Ælfric, Catholic Homilies

When Ælfric of Eynsham was sent from Winchester, where he received his education, to the monastery of Cerne Abbas in modern Dorset around 987, he appears to have entered a prolific period of composition in which he wrote numerous homilies and saints’ lives, a Latin Grammar, books of Old Testament translation, pastoral letters, and other works. His two volumes of Catholic Homilies (the work is titled Sermones Catholici in its manuscripts, with “catholic” used in its original sense of “universal”) consist of two sets of forty homilies each; the first series was probably completed in 989, and the second series between 991 and 993. Both series contain expositions of gospel passages, accounts of the lives of saints, sermons of moral instruction, and explanations of church doctrines such as the Trinity, the nature of angels, and the resurrection of the dead at the Last Judgment. Every text except the first (CH I.1 “On the Origin of the Created World”) was written to be read on a specific occasion, whether a mass on Sunday, a major feast day or feast of a saint, or the special masses before the Ascension called “Litanies” or Rogationtide.

The church year unfolded in two interlocking cycles. The sanctorale was the celebration of the feast days of the saints on fixed days in the calendar year; the temporale was the cycle of movable feasts (feasts which occur on different dates in different years) from Lent to Easter to Pentecost to Advent, along with a few feasts of Christ and Mary on fixed days (such as the Epiphany on January 6, the Annunciation on March 25, Christmas on December 25). On Sundays and feast days priests were expected to preach to their congregations—often this consisted of explaining the meaning of the gospel read at that day’s mass, called a pericope. For this preaching to be effective, of course, it had to be in English. The two series of Catholic Homilies, each organized around the course of a year, supply readings for Sundays and major feasts in both the temporale and sanctorale. Each series was regarded by Ælfric as sufficient for an entire year of preaching.

In his training, his insistence on orthodox belief, and his drive to provide high-quality and carefully-vetted preaching materials, Ælfric was very much a product of the monastic reform of the later tenth century. This was a movement inspired by the spread of more rigorous observance of the Benedictine Rule in French monasteries; in England the movement was led by Dunstan, archbishop of Canterbury, Oswald, Archbishop of York, and Æthelwold, bishop of Winchester and Ælfric’s teacher. Under their leadership and with the support of King Edgar (959–975), monasteries were reformed along stricter lines to follow the Rule of Saint Benedict. Reformed monks replaced non-monastic canons in the cathedral churches; even parish priests were expected to practice celibacy and observe the Rule. Ælfric was concerned that the homilies available to these parish priests were not theologically sound; in the English preface to the First Series of Catholic Homilies he says that he was moved to write them “because I saw and heard great error in many English books which unlearned people in their simplicity have taken for great wisdom, and I regretted that they did not know or did not have the gospel teaching among their writings” (CH 1.0.5).

Homilies generally followed a similar outline: an opening quotation of the biblical text, an address to the congregation, a moral, historical, or doctrinal exposition of the biblical passage, and a concluding formulaic statement of faith called a doxology. Like most Old English homilies, Ælfric’s homilies are generally translations, often very close ones, of a Latin source; even where he is not translating closely but is weaving together citations, allusions, images, and remembered texts from several authorities and his own favorite themes, he is usually careful to appear to be relying on an authoritative source. The early fathers of the church like Augustine of Hippo, Jerome, Gregory the Great, the venerable Bede, and others, wrote hundreds of sermons—expositions of nearly every passage in the Gospels and much of the Old Testament, lives and miracles of the saints, moral exhortations, and presentations of basic church doctrines. Later, in the ninth century, a number of writers excerpted and compiled these writings into collections called homiliaries, sometimes with hundreds of individual homilies. The homiliary of Paul the Deacon, commissioned by Charlemagne at the end of the eighth century, is a large anthology arranged in a sequence for reading during the church year, often with multiple homilies for each occasion, and giving source attributions for each homily. Another was the homiliary of Smaragdus, a ninth-century Frankish monk of Saint-Mihiel; unlike Paul the Deacon, whose homiliary contained whole texts by patristic authors, Smaragdus strung together shorter extracts from different authorities into composite homilies, and includes marginal abbreviations citing the authorities for the extracts he includes. Yet another source was the homiliary of Haymo of Auxerre, a ninth-century monk of Saint-Germain d’Auxerre. So when Ælfric translates a homily by a church father such as Gregory or Bede, it is not always easy to tell whether he read their work directly, or in an anthology such as the homiliary of Paul the Deacon, Smaragdus, or Haymo. These collections offered Ælfric a reliable foundation for his own writing and the confidence that he was basing his work on the most authoritative and orthodox sources available.

