King Alfred is often credited with effectively inventing Old English prose, by sponsoring the production of an ambitious educational program of translation from Latin into the vernacular; still at issue is the extent to which the king was directly involved in several of the translations himself. Among the Alfredian texts to be considered are the prose renderings of the first fifty Psalms, as well as the versions of Orosius' Historiae contra paganos, Gregory's Cura pastoralis and Dialogi, Augustine's Soliloquia, Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, and Boethius' De consolatione philosophiae.