Sermons, Saints, and Sources

The corpus of sermons and saints’ lives from early medieval England, in English and Latin, is the largest and most varied of its kind from a contemporary European perspective. In recent years this extraordinary body of literature has attracted increasing attention, as witnessed by an efflorescence of new editions, translations, commentaries, essay collections, dissertations, and amply funded research projects such as the Electronic Corpus of Anonymous Old English Homilies (ECHOE) project based at the University of Göttingen.

The present collection of thirteen essays grew out of a 2022 conference sponsored by the ECHOE project on Old English anonymous homilies and saints’ lives and their sources and reflects the best of current scholarship on early medieval homiletic and hagiographic literature from England. This literature is central to an understanding of the spiritual imagination and social practices of non-élite audiences. Together, they introduce new discoveries, identify new sources, edit new texts, make new claims about authors, revisers, and textual relationships, revise previous arguments about aspects of literary history, and provide new interpretations of Old English and Latin sermons and saints’ lives. These studies show vividly how European learning influenced the liturgical practices and peripheral education of early medieval England.

Contributors include Helen Appleton, Aidan Conti, Claudia Di Sciacca, R. D. Fulk, Thomas N. Hall, Christopher A. Jones, Leslie Lockett, Rosalind Love, Hugh Magennis, Stephen Pelle, Jane Roberts, Winfried Rudolf, and Charles D. Wright.

Introduction — THOMAS N. HALL AND WINFRIED RUDOLF

Our Spiritual Meeting Places: Regulating Liturgical Processions in Old English Homilies for Rogationtide — HELEN APPLETON

Rogationtide, Doomsday, and Communitas in Bazire-Cross Homily iii — CHARLES D. WRIGHT

The Rogationtide Homily In vigilia Ascensionis in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 303: an Eschatological Hodgepodge for Post-Conquest England — CLAUDIA DI SCIACCA

‘Quoting’ the Bible in Times of Trouble: Wulfstan and the Story of Saul and Jonathan in Napier Homily xxxvi — WINFRIED RUDOLF

Revisiting Some ‘Stock Descriptions of Heaven and Hell’ in the Old English Anonymous Homilies — STEPHEN PELLE

The Old English Phoenix Homily and Its Congeners — R. D. FULK

What’s in a Name? Negotiating the Everyday Exegesis of the Homiliary of Angers — AIDAN CONTI

Early English Homiletic Treatments of Christ’s Passion: Generic and Liturgical Influences — CHRISTOPHER A. JONES

The Earliest Latin Sermon for the Virgin’s Conception at the Annunciation — THOMAS N. HALL

Domesticating Translation in the Old English Legend of the Seven Sleepers — HUGH MAGENNIS

Some Differences between the Vercelli and Vespasian Prose Guthlac Texts — JANE ROBERTS

Starting to Write about the Saints of Kent — ROSALIND LOVE

The ‘Sanctification’ of Agustinus in the Old English Soliloquies — LESLIE LOCKETT

Manuscript Index

Sermon Index

Hagiography Index

General Index