Alfred was basically a scholarly man who was forced by circumstances to spend most of his reign fighting off invading vikings. His heart was always for learning and knowledge. Asser says that as a young man “more than anything else” he had the desire for wisdom. It greatly grieved him that whereas in the seventh century religion and learning had flourished, in the ninth century the church had declined and with it the quality of learning in England. In the preface to his translation of Pope Gregory’s Pastoral Care Alfred mourned the fact that there were very few men left South of the Humber river who could understand Latin and not a single one south of the Thames. Alfred’s first concern was to recruit men of learning to make up for the lack of learning in his kingdom of Wessex. Asser himself was one of the men Alfred recruited. 

This desire for greater learning for himself and his country was borne out of his Christian faith. He was a layman of exceptional religious devotion. Asser tells us that he was in the invariable habit of listening daily to divine services and Mass and of participating in certain psalms and prayers and in the daytime and night offices. As well as translating the first fifty Psalms he translated several other religious works and drew up a law code based on biblical principles. One notable aspect of the Laws of Alfred is their emphasis on the concept of compensation. Many of the crimes listed in the laws could be resolved through the payment of a fine or compensation to the victim. This concept would become a central component of English common law, which developed in the centuries after Alfred’s reign and it is a concept drawn directly from the bible.