Ælfric's "Lives of Saints"
Ælfric of Eynsham, the most prolific named writer of Old English prose, completed the Lives of Saints between c. 994–998 while serving as monk and priest at Cerne Abbas (in Dorset, southern England). The Lives of Saints—a modern title—is a collection of narratives predominantly about saints (their lives, deaths, and miracles), some sermons (texts on moral or doctrinal themes), and two Old Testament narratives written in Ælfric’s characteristic rhythmical prose style. Structured around the liturgical year, the collection begins with the Nativity of Christ (although this piece is really concerned with the nature of God) and provides lively narratives that address myriad topics: divine, demonic, and human nature; earth and the afterlife; good and bad rulership; marriage and chastity; the individual and the communal; authority, obedience, and heroic defiance; the body and spirit; violence and torture. It is difficult to overstate the popularity of saints and their narratives in early England (indeed, throughout Christendom): their stories survive in far greater quantities than any other type of writing; their feast days marked time; their shrines and places of death marked the landscape; and their stories of defiance, miracles, and faith entertained and uplifted.
Prior to his time at Cerne Abbas, Ælfric had been trained as a Benedictine monk at the Old Minster, Winchester, under Bishop Æthelwold (a key figure of the Benedictine Reform movement), and later, in 1005, he became abbot of Eynsham (hence his moniker today), where he remained until his death c. 1010. From surviving records we know that Ælfric entered Cerne Abbas in 987: our knowledge of his movements, his connections with leading figures of his day (such as ealdorman Æthelweard, Sigeric, the archbishop of Canterbury, and Wulfstan, another eminent prose writer), along with his own literary flair, foibles, and productivity has made Ælfric one of the most studied prose writers of the period.
Ælfric is one of the few named writers from the Old English period whose works survive in great quantities, and his carefully constructed texts and extensive revisions reveal not only that he was a deeply devoted teacher and educator, they also betray a palpable sense of his unease lest his works be misinterpreted or misused–he was, at times, an incredibly reluctant translator. This anxiety relates particularly to his biblical translations, where he foresaw slippage between Old and New Testament interpretations (e.g. of marriage), and confusion between the different readings involved in biblical exegesis (historical, moral, allegorical, and anagogical), although we also witness it in his Latin ‘Preface’ to the Lives of Saints:
Nec tamen plura promitto me scripturum hac lingua, quia nec convenit huic sermocinationi plura inseri, ne forte despectui habeantur margarite Christi
However, I do not promise to write more in this language, because it is not appropriate that more be put into this manner of speaking, for fear that the pearls of Christ perhaps be held in contempt.] (Clayton and Mullins, pp.2–3).
One of his patrons, Ealdorman Æthelweard of Wessex, seems to have been the instigator behind a number of Ælfric’s translations, including his Lives of Saints, despite Ælfric’s reluctance. In his Old English ‘Preface’ to the collection, Ælfric address Æthelweard, and his son, Æthelmær, saying:
Ælfric gret ead-modlice Æðelwerd ealdor-man, and ic secge þe, leof, þæt ic habbe nu gegaderod on þyssere bec þæra halgena þrowunga þe me to onhagode on Englisc to awendene, forþan þe ðu, leof, swiðost, and Æðelmær, swylcera gewrita me bædon and of handum gelæhton, eowerne geleafan to getrymmenne mid þære gerecednysse þe ge on eowrum gereorde næfdon ær.
[Ælfric humbly greets Ældorman Æthelweard, and I say to you, beloved man, that I have now gathered in this book the passions of those saints that it was in my power to translate into English because you, beloved man, most particularly, and Æthelmær also, asked me for such writings and seized them from my hands in order to strengthen your faith with this account that you never had in your language before.] (Clayton and Mullins, pp.8–9)
In addition to learning the circumstances of production and aims of the collection (to strengthen an audience’s faith), we also learn from the Old English Preface that Ælfric intended this collection to be a supplement to his earlier Catholic Homilies series I and II (CHI and CHII): he tells us that in these twam ærrum bocum (‘two earlier books’) he translated the saints’ lives that all English people celebrate throughout the land, whereas this book aims to relay stories of those saints that mynster-menn mid heora þenungum betwux him wurðiað (‘those who live in monasteries honour among themselves in their offices’) (Clayton and Mullins, p. 8). In other words, the saints whose lives are included within this third collection were not as widely venerated by the laity as those in CHI and CHII, but were requested as further devotional reading by these two devout high-ranking nobles, Æthelweard and Æthelmær.
Ælfric’s Prefaces thus provide clues to the reading contexts for the Lives of Saints. It seems that the most immediate context was private reading or reading aloud in (noble, high-ranking) lay households, although Ælfric certainly envisioned wider audiences beyond this and he would have been aware that once the text began to circulate, it was outside of his control—as the manuscript evidence is testament to. Other probable audiences include priests and perhaps monks (or oblates) to supplement their monastic reading of Latin legendaries (collections of saints’ lives).
