Old English Literature - Old English Prose - Christian Prose

Christian Prose

The most widely known secular author of Old English was King Alfred the Great, who translated several books, many of them religious, from Latin into Old English. These translations include: Gregory the Great's The Pastoral Care, a manual for priests on how to conduct their duties; The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius; and The Soliloquies of Saint Augustine. Alfred the Great was also responsible for a translation of fifty Psalms into Old English.

Other important Old English translations include: Historiae adversum paganos by Orosius, a companion piece for St. Augustine's The City of God; the Dialogues of Gregory the Great; and Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People.

Ælfric of Eynsham, wrote in the late 10th and early 11th century. He was the greatest and most prolific writer of Anglo-Saxon sermons, which were copied and adapted for use well into the 13th century. He translated the first six books of the Bible (Old English Hexateuch), and glossed and translated other parts of the Bible. His Lives of Saints in the Julius manuscript contains Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, Saint Mary of Egypt, Saint Eustace, and Saint Euphrosyne. Ælfric also wrote an Old English work on time-reckoning, and pastoral letters.

In the same category as Aelfric, and a contemporary, was Wulfstan II, archbishop of York. His sermons were highly stylistic. His best known work is Sermo Lupi ad Anglos in which he blames the sins of the English for the Viking invasions. He wrote a number of clerical legal texts Institutes of Polity and Canons of Edgar.

One of the earliest Old English texts in prose is the Martyrology, information about saints and martyrs according to their anniversaries and feasts in the church calendar. It has survived in six fragments. It is believed to date from the 9th century by an anonymous Mercian author.

The oldest collection of church sermons are the Blickling homilies in the Vercelli Book and dates from the 10th century.

There are a number of saint's lives prose works; beyond those written by Aelfric are the prose life of Saint Guthlac (Vercelli Book), the life of Saint Margaret and the life of Saint Chad. There are four lives in the Julius manuscript: Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, Saint Mary of Egypt, Saint Eustace and Saint Euphrosyne.

The Wessex Gospels are a full translation of the four gospels into a West Saxon dialect of Old English, produced about 990. The Old English Gospel of Nicodemus manuscripts date from the 11th century AD. Other translations include "...the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, Vindicta salvatoris, Vision of Saint Paul and the Apocalypse of Thomas".

One of the largest bodies of Old English text is found in the legal texts collected and saved by the religious houses. These include many kinds of texts: records of donations by nobles; wills; documents of emancipation; lists of books and relics; court cases; guild rules. All of these texts provide valuable insights into the social history of Anglo-Saxon times, but are also of literary value. For example, some of the court case narratives are interesting for their use of rhetoric.