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Asser’s Life of King Alfred, a biography of Alfred the Great composed by a Welsh monk from St David’s in 893, is a key source for understanding connections between ninth-century Britain and the Continent. Asser’s biography draws on a variety of continental sources, the most famous and widely discussed being Einhard’s Vita Karoli. This article examines parallels between Asser’s Life of King Alfred and another, more obscure, continental source, the anonymous ninth-century Vita Alcuini, a text which has received little scholarly attention. Unlike many of his Carolingian counterparts, Asser’s biography features himself as a major character, providing an account of his journey to Alfred’s service. It has been noted by various scholars that this autobiographical section of the Life bears great similarity to the Vita Alcuini’s description of Alcuin entering the service of Charlemagne. This article provides a thorough examination of the two texts, assessing the possibility of a connection, and investigating the implications for our understanding of Asser and his agenda. As there is no manuscript evidence that the Vita Alcuini ever made it to Britain, this study has the potential to transform our understanding of its transmission and readership in the early Middle Ages, illuminating a further connection Britain England and the continent in the ninth century.

De locis sanctis is a seventh-century description of Palestine and other regions in the Near East written by Adomnán, the ninth abbot of Iona. Adomnán claimed that he obtained much of his information from a Gaulish bishop called Arculf who had travelled around the east Mediterranean lands. This meant that for a long time scholars categorised De locis sanctis as a pilgrimage account. In recent years this view has been challenged, and it has been argued that Adomnán wrote the text principally on the basis of literary sources; this has led to a downgrading or even denial of the role of Arculf. This article looks afresh at this debate and reassesses the text in three ways. Firstly, it illustrates the ways in which Adomnán blended the written and oral sources at his disposal. Secondly, it re-examines the references in the work to the Arabs and Islam from an Islamicist’s perspective, and considers what might have been their significance to Adomnán. Finally, the article reconsiders the motives behind the structure and purpose of the problematic Book III of De locis sanctis. Rather than seeing De locis sanctis as either a pilgrim’s testimony or a work created solely by Adomnán in his library, this article presents the text as a complex narrative shaped by Adomnán on the basis of written and oral sources, the latter provided by a recent traveller to the Near East.