Anonymous Old English Homilies (Vercelli, Blickling and others)

Introduction

Pastoral instruction in the English vernacular was certainly part of the Irish and Roman missions of the early English kingdoms, but exactly when such addresses began to go beyond biblical paraphrase, what topics they addressed, and when they were first committed to writing is unknown. Today, about 350 individual witnesses to Old English anonymous homilies survive in about sixty manuscripts dating from the mid-ninth to the late-twelfth century. They occur as fragments, in small booklets, and in large collections, sometimes alongside similar materials authored by the well-known homilists Ælfric of Eynsham (d. ca. 1010) and Wulfstan of York (d. 1023). They sometimes consist primarily of exegetical readings of biblical pericopes (‘homilies’ in a narrow sense) or present general catechetical instruction or moral exhortation (what some are inclined to call ‘sermons’), although early English preachers did not make such a clear-cut generic distinction and often simply called a pastoral address of any kind a spel or larspell.

Like many other Old English prose texts, anonymous homilies depend on a vast range of Latin sources and are firmly rooted in a wider European tradition of Christian writings. Some homilies are direct translations of works by major authors such as Gregory the Great or Caesarius of Arles. Some are compilations from multiple sources that are as varied as antiphons, hymns, saints’ lives, poems, epistles, penitentials, biblical commentaries, medical instructions, and records of synods and councils. Some make heavy use of influential sermon collections such as the homiliaries of Paul the Deacon and of Saint-Père-de-Chartres. Some are completely unique, while others are closely paralleled by literature in Coptic, Greek, Irish, Norse, and Welsh.

Homilies are texts that are used over and over again. This is why they show a higher degree of textual variance than most other genres of medieval literature. The textual variations we see in homilies that occur in multiple copies or versions sometimes involve only minor revisions, sometimes more thorough sentence-by-sentence reworkings, and sometimes large-scale additions or omissions of passages containing several hundred words. This fluidity makes it difficult to define a text’s identity, and it problematizes the way we present such texts in modern editions. It likewise makes it difficult to talk about a homily’s authorship when that homily has been through many hands and mouths. Instead it may be more useful to think about these texts’ idiosyncrasies, their domestications, their potential preaching contexts, and the goals of their revisers.

To judge from the textual evidence, there must have been a substantial tradition of vernacular preaching before Ælfric compiled his widely disseminated Catholic Homilies, an authorised temporale collection dedicated to Archbishop Sigeric of Canterbury (d. 999) (to read about this collection, click here), but only two major collections of pre-Ælfrician Old English homilies survive: the Vercelli Homilies and the Blickling Homilies. In the discussion that follows, we comment briefly on the nature and contents of these two collections, then we comment even more briefly on a few other anonymous homilies that fall outside these two collections. All quotations and translations below are based on the online editions on the website of the Electronic Corpus of Anonymous and Wulfstanian Homilies in Old English (ECHOE) based at the University of Göttingen, which provides detailed information concerning the manuscript contexts, textual relations, and sources of the corpus, as well as extensive bibliographies of relevant scholarship.

 

The Vercelli Homilies

Better known to some for its Old English poems, including Andreas, The Dream of the Rood, and Cynewulf’s Elene, the Vercelli Book (Vercelli, Biblioteca Capitolare, MS CXVII) is also our earliest collection of English preaching materials. Its twenty-three homilies cover selective preaching occasions from Christmas to Good Friday (though not in proper calendrical order), plus admonitions on penitential discipline and accounts of the lives of Saints Martin and Guthlac. Why this book today resides in Vercelli, Italy, rather than some ancient English library is an enduring mystery. It was probably copied by a single scribe working somewhere in the southeast of England in about the third quarter of the tenth century using at least five exemplars, but every word in that sentence is open to scrutiny. Some folios of this manuscript are missing today.

 

Vercelli, Biblioteca Capitolare, MS CXVII,  fol. 112r: Opening of Vercelli Homily XXI

The order and purpose of some items in this collection are not always clear, but seven homilies are designated for Rogationtide, the three holy days leading up to Ascension Day when all good Christians were expected to perambulate the land and forest as a community, walking barefoot behind Christ’s Cross, singing, fasting, praying, and listening to some cracking good sermons. Vercelli XI, for Rogationtide Monday, sets a hopeful tone by explaining that Christians have been exiled from their native country of Paradise by Adam’s sin and are pilgrims in this world, and even though they cannot possess true joy here, they can find it in heaven, where the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and other fellow-citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem are waiting to embrace them.

