9780674425095

067442509X

9780674241299

0674241290

9780674241725

067424172X

"Old English Lives of Saints, a series composed in the 990s by the Benedictine monk Ælfric (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. Ælfric 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."-- Publisher's website

These volumes contain a series of texts written by the Anglo-Saxon monastic author Ælfric between ca. 994 and 998 CE and assembled by him into a book now commonly referred to as his Lives of Saints (LS). Ælfric describes it in the Old English preface as a "book about the passions and lives of those saints whom those who live in monasteries honor among themselves in their offices." He intended it to complement his two earlier series, now known as Catholic Homilies I and II (CH I and CH II), which had provided two collections for use in preaching to the laity and clergy throughout England. In composing this third collection and dedicating it to a powerful and very religious lay patron, Æthelweard, Ælfric was providing a series of texts that Æthelweard and other devout people, lay and religious, could use as spiritual reading or could listen to being read aloud.-- Provided by publisher.

Dumbarton Oaks medieval library ; DOML 58-60

Volume 1. Introduction

Latin Preface

Old English Preface

Table of Contents in British Library, Cotton Julius E. vii ["Incipiunt Capitula" / "Here begin the headings"]

1. Nativity of Christ

2. Saint Eugenia

3. Saint Basil

4. Saints Julian and Basilissa

5. Saint Sebastian

6. Saint Maur

7. Saint Agnes and Saints Constantia and Gallicanus

8. Saint Agatha and Saint Lucy

9. The Chair of Saint Peter the Apostle

10. The Forty Soldiers

Volume 2. 11. Shrove Sunday

12. On the Prayer of Moses for Mid-Lent Sunday

13. Saint George

14. Saint Mark and The Four Evangelists

15. Memory of Saints

16. On Omens

17. Kings

18. Saint Alban and On the Unjust

19. Saint Æthelthryth

20. Saint Swithun and Saint Macarius and the Sorcerers

21. Saint Apollinaris

22. Saints Abdon and Sennes and The Letter of Christ to Abgar

23. The Martyrdom of the Maccabees, Their Battles, and The Three Orders of Society

Volume 3. 24. Saint Oswald

25. Exaltation of the Holy Cross

26. Saint Maurice and His Companions

27. Saint Dionysius

28. Saint Martin

29. Saint Edmund

30. Saint Cecilia

31. Saints Chrysanthus and Daria

32. Saint Thomas

33. Saint Vincent

Bibliography.

Christian saints > Biography > Early works to 1800.

Christian women saints > Biography > Early works to 1800.

Devotional literature, English > Early works to 1800.