His mother Ælfgifu seems to have died shortly after childbirth, so he was raised by Ælfwynn, the wife of Æthelstan Half-King, an ealdorman of East Anglia, whose nickname is recorded in a Life of St. Oswald and explained as the result of the authority he wielded in East Anglia and the value of his advice to the five kings of England he served. Ælfwynn was very religious, and Edgar's upbringing was exposed to the idea of monastic reform.
His teacher in this was Æthelwold of Winchester, the abbot of Abingdon Abbey.
As king, therefore, he supported English Benedictine Reform, the late 10th-century religious and intellectual movement to replace monasteries (which at the time were largely staffed by often-married secular clergy) with celibate and contemplative monks who would follow the Rule of St. Benedict. Edgar's influence in this matter was more prominent in southern England; as yet his sway over practices in the north was tentative, a holdover from the previous decades of their independence under Viking rule.
In fact, most of the contemporary or near-contemporary sources we have on Edgar come from accounts of the Benedictine Reform movement—logical, since literate clergy were the likeliest sources of writing and recording at the time. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle only has ten entries that mention him.
Later historians have a lot to say about Edgar, his three consorts—one or two of which he might have actually married—and the children he fathered with them. They make for interesting reading, and we'll start those stories tomorrow.
