The Blickling homilies are a collection of anonymous homilies from Anglo-Saxon England. They are written in Old English, and were written down at some point before the end of the tenth century, making them one of the oldest collections of sermons to survive from medieval England, the other main witness being the Vercelli Book. [1] Their name derives from Blickling Hall in Norfolk, which once housed them; the manuscript is now at Princeton, Scheide Library, MS 71.
The homilies in the collection deal primarily with Lent, with items for Passion Sunday, Palm Sunday and Holy Week, as well as homilies dealing with Rogation Days, Ascension Day and Pentecost. The rest of the homilies in the collection are saints’ feast days.
As numbered in the first edition of the homilies, by Richard Morris, the contents are:
Little is known about the origin of the homilies or their intended audience. In the assessment of D. G. Scragg, the manuscript
There is little overlap with the homilies of the Vercelli Book, from south-eastern England, suggesting that the Blickling Homilies were gathered in a different regional and intellectual milieu; the language of the Homilies suggests a Mercian origin'. The collection does have some overlaps with another homily collection, MS Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 198, whose origins are also poorly understood, [2] but which are likely to have been in the West Midlands. [3]
Meanwhile, although it is surely significant that the homilies were in Old English rather than Latin, 'little sense of a specific congregation or reading audience prevails in this collection of ancient and commonplace materials for the instruction of Christian folk', and the intended audience of the material is essentially unknown. [4]
The most famous and extensively studied of the Blickling Homilies is XVI (XVII in the numbering of Morris's edition), 'To Sanctae Michaeles Mæssan' ('On St Michael's Mass', generally celebrated on September 29 in tenth- to eleventh-century Anglo-Saxon England). [5] The homily is not noted for being well composed, [6] but for its relationship with Anglo-Saxon pilgrimage to Italy on the one hand, and some striking similarities with the Old English poem Beowulf on the other.
The homily is a translation of a version of a Latin hagiographical text known as 'De apparitione Sancti Michaelis' ( Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina 5948). [7] This story provides a foundation myth for the Sanctuary of Monte Sant'Angelo, in Apulia, southeast Italy, the oldest Western European church dedicated to St Michael and a major pilgrimage site in the Middle Ages. Our earliest manuscripts of 'De apparitione' are of the early ninth century, and so this version was probably composed in the eighth century. The text tells of three different 'apparitions' by St Michael, which 'appear to have nothing in common and suggest at least three layers of narrative accretion'; the oldest strata of the text seem to go back to an earlier, lost version of perhaps the sixth century. [8] Having come to Italy from the Near East, the cult of Michael spread to Frankia, where peregrinating Irish monks learned of it; the cult became popular in Ireland, from where the cult had spread to Anglo-Saxon England already by the seventh century. [9] It is also clear that a number of Anglo-Saxon pilgrims passed through Monte Gargano: among the many pilgrims who inscribed their names on the cave walls, five bore Anglo-Saxon names, some inscribing in runes. Their date is uncertain but must be between c. 700 and c. 850. [10] In the assessment of North, Allard, and Gillies, 'this aspect of history transforms the genre of this work [Blickling Homily XVI] ... from ... homily to tourist brochure'. [11] Blickling Homily XVI seems to have a common source with Ælfric of Eynsham's later homily for September 29, which was clearly a Latin or vernacular version of the 'De apparitione'. [12]
The most striking difference between Blickling Homily XVI and the Latin text of which it is a translation is that Blickling Homily XVI ends with a description of Hell, derived ultimately from the Visio sancti Pauli ; the closest parallels are with a ninth-century, Latin version of the Visio known as Redaction XI, [13] of Insular and probably Irish origin. [14] The Blickling Homily XVI description of Hell is recognised as a close parallel to the description of Grendel's home in Beowulf (lines 2719-33). The homily may have influenced the poem directly, or both texts may have drawn on common sources; [15] the main recent study of the connection is Charles D. Wright's, which argues for independent descent from a common source. [16]
The Blickling homilies were first edited and translated in the nineteenth century by Richard Morris, and were republished again in a more recent volume by Richard J. Kelly, although several scholars have since pointed to the many serious deficiencies with the latter. [17] [18] [19] Samantha Zacher has indicated that a new edition is underway at the University of Toronto. [20] There is also a new translation in progress at Rutgers University, where as of St. Valentine's Day 2021 the first five homilies are available [21] and Aaron Hostetter calls for translations. [22]
Eadwig was King of England from 23 November 955 until his death. He was the elder son of Edmund I and his first wife Ælfgifu, who died in 944. Eadwig and his brother Edgar were young children when their father was killed trying to rescue his seneschal from attack by an outlawed thief on 26 May 946. As Edmund's sons were too young to rule he was succeeded by his brother Eadred, who suffered from ill health and died unmarried in his early 30s.
Edgar was King of the English from 959 until his death. He became king of all England on his brother's death. He was the younger son of King Edmund I and his first wife Ælfgifu. A detailed account of Edgar's reign is not possible, because only a few events were recorded by chroniclers and monastic writers were more interested in recording the activities of the leaders of the church.
