SOURCE: “An Orthodox Old English Homiliary?: Ælfric's Views on the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles,” in Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, Vol. 100, No. 1, 1999, pp. 15-26.

[In the following essay, O'Leary examines Ælfric's use of apocryphal material.]

Ælfric, abbot of Eynsham, who died in the early eleventh century, has been described as ‘the most prolific … vernacular author of the Anglo-Saxon period’.¹ His known works consist mainly of didactic and hagiographical material—sermons, Lives of saints, and a grammar are the best known of these. Ælfric had access, as a pupil of Æthelwold's school at Winchester Cathedral, to a broad range of theological works.² Much scholarly debate has taken place concerning his attitude towards the sources with which he worked, and, in particular, the criteria used by him in choosing material for his sermons, which date from the last two decades of the tenth century.³ The predominant view among scholars of Ælfric's writings has been that, particularly in the compilation of his Catholic Homilies, he strongly disapproved of, and therefore rejected, sources not supported by the authority of the Bible, by Church-teaching or earlier Fathers or writers; that is, sources such as New Testament apocrypha—texts outside, but connected with, the New Testament—, which he is thought to have seen as theologically suspect. For example, Peter Clemoes said of Ælfric:⁴

… there was his stand for purity of doctrine … The selection and treatment of canonical authorities was, then, crucial for Ælfric.

One of the best-known passages in which Ælfric has been thought to condemn apocryphal writings is in a homily on the Assumption of the Virgin Mary.⁵

… If we say more of this feast-day than we read in the holy books that have been composed by the inspiration of God, then we should be like unto those heretics, who from their own imagination, or from dreams, have recorded many false traditions; but the orthodox teachers, Augustine, Jerome, Gregory and many others, have, through their wisdom, rejected them. These heretical books, nevertheless, yet exist, both in Latin and in English, and ignorant men read them. It is enough for believing men to read and to say that which is true; and few are those men that can perfectly examine all the holy books that have been inspired by God's mouth, or by the spirit of God. Let every one cast away the heretical leasings that lead the unwary to perdition, and let every one read, or listen to, the holy lore, which directs us to the kingdom of heaven, if we will hear it.

I propose to show, by reference to his accounts of the apostles in the Catholic Homilies and the Lives of Saints, that, while Ælfric explicitly spurned the heretical, he by no means rejected apocryphal material, but rather was keen to use some of it as one of his principal sources.

Ælfric himself stated occasionally in the Catholic Homilies that he knew and was utilising the apocryphal acts of the apostles. He did not name them in this way, however, but used a variety of other phrases: sanctorum passiones uel uitas, ‘passions or lives of the saints',⁶ … ‘life or passion of God's saints’,⁷ among which he seems to have included apocryphal passions of the apostles; and on gewyrdelicum racum, ‘in historical narratives’,⁸ with reference to where the legend of the apostle John's proposed marriage was to be found. The term ‘apocryphal’ is nowhere to be seen in such passages, nor did Ælfric habitually make reference to particular sources or authors among such texts.

The Catholic Homilies include accounts of the passions of eleven apostles: in the First Series, Peter and Paul (in one text),⁹ Andrew,¹⁰ Bartholomew,¹¹ and John the Evangelist;¹² in the Second Series, Philip and James the Less (who shared one feast-day),¹³ James, brother of John,¹⁴ Simon and Jude (together),¹⁵ and Matthew.¹⁶ In the Lives of Saints, the Passion of Thomas is related.¹⁷ There is no doubt that these texts were modelled on a Latin collection of apocryphal acts of the apostles which was attributed to Abdias (the first bishop of Babylon) and therefore known as ‘Pseudo-Abdias’;¹⁸ it is sometimes referred to as Historia apostolica or Virtutes apostolorum,¹⁹ and was compiled in the late sixth or the seventh century.²⁰ If we can assume that the account by Gregory of Tours (d. 594) describing St Andrew's miracles (and written probably around the middle of the century) was an element of the original collection of apostolic texts,²¹ that collection has a terminus post quem around a.d. 560; and a terminus ante quem around a.d. 690, since Muirchú, the principal hagiographer of St Patrick,²² displayed a thorough knowledge of the same legends of the passions of the apostles.²³ Such collections described the passiones (executions) of the apostles, usually devoting a separate text to the story of each individual apostle. It has been thought that the original group consisted of ten books,²⁴ but many manuscripts contain more than ten such texts in a group.²⁵ The dependence of Ælfric's apostolic homilies on the so-called ‘Pseudo-Abdias’ collection was demonstrated a century ago by Max Förster in his comprehensive study of Ælfric's sources.²⁶ When comparisons are made on an individual basis, there are some differences (which I shall analyse),²⁷ but in general we find that Ælfric carried out a wholesale translation—which was a large-scale project presumably requiring considerable time and effort—of a collection of apostolic passiones. The most evident illustration of this is the conclusion of his homily on Simon and Jude,²⁸ where Ælfric stated Abdias, follower of the apostles and first bishop of Babylon, to have been the author of this passion.²⁹

… The bishop Abdias wrote this narrative, who had followed the apostles from the land of Judea. He wrote it in the Hebrew tongue, and his disciple Eutropus turned it afterwards into the Greek tongue, and Africanus wrote it afterwards in ten books; but this short narrative in our tongue will suffice us for the confirmation of our belief.

