being placed in a grand new reliquary of gold, silver and rubies which Edgar had ordered to be made. He was also the greatest benefactor of Æthelwold's Abingdon Abbey. Reformed Benedictine monasteries were mainly confined to Wessex and some areas of Mercia, and they were greatly outnumbered by the many secular minsters, although the reformed monasteries were much wealthier. The reformers portrayed Edgar's reign as a golden age which fundamentally changed the English church, but the historian John Blair is sceptical: "The polemic may belie a religious culture in Edgar's reign which, when we probe beneath the surface, starts to look less exclusive and more like that of Æthelstan's and Edmund's." Learning and art When Alfred came to the throne in 871, learning had declined to a low level and the knowledge of Latin was very poor. He started the revival of learning, and it was brought to its height by Edgar. Lapidge comments that his reign "marks a decisive turning-point in English literary history." No Latin works by Oswald are known, but Æthelwold and Dunstan were outstanding scholars. Æthelwold's translation of the Regula S. Benedicti is of the highest standard, and his New Minster Charter was written in elaborate hermeneutic Latin to display the dazzling erudition of the Benedictine movement and glorify King Edgar and the reform. Some of the works in Old English produced by Æthelwold are so lavishly and expensively produced that they cannot have been for the instruction of young oblates and were probably intended for nobles and royalty. There was also a great increase in Latin literature in Edgar's reign, all of it apparently associated with Æthelwold's Winchester. Much of this literature consisted of poetry, often containing many grecisms. The three leading reformers were strongly influenced by Continental scholarship and welcomed learned foreign clerics, such as Lantfred from Fleury Abbey, to their households. The art historian David Wilson states that Edgar's reign "produced some of the highest achievements in painting and sculpture ever seen in England". The Benedictional of St. Æthelwold is one of the greatest examples of English art. Several half-sisters of Edgar's father had married Continental royalty, and these connections helped Edgar to bring in foreign scholars such as Radbod and painters and goldsmiths such as Benna, who made metalwork for the king and decorated the ceiling of Wilton church. Warfare and foreign relations Peter Rex observes in his biography of Edgar that