SOURCE: “Ælfric and the Legend of the Seven Sleepers,” in Holy Men and Holy Women: Old English Prose Saints' Lives and Their Contexts, edited by Paul E. Szarmach, State University of New York Press, 1996, pp. 317-31.

[In the following essay, Magennis explains that Ælfric practiced severe excising in his retelling of the Legend of the Seven Sleepers in order to rid it of anything that might interfere with its hagiographical aspect.]

The version of the legend of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus that appears in the Second Series of Ælfric's Catholic Homilies under the title Sanctorum Septem Dormientium is extremely brief even by Ælfric's standards. This version amounts to not much more than a page in Godden's edition¹ and could be described as a summary rather than a developed narrative. The very fact that the text is so short, however, and that its abbreviation of source is so pronounced makes it a particularly revealing illustration of Ælfric's approach to hagiography and of the kinds of interests he extracts from his hagiographical sources. In his treatment of the Seven Sleepers Ælfric focuses on what he sees as the essential significance of the legend and disregards everything else. As explained here, some of these essential interests are reflected again in a later passage on the Seven Sleepers written by Ælfric, in an addition he made to a homily in the First Series of Catholic Homilies. In considering Ælfric's response to the legend it is also fortuitous that we have, probably closely contemporary with Ælfric's own writings, a second Old English version of it, which can be compared to that of Ælfric. This second version, the anonymous Legend of the Seven Sleepers,² appears in the manuscript of Ælfric's Lives of Saints, but it presents an approach to its material that is diametrically opposed to that of Ælfric himself.

After a discussion of the question of the source of the Sanctorum Septem Dormientium, the present chapter will consider Ælfric's careful tailoring of his inherited material to his underlying doctrinal and hagiographical ends. Because the doctrinal concerns of the Sanctorum Septem Dormientium are also reflected in Ælfric's other passage on the Seven Sleepers (in the First Series of Catholic Homilies), the text of this other passage, which is not yet accessible in a printed edition, will be set out here. Our examination of the Sanctorum Septem Dormientium will show Ælfric transforming a legend rich in incident and human interest into a serene revelation of Christian mystery.

Patrick Zettel has identified the source of Ælfric's version of the legend as the anonymous Latin Passio Septem Dormientium (BHL 2316),³ a text of which was also the source of the other Old English version.⁴ Ælfric's dependence on this passio is revealed by a whole series of correspondences, from the very order in which the names of the saints are given,⁵ to the number of years (372) they are supposed to have slept, to the prayer of the Sleepers that God will protect the realm of the Christian emperor Theodosius against the temptations of the devil … (224-25): this reading follows the Latin “custodiat imperium tuum in nomine suo a tentationibus et laqueis satanae” [“may he preserve your imperial authority in his name against the temptations and snares of Satan,” p. 76, 4-5]. Zettel goes on to propose that the particular variant of BHL 2316 that served as Ælfric's source is that preserved in the Cotton-Corpus legendary, a collection of Latin saints' lives that Zettel shows to have been Ælfric's main quarry for his hagiographical material. With regard to Sanctorum Septem Dormientium, Zettel admits that the sheer brevity of the piece makes it difficult to tell whether the Old English is following a particular variant or not, but if Ælfric uses the Cotton-Corpus collection for many of his other saints' lives, then it would seem not unreasonable to suggest that this legendary also contains the source of his version of the legend of the Seven Sleepers.

Two notable readings in Ælfric's version, however, contrast with the corresponding readings in the text of the surviving copies of the Cotton-Corpus legendary, and these suggest that Ælfric must have been following a different manuscript tradition of the passio, or that, if he did base his Old English on the Cotton-Corpus text, the version of it he used cannot have been identical to that in either of the surviving copies. First, the Cotton-Corpus text in the course of the narrative gives the number of years of the sleep of the seven saints as 370, instead of the 372 years found in the other manuscripts and in Ælfric (see 204-05).⁶ Near the end of the passio the length of the sleep is referred to again, and this time the Cotton-Corpus copies have the regular figure of 372 years.⁷ Ælfric's Latin text may have had the anomalous 370 in the former passage, but if so he was evidently able to recognize this as an error and transfer the correct figure to the earlier part of his narrative.