Ælfric’s Latin Preface to the First Series states that he has translated his homilies “for the edification of the simple who know only this language” (CH I.0.1); in the English Preface he stresses the need for good teaching and pastoral care “especially at this time which is the ending of this world” (CH I.0.6). In his pastoral letter to Wulfsige Ælfric stresses the need for priests to explain the meaning of the gospel to the people in English on Sundays and mass-days. So we may assume that his primary intention was to provide material to fulfill this pastoral duty, and his first audience was the congregation at mass before whom these homilies were read. Apart from reading at Mass, the homilies could have served as reading for monks during the Night Office, or for priests whose Latin was not as good as it should be, or for literate laypeople such as Ælfric’s patrons Æthelweard, ealdorman of Wessex, and his son Æthelmær. At the end of the English Preface to the first series, a Latin note in one manuscript says that Æthelweard has requested a bespoke copy with forty-four homilies rather than the standard forty. Monks, nuns, secular clerics, lay congregations, patrons, readers, and listeners, all may have been in Ælfric’s mind as he composed his homilies.

Ælfric cared as much about the clarity of his prose as about the orthodoxy of his teaching; the Catholic Homilies are written in a self-consciously clear style which Ælfric took pains to regularize and correct, and with a distinctive precision in vocabulary that reflected his training in Winchester. In his second series of Catholic Homilies he develops a more ornamented prose style characterized by alliterating rhythmical phrases much in the manner of Old English verse. A brief passage from the second series of Catholic Homilies might illustrate Ælfric’s care with language, his method of reading and interpreting scripture, and the distinctive style that is characteristic of his more developed homilies. CH 2.12 is a homily for the Sunday in Mid-Lent, and is drawn from a number of sources. It explains the Old Testament history of Exodus historically and then allegorically: “The land of Egypt signifies this world, and Pharaoh signifies the perverse devil” (CH 2.12.13). After recounting the story of the Ten Commandments and the arrival of the Hebrews in the Promised Land, Ælfric notes that just as “Joshua and the people of Israel overcame seven nations—the eighth was Pharaoh, who was drowned with his people…. So also should Christians overcome all the eight chief sins with their hosts, if they ever want to come to the country which the heavenly father intended for them” (CH 2.12.31). He continues by pairing each of the deadly sins with a corresponding virtue; the rhythm of his phrases becomes more regular as he goes, on until they begin to resemble alliterative poetry:

Þisum heafodleahtrum we sceolon symle on urum ðeawum wiðcweðan, and ðurh Godes fultum mid gastlicum wæpnum ealle oferwinnan, gif we ðone heofenlican eard habban willað. To ðam earde we wæron gesceapene, ac we hit forwyrhton. Nu næbbe we hit næfre buton we hit eft gewinnon mid gastlicum gecampe, ðurh Godes fultum, swa swa Israhel ðone eard gewann ðe Abrahame ær behaten wæs. We sceolon oferwinnan ærest gifernysse mid gemetegunge ætes and wætes; forliger oððe galnysse mid clænnysse, swa þæt se læweda his æwe healde, and se gehadoda Godes ðeow symle on clænnysse wunige, swa swa se canon him cuðlice sægð.

We sceolon oferwinnan woruldlice gytsunge

mid cystignysse ures clænan modes,

and weamette mid wislicum geðylde,

and woruldlice unrotnysse mid gastlicere blisse,

asolcennysse mid soðre anrædnysse,

ydelne gylp mid incundre lufe,

modignysse mid micelre eadmodnysse.

Þonne sylð us to leane se sigefæsta Iesus

ðone ecan eðel mid eallum his halgum,

on ðam we a syððan gesælige rixiað,

ælces yfeles orsorge, gif we hit nu geearniað.

