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Caesarius of Arles and Old English literature: some contributions and a recapitulation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Joseph B. Trahern Jr
Joseph B. Trahern Jr
Affiliation:
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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Extract

Several studies in recent years have contributed to the discovery that the early-sixth-century sermons of Caesarius of Arles had considerably more influence on Old English literature than had been realized. The extent of that influence may not be fully apparent even now, partly because many of the recent studies discuss examples in isolation, each in its own context, and partly because many of the earlier studies cited certain anonymous Latin sermons which have been only later identified as the work of Caesarius. My aim here is to offer new evidence for Caesarius's influence on five Old English texts and to recapitulate the evidence for his influence upon the corpus of Old English literature as a whole.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 5 , December 1976 , pp. 105 - 119
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1976

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References

Page 105 note 1 The Homilies of Ælfric: a Supplementary Collection, ed. Pope, John C., Early Eng. Text Soc. o.s. 259–60 (London, 1967–1968; cited hereafter as Pope), 799.Google Scholar

Page 105 note 2 Angelsächsische Homilien und Heiligenleben, ed. Assmann, Bruno, Bibliothek der angelsächsischen Prosa 3 (Kassel, 1889; repr., with a suppl. intro. by Peter Clemoes, Darmstadt, 1964; cited hereafter as Assmann).Google Scholar

Page 105 note 3 Pope, pp. 805 and 810.

Page 106 note 1 Sancti Caesarii Arelatensis Sermones, editio altera, ed. Morin, G., Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 103–4, 11, 599–602Google Scholar. All references to Caesarius's sermons are to this edition, which reproduces parenthetically within the text the pagination of Morin's less accessible earlier edition. Quotations from the sermons are identified by sermon number and paragraph.

Page 107 note 1 Pope, p. 804.

Page 107 note 2 Ælfric's power of recall and his processes of association are discussed perceptively in several articles by Cross, J. E.: e.g. ‘Ælfric – Mainly on Memory and Creative Method in Two Catholic Homilies’, SN 41 (1969), 135–55Google Scholar ‘More Sources for Two of Ælfric's Catholic Homilies’, Anglia 86 (1968), 59–78; and ‘The Literate Anglo-Saxon – on Sources and Disseminations’, Proc. of the Brit. Acad. 58 (1972), 67–100.

Page 108 note 1 The Blickling Homilies of the Tenth Century, ed. R. Morris, EETS o.s. 58, 63 and 73 (London, 1874–1880; repr. as one volume 1967; cited hereafter as Morris), 27–39.

Page 108 note 2 ‘Zu den Blickling Homilies’, ASNSL 91 (1893), 180.

Page 108 note 3 ‘Structure and Style in the Blickling Homilies for the Temporale’, diss: Illinois, 1968, pp. 46 and 53, n. 12.

Page 109 note 1 ‘Vercelli Homily VIII and the Christ’, PMLA 42 (1927), 314–30.

Page 109 note 2 ‘Latin Prose Sources for Old English Verse’, JEGP 57 (1958), 588–95.

Page 109 note 3 Die Vercelli-Homilien, I Halfte, ed. Max Forster, Bibliothek der angelsächsischen Prosa 12 (Hamburg, 1932), 149.

Page 109 note 4 ‘An Old English Penitential Motif’, ASE 2 (1973), 221–39.

Page 109 note 5 I am fully aware that collocations of scriptural quotations such as this do not in themselves constitute evidence of a source, but, in the light of the clear evidence for the use of Caesarius throughout this homily, I do not think the point needs to be argued.

Page 109 note 6 Morin 1, 256–7.

Page 110 note 1 MS biene.

Page 110 note 2 Also ‘þenden… lætan’ should be compared with Caesarius's remark in the same paragraph that God spares man for repentance and that the longer he waits for it the more severe die punishment is if man is unwilling to be corrected.

Page 111 note 1 P.A.M. Clemoes, in a private communication, has suggested to me that the wording in the Vercelli manuscript could possibly be a homilist's attempt to make sense out of a copy of the Latin which, through homæoteleuton, read ‘…cum angelis suis; et tunc reddet unicuique secundum misericordiam suam, sed secundum opera sua ’. If so, the homilist would have intended ‘æfter his agenum gewyrhtum 7 geeamungurn, þe he dyde, æfter his mildheortnesse’ to refer to Christ's own deeds (during his life on earth) and all after ‘geeamungurn’ would have been dropped later by someone wanting to restore a normal rendering of Matthew xvi.27. I am grateful to Professor Clemoes for this and several other suggestions on various aspects of this study.