One of the reasons for the writing of these passions was to fill gaps left in the canonical New Testament. It seems that there was a widespread thirst for knowledge, in mediaeval western Europe, about the activities of the apostles and the manner of their deaths, which acted as a spur for the committing to parchment and the continued development of apocryphal acta.³⁰ Ælfric can probably be said to have harboured this same curiosity to learn more about these men who had played such a large part in disseminating the faith, and to have desired to spread this knowledge in the vernacular; so he saw fit to use what information he had concerning the apostles.

Most of his apostolic homilies are preceded by an account of the natale, ‘nativity’, of the apostle or by a description of the events in which he appears in the New Testament. The general pattern is that a link is provided after this part of the narrative, by which the Passion of the same apostle(s) is introduced.³¹ By far the most interesting and, indeed, informative link is that introducing the Passion of Peter and Paul.³²

… We will after this gospel relate to you the lives and end of those apostles in a short narrative, because their passion is everywhere fully set forth in the English tongue.

This introductory passage, which follows an account of the role(s) of the pair in the biblical context, strongly implies that the passions of the apostles had in Ælfric's view a role to play in the liturgy following canonical readings; but, perhaps more significantly, it gives notice that the apostles' passion-narrative had already been translated (probably more than once) into English and was very widely known in that form. Such a translation could have been an enterprise independent of his translation of the collection of passion-texts (for Ælfric asserted for only one other apostolic passion, that of Thomas, that there was an earlier circulation in the vernacular³³); or an entire collection could have been translated into English before the time of Ælfric.³⁴ The Blickling Homily on Peter and Paul³⁵ is based on the same Latin original as Ælfric's passion³⁶—the ‘Pseudo-Marcellus’ text³⁷—and there is a possibility that the Blickling collection was of pre-Ælfrician date;³⁸ therefore Ælfric may have been referring to that translation.

The attitude of Ælfric towards one apocryphal passion—that of Thomas—is neatly illustrated, it seems to me, in a passage entitled Excusatio Dictantis, The Inditer's Apology.³⁹

… The passion of Thomas we leave unwritten, because it has long since been turned from Latin into English in song-wise; but the wise Augustine, however, has said in some treatise of his, that one thing incredible was set in that narrative, that is of the cupbearer who struck the apostle on the ear, and of the dog which brought his hand in again. Of this Augustine said, ‘This those read with great diligence who love vengeance; but it is allowed us to doubt in this, that the apostle would so cruelly avenge his injury’. For this doubt we would not touch his passion. It is nevertheless all quite credible, except that only which Augustine gainsays.

Perhaps we can assume from this that for Ælfric any apocryphal tale was full geleaflic, ‘quite credible’, provided that he knew of no explicit objection to it on the part of Augustine or a comparable authority.⁴⁰ Mary Clayton (focusing on his writings about the Virgin Mary) has deduced that Ælfric's judgment regarding apocryphal legend was largely based on his open reluctance to fall (or to lead others) into heresy—and above all in deference to negative remarks of (usually) Augustine—and not on any doubts of his own.⁴¹ My approach here (focusing on apocryphal acta) shows how Ælfric regarded apocryphal compositions about the closest followers of Jesus in a positive light and, for the most part, was by no means reluctant to utilise them.

As I have mentioned, Ælfric translated the Passion of Thomas in his later collection, Lives of Saints:⁴² in his Latin preface to that Passion he recalled the immense difficulty which he had had, and he explained that because of the derogatory remark by Augustine he had elected to omit the ‘incredible’ part of the original legend from his own version.⁴³

… I was for a long while in doubt as to translating into English the passion of St Thomas the apostle, for various reasons; and chiefly because the great Augustine denies the story concerning a cupbearer whose hand a black dog is said to have carried to a feast. In contradicting this story, Augustine himself wrote in these words: ‘which narrative it is permitted us to disbelieve, for it is not in the catholic canon’.

Ælfric continued by quoting more of Augustine, from the latter's sermon on Jesus's ‘Sermon on the Mount’. Here is that passage from Augustine in full.⁴⁴

… Or let them note what we are saying, in those books to which they attach great authority, where it is written that the Apostle Thomas cursed a man who had buffeted him, calling down the punishment of a horrible death; but his soul was prayed for, that it might be spared in the world to come. The man was killed by a lion, and a dog brought his hand severed from the rest of his body to the table where the Apostle was dining. We are free to give no credence to this piece of writing, for it is not in the catholic canon, but they both read it and honor it as being most uncorrupted and most truthful, they who rave most bitterly with a blindness that defies description, against the corporal punishments which are in the Old Testament, totally ignorant of the spirit and the temporal economy in which these punishments were inflicted.