Ælfric's second departure from the Cotton-Corpus text comes when he relates that the seven saints secretly distributed money to the poor … (197). The corresponding reading in most manuscripts of the Latin, including those of the Cotton-Corpus legendary, is “dabant mendicis occulte et aperte” [“they gave to the poor secretly and openly”].⁸ The omission of an equivalent in Ælfric to “aperte” might easily be explained as due to a local scribal slip in the particular manuscript of the Cotton-Corpus legendary that Ælfric was following. It is notable, however, that certain non-Cotton-Corpus textual traditions of BHL 2316 distinctively lack the reading “et aperte,”⁹ and it is possible that overall Ælfric might be following one of these, instead of the Cotton-Corpus variant. On purely internal grounds, we cannot be sure which strand of the passio provided Ælfric with his immediate source. He may have worked from a form of the Cotton-Corpus text that did not exhibit the discrepancies noted here. The evidence for his use of this legendary is entirely circumstantial, however, as no decisive Cotton-Corpus readings are preserved in his brief narrative.¹⁰

Further examination of Ælfric's Sanctorum Septem Dormientium reveals the presence in it of details which do not occur in BHL 2316 at all, but are paralleled only in a work not otherwise known to have been read in Anglo-Saxon England, Gregory of Tours' Passio Septem Dormientium apud Ephesum (BHL 2312).¹¹ Ælfric characteristically adds emotive details in his saints' lives, of course, and it might be argued that the apparent correspondences with Gregory could really be the result of independent additions by Ælfric, which happen to resemble features in Gregory. Examples of emotive additions in Ælfric's account of the Seven Sleepers are the references to the persecuting emperor Decius … (190) and as “gehathyrt” (201)—in the latter case Gregory, in contrast, speaks of Decius being troubled—“commotus” (p. 764, 13)—and the anonymous passio (p. 52, 12) says that he did not wish to harm the seven young men. The correspondences seem too precise to be coincidental, however, and they point to Ælfric's knowledge of details from Gregory's version.

The first such correspondence comes with Ælfric's description, in the opening lines of his version, of the saints as “Das seofon geleaffullan godes cempan” (187-88): with the emotive addition of geleaffullan [“believing”] this corresponds closely to Gregory's “hii septem adletae Christi” [“these seven champions of Christ”] at the beginning of his version (p. 762, 7). There is no such description in the anonymous passio. A second correspondence can be seen in the threat of Decius in Ælfric's version to torture the saints with various kinds of torments—“mid mislicum tintregum gecwylmede” (194). This again has no parallel in the anonymous passio, but it closely follows Gregory's “experietis diversa genera tormentorum” (p. 763, 2-3), with the direct speech, typically for Ælfric, being recast as indirect. At the corresponding part of the passio (see pp. 46-47) Decius is relatively sympathetic toward the seven. Again, Ælfric's statement that the saints sold their possessions to obtain money to give to the poor has no equivalent in the anonymous passio, which does not mention their possessions at all (see p. 47). Gregory does not actually speak of them selling their possessions, but he does say that they took their possessions, specifically clothes and furniture, and gave them to the poor—“abstulerunt aurum argentumque et vestimenta cunctaque [sic] suppellectilem. Quae distributa pauperibus …” (p. 763, 17-18). [“they took silver and gold and clothing and all their household furniture. Having distributed these to the poor …,” p. 769, 6], although here the memoriam magnam of BHL 2316 (see p. 78) could also be the source of Ælfric's phrase.¹² Another parallel with Gregory comes at the end of Ælfric's text, where the Old English mære cyrcan (230) recalls Gregory's basilica magna.

Although suggestions about source must remain fairly tentative, given the extreme brevity and concentration of his treatment, we may conclude that Ælfric primarily followed the anonymous passio but that he seems also to have been able to use details derived from Gregory of Tours. What is very clear, however, is that he has stripped his inherited material back to what he considers its bare essentials. The resulting organization of material and the particular emphases that can be seen in the Old English are entirely Ælfric's own, and they produce a version quite unlike any other.

