Old English literature refers to poetry and prose written in Old English in early medieval England, from the 7th century to the decades after the Norman Conquest of 1066, a period often termed Anglo-Saxon England. The 7th-century work Cædmon's Hymn is often considered as the oldest surviving poem in English, as it appears in an 8th-century copy of Bede's text, the Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Poetry written in the mid 12th century represents some of the latest post-Norman examples of Old English. Adherence to the grammatical rules of Old English is largely inconsistent in 12th-century work, and by the 13th century the grammar and syntax of Old English had almost completely deteriorated, giving way to the much larger Middle English corpus of literature.
The Rule of Saint Benedict is a book of precepts written in Latin c. 530 by St Benedict of Nursia for monks living communally under the authority of an abbot.
The Old English Bible translations are the partial translations of the Bible prepared in medieval England into the Old English language. The translations are from Latin texts, not the original languages.
Ælfric of Eynsham was an English abbot and a student of Æthelwold of Winchester, and a consummate, prolific writer in Old English of hagiography, homilies, biblical commentaries, and other genres. He is also known variously as Ælfric the Grammarian, Ælfric of Cerne, and Ælfric the Homilist. In the view of Peter Hunter Blair, he was "a man comparable both in the quantity of his writings and in the quality of his mind even with Bede himself." According to Claudio Leonardi, he "represented the highest pinnacle of Benedictine reform and Anglo-Saxon literature".
The Old English poem Judith describes the beheading of Assyrian general Holofernes by Israelite Judith of Bethulia. It is found in the same manuscript as the heroic poem Beowulf, the Nowell Codex, dated ca. 975–1025. The Old English poem is one of many retellings of the Holofernes–Judith tale as it was found in the Book of Judith, still present in the Catholic and Orthodox Christian Bibles. The other extant version is by Ælfric of Eynsham, late 10th-century Anglo-Saxon abbot and writer; his version is a homily of the tale.
De duodecim abusivis saeculi, also titled simply De duodecim abusivis, is a Hiberno-Latin treatise on social and political morality written by an anonymous Irish author between 630 and 700, or between 630 and 650. During the Middle Ages, the work was very popular throughout Europe.
West Saxon is the term applied to the two different dialects Early West Saxon and Late West Saxon with West Saxon being one of the four distinct regional dialects of Old English. The three others were Kentish, Mercian and Northumbrian. West Saxon was the language of the kingdom of Wessex, and was the basis for successive widely used literary forms of Old English: the Early West Saxon of Alfred the Great's time, and the Late West Saxon of the late 10th and 11th centuries. Due to the Saxons' establishment as a politically dominant force in the Old English period, the West Saxon dialects became the strongest dialects in Old English manuscript writing.
Layamon's Brut, also known as The Chronicle of Britain, is a Middle English alliterative verse poem compiled and recast by the English priest Layamon. Layamon's Brut is 16,096 lines long and narrates a fictionalized version of the history of Britain up to the Early Middle Ages. It is the first work of history written in English since the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Named for Britain's mythical founder, Brutus of Troy, the poem is largely based on the Anglo-Norman French Roman de Brut by Wace, which is in turn a version of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Latin Historia Regum Britanniae. Layamon's poem, however, is longer than both and includes an enlarged section on the life and exploits of King Arthur. It is written in the alliterative verse style commonly used in Middle English poetry by rhyming chroniclers, the two halves of the alliterative lines being often linked by rhyme as well as by alliteration.
A homiliarium or homiliary is a collection of homilies, or familiar explanations of the Gospels.
The Regularis Concordia was the most important document of the English Benedictine Reform, sanctioned by the Council of Winchester in about 973.
Smaragdus of Saint-Mihiel< OSB was a Benedictine monk of Saint-Mihiel Abbey near Verdun. He was a significant writer of homilies and commentaries.
The Old English Hexateuch, or Aelfric Paraphrase, is the collaborative project of the late Anglo-Saxon period that translated the six books of the Hexateuch into Old English, presumably under the editorship of Abbot Ælfric of Eynsham. It is the first English vernacular translation of the first six books of the Old Testament, i.e. the five books of the Torah and Joshua. It was probably made for use by lay people.
The Wessex Gospels are a translation of the four gospels of the Christian Bible into a West Saxon dialect of Old English. Produced from approximately AD 990 in England, this version is the first translation of all four gospels into stand-alone Old English text. Seven manuscript copies survive. Its transcribing was supervised by the monk Ælfric of Eynsham.
Ælfric Bata was a monk and a disciple of Ælfric of Eynsham at Winchester some time before 1005. The epithet Bata is unclear; the formerly accepted interpretation "the bat" has been rejected, and Tengvik suggests it means 'stout'.
Quaestiones in Genesim is a commentary on the biblical Book of Genesis by the Anglo-Saxon scholar Alcuin, addressed to his protege Sigewulf, comprising 281 questions and corresponding answers about Genesis. It has been dated by Michael Fox to around 796.
Porcarius I was the abbot of Lérins in the late fifth century and into the early sixth. He wrote at least one spiritual treatise in Latin and two other works have been tentatively assigned to him.
Pseudo-Basil is the designation used by scholars for any anonymous author of a text falsely or erroneously attributed to Basil of Caesarea. Pseudo-Basilian works are usually known by Latin titles. They are often misattributed only in translation. They include:
Saint John of Réôme was an early Christian abbot in what is now Moutiers-Saint-Jean in the Côte-d'Or department of France.
The Excerptiones Prisciani is a tenth-century compilation of Priscian's Institutiones grammaticae and Donatus's Ars maior.
