John Asser

Asser was a Welsh monk and scholar of the ninth century, from the community of St. Davids in Dyfed. Around 885 King Alfred of Wessex invited him to his court to help revive learning, and he spent part of each year with the king, reading with him and assisting with his translations from Latin. Alfred made him bishop of Sherborne. In 893 Asser wrote a Latin Life of King Alfred, which combines annals of the Danish wars with a personal portrait of the king and is the only contemporary biography of an Anglo-Saxon ruler. He died around 909.