Vercelli X, for Rogationtide Tuesday, is more dire. It tells the story of a greedy rich man who refused to share his wealth with the poor. Christ appears and chastises the man for his selfishness and threatens to withdraw his mercy. That very night the rich man dies together with his children, and his possessions are given away to strangers. This is one of the most elegantly written homilies in Old English, employing vivid imagery and complex patterns of rhyme, alliteration, assonance, verbal doublets, two-stress rhythmical phrases, incremental repetition, and even an embedded poem. It survives in multiple copies, and to judge from the manuscripts, it was a best-seller for over two centuries.

The stern message of Vercelli XIII, for Rogationtide Wednesday, is that if you have done anything against God’s will during the forty days since Easter, you must atone and cleanse yourself now, so you will be pure when you receive the Eucharist on Ascension Eve, which is today. Remember the sorrowful fate of the proud man who lived his life in luxury and sin. He is now nothing but dust and bones rotting in the tomb. If those bones could speak to a passing wayfarer, they would call out and say:

To hwan, la, ðu earma man and þu ungesæliga, gymest ðu þysse worulde swa swiðe, oððe to hwan begæst ðu ungesæliga þe in geweald oferhiede oððe fyrenlustum, oððe to hwan upahebbast ðu þe ðam wælhreowestan hlafordum, þæt is leahtrum and uncystum? Beheald me and sceawa mine ban, and ondræd þe þinne fyrenlust and þine gytsunge. Þæt ðu eart nu, þæt ic wæs io. Þæt ic eom nu, þæt ðu wiorðest eft. (ECHOE 394.15.17–21)

[O why, you pathetic and disconsolate man, are you so preoccupied with this world? And why do you make yourself miserable under the tyranny of pride and wicked desire? And why do you submit yourself to those most cruel masters, namely sins and vices? Look upon me and consider my bones, and be terrified of your wanton desire and your greed. What you are now, I once was. What I am now, you shall become.]

This ghostly warning to the wayfarer is adapted from a sermon by Caesarius of Arles but is ultimately based on an ancient memento mori distich inscribed on Roman tombs: Quod nunc es fueram, famosus in orbe, viator, et quod nunc ego sum, tuque futuris eris.

Other homilies are tied to no particular liturgical occasion and could have been preached anytime, and no topics are better suited for anytime preaching than death, Doomsday, and the fate of the soul. Vercelli IX is a high-octane rollercoaster ride through hell, where a monstrous Cerberus-like hound awaits that has a hundred heads, a hundred eyes in each head, and each eye is as hot as fire. It has a hundred claws and a hundred fingers on each claw, and each finger is sharpened like a serpent’s fang. Vercelli XV foretells in nightmarish detail the plagues, earthquakes, blood-soaked skies, crashing mountains, battles between angels and demons, and other cataclysms that will rock the universe on the six days leading up to Doomsday, when the devil will round up the damned and thrust them into hell. St Peter will lock hell’s gates, then turn away because he cannot bear to look upon the suffering. In despair he will toss the keys over his shoulder behind him, which will clang loudly as they hit the floor of hell.

Exhortation dominates many Vercelli homilies, and systematic line-by-line exegesis is rare. What we often find is effortless shifts in the preaching mode between plain declarative prose and finely ornamented rhythmical passages that read more like poetry. Here’s a very popular example from Vercelli II, a verse-like litany of woes known as The Judgement of the Damned that is also repackaged in Vercelli XXI and five other parallel versions as a kaleidoscopic, spine-tingling harbinger of Doomsday. This is a single sentence, set out here the same way we print Old English poetry to highlight the two-stress rhythmic pattern that structures most half-lines of Old English verse. Alliteration is indicated by bold. Rhyme and off-rhyme are in italics. Other forms of sound-play are too subtle and intricate to mark here in a simple way. (To listen to a recording of this passage, click here).

On þam dæge us bið æteowed

se opena heofon     and engla þrym

and eallwihtna hryre     and eorþan forwyrht   

treowleasra gewinn       and tungla gefeall

þunorrada cyrm     and se þystra storm   

and þæra liga blæstm        

and graniendra gesceaft       and þæra gasta gefeoht       

and sio grimme gesyhð       and þa godcundan miht       

and se hata scur       and hellwarena dream       

and þara bymena sang     and se brada bryne   

and se bitera dæg     and þara sawla gedal       

and se deaðberenda draca       and diofla forwyrd    

and se nearwa seaþ       and se swearta deaþ   

and se byrnenda grund     and se blodiga stream   

and mycel fionda fyrhto     and se fyrena ren

and hæðenra granung     and hira heriga fyll

heofonwarena mengo     and hiora hlafordes miht     

and þæt mycle gemot

and sio reðe rod     and se rihta dom

and þara feonda gestal

and þa blacan andwlitan     and bifiendan word     and þara folca wop     

ond se scamienda here     and sio forglendrede hell

and þara wyrma gryre.  (ECHOE 394.2.17)

