The Chronology and Canon of Ælfric of Eynsham

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron J. Kleist
Keyword(s):  
Aelfric Of Eynsham

Warrior Saints, Warfare, and the Hagiography of Ælfric of Eynsham

Traditio ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 27-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hugh Magennis
Keyword(s):  
Small Group ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Military Leaders ◽  
Military Life ◽  
Aelfric Of Eynsham ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
The World ◽  
The Military ◽  
Scholarly Attention

Among the saints celebrated by the major vernacular Anglo-Saxon hagiographer Ælfric of Eynsham, one interesting group that has not received much scholarly attention is his warrior saints. In his lives of these saints Ælfric the monk, who has abjured violence, proclaims the spiritual achievements of men who have been military leaders and of ordinary soldiers serving in the ranks. The most famous of Ælfric's soldiers, St. Martin, was an unwilling one, but others commended by him were not unhappy to embrace the military life, even indeed when serving under pagans. Warrior saints were a distinctive and popular class of saints in the earlier Christian Mediterranean world. In the writings of Ælfric, as in Anglo-Saxon hagiography generally, they are a small group, but they are a group that illustrates strikingly Ælfric's approach to writing about saints, and study of them helps to throw light on the work he intended vernacular hagiography to perform. Part of that work, as argued below, was to provide ideologically suitable spiritual heroes for the faithful. But how should the potentially problematic group of warrior saints be presented, whose lives combine sanctity and violence and whose exploits might have disconcerting associations with the world of secular heroism?

Introduction: Early Medieval Earth Consciousness

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Courtney Catherine Barajas
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Exeter Book ◽  
English Poetry ◽  
Turn Of The Millennium ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Old English Poetry ◽  
Religious Lyrics ◽  
Broad Audience ◽  
Aelfric Of Eynsham

The existential threat of environmental collapse loomed large in the early medieval English imagination. In particular, the work of Wulfstan, Archbishop of York and Ælfric of Eynsham pointed to the imminence of the apocalypse. Wulfstan explicitly attributed environmental collapse to human sin, while Ælfric urged the faithful to look hopefully to the post-apocalyptic establishment of a new Earth. The broad audience and didactic intent of these prolific and well-connected theologians makes their work a useful representation of English theology at the turn of the millennium. Similarly, the 10th-century manuscript called the Exeter Book—the largest, most diverse extant collection of Old English poetry, including religious lyrics, obscene riddles, and elegies—may serve as a representative of the contemporaneous poetic corpus.

Abbot Ælfric of Eynsham

2020 ◽  
pp. 740-755
Author(s):  
Richard North ◽  
Joe Allard ◽  
Patricia Gillies
Keyword(s):  
Aelfric Of Eynsham
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