In examining Ælfric's approach to his material, two aspects of the legend, as he inherited it, are of particular note. One is its preoccupation with the theological doctrine of the resurrection of the body. This element is centrally present in all the main versions of the legend and gives the miracle of the long sleep its whole purpose and meaning. Gregory of Tours has Malchus declare, on discovering that he has really been asleep for many years, that God has awakened him and his companions so that every age may know that the resurrection of the dead will come to pass: “Et nunc suscitavit me Dominus cum fratribus meis, ut cognoscat omnis saeculus, quia fiet resurrectio mortuorum” (p. 767, 13-14) [“And now the Lord has raised me up with my brothers so that every age may understand that there will be a sresurrection of the dead”]. Similarly, at the end of the anonymous Latin passio, Maximianus, the leader of the seven, addresses the Christian emperor Theodosius and tells him that it was so that he might believe in the resurrection of the dead that God caused the miracle to take place: “propter te suscitavit nos Deus a terra ante diem magnum resurrectionis, ut credas sine dubitatione, quoniam est resurrectio mortuorum” (p. 76, 6-8). [“Because of you God raised us from the earth before the great day of the Resurrection so that you may believe without doubt that there is a resurrection of the dead”]. The latter passage is taken over directly by Ælfric: … “for ðe arærde se ælmihtiga god us of eorðan ær ðgam micclum dæge. þæt ðu buton twyn gelyfe. þæt deadra manna ærist bið” (220-22) [“For you almighty God raised us from the earth before the great day that you may believe without doubt that there will be a resurrection of the dead”].

Early medieval saints' lives characteristically focus on the inspiring acts of the saints whom they celebrate. They aim to show these saints as the exemplary heroes of the church.¹³ In the legend of the Seven Sleepers, however, the doctrine of the resurrection, rather than the actions of the saints, is at the center of the edification the narrative offers. The saints are faithful in the face of persecution, but their role throughout is essentially passive, not active. They are not in control of their own destinies: to all intents and purposes they are martyred without knowing it, for God causes them to fall into a miraculous sleep before they are walled up in the cave. They become instruments in a larger divine plan whose object is to offer to Theodosius, and to Christians generally, proof that the body will rise again: it is God's wish, we read in the passio, to reveal through the Sleepers the hope of life in the resurrection of the dead at the time of Theodosius: “revelare spem vitae in resurrectione mortuorum in illo tempore” [“to reveal the hope of life in the resurrection of the dead at that time,” p. 57, 8-9]. The miracle of the Seven Sleepers presents itself primarily as a triumphant vindication of this doctrine of the resurrection of the body. It has been suggested indeed that the legend was composed in the first place, in fifth-century Ephesus, and soon after the supposed occurrence of the miracle itself, to combat a revival of Origenistic beliefs denying the resurrection of the body.¹⁴ This historical context of theological controversy can be seen as giving the treatment of the theme of the resurrection the urgency and insistence that it receives in the story of the Sleepers, even in versions composed long after such controversy was settled.

The second aspect to be noted is the legend's concern with what might be called the human dimension of the story. This aspect grows out of the doctrinal basis of the legend. Because the events that happen in it are essentially beyond the control of the saints themselves there is scope to develop in the legend an interest in their fears, insecurities, and ignorance about what is happening to them. The interest in the human dimension of the story is centered above all on the episode of Malchus's expedition to Ephesus after the long sleep, when Malchus thinks that he has been asleep for only one night. The youth's astonishment and bewilderment at the changes that have come upon Ephesus are vividly described in Gregory and even more so in the passio—in both of these versions Malchus wonders if he is dreaming (Gregory, p. 766, 17-18; passio, p. 62, 15-16)—but they are emphasized above all in the anonymous Old English version, in which Malchus's distracted progress is followed with particular fascination and sympathy. Malchus and his companions emerge from these and other versions of the legend as essentially human and vulnerable, in some ways more like ordinary people than like the larger-than-life heroes of conventional hagiography.

Ælfric is drawn to the doctrinal significance of the legend, but he ignores entirely its human dimension. His interest in this doctrinal significance of the Seven Sleepers story is vividly illustrated by the second reference to it in his writings, in a passage, mentioned earlier, that he added to his homily for the first Sunday after Easter when he was revising the First Series of Catholic Homilies. As noted by Gatch, this addition appears in six of the eleven surviving manuscripts of the collection, although it is not given in Thorpe's edition.¹⁵ The addition consists of seventy-eight lines of rhythmical prose, which elaborate on the theme with which the original homily was dealing at this point. The theme is that of the resurrection of the body, and the addition provides a series of exempla intended to give proof of this doctrine. Ælfric evidently felt that his original composition required further discussion of this difficult element of Christian teaching. His demonstrations in the added passage represent, as Gatch puts it, “an honest attempt by reference to natural science and hagiography to elucidate one of the most puzzling mysteries of the faith so as to make it more easily understandable to a lay congregation.”¹⁶