 

[On that day will be shown to us

the open heaven and the host of angels

and the destruction of all creation and the criminality of the earth,

the strife of unbelievers and the plummeting of the stars,

the crashing of thunderbolts and the dark storm

and the flashes of lightning

and the fate of the groaning and the battle of souls

and the horrible sight and the divine power

and the scalding rain and the wailing of the hell-dwellers

and the sounding of trumpets

and the widespread fire and the dreadful day

and the parting of souls

and the death-bearing dragon and the damnation of devils

and the narrow pit and the black death

and the burning ground and the river of blood

and the mighty dread of devils and the fiery rain

and the groaning of the heathen and the fall of their armies,

the multitude of hell-dwellers and the power of their lord and that great assembly

and the cruel Cross and the just Judgement

and the accusation of fiends

and the pale faces and trembling words and the weeping of people

and the shaming army and the fire-consumed hell

and the terror of the worms.]

Is this prose? Does it matter? When you think about the fact that all the texts in the Vercelli Book are written straight across the page without any visual cues to distinguish prose from verse, those labels begin to lose their force. Rather, it is the dramatic delivery and expressive energy of the performer that seems to have mattered most.

 

The Blickling Homilies

A second major collection of pre-Ælfrician anonymous Old English homilies is preserved in the Blickling manuscript (now Princeton University Library, W. H. Scheide Collection, MS 71), so called because it was long kept at Blickling Hall in Norfolk. These eighteen homilies were copied in their present form perhaps a bit later than the Vercelli Book. The language suggests a geographical origin in the East Midlands, and a plausible but inconclusive case has been made for Lincoln. Remarkably, one homily tells us the exact year in which it was preached: Blickling XI, for Ascension Day, warns that no one knows when the world will end except the Lord himself, but Christians should know that the end is not far off since all the predicted signs of Judgement Day have already occurred, except for the coming of Antichrist. In fact, the end will come in the very age in which we live, since five of the six ages of the world have already come and gone, and as the homilist says, þisse is þonne se mæsta dæl agangen efne nigon hund wintra and .lxxi. on þysse geare [the greatest part of this has now come to pass, exactly 971 winters this year] (ECHOE 382.11.22).

 

Princeton University Library, W. H. Scheide Collection, MS 71, fol. 72r: Blickling Homily XI

 

Whereas the contents of the Vercelli Book seem to have been cobbled together in almost random, haphazard fashion with no clear organizational plan, the Blickling homilies follow at least parts of the church calendar like many liturgical homiliaries, with texts for the Annunciation, Lent, Easter, Rogationtide, the Ascension, Pentecost, and the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, followed by readings for five saints’ feasts: John the Baptist, Peter and Paul, Michael, Martin, and Andrew. Large chunks of the manuscript are now lost, however, as we can gather from the sporadic and inconsistent quire signatures and the fragmentary and disordered state of several texts, so the full original contents and their intended sequence are impossible to know.

The parts that do survive possess a surprisingly rich and varied literary background, with elements that in many cases have Classical, patristic, and early medieval roots. Blickling II, for the Sunday before Lent, insists that Christians should ardently pray that the Lord will shield them from þa þusendlican cræftas deofles costunga [the thousandfold stratagems of the devil’s temptations] (ECHOE 382.2.55), a line that goes back ultimately to Vergil’s Aeneid VII.338, where the phrase mille nocendi artes is used to characterize the countless scheming ploys not of the devil but of the malevolent Fury Alecto. Much of Blickling III, for the beginning of Lent, draws on a homily by Gregory the Great and on Hiberno-Latin exegetical commentary on Christ’s temptation in the wilderness, but a short passage on the devil’s perverse desire to have Christ worship him is a faithful prose translation from Caelius Sedulius’s fifth-century Carmen paschale (ECHOE 382.3.36–37). The lurid vision of hell that concludes Blickling XVI, with its dark mists, icy woods, and black waters teeming with ravenous sea-beasts chomping on the souls of sinners, sounds suspiciously like the description of Grendel’s mere in Beowulf, and it turns out that both homily and poem probably do in fact make independent use of a common source, a lost Old English version of the apocryphal Vision of St Paul.

