We now come to the Blickling Homilies, a recently-published book of great importance. It is not a homogeneous work, but a motley collection of sermons of various age and quality. Some of the later sermons are not so very different from those of Ælfric; but these are not the ones that give the book its character. The older sort have very distinct characteristics of their own, and they furnish a deep background to the Homilies of Ælfric. They are plainly of the age before the great Church reform of the tenth century, when the line was very dimly drawn between canonical and uncanonical, and when quotations, legends, and arguments were admissible which now surprise us in a sermon. Indeed, one can hardly escape the surmise that the elder discourses may come down from some time, and perhaps rather an early time, in the ninth century. One of the sermons bears the date of 971 imbedded in its context; and this, which is probably the lowest date of the book, is twenty years before the Homilies of Ælfric appeared. Speaking of that frequent topic of the time, the end of the world, which is to take place in the Sixth Age, the preacher says:—
| —and thisse is thonne se mæsta dæl agangen, efne nigon hund wintra and lxxi. on thys geare.—P. 119. | —and of this is verily the most part already gone, even nine hundred years and seventy-one, in this year. |
Perhaps there is no book which has been published in the present generation that has done so much for the historical knowledge of Anglo-Saxon literature. Speaking generally, we may say that it represents the preaching of the times before Ælfric; that it contains the sort of preaching that Ælfric sat under in his youth (when not at Abingdon or Winchester); the sort of preaching, too, that Ælfric set himself to correct and to supersede. It is a book whose value turns not so much upon its own direct communications, as on the light it throws all around it, showing up the popular standards of the time, and enabling us to recognise the true setting of many a waif and stray of the old literature. But it is upon the work of Ælfric that it sheds the most valuable light. There is in Ælfric’s Homilies a certain corrective aim, which was but faintly seen before, and when seen could not be distinctly explained; but now we have both the aim and the occasion of it rendered comparatively clear.
These Homilies supply to those of Ælfric their true historical introduction. They support the reasons which Ælfric assigns for producing homilies. In his preface he speaks of certain English books to which he designs his sermons as an antidote. He had translated his discourses (he says) out of the Latin, not for pride of learning, “but because I had seen much heresy (gedwild) in many English books, which unlearned men in their simplicity thought mighty wise.” Not only do the Blickling Homilies contain enough of unscriptural and apocryphal material to justify the charge of “gedwild” in its vaguer sense of error, but we have also documentary grounds for believing that a careful theologian of that time, such as Ælfric undoubtedly was, would have brought them under the indictment of heresy.
It used to be thought that the oldest extant list of condemned books proceeded from Pope Gelasius, and was of about A.D. 494; but now that list is assigned to the eighth or even ninth century. In this Index we find sources for much of the literature which we have been considering in this chapter; we find the “Acts of Pilate,” “Journeys of the Apostles,” “Acts of Peter,” “Acts of Andrew the Apostle,” “The Contradiction of Solomon,” “The Book Physiologus.”[122] The material which gives the Blickling collection its peculiar character is largely apocryphal, and, in the light of the above list, heretical.
A new vitality is imparted to Ælfric’s sermons by their contrast with these older ones. It is plain that there is a common source behind both sets of sermons; the well-established series of topics for each occasion seems clearly to point to some standard collection of Latin homilies now lost.[123] The evident identity of the lines on which the discourses run makes comparison the easier and the more satisfactory. In the sermon for Ascension Day, Ælfric’s treatment is in pointed contrast with the older book. The Blickling is full of the signs and wonders; some, indeed, Scriptural, but far more apocryphal; and it is effusive over these. Whereas Ælfric teaches that the visible miracles belonged to the infancy of the Church, and were as artificial watering to a newly-planted tree; but, when the heathen believed, then those miracles ceased. Now (he says) we must look rather for spiritual miracles. The Homily on St. John Baptist is a good example. According to the old book, John is called “angelus,” because he lived on earth the angelic life, but Ælfric takes it as messenger, and this may hint the difference of treatment. In the same discourse there is a contrast which touches the chronology. The old Homily says that there are only two Nativities kept sacred by the Church—that of the Lord and that of His forerunner. Ælfric takes up this topic with a difference. He says that there are three Nativities, which are celebrated annually, adding that of the Blessed Virgin to the previous two. Now, it was precisely in the tenth century that this third began to be observed in the churches of the West;[124] and the change took place in the interval that separates these two sets of homilies.
On the Assumptio St. Mariæ, the elder homily is a jumble of apocryphal legend. Here Ælfric presents a contrast, and manifestly an intentional one. In the preamble he recalls certain teaching of Jerome, “through which he quashed the misguided narrative which half-taught men had told about her departure.” Then, after an exposition of the Gospel for the day, he returns to the Assumption in a passage which, when read in the light of the elder Homily, is very pointed:—“What shall we say to you more particularly about this festival, except that Mary was on this day taken up to heaven from this weary world, to dwell with Him, where she rejoices in eternal life for evermore? If we should say more to you about this day’s festival than we read in those holy books which were given by God’s inspiration, we should be like those mountebanks who, from their own imaginations or from dreams, have written many false stories; but the faithful teachers, Augustine, Jerome, Gregory, and other such, have in their wisdom rejected them. But still these absurd books exist, both in Latin and in English, and misguided men read them. It is enough for believers to read and to relate that which is true; and there are very few men who can completely study all the holy books that were indited by God’s Holy Spirit. Let alone those absurd fictions, which lead the unwary to perdition, and read or listen to Holy Scripture, which directs us to heaven.”
The Homilies of Ælfric are in two series, of which the first was published in 990, and addressed to Sigeric, Archbishop of Canterbury; the second in 991, after that Danish invasion in which Byrhtnoth fell. These were long ago published by the Ælfric Society. But there is another set, appropriated to the commemoration of saints, after the manner of the Benedictine hagiographies.[125] These have a Latin preface, pointedly agreeing with the prefaces to the previous series. If their miraculous narratives sometimes contain what we should not have expected from Ælfric, and if this leads us to doubt the authorship, we may reflect that the contrast is not so great as that between the “Cura Pastoralis” and the “Dialogues” of Gregory.
As a slight specimen of the character of these latter discourses, I will give a few lines from that on St. Swithun:—