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34 Chapter 1
This may have been because the Latin of the English clergy was
even worse on average than elsewhere—a plausible position though
hard to prove. Whatever the reason, vernacular homilies would
surely have been much more accessible to the lower clergy. They
are easily accessible to the historian too, since the content of the
corpus has been thoroughly indexed.
Perhaps the earliest relevant passage is from the Blickling Homilies.
(These are one of two collections of vernacular Anglo-Saxon
homilies whose date, setting in life, and audience all seem uncertain.)
In a sermon for the Annunciation we find the following:
‘the Heavenly King shall prepare thy womb as a bridal chamber for
his son, and also great joy in the bride-chamber . . .’ And again,
‘Let us rejoice then in the union of God and men, and in the union
of the bridegroom and the bride, that is Christ and holy church.’
This is marriage symbolism, but there is apparently not much more
of it in vernacular collections other than ªlfric’s. ªlfric uses marriage
symbolism in several places, one of them his homily on the
marriage feast of Cana Gospel reading.
Pastoral delivery systems in the early Middle Ages
The vernacular tradition in England raises a question about the
Continent and indeed about the impact of Latin texts in England
itself. Were most laypeople near enough to a church to have even
the possibility of hearing regular sermons? Would the mass of the
clergy have been capable, suciently Latin-literate, to use Latin
R. DiNapoli, An Index of Theme and Image to the Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon
Church, Comprising the Homilies of ªlfric, Wulfstan, and the Blickling and Vercelli
Codices (Hockwold cum Wilton, 1995): for marriage, see pp. 62–3.
C. D. Wright, ‘Vercelli Homilies XI–XIII and the Anglo-Saxon Benedictine
Reform: Tailored Sources and Implied Audiences’, in C. Muessig (ed.), Preacher,
Sermon and Audience in the Middle Ages (Leiden etc., 2002), 203–27 at 205–6. See
also especially M. Clayton, The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Anglo-Saxon England
(Cambridge, 1990): ‘we have no unambiguous proof that the anonymous works
do belong to the pre-reform period, rather than to a date closer to the dates of
compilation of the manuscripts in which they are found’ (264); she cautions against
assigning the anonymous homilies to the pre-reform period (264–6).
The Blickling Homilies of the Tenth Century, from the Marquis of Lothian’s
Unique MS. A.D. 971, ed. and trans. R. Morris (London, 1880), 8.
Ibid. 10.
See DiNapoli, Index of Theme and Image, 63, under ‘the Church is Christ’s
bride’.
For a commentary on this homily with analysis of its sources see M. Godden,
ªlfric’s Catholic Homilies: Introduction, Commentary and Glossary, ed. M. Godden
(Early English Text Society, SS 18; Oxford, 2000), 370–80.