Some of the ideas expressed in these homilies are important because they signal new ways of thinking about subjects that Christian authorities had been writing about for centuries. In Blickling XI, the text dated internally to the year 971, Christ issues his commission to the apostles to go forth and spread the gospel throughout the world, then he abruptly shoots up into heaven, disappears from sight, and is swallowed by the clouds. This remarkable description of Christ’s unaided ascent, viewed from the perspective of the apostles below, is famously discussed by Meyer Schapiro in a classic 1943 essay on ‘The Image of the Disappearing Christ’, which argues that this passage is the earliest literary expression of a completely novel concept of Christ’s Ascension, one that emphasizes Christ’s sinless humanity, unburdened by the weight of mortal corruption, which enabled him to rise into heaven unassisted. Before this it was customary in art to depict the ascending Christ enclosed within a mandorla, supported and guided by angels, but as Schapiro explains, ‘The scene is conceived from the viewpoint of the apostles as eyewitnesses of the Ascension (why stand ye gazing, men of Galilee?); it is their real vision of the disappearing Christ which replaces the visionary and theological image of the triumphantly ascending Lord’ (p. 282). This distinctively Anglo-Saxon representation of Christ’s Ascension is first depicted in English art in the early eleventh-century Missal of Robert of Jumièges, where only Christ’s feet and legs are visible dangling from the clouds. Similar images appear in three later eleventh-century English manuscripts (the Bury St Edmunds Psalter, the Tiberius Psalter, and the Cotton Troper) before anything comparable appears in Continental art. Blickling XI is the earliest known literary witness to this idea, predating any of the artistic representations.

 

Other collections

The Blickling and Vercelli collections both stand out for their early dates and for the diversity and complexity of their contents, but there are other collections of Old English homilies that are just as interesting and that even overlap with Blickling and Vercelli. One such example is the eleventh-century volume now divided into two parts under the combined shelfmark Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Junius 85/86. Together this tiny pair of pocket-sized books — barely four by six inches and only 81 folios long — contains, depending on how you count them, either six or seven or eight homilies, probably for use by a priest. One is by Ælfric. Three are also in the Blickling manuscript. And the rest are unique texts that have been edited by Anna Maria Luiselli Fadda as her homilies I and VIII, though both are almost certainly made up of what were originally more than one text. Luiselli Fadda I is an address for Lent that culminates in a chilling rendition of the ‘Three Utterances of the Soul’ exemplum, followed by what reads like a separate sermon on the horrors of hell, the joys of heaven, and the tumultuous events of Doomsday. Luiselli Fadda VIII is a lengthy soul-and-body sermon, into the middle of which an Old English translation of the Visio Pauli has been inserted. Textual problems abound, but the preacher who had this little book in his saddle bag would have been well equipped to teach virtue, counsel penance, and strike fear into the hearts of his listeners.

And what, you may ask, are the ‘Three Utterances of the Soul’? This is a short dramatic narrative that was especially popular among Irish and Anglo-Saxon preachers in the eighth and ninth centuries, both in the British Isles and on the Continent. It tells that when a soul parts from its body at the moment of death, a crowd of angels and demons converge upon it to determine its fate (independent of divine judgement at this point). The damned soul utters three declarations about its lamentable plight to the demons, who reply in kind. Then the blessed soul has a parallel exchange with the angels. The first half of the story as it appears in Bazire-Cross Homily IX goes like this (to listen to a recording of this passage, click here):

Ne mæg seo sawul þonne nawiht geseon in þas woruld, ac heo on þeostrum and on gedwolan swyðe unbliðe færð and ðus cweð: ‘Magna est ista angustia!’ Ðæt is, heo cweð: ‘Eala, hwæt! Þis is mycel nearones!’ Hire þonne sona andswariað þa deoflu and ðus cweþað: ‘Mare þe is toward þonne we ðe gebringað mid urum ealdre deofle, se is gebunden in þam nyðemestan hellegrunde mid þære menigo his gemæccan’. Ðonne cweð seo sawul þus oðre siðe: ‘Magne sunt tenebre iste. Eala, hwæt! Þis syndon mycele þeostru!’ Hire þonne andswariað þa deoflu and ðus cweþað: ‘Maran þe syndon toweardes þonne we þe gelædað in þa neoðemestan þeostru, þær bið eagena wop and toða gristbitung’. And heo þonne gyta seo sawul þriddan siðe þus cweð: Asperum est iter. Eala, hwæt! Þis is grimlic siðfæt þe we on syndon!’ Hyre þonne sona andswariað þa deoflu and dus cweþað: ‘Ðe is mycle grimlicre toward þonne þu gesihst þa grimnesse þines siðfætes, and ðu byst þæra soðfæstra husa benumen, and ðu byst gelæded in þa witu hellecarcernes. (ECHOE 331.53.33–52)

