A D. 884. ALFRED DEFEATS THE DANES. 55 tain points. In some respects he has certainly deviated from the track of the Latins by keeping his eyes intently fixed upon the Greeks ; for which reason he has been even considered a heretic, and a certain Floras wrote against him. And, indeed, there are in his book, νι?ί φύβιων, very many things which, unless they are most carefully examined, seem opposed to the Catholic faith. Pope Nicholas is known to have been of this opinion ; for he says, in an epistle to Charles, " It has been reported to our Apostleship, that a certain man, named John, by birth a Scot, has lately translated into Latin the work of Saint Dionysius the Areiopagite, which he eloquently wrote in Greek, touching the alvine names and the celestial orders. Now, according to the usual custom, this ought to have been sent to us and submitted to the approval of our judgment ; and the more especially as the said John, though he is stated to be a man of great knowledge, has been said for some time past by general report not to be quite sound on eertain points." In consequence of this discredit he became tired of France, and came to king Alfred, by whose munifieence he was appointed a teaeher, and settled at Malmesbury, as appears from the king's writings. Here, some years afterwards, he was stabbed with their writing instruments8 by the boys whom he was teaehing, and quitted this life in great and cruel torments ; at a period when, his weakness waxing stronger and his hands shaking, he had often asked in vain that he might experience the bitterness of death. He lay for some time with an ignoble burial in the chureh of Saint Laurence, the scene of his shoeking death ; but, after the Divine favour for many nights had honored him by a ray of fire, the monks, being thus admonished, transferred him to the greater church, and placed him at the left side of the altar. In the year 884, the above-mentioned army of the pagans vided themselves into two bodies ; one of which entered East France, the other returned into Kent, and lay siege to the city of Roueeestre ;9 but the citizens made a stout resistance, and king Alfred coming to their aid with his army, compelled the heathens to raise the siege and return to their ships, leaving the fortress which they had built there before the gates of the above named city, besides their spoil, and the men and horses s The " graphia," or " styli," the iron pens with which they wrote on wax tablets. · Rochester.