Æthelwold was Dunstan's closest collaborator in the English Monastic Revival. Born at Winchester, he became a monk at Glastonbury under Dunstan around 940, then was appointed Abbot of Abingdon by King Edred. He spent twenty years restoring Abingdon as a model Benedictine community on the Cluniac pattern.
Made Bishop of Winchester in 963, he expelled the secular canons of the cathedral (who had been ruling it without monastic vow) and replaced them with Benedictine monks — establishing the great cathedral priory model that lasted at Winchester until the Reformation. He founded or refounded twelve other monasteries during his episcopate, including Peterborough, Thorney, and Ely.
He was a tireless builder of churches and an outstanding educator; the Benedictional of St Æthelwold (c. 970) — one of the masterpieces of Anglo-Saxon manuscript art, now at the British Library — was illuminated under his direction. He wrote (or directed the writing of) the Regularis Concordia jointly with Dunstan in 973.
He died at Beddington in 984 and is buried in Winchester Cathedral.