Unlike CHI and CHII which survive in multiple manuscripts, Lives of Saints survives complete in just one manuscript: British Library Cotton Julius E vii, which dates to the early eleventh century. In their recent edition of Lives of Saints, Mary Clayton and Juliet Mullins draw attention to the temptation to regard this sole surviving manuscript witness as representing Ælfric’s original conceptualisation for the series, particularly as it includes two Prefaces (one Latin, one Old English), and a table of contents, giving it all the trappings of a cohesive, authoritative volume. As mentioned, Cotton Julius E vii contains not only saints’ lives, but also sermons, Old Testament narratives (Kings and Maccabees), three other texts by Ælfric (Of the Questions of Sigewulf the Priest, Of False Gods, Of the Twelve Abuses), as well as four anonymous saints’ lives, the Life of Saint Euphrosyne, the Passion of Saint Eustace and His Companions, the Life of Saint Mary of Egypt, and The Seven Sleepers. In their edition, Clayton and Mullins exclude these anonymous lives, as well as the three Ælfrician texts just mentioned; they include Ælfric’s Passion of Saint Vincent, which is not in Cotton Julius E vii but thought to be part of his original conception for Lives of Saints. The insertion of the four anonymous lives (potentially while Ælfric was still alive) speaks to the malleable nature of manuscript composition and circulation, the lack of control writers had over their works, and to contemporary interest in types of saint that Ælfric avoided (e.g. Mary of Egypt was a harlot saint and quasi hermit).
What kinds of saints did Ælfric include in Lives of Saints, and why? His main source was the Cotton-Corpus Legendary (or an earlier iteration): comparison with this source allows us to consider which lives he chose to exclude. Ælfric seems to have chosen saints’ lives which would have appealed to Æthelweard, his patron, and which adhered with his own orthodox beliefs as a Benedictine monk. These included soldier saints (Martin), courageous kings (Oswald and Edmund, both native saints who chose different ways to defend their kingdoms and their faith), accounts of military endeavours (Forty Soldiers, Maccabees), virgin martyrs (e.g. Agatha, Agnes), and chaste married saints (e.g. Julian and Basilissa). He avoids saints who are anything other than absolute and steadfast in their faith, or who display human emotions such as excess sorrow—similarly he avoids saints’ lives which he thinks may be open to misinterpretation, such as those of the desert fathers.
As noted, Ælfric translates his source texts into his characteristic so-called ‘rhythmical prose’, resulting in lively and engaging narratives, as this extract from the Passion of St Cecilia demonstrates:
Ic secge gif þu hætst hwilce mihte þu hæfst,
Ælces mannes might þe on modignysse færð
is soðlice þam gelic swilce man siwige
ane bytte, and blawe hi fulle windes,
and wyrce siððan an þyrl þonne heo to-þunden bið
on hire greatnysse þonne togæð seo miht (Skeat, 374, ll. 314–319)
[If you urge me, I will speak of the kind of might that you have. Each man’s
might who goes in pride is truly like if someone had sewn up a bladder, blown
it full of wind, and then afterwards, when it was swollen, to work a hole into
it; then the might, in its greatness, goes away.]
Here, Cecilia’s defiant speech to her tormentor, Almachius, is made more dramatic by Ælfric’s use of balanced clauses and alliteration: the alliteration here is clearly much looser than that which governs verse, and there is much debate on the nature of Ælfric’s rhythmical prose. Another notable characteristic of Ælfric’s hagiographic style is the use of epithets to clearly delineate the binary of good versus bad. We see this throughout this Life, for example Ælfric renders the relatively plain Latin, Almachius ceciliam sibi presentari iubet (‘Almachius ordered Cecilia to be presented to him’) (208, ll. 568–569) into Almachius se arleasa het þa ardlice gefeccan þa eadigan Cecilian (‘then the wicked Almachius ordered the blessed Cecilia to be fetched quickly’; 374, ll. 308–309).
Ælfric is also clearly attuned to the rhetorical and literary flourishes of his Latin sources. When he is not omitting excess or tedious material from his sources, he carefully adapts such rhetorical flourishes in his characteristic conscientious manner. The Passion of Saint Vincent provides many good examples, and Vincent’s declaration of his desire to enter spiritual battle against his antagonist Datianus serves as a brief sample:
“Winne he wiþ me on þisum ge winne nu,
and he wið me feohte on his feondlicum truwan,
and he gesyhð soðlice þæt ic swyþor mæg” (Clayton and Mullins, ll. 88–90)
[Let him toil against me now in this struggle and let him fight against me in
his devilish faith, and he truly will see that I am stronger.]
