Old English Lives of Saints, Volume III

by Ælfric of Eynsham, Mary Clayton (Translation), Juliet Mullins (Translation)

Old English Lives of Saints, a series composed in the 990s by the Benedictine monk Aelfric in his distinctive alliterative prose, portrays an array of saints--including virgin martyrs, married virgins, aristocrats, kings, soldiers, and bishops--for a late Anglo-Saxon audience. At a turbulent time when England was under increasingly severe Viking attack, the examples of these saints modeled courageous faith, self-sacrifice, and individual and collective resistance. The Lives also covers topics as diverse as the four kinds of war, the three orders of society, and whether the unjust can be exempt from eternal punishment. Aelfric intended this series to complement his Catholic Homilies, two important and widely disseminated collections used for preaching to lay people and clergy. The translation is presented alongside a new edition of Lives of Saints, for which all extant manuscripts have been collated afresh.

416 pages, Hardcover

Published November 19, 2019

About the author

Aelfric, noted Anglo-Saxon abbot, known as "Grammaticus" (955?-1020?), authored works, such as Catholic Homilies and Lives of the Saints , in Old English as well as a Latin grammar.

Ælfric of Eynsham well wrote consummately and prolifically as hagiographer, biblical commentator, and writer of other genres. Peter Hunter Blair viewed this "man comparable both in the quantity of his writings and in the quality of his mind even with [authore:Bede] himself." According to Claudio Leonardi, he "represented the highest pinnacle of Benedictine reform and Anglo-Saxon literature."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%86l...

Reviews

[Max_Barber]

Only read 'The Life of Saint Edmund', but I loved it and wanted to remember the edition I read.

[Lila Robinson]

maybe my second favourite topic for finals… so good!