The episode absent from Ælfric's translation was hardly the only one absent from the New Testament canon. Ælfric's view, as expressed in the passage quoted, is respectful towards the venerable sages of the Church, but at the same time broad-minded and pragmatic. He appears not to have objected to apostolic apocrypha: if he had considered them heretical or offensive, or if he thought that ungerade menn, ‘ignorant men’, would be led astray by them, a collection of passions of the apostles would not have played such a visible role in his compilation of sermons.

When there was a specific objection, such as that of Augustine regarding the Passion of Thomas, Ælfric made a point of following example (after careful consideration); otherwise, it is very difficult to find any concrete evidence for objections to apostolic apocrypha on the part of Ælfric himself.⁴⁵ Ælfric's omission of the one frowned-on episode—when he finally managed to resolve his dilemma and publish a translation of the Passion of Thomas—was, it seems to me, a concession to authority, not an expression of his own dislike of any of the material. His dilemma concerning it, when he was writing the Catholic Homilies, apparently had no wider consequences, at least for his deployment of any of the other apocryphal passions.⁴⁶

Ælfric seems nonetheless to have been extremely anxious about the risk of people falling into error as a result of unreliable or downright false information. There are several expressions of this concern in the Catholic Homilies: for example, in a note entitled De Sancta Maria, he explained his reason for not including in his collection a sermon on the nativity of Mary as ‘lest anyone should fall into error’.⁴⁷ But this should not be taken as a blanket-criticism of apocryphal material.

After the ground-breaking efforts of Max Förster, the work of J.E. Cross and Cyril Smetana helped to advance the study of the sources behind Ælfric's sermons.⁴⁸ However, the implication of much of Cross's published writing on the subject seems to be that Ælfric disapproved of apocryphal compositions. For example, he quoted part of a passage on the apostles in Ælfric's homily on the Ascension, which I give in full here.⁴⁹

… The apostles were witnesses of Christ's works, for they preached his passion, and his resurrection, and ascension, first to the Jewish people, and afterwards their voice came to every land, and their words to the boundaries of the whole globe; for they recorded the miracles of Christ, and the books exist among Christian people, both where the apostles bodily preached, and where they did not come.

This again illustrates Ælfric's very visible interest in the apostles' activities. J.E. Cross interpreted the final phrase as a hint of ‘Ælfric's consistent rejection of apocryphal stories about these and other holy people’.⁵⁰ Yet, in the same article, he made reference to Ælfric's use of the Passion of Andrew and did not address the fact that that text was apocryphal.⁵¹ Most recently, a stimulating analysis by Malcolm Godden has laid emphasis on Ælfric's problem of selecting from a wealth of authorities and other sources in composing the Catholic Homilies.⁵² Godden has usefully pointed out the complex background of the texts concerned with saints,⁵³ and in this way has built on his previous studies of the subject.⁵⁴ Of the apostles he has dealt with only four, in four texts (Peter and Paul, Paul alone, Andrew, and John).⁵⁵ In my view, however, he has overplayed Ælfric's hagiographical intent and underplayed his general lack of difficulty with—indeed enthusiasm for—the apocryphal acta which he knew.⁵⁶

Did the apostolic passiones attributed to Abdias reach Ælfric in a self-contained collection (possibly with other material), or did he actively seek out individual passiones? Peter Clemoes pointed out that, while to identify the source(s) of any work of Ælfric may not be difficult, it is often not at all easy to determine the form in which these sources became accessible to him.⁵⁷ It has been thought very likely⁵⁸ that, in the compilation of his Catholic Homilies, Ælfric used a very large and comprehensive collection of homilies such as that of Haymo of Auxerre, which he acknowledged in his preface to the First Series,⁵⁹ or that of Paul the Deacon. Cyril Smetana demonstrated from several quotations and echoes that Ælfric drew on the collection of Paul the Deacon for some of his translations in the Catholic Homilies.⁶⁰ However, these are not concerned with the passions of the apostles and so yield no information on Ælfric's views on apocryphal acts.

