and his letter to Acircius (Aldfrith or Eadfrith, king of
Northumbria) is a treatise on Latin prosody for the use of his
countrymen. In this work he included his most famous productions,
101 riddles in Latin hexameters. Each of them is a complete
picture, and one of them runs to 83 lines. That his merits
as a scholar were early recognized in his own country is shown
by the encomium of Bede (Eccl. Hist. v. 18), who speaks of
him as a wonder of erudition. His fame reached Italy, and at
the request of Pope Sergius I. (687-701) he paid a visit to
Rome, of which, however, there is no notice in his extant
writings. On his return, bringing with him privileges for
his monastery and a magnificent altar, he received a popular
ovation. He was deputed by a synod of the church in Wessex
to remonstrate with the Britons of Domnonia (Devon and
Cornwall) on their differences from the Roman practice in
the shape of the tonsure and the date of Easter. This he
did in a long and rather acrimonious letter to their king
Geraint (Geruntius), and their ultimate agreement with Rome
is referred by William of Malmesbury to his efforts. In
705, or perhaps earlier, Haeddi, bishop of Winchester, died,
and the diocese was divided into two parts. Sherborne was
the new see, of which Aldhelm reluctantly became the first
bishop. He wished to resign the abbey of Malmesbury which he
had governed for thirty years, but yielding to the remonstrances
of the monks he continued to direct it until his death. He
was now an old man, but he showed great activity in his new
functions. The cathedral church which he built at Sherborne,
though replaced later by a Norman church, is described by
William of Malmesbury. He was on his rounds in his diocese
when he died in the church of Doulting on the 25th of May
709. The body was taken to Malmesbury, and crosses were
set up by the pious care of his friend, Bishop Ecgwine of
Worcester, at the various halting- places. He was buried in
the church of St Michael. His biographers relate miracles due
to his sanctity worked during his lifetime and at his shrine.
Aldhelm wrote poetry in Anglo-Saxon also, and set his own
compositions to music, but none of his songs, which were
still popular in the time of Alfred, have come down to us.
Finding his people slow to come to church, he is said to have
stood at the end of a bridge singing songs in the vernacular,
thus collecting a crowd to listen to exhortations on sacred
subjects. Aldhelm wrote in elaborate and grandiloquent
Latin, which soon came to be regarded as barbarous. Much
admired as he was by his contemporaries, his fame as a scholar
therefore soon declined, but his reputation as a pioneer
in Latin scholarship in England and as a teacher remains.
Aldhelm's works were collected in J. A. Giles's Patres
eccl. Angl. (Oxford, 1844), and reprinted by J. P.
Migne in his Patrologiae Cursus, vol. 89 (1850). The
letter to Geraint, king of Domnonia, was supposed to have
been destroyed by the Britons (W. of Malmesbury, Gesta
Pontificum, p. 361), but was discovered with others of
Aldhelm's in the correspondence of St Boniface, archbishop of
Mainz. A long letter to Eahfrid, a scholar just returned from
Ireland (first printed in Usserii Veterum Epistt. Hiber.
Sylloge, 1632), is of interest as casting light on the
relations between English and Irish scholars. Next to the
riddles, Aldhelm's best-known work is De Laude Virginitatis
sive de Virginitate Sanctorum, a Latin treatise addressed
about 705 to the nuns of Barking,2 in which he commemorates
a great number of saints. This was afterwards turned by
Aldhelm into Latin verse (printed by Delrio, Mainz, 1601).
The chief source of his Epistola ad Acircium sive liber de
septenario, et de metris, aenigmatibus ac pedum regulis
(ed. A. Mai, Class. Auct. vol. v.) is Priscian. For the
riddles included in it, his model was the collection known
as Symposii aenigmata. The acrostic introduction gives the
sentence, ``Aldhelmus cecinit millenis versibus odas,'' whether
read from the initial or final letters of the lines. His
Latin poems include one on the dedication of a basilica built
by Bugge (or Eadburga), a royal lady of the house of Wessex.
AUTHORITIES.--Faritius (d. 1117), an Italian monk of
Malmesbury, afterwards abbot of Abingdon, wrote a Vita S.
Aldhelmi (MS. Cotton, Faustina, B. 4), printed by Giles and
Migne, also in Original Lives of Anglo-Saxons (Caxton
Soc., 1834); but the best authority is William of Malmesbury,
who in the fifth book, devoted to St Aldhelm, of the Gesta
Pontificum proposes to fill up the outline of Faritius,
using the church records, the traditions of Aldhelm's
miracles preserved by the monks of Malmesbury, and the lost
``Handboc'' or commonplace book of King Alfred. His narrative
is divided into four parts: the birth and attainments of
Aldhelm, the religious houses he had established and endowed,
the miracles recorded of him, and the history of the abbey
down to the writer's own time (see De Gestis Pontificum,
ed. N. E. S. A. Hamilton, 1870, for the Rolls Series. pp.
330-443). The life by John Capgrave in his Legenda
Nova (1516) is chiefly an abridgment of Malmesbury's
narrative. Consult also L. Bonhoff, Aldhelm von Malmesbury
(Dresden, 1894); T. D. Hardy. Descriptive Catalogue
(1862), vol. i. pp. 389-396; T. Wright, Biog. Brit. Lit.
(A.-S. Period, 1842); G. F. Browne, bishop of Bristol, St
Aldhelm; his Life and Times (1903); and W. B. Wildman,
Life of S. Ealdhelm, frst Bishop of Sherborne (1905),
containing many interesting local details. For some poems
attributed to Aldhelm, and printed in Dummler's edition of
the letters of St Boniface and Lul in Monumenta Germaniae
Historica (epistt. tom. iii.), see H. Bradley in Eng.
Hist. Review, xv. p. 291 (1900), where they are attributed
to Aldhelm's disciple AEthilwald. The very varied sources
and the chronology of Aldhelm's work are discussed in ``Zu
Aldhelm und Baeda,'' by Max Manitius, in Sitzungsberichte
der kaiserlichen Akad. der Wissenschaften (Vienna, 1886).
An excellent account of his ecclesiastical importance is
given by W. Bright in Chapters on Early English Church
History (Oxford, 1878). For his position as a writer
of Latin verse consult A. Ebert, Allgemeine Geschichte
d. Literatur des Mittelalters im Abendlande, vol. i. new
edition (1889); M. Manitius, Geschichte der christlich-
lateinischen Poesie &c. (Stuttgart, 1891), pp. 487-496;
also H. Hahn, Bonifaz und Lul ihre angelsachsischen
Korrespondenten, chap. i. (Leipzig, 1883). The two last-named
works contain many further bibliographical references.
1 For the disputed etymology of Malmesbury,
which some connect with Aldhelm's name, see Bishop
Browne, St Aldhelin: his Life and Times, p. 73.
2 Cuthburga, sister of King Ine of Wessex, and therefore
related to Andhelm, left her husband Aldfrith, king of
Northumbria, to enter the nunnery at Barking. She afterwards
founded the nunnery of Wimborne, of which she became abbess.
ALDINE PRESS, the printing office started by Aldus Manutius
at the end of the 15th century in Venice, from which were issued
the celebrated Aldine editions of the classics of that time. (See
MANUTIUS.) The Aldine Press is famous in the history of typography
(q.v.), among other things, for the introduction of italics.
ALDINI, GIOVANNI (1762--1834), Italian physicist, born
at Bologna on the 10th of April 1762, was a brother of the
statesman Count Antonio Aldini (1756-1826) and nephew of L.
