Ælfric's Catholic Homilies: Introduction, Commentary and Glossary PDF
Preview Ælfric's Catholic Homilies: Introduction, Commentary and Glossary
ÆLFRIC’S CATHOLIC HOMILIES I N T R O D U C T IO N , C O M M E N T A R Y A N D G L O S S A R Y E A R L Y E N G L I S H T E X T S O C IE T Y S.S. 18 2000 ÆLFRIC’S CATHOLIC HOMILIES INTRODUCTION, COMMENTARY AND GLOSSARY BY M ALCO LM GO DDEN Published for THE EARLY ENGLISH T E X T SOCIETY by the OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 2000 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Great Clarendon Street, Oxford 0x2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s aim of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogotá Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madras Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Paris Sào Paulo Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Early English Text Society, 2000 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2000 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organizations. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same conditions on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data applied for ISBN 0-19-722419-9 1 3 5 7 9 10 8642 Typeset by Joshua Associates Ltd., Oxford Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Print Wright Ltd., Ipswich PREFACE This is the third and final volume in a project which began with the publication of my edition of the Second Series of Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies in 1979 and continued with the publication of Peter Clemoes’ edition of the First Series in 1997. It was originally conceived as a collaboration between Peter Clemoes and myself, and we mapped out the general content and structure together in the early 1970s, but Peter was in the end still embroiled in revising his edition of the text when he died in 1996, and this final volume was left to me. The extensive and complex manuscript tradition of the two series, together with Ælfric’s continuous revision of the text and his reissuing of the homilies from time to time in different kinds of collections, is discussed in detail in the introductions to the previous two volumes. This volume provides a brief general introduction, dealing with the composition of the text and the treatment of sources, a commentary on each homily which summarises its main concerns and sources and gives all the source-passages I have been able to trace, together with comments on any necessary points of detail; and a glossary. An analysis of the language of the text, though long customary in EETS volumes, was excluded from the original plan since even then it seemed impractical: this is by far the longest extant text in Old English (some twelve per cent of the extant corpus of prose and verse in Old English), it has been available in print for 150 years and has been the focus of countless philological studies and textbooks, and although much remains to do, and the Royal MS which forms the basis for the text of CH I has been relatively little studied, it is clear that at least another lengthy volume, and many more years, would be needed to do justice to the language. I first embarked on the work for this volume in 1970 and have acquired many debts to friends and colleagues over the years. I acknowledge with pleasure the support of Pembroke College, Cam bridge, where I was a research fellow 1969-72; the University of Liverpool, where I was a lecturer 1972-5; the University of Oxford, where I have been a lecturer and subsequently professor since 1976, together with Exeter College where I held a tutorial fellowship 1976-91 and Pembroke College where I have held a professorial fellowship since 1991. The officers and council members of the Early English Text VI PREFACE Society have been their usual patient and supportive selves, from Pamela Gradon who was editorial secretary at the outset to her current successor Dr Helen Spencer, and Professor Janet Bately, who read the typescript for the Society and made countless suggestions for change and improvement. Of the work of others, I have profited especially from the work of Professor Mary Clayton of University College Dublin and Dr Susan Irvine of University College London, both former graduate students; and, it goes without saying, from the work of Professor J.E. Cross, who was a generous and supportive head of department at Liverpool. Gordon Whatley of Queen’s College, New York, was ex tremely generous in giving me an advance copy of his massive work on the saints’ lives known in Anglo-Saxon England, and my use of it will be evident throughout the volume. Professor Simon Keynes was prompt and generous in responding to my queries and arguments about the dating and background of Ælfric’s work. Brad Bedingfield of Oxford University helped on the glossary, and his work on the relation of the homilies to the liturgy has much influenced my thinking. Other debts to colleagues and former students are noted in the text and footnotes. The biggest debt, however, is to Dr Rohini Jayatilaka, who made sure that I could and would access the latest electronic resources, found articles that I could not trace, checked endless references and quotations, queried dodgy arguments, and reduced an enormous variety of citations to order. The book would not have been finished without her. My introduction to this project came from Peter Clemoes, who signed me up to it when I was an undergraduate in 1965. I hardly dare imagine that he would have liked the result; but his humanity and generosity is behind it all. CONTENTS ERRATA IN CH I AND II ix ABBREVIATIONS AND SHORT TITLES X INTRODUCTION xxi Ælfric of Eynsham xxi The nature of the Catholic Homilies xxi The date and origin of the Catholic Homilies xxix The alliterative style xxxvi Ælfric’s sources xxxviii Biblical sources xliv Ælfric’s working methods xlv Summary List of Sources xlvi COMMENTARY i GLOSSARY 671
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