On the other hand, the compilation of hagiographical texts now known as the ‘Cotton-Corpus Legendary’ may provide a key to understanding how some of Ælfric's sources reached him: as Patrick Zettel has shown, many of its texts correspond with Ælfric's translations in terms of individual readings of remarkable closeness.⁶¹ Zettel has used the term ‘Cotton-Corpus Legendary’ generically to describe all three manuscript-groups of the collection. The apostles are represented in one group, the Cotton and Corpus manuscripts,⁶² as follows: texts on James the Less, Philip, Peter, Paul, James (brother of John), Bartholomew, and Matthew.⁶³ When the combination of apostles as presented in the legendary is taken into account, only three of the seven texts could be behind Ælfric's translations, since Ælfric described Peter and Paul in one text; likewise Philip and James the Less. Also, Zettel has noticed a pattern of inferior readings (not corresponding with those of Ælfric) in the apostolic texts.⁶⁴ The texts which do correspond with Ælfric's translations are the passiones of James (brother of John), Bartholomew, and Matthew; further detailed research will be necessary to establish the relationships between these three passiones and their counterparts in Ælfric's ‘Catholic Homilies’.

Another branch of this legendary, called ‘H’ by Zettel, though in its extant state covering only the months of November and December, provides a ‘uniquely useful reference work for a detailed study of Ælfric's sources’.⁶⁵ This branch has been thought to represent part of a later version of the collection, expanded and to some extent updated.⁶⁶ In it are contained texts on the apostles John, Thomas, and Andrew, which Zettel has given as examples of a group of texts which may have been used by Ælfric, since there are several strikingly close parallels between them and Ælfric's translations. We cannot prove, however, whether all the apostolic lives reached Ælfric as part of this collection.⁶⁷

Many insights into Ælfric's views on the apocryphal acts may be obtained by comparing in detail each of his translations with the text from which it derives. In some of Ælfric's passions the introductory passage synthesises much of the more basic information concerning the apostle, before the beginning of the story proper.⁶⁸ A good example of this is provided by his Passion of Andrew, in which the original introduction (claiming that the Latin text as a whole was composed by the priests and deacons of Achaia⁶⁹) was replaced by Ælfric with a brief description of Andrew's activities on his mission in Greece.⁷⁰

… The apostle Andrew, after Christ's passion, went to the land which is called Achaia, and there preached the faith of the Lord and the redemption of the world through his passion.

The information that the priests and deacons of Achaia wrote this passion is, however, incorporated into the text, but relegated to the conclusion.⁷¹

… The priests of that nation, and the same deacons who saw it all, recorded this passion, lest anyone should doubt concerning this narrative.

There is some possibility that Ælfric saw this attribution as an indication of the authority of the Latin original.

Alteration of introductory material is not, however, a uniform development: Ælfric's Passion of Bartholomew begins with an exact translation of its counterpart in the so-called ‘Pseudo-Abdias’ collection.⁷²

… Historians say that there are three nations called India. The first India lies towards the Ethiopians' realm, the second lies towards the Medes, the third on the great ocean; this third India has on one side darkness, and on the other the grim ocean.

In his account of the sources behind the Lives of Saints⁷³ Grant Loomis concluded that Ælfric's Passion of Thomas was translated from the Latin passio of the apostle,⁷⁴ and not from the text known as Miracula Thomae,⁷⁵ since the passio corresponded with Ælfric's text in being more compressed, especially in terms of dialogue, than the Miracula. (Loomis referred to the editions by—among others—Bonnet and Fabricius respectively.⁷⁶) In this instance, then, Ælfric was not interfering with his source but using a brief, alternative version (perhaps the only version to reach him).

Some of the original apostolic passions were in independent circulation as well as forming part of collection: for example, Ælfric's homily on Peter and Paul is based on the ‘Pseudo-Marcellus’ text, Passio sanctorum apostolorum Petri et Pauli,⁷⁷ and that on Andrew on the ‘Letter of Priests and Deacons’.⁷⁸ Other Latin passions are known almost exclusively as elements of apostolic collections: for instance, those of James the Greater and Bartholomew.

Ælfric's translations are, for the most part, faithful to the original accounts. This is particularly evident in the Passions of Philip and James, where hardly any alterations were made. Occasionally in the translations an explanatory addition is found. Ælfric did not feel a need to transpose or rework the originals in any significant way. Therefore the account given by Michael Lapidge and Michael Winterbottom,⁷⁹ who have characterised Ælfric as an abbreviator by nature, does not apply in the cases of the apostles. His Passion of Andrew is the only possible exception to this, given the omission of some passages of the ‘Letter of Priests and Deacons’ which either repeated earlier material or quoted the canonical New Testament and so might have been considered superfluous. An example of omission of such quotation is Andrew's recollection of the Last Supper, in particular the role played by his brother, Peter.⁸⁰

Ælfric took careful and frequent notice of the objections of those whom he considered wise in matters of doctrine, and specific objections from them clearly influenced his judgment. But for his own part he admitted no difficulties with the origins or content of the apocryphal acts of the apostles and viewed them as he would Lives or passiones of any other saints.⁸¹ Enthusiasm, therefore, not criticism, characterised his adoption of apocryphal acta into his own homiliary.⁸²

Notes

1. M. Lapidge and M. Winterbottom, edd. and trans., Wulfstan of Winchester, The Life of St Æthelwold (Oxford, 1991), p. cxlvi. For an introductory treatment of Ælfric and his works, see J. Hurt, Ælfric, Twayne English Authors Series, 131 (New York, 1972).