Page 111 note 2 ‘Einige Wulfstantexte und ihre Quellen’ Anglia 56 (1932), 306–7. See also Hocquard, Gaston, ‘La Règle de Saint Chrodegang’, Saint Chrodegang: Communications Présentées au Colloque Tenu à Metz à l'occasion du Douzième Centenaire de sa Mort (Metz, 1967), pp. 54–89.Google Scholar

Page 112 note 1 ‘Sources of the Vernarcular Homily in England, Norway and Icelandö Nordisk Filologi 75 (1960), 179, n. 1.

Page 113 note 1 ‘Die Beschlüsse des Aachener Concils im Jahre 816’, Netus Archiv der Gesellscbaft für ältere deutsche Gescbichtskunde 27 (1902), 605–75, esp. Anhang I, ‘Die Recensionen der Regula Chrodegangi’ (pp. 646–51).

Page 113 note 2 ‘Caesarius, Chrodegang and the Old English Vainglory’, Gesellschaft, Kultw, Literatur: Beiträge Luitpold Wallach gewidmet, ed. Karl Bosl, Monographien zur Geschichte des Mittelalters 11 (Stuttgart, 1975), 167–78. The source is sermon 233 (Morin 11, 925–31).

Page 113 note 3 References to the Liber Scintillarum and to the identification of the texts which comprise its ch. xxviii are to the edition of H. M. Rochais, Defensoris Liber Scintillarum, CCSL 117. The identification of the sources of ch. lx of Chrodegang's Regula is, however, entirely mine. The Latin-English text of the Regula referred to is The Old English Version of the Enlarged Rule of Chrodegang together with the Latin Original, ed. Arthur S. Napier, EETS o.s. 150 (London, 1916), 72–5, my references being to page and line.

Page 118 note 1 By Rochais (see preceding note) for the Liber Scintillarum; for Alcuin, see Wallach, Luitpold, Alcuin and Charlemagne: Studies in Carolingian History and Literature (Ithaca, 1959; rev. and amended repr. Johnson Reprint Corp. 1968), pp. 231–54.Google Scholar

Page 118 note 2 The Pastoral Care of Souls in Soutb-East France during the Sixth Century, Analecta Gregoriana 51 (Rome, 1950), 264, citing the Vita Caesarii 1.16 and Caesarius's sermons 6 and 69; see also Bardy, G., ‘La Prédication de Saint Césaire d'aries’, Revue d'histoire de l' Église de France 29 (1943), 201–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Page 119 note 1 Vita Caesarii n. 5, cited by Beck, , Pastoral Care of Souls, p. 271.Google Scholar

Page 119 note 2 See, for example, sermons 1 and 69; see also Daly, William M., ‘Caesarius of Aries, a Precursor of Medieval Christendom’, Traditio 26 (1970), 1–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Page 119 note 3 Nos. 13, 31, 33, 43, 46, 47, 54, 57, 58, 136, 148, 154, 155, 157, 158, 179, 198, 199, 209, 215, 216, 217, 219, 222, 229 and 233. Ogilvy, J. D. A. (Books Known to the English, 597–1066 (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), p. 104)Google Scholar includes in his list of eight sermons of Caesarius used by English writers no. 214 as a source for Vercelli xi, citing Willard, ‘Vercelli Homily xi and its Sources’. While Willard discusses 214 in connection with 215, I do not find a suggestion that 214 influenced Vercelli xi. I have been unable to identify a homiliary with established connections with England which contains a substantial number of these sermons. The ‘original’ homiliary of Alan of Farfa (see Leclercq, J., ‘Tables pour l'lnventaire des Homiliares Manuscrits’, Scriptorium 2 (1948), 194–214CrossRefGoogle Scholar) appears to contain twelve sermons by Caesarius, but only five of these are among the twenty-six listed above. Smetana identifies those which Ælfric used and which occur in the homiliary of Paul the Deacon. For occurrences in the homiliaries of the known sources of the Blickling and Vercelli homilies, see Gatch, Milton McC., ‘Eschatology in the Anonymous Old English Homilies’, Traditio 21 (1965), 117–65Google Scholar. The apparatus to Morin's edition provides, of course, the fullest information about the manuscripts of Caesarius's sermons. For sermons attributed to him since Morin's edition, see Dekkers, E. and Gaar, A., Clavis Patrum Lalinorum, 2nd ed., Sacris Erudiri 3 (Steenbrug, 1961), item 1008 (p. 224)Google Scholar. His sermons in PL 39 are identified in item 368 (p. 88). See also the entry for Caesarius in the index (p. 532).

Page 119 note 4 Professor J. E. Cross informs me that he is preparing a paper which demonstrates some influence of Caesarius on the Old English Martyrology.