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Aelfric
1911 Encyclopedia Britannica
or called the "Grammarian" (c. 9551020 ?), English abbot and author, was born about 955. He was educated in the Benedictine monastery at Winchester under lEthelwold, who was bishop there from 963 to 984. ZEthelwold 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. IElfric no doubt gained some reputation as a scholar at Winchester, for when, in 987, the abbey of Cernel (Cerne Abbas, Dorsetshire) was finished, he was sent by Bishop iElfheah (Alphege), thelwold's successor, at the request of the chief benefactor of the abbey, the ealdorman IEthelmar, to teach the Benedictine monks there. He was then in priest's orders. 2Ethelma r and his father ZEthelweard were both enlightened patrons of learning, and became Æthic's faithful friends. It was at Cernel, and partly at the desire, it appears, of 'Ethelweard, that he planned the two series of his English homilies (ed. Benjamin Thorpe, 1844-1846, for the IElfric Society), compiled from the Christian fathers, and dedicated to Sigeric, arch bishop of Canterbury (990-994). The Latin preface to the first series enumerates some of iElfric'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 Buckling 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. Æthic 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 Reformation writers as a proof that the early English church did not hold the Roman doctrine of transubstantiation.' His Latin Grammar and Glossary 2 were written for his pupils after the two books of homilies. A third series of homilies, the Lives of the Saints, dates from 996 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 ZEthelweard he also began a paraphrase 3 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 Cernel. It has been suggested that this part of his life was 1 See A Testimonie of Antiquitie, sheaving the auncient fayth in the Church of England touching the sacrament of the body and bloude of the Lord here publikely preached, printed by John Day (1567). It was quoted in John Foxe's Actes and Monuments (ed. 1610).
2 Ed. J. Zupitza in Sammlung englischer Denkmi ler (vol. i., Berlin, 1880).
3 Edited by Edward Thwaites as Heptateuchus (Oxford, 1698); modern edition in Grein's Bibliothek der A. S. Prosa (vol. i. Cassel and Göttingen, 1872). See also B. Assmann, Abt s. .. Esther (Halle, 1885), and Abt iElfric's Judith (in Anglia, vol. x.).
chiefly spent at Winchester; but his writings for the patrons of Come!, 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 or Ensham, near Oxford, another foundation of ZEthelma r's. After his elevation he wrote an abridgment for his monks of IEthelwold's De consuetudine monachorum, 5 adapted to their rudimentary ideas of monastic life; a letter to Wulfgeat of Ylmandun 6; an introduction to the study of the Old and New Testaments (about io08, edited by William L'Isle in 1623); a Latin life of his master i z Ethelwold 7; 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.8 The Colloquium, 9 a Latin dialogue designed to serve his scholars as a manual of Latin conversation, may date from his life at Cernel. It is safe to assume that the original draft of this, afterwards enlarged by his pupil, Alfric Bata, was by Alfric, and represents what his own scholar days were like. The last mention of Alfric Abbot, probably the grammarian, is in a will dating from about 1020.
There have been three suppositions about Alfric. (I) He was identified with Alfric (995-1005), archbishop of Canterbury. This view was upheld by John Bale (III. Maj. Brit. Scriptorum.. . 2nd ed., Basel, 1557-1559; vol. i. p. 149, s.v. Alfric); by Humphrey Wanley (Catalogus librorum septentrionalium, &c., Oxford, 1705,1705, forming vol. ii. of George Hickes's Antiquae literaturae septentrionalis); by Elizabeth Elstob, The EnglishSaxon Homily on the Birthday of St Gregory (1709;(1709; new edition, 1839); and by Edward Rowe Mores, Alfrico, Dorobernensi, archiepiscopo, Commentarius (ed. G. J. Thorkelin, 1789), in which the conclusions of earlier writers on Alfric are reviewed. Mores made him abbot of St Augustine's at Dover, and finally archbishop of Canterbury. (2) Sir Henry Spelman, in his Concilia.. . (1639, vol. i. p. 583), printed the Canones ad Wulsinum episcopum, and suggested Alfric Putta or Putto, archbishop of York, as the author, adding some note of others bearing the name. The identity of !Ethic the grammarian with IElfric 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. 1 39, pp. 1459-70, Paris, 18 53). (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 fiir historische Theologie (vols. for 1855 and 1856, Gotha), which have formed the basis of all subsequent writings on the subject.
Sketches of f lfric's career are in B. Ten Brink's Early English Literature (to Wiclif) (trans. H. M. Kennedy, New York, 1883, pp. 105-112), and by J. S. Westlake in The Cambridge History of English Literature (vol. i., 1907, pp. 116-129). An excellent bibliography and account of the critical apparatus is given in Dr R. Walker's Grundriss zur Geschichte der angelscichsischen Litteratur (Leipzig, 388 5, pp. 452-480). See also the account by Professor Skeat in Pt. iv. pp. 8-61 of his edition of the Lives of the Saints, already cited, which gives a full account of the MSS., and a discussion of f lfric's sources, with further bibliographical references; and Alfric, a New Study of his Life and Writings, by Miss C. L. White (Boston, New York and London, 1898) in the "Yale Studies in English." Alcuini Interrogationes Sigewulfi Presbyteri in Genesin (ed. G. E. McLean, Halle, 1883) is attributed to./ lfric by its editor. There are other isolated sermons and treatises by f lfric, printed in vol. iii. of Groin's Bibl. v. A.S. Prosa. ' Printed by Benjamin Thorpe in Ancient Laws and Institutes of England (1840), with the later pastoral for Wulfstan.
5 See E. Breck, A Fragment of Alfric; translation of. thelwold's De Consuetudine Monachorum and its relation to other MSS. (Leipzig, 1887.
6 Ilmington, on the borders of Warwickshire and Gloucestershire.
7 Included by J. Stevenson in the Chron. Monast. de Abingdon (vol. ii. pp. 253-266, Rolls Series, 1858).
8 See Oswald Cockayne, Leechdoms, Wortcunning and Starcraft (vol. iii., 1866, pp. xiv.-xix. and pp. 233 et seq.) in the Rolls Series.
9 See an article by J. Zupitza in the Zeitschrift f iir deutsches Altertum (vol. xix., new series, 1887).
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Chisholm, Hugh, General Editor. Entry for 'Aelfric'. 1911 Encyclopedia Britanica. https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/bri/a/aelfric.html. 1910.