2. Lapidge and Winterbottom, edd. and trans., Wulfstan, pp. xcviii-xcix.

3. P. Clemoes, ‘The Chronology of Ælfric's Works’, in The Anglo-Saxons: Studies in Some Aspects of their History and Culture presented to Bruce Dickins, ed. P. Clemoes (London, 1959), pp. 212-47, at 243-4.

4. ‘Ælfric’, in Continuations and Beginnings: Studies in Old English Literature, ed. E.G. Stanley (London, 1966), pp. 176-209, at 184-5. Compare the following account by Malcolm Godden—‘Aelfric was familiar with … homilies full of apocryphal legends and unorthodox ideas, which he knew well and generally disapproved of’: ‘Aelfric and the Vernacular Prose Tradition’, in The Old English Homily and its Backgrounds, edd. P.E. Szarmach and B.F. Huppé (Albany, NY, 1978), pp. 99-117, at 105; and M. McC. Gatch, Preaching and Theology in Anglo-Saxon England: Ælfric and Wulfstan (Toronto, 1977), pp. 14-15 and 102-3.

5. No. xxxiv: B. Thorpe, ed. and trans., The Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church: the First Part, containing the Sermones Catholici, or Homilies of Ælfric in the original Anglo-Saxon, with an English Version, 2 vols (London, 1844-6), II.438-45, at 444-5; M. Godden, ed., Ælfric's Catholic Homilies: the Second Series, EETS, supplementary series, 5 (London, 1979), pp. 255-9, at 259. Cf. M. Clayton, The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Anglo-Saxon England, Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England, 2 (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 242-3, and ‘Ælfric and the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary’, Anglia 104 (1986), 286-315, at pp. 289-90. Marie Walsh has referred to this passage, in a study of the sources behind the poem Andreas, as a prime example of Ælfric's objections to apocrypha’ which, on the face of it, contradict his use (also noted by Walsh) of apocryphal passions: M.M. Walsh, ‘St Andrew in Anglo-Saxon England: the Evolution of an Apocryphal Hero’, Anmuale Mediaevale 20 (1981), 97-122, at p. 100. However, the passage seems to me to show that Ælfric had regard for the authority of Augustine, Jerome, and Gregory (particularly Augustine: cf. pp. 17-19, below) such that his desire was not to appear to go against the beliefs or teachings of the elders of the Church as heretics did.

6. Preface to the First Series: Thorpe, ed. and trans., The Homilies, I. 1; P. Clemoes, ed., Ælfric's Catholic Homilies: the First Series, EETS, supplementary series, 17 (Oxford, 1997), p. 173.

7. Preface to the Second Series: Thorpe, ed. and trans., The Homilies, II.2-3; Godden, ed., Ælfric's Catholic Homilies, p. 2.

8. Homily on the Assumption of St John the Evangelist: Thorpe, ed. and trans., The Homilies, I. 58-9; Clemoes, ed., Ælfric's Catholic Homilies, p. 206.

9. Thorpe, ed. and trans., The Homilies, I.364-85; Clemoes, ed., Ælfric's Catholic Homilies, pp. 388-99 (no. xxvi).

10. Thorpe, ed. and trans., The Homilies, I.576-99; Clemoes, ed., Ælfric's Catholic Homilies, pp. 507-19 (no. xxxviii).

11. Thorpe, ed. and trans., The Homilies, 1.454-71; Clemoes, ed., Ælfric's Catholic Homilies, pp. 439-50 (no. xxxi).

12. Thorpe, ed. and trans., The Homilies, I.58-77; Clemoes, ed., Ælfric's Catholic Homilies, pp. 206-16 (no. iv); R.H. Bremmer Jr, ed. and trans., ‘The Reception of the Acts of John in Anglo-Saxon England’, in The Apocryphal Acts of John, ed. J.N. Bremmer, Studies on the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, 1 (Kampen, 1995), pp. 183-96, at 188-96. For discussion of the uses in Anglo-Saxon England of apocryphal accounts of John, see ibid., pp. 186-7. Cf.M.R. Godden, ‘Ælfric's Saints’ Lives and the Problem of Miracles', Leeds Studies in English, n.s., 16 (1985), 83-100, at 90-2.

13. Thorpe, ed. and trans., The Homilies, I.294-9 and 299-303 (separate accounts; no. xviii); Godden, ed., Ælfric's Catholic Homilies, pp. 169-73 (no. xvii).

14. Thorpe, ed. and trans., The Homilies, II.412-25 (no. xxxi); Godden, ed., Ælfric's Catholic Homilies, pp. 241-7 (no. xxvii).

