New Latin Contexts for Old English Homilies: Editions and Studies of Ten Sources and Analogues

Stephen Pelle (ed)

Pages: xii + 504 p.
Size:152 x 229 mm

Language(s):English
Publication Year:2024

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ISBN: 978-0-88844-233-8
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“Stephen Pelle’s New Latin Contexts for Old English Homilies is a gem. Pelle has written a scholarly resource that will also serve as a very useful textbook. He offers ten editions of Latin homilies, each accompanied by an introduction, English translation, notes, and a relevant case study in the sources of its motifs. Pelle focuses on Carolingian and Irish preaching collections that bear on early medieval English homilies. Old Norse and Middle High German are also represented. Many homilies will be new to scholars of early England. Pelle’s case studies are models of source scholarship well suited for classroom use. Readers will surely agree with Pelle that “the great mass of unedited medieval Latin homiletic material still holds treasures for the study of Old English homilies.” New Latin Contexts is a significant contribution to charting influential intellectual traditions of the early Middle Ages.” — Stephen J. Harris, University of Massachusetts Amherst

BIO

Stephen Pelle is Assistant Professor in the Centre for Medieval Studies in the University of Toronto, and co-editor of the Dictionary of Old English. The author of numerous essays in various collections and articles in Anglia, Gripla, The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Medieval Sermon Studies, and Traditio, among other journals, he is co-editor (with Brigitte Bulitta, Robert Getz, and Katja Schmidt) of a forthcoming collection of essays dealing with Old English and Old High German lexicography, glossography, and related topics.

Summary

This book sheds new light on the Latin background of various Old English homilies, and of certain homilies from related vernacular traditions. Two broad themes are treated, the Nativity of Christ and Christian eschatology; the volume contains five Latin texts dealing with each theme. Critical editions, full English translations, and detailed introductions and commentaries are included, as well as case studies that demonstrate the relevance of each text to one or more homilies written in Old English, and, in a few cases, early Middle English and Old Norse. While the volume is intended for scholars of early English preaching, many of the texts hold considerable intrinsic interest and should have general appeal for medievalists, students of preaching, and those working on the transmission of biblical apocrypha in the Latin West.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Sigla codicum
Introduction

TEXT ONE
A Christmas Homily from the Bavarian Homiliary (BH I.2)

TEXTS TWO AND THREE
Carolingian Sermons on the Miracles at Christ’s Birth

TEXTS FOUR AND FIVE
Hiberno-Latin Christmas Homilies

TEXTS SIX AND SEVEN
Eschatological Sermons Included in Some Manuscripts of the Homiliaries of Angers and Saint-Père de Chartres

TEXT EIGHT
A Sermon Related to an Early Redaction of the Visio Pauli (Einsiedeln, Stiftsbibliothek, 27, fols. 104v–106v)

TEXT NINE
A Doomsday Sermon from a Carolingian Priest’s Handbook (Laon,
Bibliothèque municipale, 288, fols. 38r–39v)

TEXT TEN
The Three Utterances of the Soul: Recension IV

Conclusions

Appendix 1: A Christmas Homily Related to Texts 1 and 5
Appendix 2: Latin Analogues for Middle Irish and Middle High German Lists
of Miracles at Christ’s Birth
Appendix 3: A Latin Vision of the Otherworld and Its Middle English
Descendants
Bibliography
Index of Manuscripts
Index of DOE Short Titles of Old English Homilies Cited or Discussed
General Index