[Now the soul can see nothing in this world, but she journeys in darkness and ignorance very unhappily and thus says: ‘Great is the affliction!’ That is, she says: ‘Oh alas! This is great distress!’ The devils then answer her right away and thus say: ‘It will be greater for you up ahead when we bring you to our chief devil, who is bound in the nethermost pit of hell with the multitude of his companions’. Then the soul says a second time: ‘Great is the darkness! Oh alas! These are great shadows!’ The devils then answer her and say: ‘There will be more up ahead when we lead you into the nethermost darkness, where there is the weeping of eyes and the grinding of teeth’. And then the soul says a third time: ‘The journey is rough! Oh alas! This is a cruel journey that we are on!’ The devils then answer her right away and say: ‘It will be even more cruel for you up ahead when you realise the severity of your journey, and you will be deprived of the house of the righteous, and you will be led into the torments of the infernal prison’.]

A similar exchange then takes place between the blessed soul and the angels guiding it to heaven, where St Michael presents the good soul to the throne of Christ. Over fifty examples of this little tale have been identified in Latin, Old English, and Old Irish, and it must have been popular for centuries.

 

Sunday Letter Homilies

Six Old English homilies survive in various manuscripts that foreground the importance of Sunday as the day of the Lord by citing a (non-biblical!) heavenly letter sent directly by God to the papal altar at St Peter’s in Rome. In this so-called Sunday Letter, God promotes Sunday as the day of the week on which most of the important events of salvation history took place. As a consequence, the letter threatens all those who do not observe this day properly with all sorts of evils, e.g. pagan armies who will attack women and children, bad weather that will destroy crops with hail-stones weighing no less than five pounds (and ælc an hagelstan wegeð fif pund [ECHOE 68.3.35]), and even disabilities inflicted on babies who are fathered on a Sunday:

And þa cildra þe beoð begiten on sunnanniht and on þam halgan freolsnihtum hi sceolan beon geborene butan eagon and butan fotum and butan handon and eac swilce dumbe. (ECHOE 35.4.80)

[And the children who are begotten on Sunday night and on the night of feast days, they shall be born without eyes and without feet and without hands and will also be mute.]

This is but one example of the emotional manipulation of early English congregations.

 

Catenae

Some later homilies are composite pieces of earlier materials, such as London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 489, art. 5, a homily whose first part uses Ælfric’s first series Catholic Homily on the Paternoster, interspersing it with his Admonitions in Lent, while the second part is concocted of sentences taken from no fewer than four homilies traditionally associated with Wulfstan (Napier homilies V, XIX, XXIV, XL). In a similar way, parts of four Vercelli homilies (nos. IV, IX, X, and XXI) were combined and extended by a homilist into what is known today as Napier homily XXX (ECHOE 331.23). The semi-poetic rhythm of some of the borrowed passages has been prosified during the process.

 

Bibliography

Manuscripts

London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 489

Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Junius 85/86

Princeton University Library, W. H. Scheide Collection, MS 71

Vercelli, Biblioteca Capitolare, MS CXVII

 

Editions and Translations

Assmann, Bruno, ed., Angelsächsische Homilien und Heiligenleben, Bibliothek der angelsächsischen Prosa 3 (Kassel: Wigand, 1889; reprinted Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1964).

Bazire, Joyce, and James E. Cross, eds., Eleven Old English Rogationtide Homilies, 2nd ed., King’s College London Medieval Studies 4 (London: King’s College London, 1989).

Belfour, A. O., ed. and trans., Twelfth-Century Homilies in MS Bodley 343. I. Text and Translation, EETS O.S. 137 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1909; reprinted London: Oxford University Press, 1962).

Chadbon, John Nicholas, ed., ‘Oxford, Bodleian Library, MSS Junius 85 and 86: An Edition of a Witness to the Old English Homiletic Tradition’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Leeds, 1993).

Downs, Yvonne L., ed., ‘An Edition of an Old English Easter Day Homily on the Harrowing of Hell (De descensu Christi ad inferos), Article 33 in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Manuscript Junius 121’ (unpublished MA thesis, University of Manchester, 1980).

ECHOE = Rudolf, Winfried, Thomas N. Hall, Paul Langeslag, Grant L. Simpson, Charles D. Wright, Susan E. Irvine, and others, eds., ECHOE Online: Electronic Corpus of Anonymous Homilies in Old English <https://echoe.uni-goettingen.de> [accessed 29 September 2025].

Faerber, Robert, ‘Deux homélies de Pâques en anglais ancien’, Apocrypha 6 (1995), 93–126.

