Aelfric

AELFRIC. - English theologian and scholar b. around 955, d. ca. 1020. Abbot of Eynsham, the greatest prose writer of Anglo-Saxon literature of his age, he was able to spread and make penetrate into the humblest strata of the population the truth of Christian religion and morality, availing himself of the agile and limpid vernacular of the time in many of his works, both of a doctrinal and narrative character and of devout popularization.

The Homeliae Catholicae (989-95) in fact, which the author drew from and compiled above all from the "Homilies" of St. Gregory and from the works of the early Fathers of the Church, were written in Anglo-Saxon with Latin prefaces. Though not of original content, they substantially reflect Western theological thought. Some, such as the sermon on the Eucharist, aroused lively controversies at the time of the Reformation, essentially unhistorical, because founded on the anachronistic tendency to attribute to the spirit of Christian edification of the 10th century the polemical intentions of the Protestant age. In reality A. did not intend to combat the doctrine of the real presence nor the dogma of transubstantiation. There also remain by A. the Passiones Sanctorum (996-97), a series of Lives of saints (notable those of Sts. Oswald, Swithun, Edmund) composed in alliterative rhythms, rich in poetic cadences very popular among the common people, to whom precisely A. wished in particular to address himself.

Of his other works mention should be made of an Anglo-Saxon Paraphrase of the first seven books of the Bible (not entirely by A.); and a treatise De Vetere et de Novo Testamento, based on the Augustinian De doctrina christiana. From the linguistic aspect, the example of A. demonstrates that Anglo-Saxon prose was acquiring a certain degree of refinement, when its evolution was interrupted by the Norman conquest.

Vittorio Gabrieli