Ælfric of Eynsham

Ælfric of Eynsham (the Grammarian) (ca. 955–ca. 1010), was an English abbot, as well as a prolific writer in Old English of hagiography, homilies, biblical commentaries, and other genres. He is also known variously as Ælfric Grammaticus, Ælfric of Cerne and Ælfric the Homilist.

Life and works

Ælfric was educated in the Benedictine Old Minster at Winchester under Saint Æthelwold, who was bishop there from 963 to 984. Æthelwold had carried on the tradition of Dunstan in his government of the abbey of Abingdon, and at Winchester he continued his strenuous efforts. He seems to have actually taken part in the work of teaching.

Ælfric no doubt gained some reputation as a scholar at Winchester, for when, in 987, the abbey of Cerne (Cerne Abbas in Dorset) was finished, he was sent by Bishop Ælfheah (Alphege), Æthelwold's successor, at the request of the chief benefactor of the abbey, the ealdorman Æthelmaer, to teach the Benedictine monks there. He was then in priest's orders. Æthelmaer and his father Æthelweard were both enlightened patrons of learning, and became Ælfric's faithful friends.

It was at Cerne, and partly at the desire, it appears, of Æthelweard, that he planned the two series of his English homilies (ed. Benjamin Thorpe, 1844-1846, for the Ælfric Society and more recently by Malcolm Godden and Peter Clemoes for EETS), compiled from the Christian fathers, and dedicated to Sigeric, Archbishop of Canterbury (990-994). The Latin preface to the first series enumerates some of Ælfric's authorities, the chief of whom was Gregory the Great, but the short list there given by no means exhausts the authors whom he consulted. In the preface to the first volume he regrets that except for Alfred's translations Englishmen had no means of learning the true doctrine as expounded by the Latin fathers. Professor Earle (A.S. Literature, 1884) thinks he aimed at correcting the apocryphal, and to modern ideas superstitious, teaching of the earlier Blickling Homilies.

The first series of forty homilies is devoted to plain and direct exposition of the chief events of the Christian year; the second deals more fully with church doctrine and history, Ælfric denied the immaculate birth of the Virgin (Homilies, ed. Thorpe, ii.466), and his teaching on the Eucharist in the Canons and in the Sermo de sacrificio in die pascae (ibid. ii.262 seq.) was appealed to by the Protestant Reformation writers as a proof that the early English church did not hold the Roman doctrine of transubstantiation.

His Latin Grammar and Glossary were written for his pupils after the two books of homilies. A third series of homilies, the Lives of the Saints, (hagiography) dates from 906 to 997. Some of the sermons in the second series had been written in a kind of rhythmical, alliterative prose, and in the Lives of the Saints (ed. W. W. Skeat, 1881-1900, for the Early English Text Society) the practice is so regular that most of them are arranged as verse by Professor Skeat.

By the wish of Æthelweard he also began a paraphrase of parts of the Old Testament, but under protest, for the stories related in it were not, he thought, suitable for simple minds. There is no certain proof that he remained at Cerne. It has been suggested that this part of his life was chiefly spent at Winchester; but his writings for the patrons of Cerne, and the fact that he wrote in 998 his Canons as a pastoral letter for Wulfsige, the bishop of Sherborne, the diocese in which the abbey was situated, afford presumption of continued residence there.

He became, in 1005, the first abbot of Eynsham, near Oxford, another foundation of Æthelmaer's. After his elevation he wrote an abridgment for his monks of Æthelwold's De consuetudine monachorum, adapted to their rudimentary ideas of monastic life; a letter to Wulfgeat of Ylmandun; an introduction to the study of the Old and New Testaments (about 1008, edited by William L'Isle in 1623); a Latin life of his master Æthelwold; a pastoral letter for Wulfstan, archbishop of York and bishop of Worcester, in Latin and English; and an English version of Bede's De Temporibus.

The Colloquium, a Latin dialogue designed to serve his scholars as a manual of Latin conversation, may date from his life at Cerne. It is safe to assume that the original draft of this, afterwards enlarged by his pupil, Ælfric Bata, was by Ælfric, and represents what his own scholar days were like. The last mention of Ælfric Abbot, probably the grammarian, is in a will dating from about 1010.

Ælfric was the most prolific writer in Old English. However, he by no means expressed the popular opinion of the time. His forward-thinking views toward women (though they were not 'modern' views, by any stretch of the imagination) and his strong stance on 'clǽnnes,' or purity, were more extreme than others during that time (see for instance his homily on Judith). This was, no doubt, related to his service under the monastic reformer Saint Æthelwold in the monastery at Winchester.

Identification

The true identification of Ælfric has been problematic, primarily because Ælfric is often confused with Ælfric, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Though Ælfric was initially identified with the archbishop, thanks to the work of Lingard and Dietrich, most modern scholars now identify Ælfric as holding no higher office than abbot of Eynsham. However, in the past, there have been attempts to identify him with three different people:

(1) As above, Ælfric was identified with Ælfric (995-1005), Archbishop of Canterbury. This view was upheld by John Bale (Ill. Maj. Brit. Scriptorum, 2nd ed., Basel, 1557-1559; vol. i, p. 149, s.v. Alfric); by Humphrey Wanley (Catalogus librorum septentrionalium, &c., Oxford, 1705, forming vol. ii of George Hickes's Antiquae literaturae septemtrionalis); by Elizabeth Elstob, The English Saxon Homily on the Birthday of St. Gregory (1709; new edition, 1839); and by Edward Rowe Mores, Ælfrico, Dorobernensi, archiepiscopo, Commentarius (ed. G. J. Thorkelin, 1789), in which the conclusions of earlier writers on Ælfric are reviewed. Mores made him abbot of St Augustine's at Dover, and finally archbishop of Canterbury.

(2) Sir Henry Spelman, in his Concina ... (1639, vol. i, p. 583), printed the Canones ad Wulsinum episcopum, and suggested Ælfric Putta or Putto, Archbishop of York, as the author, adding some note of others bearing the name. The identity of Ælfric the grammarian with Ælfric archbishop of York was also discussed by Henry Wharton, in Anglia Sacra (1691, vol. i, pp. 125-134), in a dissertation reprinted in J. P. Migne's Patrologia (vol. 139, pp. 1459-70, Paris, 1853).

(3) William of Malmesbury (De gestis pontificum Anglorum, ed. N. E. S. A. Hamilton, Rolls Series, 1870, p. 406) suggested that he was Abbot of Malmesbury and Bishop of Crediton.

The main facts of his career were finally elucidated by Eduard Dietrich in a series of articles contributed to C. W. Niedner's Zeitschrift für historische Theologie (vols. for 1855 and 1856, Gotha), which have formed the basis of all subsequent writings on the subject.

References

• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)