15. Thorpe, ed. and trans., The Homilies, II.480-99 (no. xxxviii); Godden, ed., Ælfric's Catholic Homilies, pp. 280-7 (no. xxxiii).

16. Thorpe, ed. and trans., The Homilies, II.472-81 (no. xxxvii); Godden, ed., Ælfric's Catholic Homilies, pp. 272-9 (no. xxxii).

17. W.W. Skeat, ed. and trans., Ælfric's Lives of Saints, 2 vols (London, 1881-1900), II.398-425 (no. xxxvi).

18. I.A. Fabricius, ed., Codex Apocryphus Novi Testamenti, 2nd edn, 3 vols (Hamburg, 1719), II.402-742.

19. For more detailed study see A.M.A. O'Leary, ‘The Latin Origins of the Irish Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles’, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1997, pp. 219-62.

20. Ibid., p. 302.

21. Ibid., pp. 288-94 and 302.

22. L. Bieler and F. Kelly, edd. and trans., The Patrician Texts in the Book of Armagh, Scriptores Latini Hiberniae 10 (Dublin, 1979), pp. 62-123.

23. See A. O'Leary, ‘An Irish Apocryphal Apostle: Muirchú's Portrayal of Saint Patrick’, Harvard Theological Review 89 (1996), 287-301.

24. As edited by Fabricius, Codex; and previously by Wolfgang Lazius, Liber de passione Domini nostri Iesu Christi, carmine hexametro, increto auctore ad Donatum episcopum scriptus, Abdiae Babyloniae episcopi et apostolorum discipuli De historia certaminis apostolici libri decem, Iulio Africano, cuius subinde Hieronymus meminit, interprete (Basel, 1551).

25. O'Leary, ‘The Latin Origins’, p. 230.

26. Über die Quellen von Ælfric's Homiliae Catholicae, I: Legenden, Inaugural-Dissertation, Friedrich-Wilhelms Universität zu Berlin (Berlin, 1892), pp. 16-26.

27. See pp. 21-22, below.

28. Thorpe, ed. and trans., The Homilies, II.481-99; Godden, ed., Ælfric's Catholic Homilies, pp. 280-7.

29. Thorpe, ed. and trans., The Homilies, II.498-9; Godden, ed., Ælfric's Catholic Homilies, p. 287; B. Mombritius, Sanctuarium seu Vitae Sanctorum, 2nd edn, 2 vols (Rome, 1910), II.539 (this epilogue was not printed by Fabricius but is attested in several manuscripts, rounding off apostolic passion-collections as a whole); cf. Förster, Über die Quellen, p. 25, where both the epilogue and Ælfric's translation are quoted. The implication in those manuscripts of Latin collections which place the text on Simon and Jude as the final element is that Abdias compiled the entire group of passions of the apostles, not only the one on Simon and Jude: one example is Bamberg, Dombibliothek, MS. Q.VI.6 (twelfth century).

30. Collections of apostolic passiones had an extremely wide circulation, as I have shown by means of a table of more than sevently such manuscripts: O'Leary, ‘The Latin Origins’, pp. 319-20.

31. The twofold nature of each element is, unfortunately, not always clear from Thorpe's contentspages, since his naming of texts as ‘passions’ or ‘nativities’ (saints' feast-days) was not consistent. For example, the Passion of James the Greater (Thorpe, ed. and trans., The Homilies, II.413-25; Godden, ed., Ælfric's Catholic Homilies, pp. 241-7) is heralded on both contents-pages as ‘The Nativity of St. James the Apostle’.

32. Thorpe, ed. and trans., The Homilies, I.370-1; Clemoes, ed:, Ælfric's Catholic Homilies, p. 391. Cf. M.R. Godden, ‘Experiments in Genre: the Saints' Lives in Ælfric's Catholic Homilies', in Holy Men and Holy Women: Old English Prose Saints' Lives and their Contexts, ed. P.E. Szarmach (Albany, NY, 1996), pp. 261-87, at 284(-5) n. 37.

33. Cf. pp. 17-18, below.

34. D.G. Scragg, ‘The Corpus of Vernacular Homilies and Prose Saints' Lives before Ælfric’, Anglo-Saxon England 8 (1979), 223-77, did not make direct reference to homilies about the apostles.

35. R. Morris, ed. and trans., The Blickling Homilies, with a Translation and Index of Words, together with the Blickling Glosses, EETS, old series, 58, 63, and 73 (London, 1874-80); reprinted as one volume (London, 1967), pp. 170-93 (no. xv); D.G. Scragg, ‘The Homilies of the Blickling Manuscript’, in Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England: Studies presented to Peter Clemoes on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday, edd. M. Lapidge and H. Gneuss (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 299-316, at 302-3; cf. ibid., pp. 311-12.

