Orderic Vitalis - Background

Background

He was born in Atcham, Shropshire, the eldest son of a French priest, Odeler of Orleans, who had entered the service of Roger of Montgomery, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury, and had received from his patron a chapel there. When Orderic was five, his parents sent him to an English priest, Siward by name, who kept a school in the abbey of SS Peter and Paul at Shrewsbury. At the age of eleven he was entered as a novice in the Norman monastery of St Evroul-en-Ouche, which Earl Roger had formerly despoiled but, in his later years, was loading with gifts. The parents paid thirty marks for their son's admission; he expresses the conviction that they imposed this exile upon him from an earnest desire for his welfare. Odeler's respect for the monastic profession is attested by his own retirement, a few years later, into a religious house which Earl Roger had founded at his persuasion. But the young Orderic felt for some time, as he avers, like Joseph in a strange land. He did not know a word of French when he reached Normandy; his book, though written many years later, shows that he never lost his English cast of mind or his attachment to the country of his birth.