[We should always oppose these chief sins in our conduct, and with God’s help overcome them all with spiritual weapons, if we wish to have the heavenly country. We were created for that country, but we forfeited it. Now we will never have it unless we win it again with spiritual warfare, through God’s help, just as Israel won the country which had been promised to Abraham. We must first overcome gluttony by moderation in eating and drinking; fornication or lust by chastity, so that the layman holds to his wife, and the ordained servant of God always continues in chastity, as the canon plainly tells him. We must overcome worldly covetousness by the generosity of our pure mind, and wrath by wise patience, and worldly discontent with spiritual joy, slothfulness by true steadfastness, idle vanity by inward love, and pride with great humility. Then the triumphant Jesus will give us as a reward the eternal country with all his saints, in which we shall ever afterwards reign happily, free from the care of every evil, if we now will merit it.]

Ælfric sent copies of his Catholic Homilies to Archbishop Sigeric of Canterbury (archbishop from 990 to 994), and Canterbury was probably a center for producing copies of Ælfric’s work. Once out of Ælfric’s hands, the homilies were separated and recombined, abridged and excerpted; some two dozen manuscripts and fragments contain some of the homilies, but only four manuscripts have the whole of the first series of Catholic Homilies, and only one has the whole of the second series. Most later manuscripts contain selected homilies, and sometimes parts of homilies, copied alongside other works by Ælfric and other authors. Some manuscripts combine homilies from the first and second series with other homilies to create a fuller sequence for the temporale. In the Latin Preface to the first series, Ælfric authorized the combination of his two series of homilies into one set, and it is clear that many copyists and compilers took him at his word. Ælfric’s homilies were widely copied and circulated even long after the Norman Conquest of 1066, and they remain some of the most impressive works of Old English prose, monuments to Ælfric’s learning, skill, and concern for pastoral care.

Select Bibliography

Blair, John. The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society. Oxford, 2005. Clayton, Mary. “Homiliaries and Preaching in Anglo-Saxon England.” Peritia 4 (1985): 207–42. Reprinted with corrections in Old English Prose: Basic Readings, edited by Paul Szarmach, 151–98. New York, 2000.

Clemoes, Peter, ed. Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: The First Series, Text. EETS s.s. 17. Oxford, 1997.

Gatch, M. McC. Preaching and Theology in Anglo-Saxon England: Ælfric and Wulfstan. Toronto, 1977.

Godden, Malcolm, ed. Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: The Second Series, Text. Edited by Malcolm Godden. EETS s.s. 5. Oxford, 1979.

Godden, Malcolm. Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: Introduction, Commentary, and Glossary. EETS s.s. 18. Oxford, 2000.

Grundy, Lynne. Books and Grace: Ælfric’s Theology. King’s College Medieval Studies. London, 1991.

Hill, Joyce. “Authority and Intertextuality in the Works of Ælfric: The Sir Israel Gollancz Memorial Lecture for 2004.” Proceedings of the British Academy 131 (2005): 157–81.

Kleist, Aaron J. The Chronology and Canon of Ælfric of Eynsham. Anglo-Saxon Studies 37. Cambridge, 2019.

Kleist, Aaron J., ed. The Old English Homily: Precedent, Practice, and Appropriation. Studies in the Early Middle Ages 17. Turnhout, 2007.

Liuzza, Roy M., ed. and trans. The Old English Catholic Homilies: The First Series. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 86. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2024.

Magennis, Hugh, and Mary Swan, eds. A Companion to Ælfric. Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition 18. Leiden, 2009.

Szarmach, Paul E., and Bernard Huppé, eds. The Old English Homily and Its Backgrounds. Albany, 1978.

Thorpe, Benjamin, ed. The Sermones Catholici, or Homilies of Ælfric: In the Original Anglo-Saxon, with an English Version. 2 vols. London, 1844–1846.

Tinti, Francesca, ed. Pastoral Care in Late Anglo-Saxon England. Woodbridge, 2005.

Wilcox, Jonathan. Ælfric’s Prefaces. Durham Medieval Texts 9. Durham, 1994.

Author bio:

Roy M. Liuzza is Distinguished Professor in the Humanities at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He is the author of numerous books and articles, including a widely-read translation of Beowulf for Broadview Press. Most recently he has published an edition and translation of Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies for the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library; the First Series appeared in 2024 and the Second Series will appear in 2026.