36. J.E. Cross, ‘Cynewulf's Traditions about the Apostles in Fates of the Apostles’, Anglo-Saxon England 8 (1979), 163-75, at p. 170.

37. R.A. Lipsius and M. Bonnet, edd., Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha, 2 vols in 3 (leipzig, 1891-1903), I.119-77. For Ælfric's use of the same passio in another homily, cf. F.M. Biggs and T.N. Hall, ‘Traditions concerning Jamnes and Mambres in Anglo-Saxon England’, Anglo-Saxon England 25 (1996), 69-89, at pp. 79-82 and p. 89.

38. M. Clayton, ‘Homiliaries and Preaching in Anglo-Saxon England’, Peritia 4 (1985), 207-42, at p. 221. Cf. R.L. Collins, ‘Blickling Homily XVI and the Dating of Beowulf’, in Medieval Studies Conference, Aachen 1983: Language and Literature, Bamberger Beiträge zur englischen Sprachwissenschaft, 15 (Frankfurt am Main, 1983), pp. 61-9, at 67-9; Scragg, ‘The Homilies’, pp. 315-16.

39. Thorpe, ed. and trans., The Homilies, II.520-1; Godden, ed., Ælfric's Catholic Homilies, pp. 297-8, at 298; J. Wilcox, ed., Ælfric's Prefaces, Durham Medieval Texts, 9 (Durham, 1995), pp. 113-14.

40. On Augustine's general opinion on this subject, see contra Faustum, XI.2: I. Zycha, ed., Sancti Aurelii Augustini De utilitate credendi, De duobus animabus, contra Fortunatum, contra Adimantum, contra epistulam fundamenti, contra Faustum, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, 25 (Vienna, 1891), pp. 314-15, in which Augustine openly condemned apocryphal legend and those who believed in it. If Ælfric was aware of this view, it did not affect his choice of material in a broader way. Cf. Clayton, The Cult, pp. 237-8, and ‘Ælfric’, pp. 288-90 and 291-2.

41. The Cult, pp. 235-8 and 260-5.

42. Cf. p. 16, and n. 17, above.

43. Skeat, ed. and trans., Ælfric's Lives, II.398-9; Wilcox, ed. and trans., Ælfric's Prefaces, pp. 122 and 132. Cf. Godden, ‘Ælfric's Saints' Lives’, pp. 88-91.

44. De Sermone Domini in Monte, I.65: Patrologia Latina, ed. J.-P. Migne, 221 vols (Paris, 1844-64), XXXIV, col. 1263; J.J. Jepson, trans., St Augustine, The Lord's Sermon on the Mount, Ancient Christian Writers, 5 (Westminster, MD, 1948), p. 78.

45. Cf. the similar conclusion drawn by Clayton, ultimately based on other material: The Cult, pp. 237-8, and p. 18 and nn. 40-41, above.

46. The general question of ‘the ambivalence of the Anglo-Saxon attitude toward apocryphal material’ (Walsh, ‘St Andrew’, p. 100) is outside the scope of the present discussion.

47. Thorpe, ed. and trans., The Homilies, II.466-7; Godden, ed., Ælfric's Catholic Homilies, p. 271; Wilcox, ed., Ælfric's Prefaces, p. 113. See also Clemoes, ‘Ælfric’, p. 184; Clayton, ‘Ælfric’, p. 287.

48. See in particular Cross, ‘Ælfric and the Mediaeval Homiliary - Objection and Contribution’, Regiae Societatis Humaniorum Litterarum Lundensis Scripta Minora (1961/2), no. 4, ‘Bundles for Burning - a Theme in Two of Ælfric's Catholic Homilies - with Other Sources’, Anglia 81 (1963), 335-46, and ‘More Sources for Two of Ælfric's Catholic Homilies’, Anglia 86 (1968), 59-78.

49. Thorpe, ed. and trans., The Homilies, I.294-311, at pp. 298-9; Clemoes, ed., Ælfric's Catholic Homilies, pp. 345-53 (no. xxi).

50. ‘More Sources’, p. 71.

51. Ibid., pp. 76-7.

52. ‘Experiments’, pp. 263-6 and 281-2.

53. Ibid., pp. 264-82.

54. ‘Ælfric’, especially pp. 99-102; ‘Ælfric's Saints' Lives’, pp. 86-93.

55. ‘Experiments’, pp. 266-75. (The homily on St Paul alone is based almost entirely on canonical material, and I have not included it in the present discussion.)