Ælfric’s repetition of winne (underlined) and phrases (italicised), as well as alliteration and assonance (in bold), is guided by the patterning in the Latin which includes alliteration, repetition, and polyptoton (a stylistic device where a word is repeated within the same sentence or phrase, with different grammatical cases). Ælfric’s style directly contributes to the literary effect: it underscores the saint’s willingness to suffer, and the necessity of physical struggle to reveal inner faith.
It has been observed that the strong preponderance of defiant saints (whether in the face of the ninth-century Viking invasions in Edmund’s Life or against non-Christian antagonists in the lives of the early Christian female martyr lives), would have resonated with an audience facing increased Viking invasions in the late tenth- and early-eleventh centuries. Ælfric himself refers to the ongoing wars and strife of the period at numerous points throughout the Lives of Saints, comparing his current time unfavourably to earlier times of peace. He offers these particular saints’ lives as models of exemplary Christian faith from which all people could draw strength, not only to battle an invading army but to combat the daily inner temptations to which all Christians were thought to be subject.
Bibliography
Editions
Clayton, Mary, and Juliet Mullins, ed. and trans. Old English Lives of Saints, Vol. I–III: Ælfric, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 60 (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2019).
Skeat, Walter W., ed. and trans. Ælfric’s Lives of Saints, EETS O. S. 76, 82, 94, 114 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966).
Criticism
Biggs, Frederick M. et al., ed. Sources of Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture Vol 1: Abbo of Fleury, Abbo of Saint-Germain-Des-Pres, and Acta Sanctorum (Kalamazoo MI: Western Michigan University Press, 2001).
Clayton, Mary. ‘Homiliaries and Preaching in Anglo-Saxon England’, in Old English Prose: Basic Readings, ed. Paul E. Szarmach with the assistance of Deborah A. Oosterhouse (New York: Garland Publishing, 2000), pp. 151–98.
Clemoes, Peter. ‘The Chronology of Ælfric’s Works’, repr. in Old English Prose: Basic Readings, ed. Paul E. Szarmach with the assistance of Deborah A. Oosterhouse (New York: Garland Publishing, 2000), pp. 29–72.
Corona, Gabriella. ‘Ælfric’s (Un)Changing Style: Continuity of Patterns from the Catholic Homilies to the Lives of Saints’, JEGP 107 (2008), 169–89.
Earl, James W. ‘Typology and Iconographic Style in Early Medieval Hagiography’, Studies in the Literary Imagination 8 (1975), 15–46.
Gittos, Helen. ‘The Audience of Old English Texts: Ælfric, Rhetoric, and ‘the Edification of the Simple’,’ Anglo-Saxon England 43 (2014), 231–66.
Godden, Malcolm. ‘Ælfric’s Saints Lives and the Problem of Miracles,’ Leeds Studies in English 16 (1985), 83–100.
Gretsch, Mechthild. Ælfric and the Cult of Saints in Late Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
Gully, Alison. The Displacement of the Body in Ælfric’s Virgin Martyr Lives (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014).
Hill, Joyce. ‘The Dissemination of Ælfric’s Lives of Saints: A Preliminary Survey’, in Holy Men and Holy Women: Old English Prose Saints’ Lives and Their Contexts, ed. Paul E. Szarmach (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1996), pp. 235–59.
–––. ‘The Preservation and Transmission of Ælfric’s Saints’ Lives: Reader-Response in the Early Middle Ages', in The Preservation and Transmission of Anglo- Saxon Culture, ed Paul E. Szarmach and Joel T. Rosenthal (Kalamazoo, MI: Western Michigan University Press, 1997), pp. 405–30.
Hill, Thomas D. ‘Imago Dei: Genre, Symbolism, and Anglo-Saxon Hagiography’, in Holy Men and Holy Women: Old English Prose Saints’ Lives and Their Contexts, ed. Paul E. Szarmach (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1996), pp. 35–50.
Horner, Shari. ‘The Violence of Exegesis: Reading the Bodies of Ælfric’s Female Saints’, in Violence Against Women in Medieval Texts, ed. Anna Roberts (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998), pp. 22–43.
Irvine, Susan. ‘Bones of Contention: The Context of Ælfric’s Homily on St. Vincent’, Anglo-Saxon England 19 (1990), 117–32.
Jorgensen, Alice. ‘Shame and the Breast in Ælfric's Life of St Agatha and the Harley Psalter’, JEGP 120 (2021), 326–51.
–––. ‘Shame, Disgust, and Ælfric's Masculine Performance’, in Feminist Approaches to Early Medieval England, ed. Renée R. Trilling, Robin Norris and Rebecca Stephenson (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023), pp. 143–68.
–––. ‘Historicizing Emotion: The Shame-Rage Spiral in Ælfric's Life of St Agatha’, English Studies 93 (2012), 529–38.
