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1 results

  • 35 - Ælfric’s library

  • from PART IV - COLLECTIONS OF BOOKS
  • Edited by Richard Gameson, University of Durham
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain
    Published online:
    28 March 2012
    Print publication:
    22 December 2011, pp 679-684

  • Summary

    Ælfric of Eynsham was a prolific writer. One important question about the nature of the resources available to him in Cerne or Eynsham is to what extent he relied on collections of excerpts or abridgements, whether compiled earlier by others or extracted by himself on visits to other libraries for his own future use, and did not have access to the full texts in his own library. He evidently made use of two Latin abridgements, of Julian of Toledo's Prognosticon and Alcuin's De animae ratione, which appear in a manuscript containing texts associated with him. For his homilies and saints' lives he relied heavily on two substantial collections of relevant Latin texts. Foremost of these was the vast homiliary compiled by Paul the Deacon. Ælfric used just about a hundred items from the collection in compiling the Catholic Homilies and later homiletic collections, choosing mainly work by (or attributed to) Augustine, Gregory and Bede.