Since the part of the addition dealing with the Seven Sleepers has yet to appear in print in a published form, it is relevant to present it here in full:

… [Books tell us, just as it is quite true, that the Seven Sleepers then slept at that time from the days of the devilish emperor Decius to the time of Theodosius, who believed in Christ, for a period of 372 years; that they then rose up from the earth alive because Christ wished to reveal to the emperor that we shall all arise from death on the last day to meet our Lord and to receive the reward for all our deeds, according as we have acted beforehand in this world. Willingly or unwillingly, we shall remain forever alive after our resurrection according to our deserts, for good or for ill, according as we have acted beforehand.]

The context of this passage in the homily for the First Sunday after Easter is a purely doctrinal one, a context concerned with the explication of Christian teaching, not with the glorification of the saints. The Sleepers arose, says Ælfric (7-8), because Christ wished to reveal to Theodosius the truth of the resurrection of the body, and he goes on to bring out the full relevance of this teaching for his audience by moving from the indirect statement of the þæt clause of lines 8-11 to direct address of his audience in the final three lines of the passage: … [“willingly or unwillingly we shall remain forever alive”]. The Seven Sleepers serve Ælfric as an exemplum of the doctrine of the resurrection of the body. Indeed an interest in the saints for their own sakes in this passage would divert attention away from the essential point which Ælfric is making.

Ælfric's Sanctorum Septem Dormientium in the Second Series of the Catholic Homilies forms a self-contained unit rather than, like the reference in the First Series, contributing to a larger discussion. In the Sanctorum Septem Dormientium Ælfric—albeit “sceortlice”[“briefly”] (184)—focuses in on the seven saints themselves, giving their names (186-87), telling of their noble birth (189), of their persecution by Decius (190-91), and of how he has them walled up in a cave “mid ormætum weorcstanum” (202). In this hagiographical narrative Ælfric sets the good servants of God—“godes þegnas” (196)—against the raging Decius, and he shows the merciful God—“se mildheorta god” (202-03)—watching over them. He describes their miraculous awakening (206-11) and, in greater detail, their joyful meeting with Theodosius (211-26), before they finally send forth their souls (226-31).

The theme of the resurrection is mentioned only in this closing part of the narrative and in Ælfric's statement that when the stone was moved from the mouth of the cave the Creator gave the saints life and resurrection—“lif and ærist” (210). In the closing part, however, when the miracle is revealed to Theodosius, the centrality of this theme of the resurrection becomes fully apparent. Theodosius himself, as in Gregory and in the anonymous passio, compares the resurrection of the seven to that of Lazarus (218-19), and Maximianus informs Theodosius, in a passage echoed in the reference in the First Series of Catholic Homilies (see 7-8 of text quoted previously), that it was to give him proof of the resurrection that they arose: … [“that you may believe without doubt that there will be a resurrection of the dead,” 221-22]. The orthodoxy of the doctrine of the resurrection is highlighted in Maximianus's prayer that the empire of Theodosius should stand … [“in true faith”] (224). … The rejoicing and glory with which the passage ends are those of the recognition of this “true belief,” brought out all the more by the antithesis of the temptations of the devil—… [“against the temptations of the devil,” 224-25].

In his treatment of the doctrinal theme, however, as in other aspects of his handling of the legend, Ælfric deliberately excises much of the specific detail found in the sources and analogues. Numbers, biblical quotations, names, and even characters that appear in the other versions are left out where Ælfric feels them to be less than necessary to the celebration of the miracle. Even the pivotal figure of the venerable bishop Marinus, who in other versions realizes the truth of the miracle, makes no appearance in Ælfric.

The emphasis on the historical setting of the legend is reduced in Ælfric's version to the point that it virtually disappears. Ælfric assumes that his audience will know enough about the Decian persecutions of the Christians without his dwelling on them, and he simplifies the relationship between Decius and the seven saints in terms of the conventional confrontation of raging emperor and Christian heroes. In the anonymous Latin passio and in the other Old English version the attitude of Decius to the saints is complicated by the fact that they are members of his household and he does not wish to harm them, whereas Ælfric (here agreeing with Gregory) emphasizes the ferocity of the emperor and the idea that he wishes to inflict tortures upon them.