Kehoe, Niamh. ‘Humor, Horror, and Violence in Ælfric of Eynsham’s Passion of Saint Vincent’, JEGP 124 (2025), 139–67.
Kleist, Aaron J. The Chronology and Canon of Ælfric of Eynsham (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2019).
Lapidge, Michael. ‘The Saintly Life in Anglo-Saxon England’, in The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature, ed. Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 251–72.
Lazzari, Loredana, Patrizia Lendinara, and Claudia Di Sciacca, ed. Hagiography in Anglo-Saxon England: Adopting and Adapting Saints’ Lives into Old English Prose c. 950–1150 (Barcelona-Madrid: Fédération Internationale des Instituts d'Etudes Médiévales, 2014).
Magennis, Hugh, and Mary Swan, ed. A Companion to Ælfric (Leiden: Brill, 2009).
Magennis, Hugh. ‘Ælfric’s Lives of Saints and Cotton Julius E.vii: Adaptation, Appropriation and the Disappearing Book', in Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe: Imagining the Book, ed. Stephen Kelly and John J. Thompson (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), pp. 99–109.
–––. ‘Approaches to Saints’ Lives’, in The Christian Tradition in Anglo-Saxon England: Approaches to Current Scholarship and Teaching, ed. Paul Cavill (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2004), pp. 163–84.
–––. ‘Warrior Saints, Warfare, and the Hagiography of Ælfric of Eynsham’, Traditio 56 (2001), 27–51.
Momma, Haruko. ‘Rhythm and Alliteration: Styles of Ælfric’s Prose up to the Lives of Saints’, in Anglo-Saxon Styles, ed. C. E. Karkov and George Hardin Brown (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2003), pp. 253–69.
Ostacchini, Luisa. Translating Europe in Ælfric’s Lives of Saints (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024).
Szarmach, Paul E., ed., Holy Men and Holy Women: Old English Prose Saints’ Lives and Their Contexts (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1996).
Trilling, Renée. ‘Heavenly Bodies: Paradoxes of Female Martyrdom in Ælfric’s Lives of Saints’, in Writing Women Saints in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Paul E. Szarmach (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), pp. 249–73.
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Pulsiano, Philip. ‘Blessed Bodies: The Vitae of Anglo-Saxon Female Saints’, Parergon 16 (1999), 1–42.
Waterhouse, Ruth. ‘Ælfric’s Use of Discourse in Some Saints’ Lives’, Anglo-Saxon England 5 (1976), 83–103.
–––. ‘Ælfric’s ‘Usitatus’ Use of Language in Lives of Saints’, Parergon 7 (1989), 1–45.
Whatley, Gordon. ‘Late Old English Hagiography, c. 950-1150’, in Hagiographies: Histoire Internationale de la Littérature Hagiographique Latine et Vernaculaire en Occident des Origines à 1550 , vol. II, ed. Guy Phillipart (Turnhout: Brepols, 1994), pp. 429–99.
–––. ‘Lost in Translation: Omission of Episodes in Some Old English Prose Saints’ Lives’, Anglo-Saxon England 26 (1997), 187–208.
–––. ‘Pearls before Swine: Ælfric, Hagiography, and the Lay Reader’, in Via Crucis: Essays in Early Medieval Source and Ideas in Memory of J. E. Cross, ed. Thomas N. Hall, with the assistance of Thomas D. Hill (Morgantown, WV: West Virginia University Press, 2002), pp. 158–84.
Wilcox, Jonathan. ‘A Reluctant Translator in Late Anglo-Saxon England: Ælfric and the Maccabees’, Enarratio 2 (1993), 1–18.
–––. ‘The Audience of Ælfric’s Lives of Saints and the Face of Cotton Caligula A. xiv, fols. 93-130’, in Beatus Vir: Studies in Early English and Norse Manuscripts. In Memory of Philip Pulsiano, ed. A. N. Doane and Kirsten Wolf, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 319 (Tempe, AZ: ACMRS, 2006), pp. 228–63.
Zettel, Peter. ‘Ælfric’s Hagiographic Sources and the Latin Legendary Preserved in BL MS Cotton Nero E i + CCCC 9 MS and Other Manuscripts’, Unpublished DPhil Thesis, University of Oxford, 1980.
–––. ‘Saints’ Lives in Old English: Latin Manuscripts and Vernacular Accounts: Ælfric’, Peritia 1 (1982), 17–37.
Niamh Kehoe is the Rebecca Marsland Career Development Fellow in English at St Hilda’s College, Oxford. She has published on Old English prose hagiography in JEGP (2025), the Review of English Studies (2022), and SELIM (2018), and has edited a special issue of English Studies on emotion, morality, and exemplarity (2024).
