Ælfric : a subject index to the homilies, saints' lives, and pastoral letters

This dissertation provides an introduction to Abbot Ælfric, who in the tenth and eleventh centuries composed scores of sermons and homilies for the Catholic Church, dozens of saints' lives for monks, and a handful of pastoral letters, among other items. The introduction sets the historical context, emphasizing the monastic reform of the tenth century, and progresses through the Ælfrician canon, sources, and prose styles. The body of the dissertation is a subject index to Ælfric's religious works, excluding both Latin works and Scriptural translation and paraphrase. Index headings were developed during and after multiple readings of each text. Results were confirmed and complemented by word-searches in the corpus with a word processor. The corpus is available in machine-readable form on computer disks from the Old English Dictionary Project at the University of Toronto. Appendices summarize how theÆlfrician corpus fills out the ecclesiastical calendar (both the Temporale and the Sanctorale), provide calculations of the ecclesiastical calendar for the late tenth century through the twelfth century, and present pericopae and Biblical passages emphasized in the canon.