John the Old Saxon

John the Old Saxon (active c. 885–904), also known as John of Saxony or Scotus, was a scholar and abbot of Athelney, probably born in Old Saxony. He was invited to England by King Alfred and contributed to Alfred's revival of English learning. In his Life of Alfred, the Welsh monk Asser reports that John "was a man of most acute intelligence, immensely learned in all fields of literary endeavour, and extremely ingenious in many other forms of expression".

Name and early life John is often referred as Iohannes. Asser states that he was of "Old" Saxon (as opposed to Anglo-Saxon or English) origins, in other words from east of the Rhine. Nothing more precise is known; as a monk, he might have been raised in one of the Saxon monasteries such as Korvey or Gandersheim, but he could also have come to England from western Francia, like Grimbald, who came to England from Reims at approximately the same time as John, in the mid-880s. Asser comments at one point that John had some experience with fighting, which implies that he had a secular upbringing. The poem describes Adalstan as a prince and is presumably an encomium to King Alfred's young grandson Æthelstan, who was then five at the oldest but was king from 924 to 939. The poem is embellished with Greek words and archaisms, foreshadowing the complex style which dominated in 10th-century Anglo-Latin literature. Acrostics are rare at this early period, so two further examples which are dedicated to King Alfred and preserved as early 10th-century additions to a late-9th-century manuscript associated with the king are possibly also by John the Old Saxon.