Wikipedia:Today's featured article/November 29, 2015

Israel the Grammarian (c. 895 – c. 965) was one of the leading European scholars of the mid-tenth century. Most likely a Breton, he wrote theological and grammatical tracts, and commentaries on the works of other philosophers and theologians. When Alfred the Great became King of Wessex in 871, learning was at a low level in southern England, and there were no Latin scholars. The king embarked on a programme of revival, bringing in scholars from Continental Europe, Wales and Mercia. His grandson Æthelstan, king from 924 to 939, carried on the work, inviting foreign scholars such as Israel to his court, and appointing Continental clerics as bishops. After Æthelstan's death, Israel successfully sought the patronage of Archbishop Rotbert of Trier and became tutor to Bruno, later the Archbishop of Cologne. In the late 940s Israel is recorded as a bishop, and at the end of his life he was a monk at the Benedictine monastery of Saint-Maximin in Trier. He was an accomplished poet, a disciple of the ninth-century Irish philosopher John Scottus Eriugena, and one of the few scholars of his time who understood Greek.