Getz, Robert R., ed., ‘Four Blickling Homilies’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Toronto, 2008).

Grant, Raymond J. S., ed. and trans., Three Homilies from Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 41: The Assumption, St Michael, and the Passion (Ottawa: Tecumseh Press, 1982).

Haines, Dorothy, ed. and trans., Sunday Observance and the Sunday Letter in Anglo-Saxon England, Anglo-Saxon Texts 8 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2010).

Kelly, Richard J., ed. and trans., The Blickling Homilies: Edition and Translation (London: Continuum, 2003).

Luiselli Fadda, Anna Maria, ed. and trans., Nuove omelie anglosassoni della rinascenza benedettina, Filologia germanica: Testi e studi 1 (Florence: Felice Le Monnier, 1977).

McDougall, David, and Ian McDougall, eds. and trans., ‘Evil Tongues: A Previously Unedited Old English Sermon’, Anglo-Saxon England 26 (1997), 209–29.

Morris, Richard, ed. and trans., The Blickling Homilies, 3 vols., EETS O.S. 58, 63, 73 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1874–80; reprinted in 1 volume, 1967).

Napier, Arthur S., ed., Wulfstan: Sammlung der ihm zugeschriebenen Homilien nebst Untersuchungen über ihre Echtheit, Sammlung englischer Denkmäler in kritischen Ausgaben 4 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1883; reprinted with a Supplement by Klaus Ostheeren, Dublin: Hely Thom, 1967).

Nicholson, Lewis E., ed., The Vercelli Homilies: Translations from the Anglo-Saxon (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1991).

Ortoleva, Grazia, ed., Dall’omiliario di Blickling: Dominica Pascha, Quaderni di Filologia Germanica 17 (Messina: Edizioni Dr. Antonino Sfameni, 2008).

Pelle, Stephen, ed. and trans., New Latin Contexts for Old English Homilies: Editions and Studies of Ten Sources and Analogues, Studies and Texts 233 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2023).

Schaefer, Kenneth Gordon, ed., ‘An Edition of Five Old English Homilies for Palm Sunday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 1972).

Scragg, D. G., ed., The Vercelli Homilies and Related Texts, EETS O.S. 300 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).

Teresi, Loredana, ed. and trans., ‘Be Heofonwarum ⁊ be Helwarum: A Complete Edition’, in Early Medieval English Texts and Interpretations: Studies Presented to Donald G. Scragg, ed. Elaine Treharne and Susan Rosser. MRTS 252 (Tempe, AZ: ACMRS, 2002), pp. 211–44.

Tristram, Hildegard L. C., ed. and trans, ‘Vier altenglische Predigten aus der heterodoxen Tradition, mit Kommentar, Übersetzung und Glossar sowie drei weiteren Texten im Anhang’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität zu Freiburg i. Br., 1970).

Wenisch, Paul, ed., ‘Nu Bidde We Eow for Godes Lufon: A Hitherto Unpublished Homiletic Text in CCCC 162’, in Words, Texts and Manuscripts: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Culture Presented to Helmut Gneuss on the Occasion of His Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. Michael Korhammer, Karl Reichl, and Hans Sauer (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1992), pp. 43–52.

Zaffuto, Rosa, ed., ‘Edizione e analisi dell’omelia “Ic bidde and eadmodlice lære men þa leofestan” (MS. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 201)’ (Dottorato di ricerca in cultura e tradizioni letterarie del mondo germanico antico e medievale (XI ciclo), University of Rome 3, 1999).

 

Discussion

Aronstam, Robin Ann, ‘The Blickling Homilies: A Reflection of Popular Anglo-Saxon Belief’, in Law, Church, and Society: Essays in Honor of Stephan Kuttner, ed. Kenneth Pennington and Robert Somerville (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977), pp. 271–80.

Cioffi, Raffaele, Un florilegio di virtù cristiane: i sermoni e le omelie del Vercelli Book, Bibliotheca Germanica, Studi e testi 44 (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2019).

———, La prosa omiletica insulare: Fonti e stilemi. Il caso dei sermoni escatologici del Vercelli Book (Turin: Accademia University Press, 2020).

Clayton, Mary, ‘Delivering the Damned: A Motif in OE Homiletic Prose’, Medium Ævum 55 (1986), 92–102.

———, ‘Homiliaries and Preaching in Anglo-Saxon England’, Peritia 4 (1985), 207–42. Reprinted in Old English Prose: Basic Readings, ed. Paul E. Szarmach with the assistance of Deborah A. Oosterhouse, Basic Readings in Anglo-Saxon England 5; Garland Reference Library of the Humanities 1447 (New York: Garland, 2000), pp. 151–98.

