955 Birth, 972–987 Life at Winchester, 987–1004 Life at Cernel, 990–991 The Catholic Homilies. I., 992 The De Temporibus, 994 The Catholic Homilies, II., 995 Grammar, 998 Lives of the Saints, 997–999 The Glossary, 998 Translations from the Old Testament, 998–1001 Pastoral Letter for Wulfsige, 995–1005 The Colloquium, 1005 Ælfric Abbot of Eynsham, 1005–1006 Tract composed for Wulfgeat, 1005 Excerpts from the De Consuetudine, 1006 Latin Life of Æthelwold, 1005–12 Treatise on the Old and New Testaments, 1007–1012 Sermon on Vigilate Ergo, 1014–1016 Pastoral Letter for Wulfstan, 1020 Second edition of the Catholic Homilies, 1020–1025 Death.

  Ælfric, surnamed Grammaticus, the well-known writer, scholar, and theologian, must be carefully distinguished from three or four contemporaries who bore the same name. He must not be confounded with Ælfric, at first Bishop of Ramsbury, and afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, who died before him (A.D. 1005). Nor may Grammaticus be identified either with Ælfric, Abbot of Malmesbury, or Ælfric, Abbot of Evesham; nor again with Ælfric, surnamed Puttoc, who became Archbishop of York in 1023, and died in 1051. Yet another Ælfric must be distinguished in the person of Ælfric Bata, the disciple of Grammaticus.

  I, Ælfric, monk and mass-priest, although more weakly than for such orders is fitting, was sent in King Æthelred’s days to a certain minster which is called Cernel, at the request of Æthelmaer, the thegn, whose borth and goodness are everywhere known. Then it occurred to my mind, I trust through God’s grace, that I would turn this book from Latin speech into English.

  This Alfric was a very wise man, so that there was no sager man in England.

  The learned energy of his earlier years has, indeed, rarely been surpassed; and although, like other Anglo-Saxons, he wrote but little quite original, yet, considering the time of his appearance, he has fully earned a foremost rank in the literature of England.

  After the name of Alfred, that of Alfric stands first among the Anglo-Saxon vernacular writers, both for the number and the importance of his works.

  His sermons … equally exhibit what were the doctrines of the Anglo-Saxon church at the period in which they were compiled or translated, and are for the most part valuable in matter, and expressed in language which may be pronounced a pure specimen of our noble, old, Germanic mother tongue.

  So far as we can follow the busy career of Ælfric, he was always the same in his aims, his ideas, and the manner of bringing them into practice. His knowledge might increase, his arguments might gain depth and stringency, but the essence of his nature, as of his writings, remained the same. He appears to us from the beginning a finished, completely developed personality. Even his style is as lucid, fluent, and upon occasion as forcible, in the first collection of homilies as in his latest writings, although his command of language and of alliteration increased as time went on. In regard to his art, it was perhaps unfortunate that Ælfric yielded so early to the allurement of alliteration, which never lost its hold upon him. The writings of the second period, almost without exception, even including the rule of St. Basil and the introduction to the Old and New Testaments, appear with this adornment. The prose expression certainly did not gain precision by this.

  Equally clear in his prose with Alfred and even more poetic and finished, he had to a less degree that masculine vigor that marked the king. Most of his prose is so alliterative as to mar its character and, yet, what he lacks in solidity he supplies in a more modern, lucid and facile expression.

  Ælfric is altogether the most important writer of the late West-Saxon period…. Ælfric’s career is conspicuous in its relation to the reform of Dunstan and Æthelwold, and his writings mark a culmination in prose style. His language is always clear, and when not forced into an artificial alliterative mould, it is flexible and forcible.

  The best of Ælfric’s homilies are as good as the best of their kind anywhere.

  Ælfric’s style exhibits decided advance over his predecessors in power of graceful transition. One paragraph leads to another, and there are varied devices of explicit reference.

  What Bæda was to England in the eighth, Ælfric was to the eleventh century. He had no creative power; nothing imaginative comes from his hand, but he had an affection for imaginative work. Some have traced in his work that he had read the poets, and he was always playing at poetry in his prose. Not original in thought, he had a gentle eagerness in writing; he had warmth and moral dignity. His charity, his affectionate friendship, his tact, his practiced skill in the affairs of men, appear in all his books and letters. He possessed the excellent power of putting into popular form the thoughts of other men, and of epitomising good books. He gathered together, absorbed, and well expressed the learning of his time; he had a strong sense of the duty of communicating it in English to the people, and he passed all the years of his manhood in teaching and writing. And as Ælfred was the creator of the elder, so Ælfric was of the younger Anglo-Saxon prose.

  When judged fairly according to the conditions of his time, he stands forth an eminent man among the Old English. But his chief excellence is not to be sought in special learnedness, nor in the distinguished place assigned him in relation to traditional Catholicism. Rather it is to be found in the fidelity with which he devoted whatever learning his opportunities enabled him to acquire to the education of the people, adapting to their needs his whole thought and activity…. As an author, considered in the general sense of that term, we cannot rank him with those who have promoted the development of knowledge. He belonged to an age in which there was almost no struggle for the formulation of doctrine, and in which all learning languished. His aim was chiefly a practical one; his writings were to serve the church of his time, and were called forth by pressing needs…. The literary aspect of our author is attractive in its noble simplicity, clearness and vigor of expression…. He was the most efficient of the writers of his time; none before him had written such urgent, impressive reproofs to the shepherds of the people; none had attained to such dignity, fullness, and power of discourse. It was reserved for him to establish the reformatory movement among the English, and to gather its fruits. His fame is to be compared with that of an Aldhelm in an earlier time, and with that of a Wyclif in a later riper age.