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2 results

  • I.38 - Ælfric of Eynsham, Preface to the First Series of CatholicHomilies

  • from Tenth Century
  • Edited with Introduction and Notes by Carolinne White, University of Oxford
  • Preface by Catherine Conybeare, Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Anthology of British Medieval Latin
    Published online:
    11 January 2024
    Print publication:
    01 February 2024, pp 401-405

  • Summary

    Ælfric, abbot of Eynsham, wrote a number of important works in both Latin and Old English. Here he writes a Latin preface for his first series of forty Catholic homilies in Old English which were intended to be read aloud to the congregation or read privately by the laity. He dedicates the work to Sigeric of Canterbury, explaining that he is basing the homilies on the works of the Church Fathers and more recent Latin theologians from the Continent, and that he believes in the need for Latin works to be translated into English. Ælfric makes use of the modesty topos in his elegant preface.

  • 26 - Old English homiliaries and poetic manuscripts

  • from PART III - TYPES OF BOOKS AND THEIR USES
  • 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 553-562

  • Summary

    From the surviving eleventh century manuscripts, one can find a use of the vernacular unparalleled in any other Western European language until the later Middle Ages. Two books date from the 970s, the Exeter and Vercelli Books. The Exeter Book is large in scale and written in a bold clear hand; a few of its poems are long. The Vercelli Book's contents are entirely religious, mainly homilies and saints' lives. In The Husband's Message, The Wife's Lament and Wulf and Eadwacer we have the closest that Old English verse comes to love poetry. The poems also include The Dream of the Rood, perhaps the most famous Old English religious poem. Thirty-six other manuscripts or manuscript fragments have copies of all or part of the Catholic Homilies. The majority of Ælfric homilies are in large-scale codices with bold handwriting, clearly designed for public reading.