Cross, James E., Cambridge Pembroke College MS 25: A Carolingian Sermonary Used by Anglo-Saxon Preachers, King’s College London Medieval Studies 1 (London: King’s College London, 1987).

Cudmore, Danielle, ‘Preaching the Landscape in the Blickling Homilies’, Journal of Literary Onomastics 6 (2017), 61–75.

Dalbey, Marcia A, ‘Patterns of Preaching in the Blickling Easter Homily’, American Benedictine Review 24 (1973), 478–92.

———, ‘“Soul’s Medicine”: Religious Psychology in the Blickling Rogation Homilies’, Neophilologus 64 (1980), 470–77.

Deshman, Robert, ‘Another Look at the Disappearing Christ: Corporeal and Spiritual Vision in Early Medieval Images’, The Art Bulletin 79 (1997), 518–46. Reprinted with additional bibliography in Eye and Mind: Collected Essays in Anglo-Saxon and Early Medieval Art by Robert Deshman, ed. Adam S. Cohen, Publications of the Richard Rawlinson Center (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2010), pp. 242–75.

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———, ‘The Ubi Sunt Motif and the Soul-and-Body Legend in Old English Homilies: Sources and Relationships’, JEGP 105 (2006), 365–87.

Fox, Michael, ‘Vercelli Homilies XIX–XXI, the Ascension Day Homily in Cambridge, Corpus Christi 162, and the Catechetical Tradition from Augustine to Wulfstan’, in New Readings in the Vercelli Book, ed. Samantha Zacher and Andy Orchard, Toronto Anglo-Saxon Series 4 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), pp. 254–79.

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Hall, Thomas N., ‘The Armaments of John the Baptist in Blickling Homily 14 and the Exeter Book Descent into Hell’, in Intertexts: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Culture Presented to Paul E. Szarmach, ed. Virginia Blanton and Helene Scheck, MRTS 334, Arizona Studies in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance 24 (Tempe, AZ: ACMRS in collaboration with Brepols, 2008), pp. 289–306.

———, ‘The Portents at Christ’s Birth in Vercelli Homilies V and VI: Some Analogues from Medieval Sermons and Biblical Commentaries’, in New Readings in the Vercelli Book, ed. Samantha Zacher and Andy Orchard, Toronto Anglo-Saxon Series 4 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), pp. 62–97.

———, ‘The Psychedelic Transmogrification of the Soul in Vercelli Homily IV’, in Time and Eternity: The Medieval Discourse. Selected Papers from the International Medieval Congress, Leeds, July 2000, ed. Gerhard Jaritz and Gerson Moreno-Riaño, International Medieval Research 9 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), pp. 309–22.

———, ‘The Reversal of the Jordan in Vercelli Homily 16 and in Old English Literature’, Traditio 45 (1989–90), 53–86.

———, ‘The Twelvefold Division of the Red Sea in Two Old English Prose Texts’, Medium Ævum 58 (1989), 298–304.

Hall, Thomas N., and Winfried Rudolf, eds., Sermons, Saints, and Sources: Studies in the Homiletic and Hagiographic Literature of Early Medieval England, Studies in Old English Literature 6 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2024).

Heffernan, Thomas J., ‘“The Sun Shall be Turned to Darkness and the Moon to Blood”: How Sin and Redemption Affect Heavenly Space in an Old English Transfiguration Homily’, in Place, Space, and Landscape in Medieval Narrative, ed. Laura L. Howes, Tennessee Studies in Literature 43 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2007), pp. 63–78.

Hill, Thomas D., ‘Delivering the Damned in Old English Anonymous Homilies and Jón Arason’s Ljómur’, Medium Ævum 61 (1992), 75–82.

———, ‘The Seven Joys of Heaven in “Christ III” and Old English Homiletic Texts’, Notes and Queries n.s. 16 (1969), 165–66.

———, ‘When God Blew Satan Out of Heaven: The Motif of Exsufflation in Vercelli Homily XIX and Later English Literature’, Leeds Studies in English n.s. 16 (1985), 132–41.

Jefferey, J. Elizabeth, Blickling Spirituality and the Old English Vernacular Homily: A Textual Analysis, Studies in Medieval Literature 1 (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1989).

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Lendinara, Patrizia, ‘“Frater Non Redimit, Redimet Homo . . .”: A Homiletic Motif and Its Variants in Old English’, in Early Medieval English Texts and Interpretations: Studies Presented to Donald G. Scragg, ed. Elaine Treharne and Susan Rosser, MRTS 252 (Tempe, AZ: ACMRS, 2002), pp. 67–80.