In the second part of the story Ælfric leaves out all reference to a heresy at the time of Theodosius denying the orthodox teaching of the resurrection of the dead. This omission has the effect of depriving the miracle of its context of theological turmoil and controversy and necessarily weakens the impact of the vindication of doctrinal truth in the legend, although it also allows Ælfric to present Theodosius more positively than he appears in other versions. Maximianus tells Theodosius that the miracle occurred so that he would believe “buton twyn” that there will be a resurrection of the dead, but stripped of its supporting context of doctrinal controversy this assertion loses its full force and immediacy, as we have no reason to believe that Theodosius should doubt the resurrection. Because of Ælfric's drastic pruning of his sources and his excision of the theme of heresy, the most immediate reason for Theodosius's sublime joy at the end of the narrative is not elucidated, and the legend becomes a general glorification of doctrinal truth, rather than having part of its significance in belonging to a particular historical moment.

This playing-down of the individual and the specific is an aspect of Ælfric's highly iconographic and stylized approach to his material. He omits the personal concern, so apparent in the other Old English version of the legend, with the worries and fears of the seven saints as they face persecution from Decius. He reduces their understandably mixed human emotions to an exemplary perseverence in the face of torture. When we first see the saints in the anonymous Old English version, they are lamenting and weeping and fading away in their sorrow at the sufferings of their fellow Christians and in their fear of being brought before the emperor (Skeat, 125-27). They are much more impassive in Ælfric's presentation. There is no mention of their sorrow or fear: they are simply “godes cempan.” Indeed, the whole of the graphic account of the persecution of the Christians found in other versions of the legend is left out by Ælfric, and with it the emphasis on the terror and flight of Christians before Decius. The other Old English version has the affective comparison of these Christians to little grasshoppers being swept away before them by Decius's men: “hi hi ut drifon. and him beforan feredon swilce lytle gærstapan” [“they drove them out and carried them before them like little grasshoppers,” Skeat, 56-57]. The other Christians do not appear at all in Ælfric's version.

Most strikingly of all in his adaptation of his inherited material, Ælfric disregards entirely the feature that the other Old English writer finds most compelling and that gives this other version much of its interest and attractiveness, its concern about the perplexed Malchus, the youth chosen by the other Sleepers to leave their cave and go into Ephesus to buy bread for them. After the sleep Malchus finds Ephesus incredibly changed, apparently after only one night, and its inhabitants have suddenly all become Christian. He is faced with suspicion and hostility and can make no sense of what he sees. The account of Malchus's expedition to Ephesus takes up about a third of the whole text in the anonymous Old English version. In Ælfric's version, however, it is not even mentioned. We are simply told that when, after a period of 372 years, the stone was rolled away from the mouth of the cave, the saints awoke and they were revealed to the citizens of Ephesus: “hi wurdon ða ameldode þam burhwarum” (211).

The treatment of the emperor Theodosius is also modified in Ælfric's version, to the extent that he, not the Sleepers themselves, becomes the character to whom most attention is given. In the anonymous Old English legend, as in the Latin versions, Theodosius is shown at the time of the heresy as uncertain and longing for spiritual enlightenment. He is a figure of humility who does not know what to believe: … [“he did not know what he should believe,” Skeat, 396-97]. In Ælfric, however, there is no sense that he is anything but a confident figure of benevolent authority. He proceeds on his journey to Ephesus not with anxiety but with the sense of assurance that characterizes his actions throughout.

It is noticeable that the tableaulike scene between Theodosius and the seven saints is the only one that Ælfric attempts to realize with any fullness of detail. He even gives us the direct words of Theodosius and Maximianus (217-25), the first time direct speech has been used in the narrative. He also retains the biblical allusion to the raising of Lazarus (218-19) found in the other versions of the legend, this being his only scriptural reference. At the center of the scene is the gesturally significant picture of Theodosius falling in veneration before the saints and kissing and embracing them (216-18).

The attention to dramatic and symbolic detail in this stylized scene highlights its position as the climax of the whole story. God's miracle is revealed and God's guiding oversight of the faith of his people is symbolized in the embrace of Theodosius, a figure of Christian kingship, and the saints. The special role of Theodosius in the story of the Seven Sleepers is exemplified by the fact that when the saints go out of the cave to meet him their faces shine like the sun: “heora nebwlitu scean swa swa sunne” (215-16). So important for Ælfric is this scene between Theodosius and the Sleepers that he allows it to overshadow the rest of the narrative. It takes up a third of his text, whereas in the Latin passio (we are unable to compare the anonymous Old English version at this point, as part of the scene between Theodosius and the Sleepers is missing in the manuscript) it represents only about one-twentieth of the total. Ælfric combines in his relatively extended treatment of this scene—and therefore in his Sanctorum Septem Dormientium as a whole—a concern about confirming orthodox teaching with an interest in the theme of spiritual authority and Christian kingship, as illustrated by the emperor Theodosius. What remains evident as well is that in his account he is not so interested in the details of what happened to the Seven Sleepers themselves, nor in their state of mind.