Eadred was King of the English from 26 May 946 until his death. He was the younger son of Edward the Elder and his third wife Eadgifu, and a grandson of Alfred the Great. His elder brother, Edmund, was killed trying to protect his seneschal from an attack by a violent thief. Edmund's two sons, Eadwig and Edgar, were then young children, so Eadred became king. He suffered from ill health in the last years of his life and he died at the age of a little over thirty, having never married. He was succeeded successively by his nephews, Eadwig and Edgar.
Æthelweard was an ealdorman and the author of a Latin version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle known as the Chronicon Æthelweardi. He was a kinsman of the royal family, being a descendant of the Anglo-Saxon King Æthelred I of Wessex, the elder brother of Alfred the Great.
Ælfweard was the second son of Edward the Elder, the eldest born to his second wife Ælfflæd.
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".
Ecgbert was an 8th-century cleric who established the archdiocese of York in 735. In 737, Ecgbert's brother became king of Northumbria and the two siblings worked together on ecclesiastical issues. Ecgbert was a correspondent of Bede and Boniface and the author of a legal code for his clergy. Other works have been ascribed to him, although the attribution is doubted by modern scholars.
The Vercelli Book is one of the oldest of the four Old English Poetic Codices. It is an anthology of Old English prose and verse that dates back to the late 10th century. The manuscript is housed in the Capitulary Library of Vercelli, in northern Italy.
Ealdwulf, also known as Aldulf or Adulf, was king of East Anglia from c. 664 to 713. He was the son of Hereswitha, a Northumbrian princess, and of Æthilric, whose brothers all ruled East Anglia during the 7th century. Ealdwulf recalled that when he was very young, he saw the Christian/pagan temple belonging to his ancestor Rædwald.
Andreas is an Old English poem, which tells the story of St. Andrew the Apostle, while commenting on the literary role of the "hero". It is believed to be a translation of a Latin work, which is originally derived from the Greek story The Acts of Andrew and Matthew in the City of Anthropophagi, dated around the 4th century. However, the author of Andreas added the aspect of the Germanic hero to the Greek story to create the poem Andreas, where St. Andrew is depicted as an Old English warrior, fighting against evil forces. This allows Andreas to have both poetic and religious significance.
Eadnoth the Younger or Eadnoth I was a medieval monk and prelate, successively Abbot of Ramsey and Bishop of Dorchester. From a prominent family of priests in the Fens, he was related to Oswald, Bishop of Worcester, Archbishop of York and founder of Ramsey Abbey. Following in the footsteps of his illustrious kinsman, he initially became a monk at Worcester. He is found at Ramsey supervising construction works in the 980s, and around 992 actually became Abbot of Ramsey. As abbot, he founded two daughter houses in what is now Cambridgeshire, namely, a monastery at St Ives and a nunnery at Chatteris. At some point between 1007 and 1009, he became Bishop of Dorchester, a see that encompassed much of the eastern Danelaw. He died at the Battle of Assandun in 1016, fighting Cnut the Great.
The Vercelli homilies are a collection of twenty-three prose entries within the Vercelli book and exist as an important example of Old English prose structure, owing to the predominance of poetry within the pool of extant Old English literature. In keeping with the origins of the Vercelli manuscript in general, little is known about the exact authorship of the Vercelli homilies. It is widely believed that the individual homilies were gathered from several authors and copied by one scribe into the manuscript at random. The compilation of the Vercelli book is typically placed within the late tenth century AD.
The Liber Eliensis is a 12th-century English chronicle and history, written in Latin. Composed in three books, it was written at Ely Abbey on the island of Ely in the fenlands of eastern Cambridgeshire. Ely Abbey became the cathedral of a newly formed bishopric in 1109. Traditionally the author of the anonymous work has been given as Richard or Thomas, two monks at Ely, one of whom, Richard, has been identified with an official of the monastery, but some historians hold that neither Richard nor Thomas was the author.
The Toller Lecture is an annual lecture at the University of Manchester's Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies (MANCASS). It is named after Thomas Northcote Toller, one of the editors of An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary.
The Leofric Missal is an illuminated manuscript, not strictly a conventional missal, from the 10th and 11th century, now in the Bodleian Library at Oxford University where it is catalogued as MS Bodl. 579.
Michael Lapidge, FBA is a scholar in the field of Medieval Latin literature, particularly that composed in Anglo-Saxon England during the period 600–1100 AD; he is an emeritus Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, a Fellow of the British Academy, and winner of the 2009 Sir Israel Gollancz Prize.
Helmut Gneuss was a German scholar of Anglo-Saxon and Latin manuscripts and literature.
The English Benedictine Reform or Monastic Reform of the English church in the late tenth century was a religious and intellectual movement in the later Anglo-Saxon period. In the mid-tenth century almost all monasteries were staffed by secular clergy, who were often married. The reformers sought to replace them with celibate contemplative monks following the Rule of Saint Benedict. The movement was inspired by Continental monastic reforms, and the leading figures were Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, Æthelwold, Bishop of Winchester, and Oswald, Archbishop of York.
Blickling Psalter, also known as Lothian Psalter, is an 8th-century Insular illuminated manuscript containing a Roman Psalter with two additional sets of Old English glosses.
The Epistola ad Acircium, sive Liber de septenario, et de metris, aenigmatibus ac pedum regulis is a Latin treatise by the West-Saxon scholar Aldhelm. It is dedicated to one Acircius, understood to be King Aldfrith of Northumbria. It was a seminal text in the development of riddles as a literary form in medieval England.