Pelle, Stephen, ‘Lambeth Homily 4 and the Textual Tradition of the Visio Pauli’, in Old English Lexicology and Lexicography: Essays in Honor of Antonette DiPaolo Healey, ed. Maren Clegg Hyer, Haruko Momma, and Samantha Zacher (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2020), pp. 80–93.

———, ‘Revisiting Some “Stock Descriptions of Heaven and Hell” in the Old English Anonymous Homilies’, in Sermons, Saints, and Sources: Studies in the Homiletic and Hagiographic Literature of Early Medieval England, ed. Thomas N. Hall and Winfried Rudolf, Studies in Old English Literature 6 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2024), pp. 173–202.

———, ‘The Seven Pains of Hell: The Latin Source of an Old English Homiletic Motif’, Review of English Studies n.s. 62 (2011), 167–80.

———, ‘Source Studies in the Lambeth Homilies’, JEGP 113 (2014), 34–72.

———, ‘The Sources and Composition of Two Old English Sunday Letter Homilies’, in The Anonymous Old English Homily: Sources, Composition, and Variation, ed. Winfried Rudolf and Susan Irvine, Medieval and Renaissance Authors and Texts 25 (Leiden: Brill, 2021), pp. 207–33.

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———, ‘Variatio Delectat – Altenglische Themapredigten als unfeste Texte’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Jena, 2005).

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———, ‘The Corpus of Vernacular Homilies and Prose Saints’ Lives before Ælfric’, Anglo-Saxon England 8 (1979), 223–77. Reprinted in Old English Prose: Basic Readings, ed. Paul E. Szarmach with the assistance of Deborah A. Oosterhouse, Basic Readings in Anglo-Saxon England 5; Garland Reference Library of the Humanities 1447 (New York: Garland, 2000), pp. 73–150.

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———, ‘Variant Texts of an Old English Homily: Vercelli X and Stylistic Readers’, in The Preservation and Transmission of Anglo-Saxon Culture: Selected Papers from the 1991 Meeting of the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists, ed. Paul E. Szarmach and Joel T. Rosenthal, Studies in Medieval Culture 40 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1997), pp. 335–51.

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———, ‘The Old English “Macarius” Homily, Vercelli Homily IV, and Ephrem Latinus, De paenitentia’, in Via Crucis: Studies in Medieval Sources and Ideas in Memory of J. E. Cross, ed. Thomas N. Hall in collaboration with Thomas D. Hill and Charles D. Wright, Medieval European Studies 1 (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2002), pp. 210–34.

———, ‘The Pledge of the Soul: A Judgment Theme in Old English Homiletic Literature and Cynewulf ’s Elene’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 91 (1990), 23–30.

———, ‘Sourcing Old English Anonymous Homilies: The Pioneers (Max Förster, Rudolph Willard, and J. E. Cross)’, in The Anonymous Old English Homily: Sources, Composition, and Variation, ed. Winfried Rudolf and Susan Irvine, Medieval and Renaissance Authors and Texts 25 (Leiden: Brill, 2020), pp. 36–84.

———, ‘Vercelli Homily XV and The Apocalypse of Thomas’, in New Readings in the Vercelli Book, ed. Samantha Zacher and Andy Orchard, Toronto Anglo-Saxon Series 4 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), pp. 150–84.

———, ‘Vercelli Homily XXI, Smaragdus of Saint-Mihiel’s Commentary on the Rule of Benedict, and the Laudes Regiae’, Revue Bénédictine 134 (2024), 282–315.

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———, ‘Sin, Syntax, and Synonyms: Rhetorical Style and Structure in Vercelli Homily X’, JEGP 103 (2004), 53–76.

 

 

Tom Hall (thomas.hall@uni-goettingen.de) is on the faculty of the Seminar für Englische Philologie at the University of Göttingen. He is co-author, with Charles D. Wright and Thomas D. Hill, of A New Commentary on the Old English ‘Prose Solomon and Saturn’ and ‘Adrian and Ritheus’ Dialogues, Studies in Old English Literature 4 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2024).

Winfried Rudolf (wrudolf@gwdg.de) is Chair of Medieval English Studies at the Seminar für Englische Philologie, University of Göttingen. He is a member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the principal investigator and director of the ECHOE project (echoe.uni-goettingen.de). Together with Tom Hall he has edited Sermons, Saints, and Sources: Studies in the Homiletic and Hagiographic Literature of Early Medieval England, Studies in Old English Literature 6 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2024).