56. Ibid., pp. 266-82.

57. Clemoes, ‘Ælfric’, p. 185.

58. C.L. Smetana, ‘Ælfric and the Early Medieval Homiliary’, Traditio 15 (1959), 163-204.

59. Thrope, ed. and trans., The Homilies, I.1; Clemoes, ed., Ælfric's Catholic Homilies, pp. 173-4.

60. Smetana, ‘Ælfric’: references concerning the apostolic homilies are at pp. 191-2 (Peter and Paul; Paul) and 200 (Matthew). An inventory of the homiliary of Paul the Deacon was reconstructed by Friedrich Wiegand (Das Homiliarium Karls des Grossen auf seine ursprüngliche Gestalt hin untersucht, Studien zur Geschichte der Theologie und der Kirche, I.2 [Leipzig, 1897]), who included readings for the celebration of the feast-days of Peter and Paul (ibid., pp. 47-8), Andrew (ibid., pp. 57-8), John the Evangelist (ibid., p. 26), Matthew (ibid., p. 58), and Philip and James (ibid., p. 43), but none for the other apostles. Such knowledge concerning the dependence of Ælfric on Paul the Deacon does not, however, imply that all his homilies were based on elements of such a collection (cf. Walsh, ‘St Andrew’, p. 107) or necessarily that he had access to an entire such homiliary. It remains to be proved whether the so-called ‘Pseudo-Abdias’ collection ever became part of a larger-scale collection of homiletic material. (Several other homiliaries were described by Réginald Grégoire, Homéliaires liturgiques médievaux: analyse de manuscrits [Spoleto, 1980]; cf. J. Hill, ‘Ælfric's Sources Reconsidered: Some Case Studies from the Catholic Homilies’, in Studies in English Language and Literature: ‘Doubt wisely’, Papers in honour of E.G. Stanley, edd. M.J. Toswell and E.M. Tyler [London, 1996], pp. 362-85, at 362-6.)

61. P.H. Zettel, ‘Saints’ Lives in Old English: Latin Manuscripts and Vernacular Accounts: Ælfric', Peritia 1 (1982), 17-37; cf. P. Jackson and M. Lapidge, ‘The Contents of the Cotton-Corpus Legendary’, in Holy Men, ed. Szarmach, pp. 131-46, at 137-40.

62. London, British Library, MS. Cotton Nero E.i, parts 1 and 2; Cambudge, Corpus Christi College, MS. 9.

63. Jackson and Lapidge, ‘The Contents’, pp. 137-40.

64. Zettel, ‘Saints' Lives’, p. 31 n. 2.

65. Ibid., p. 32.

66. Ibid., p. 20.

67. Cf. G. Philippart, Les légendiers latins et autres manuscrits hagiographiques, Typologie des sources du Moyen Âge occidental, 24-25 (Turnhout, 1977), pp. 87-93, on legendaries which include accounts of apostles; see also O'Leary, ‘The Latin Origins’, pp. 258-9.

68. Cf. p. 17, above; for consideration of Ælfric's translation-technique, see D. Bethurum, ‘The Form of Ælfric's Lives of Saints’, Studies in Philology 29 (1932), 515-33, at pp. 517-28; M.R. Godden, ‘The Sources for Ælfric's Homily on St Gregory’, Anglia 86 (1968), 79-88, at pp. 85-7; J. Gaites, ‘Ælfric's Longer Life of St Martin and its Latin Sources: a Study in Narrative Technique’, Leeds Studies in English, n.s., 13 (1982), 23-41; and E.G. Whatley, ‘Lost in Translation: Omission of Episodes in some Old English Prose Saints' Legends’, Anglo-Saxon England 26 (1997), 187-208, at pp. 190-2.

69. Lipsius and Bonnet, edd., Acta, I.1 (§1).

70. Thorpe, ed. and trans., The Homilies, I.586-7; Clemoes, ed., Ælfric's Catholic Homilies, p. 513.

71. Thorpe, ed. and trans., The Homilies, I.598-9; Clemoes, ed., Ælfric's Catholic Homilies, p. 519.

72. Thorpe, ed. and trans., The Homilies, I.454-5; Clemoes, ed., Ælfric's Catholic Homilies, p. 439; Lipsius and Bonnet, edd., Acta, I.128 (§1).

73. G. Loomis, ‘Further Sources of Ælfric's Saints' Lives’, Harvard Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature 13 (1931), 1-8.

74. Ibid., pp. 6-7.

75. K. Zelzer, ed., Die alten lateinischen Thomasakten, Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur 122 (Berlin, 1977), pp. 45-77.

76. M. Bonnet, ed., Acta Thomae, Supplementum codicis apocryphi, I (Leipzig, 1883), pp. 133-60; Fabricius, ed., Codex, II.687-736 (Bk 9).

77. Lipsius and Bonnet, edd., Acta, I.119-77.

78. Ibid., II 1, pp. 1-37.

79. Wulfstan, p. cxlvii.

80. Lipsius and Bonnet, edd., Acta, I.6-8 (§3).

81. Cf. Godden, ‘Experiments’, especially pp. 264-6.

82. I wish to thank Professor D.N. Dumville for reading drafts of this paper and for valuable discussion of the issues involved.