These saints are not shown as people with whom the audience can identify or sympathize. They exist on a rarified and emotionless level, on which there is no concern with worldly needs or with fears. In their transfigured state at the end of the narrative their faces may shine like the sun, but the saints are also in a sense transfigured from ordinary life in the rest of the narrative as well, being presented as changeless icons rather than as striving human beings at a time of trial. Ælfric's source would have concerned itself with such human considerations but they are not of interest to Ælfric in his presentation of the story as a revelation of spiritual truth.

The Sanctorum Septem Dormientium provides an unusually extreme example of Ælfric's approach to hagiographical writing, and one in which doctrine receives more explicit attention than usual. In key respects, however, this text is typical of the way in which Ælfric treats his hagiographical material elsewhere.¹⁸ Emphasizing the exemplary and iconographic aspects of the legend and deemphasizing the saints' individual humanity and vulnerability and the specific details of the historical setting of the story are, of sourse, particularly appropriate in the strongly doctrinal context of the Catholic Homilies. The whole of the Catholic Homilies is underlain by the principle of imparting good teaching: as Ælfric puts it in the Old English Preface to the First Series, … [“people have need of good teaching,” p. 2]. Ælfric's emphasis in the Sanctorum Septem Dormientium is also, however, in accordance with his usual hagiographical practice. In one of the first detailed examinations of Ælfric's approach to hagiography, Dorothy Bethurum spoke of his habitual “exchange of concrete detail [as found in his sources] for a summarizing phrase” and of the consequent “loss of vividness” in his saints' lives.¹⁹ And the study of Ælfric's saints' lives has led Raymon S. Farrar to describe the heroes of hagiography as “at times slightly depersonalized representations of various aspects of Christian life.”²⁰ Ælfric presents his saints as elevated and exemplary figures, in whom, as he declares in the Old English Preface to Lives of Saints, the wonders of God are seen:

… [God is wonderful in his saints, as we have said before, and the wonders of his saints honor him because he has performed the wonders through them.]

(Skeat, 56-58)

The lives of the saints are written so that they may be remembered and so that the faith of future generations may be confirmed:

… [Holy teachers wrote it in the Latin language as a lasting memorial and to confirm the faith of future generations.]

(Skeat, 50-52)

In his Latin Preface to Lives of Saints Ælfric speaks of his aim of refreshing his audience by the exhortations—“hortationibus” (16)—contained in his saints' lives, because, as he puts it, the passions of the martyrs greatly revive a failing faith—“quia martyrum passiones nimium fidem erigant languentem” (16-17).

Ælfric's approach, in his version of the legend of the Seven Sleepers as in his other saints' lives, reflects definitive characteristics of early medieval hagiography as a whole, as these have been discerned by modern scholars. Hagiography, of course, encompasses a range of styles, approaches, and attitudes on the part of its authors, and individual works will not all uniformly reflect its typical elements. Nonetheless, such features as the idealizing and symbolic qualities of this literature are widely recognized.²¹ Its heroes are larger than life, abstracted from everyday reality, and presented in highly conventional terms. They are, typically, secure and indestructible in their faith in the protection of God and beyond criticism in their behavior. They are idealized and exemplary: “The very basis of hagiography,” writes Régis Boyer, “is the exemplum, these texts have been, first of all, born of a pedogogical, edifying intention.”²² The remarks of C. W. Jones on Bede's approach in his prose Life of St. Cuthbert, a work written in Latin for a monastic audience, apply too to that of Ælfric, who wrote in the vernacular for a wider audience: “His primary aim was to generalize and to idealize the picture and to point it more clearly to its proper end. So we find him eliminating facts and detail … and making clear the moral rightness of the acts.”²³

The legend of the Seven Sleepers, however (as it appears in most versions), with its use of dramatic irony at the expense of the saints and with its interest in the feelings of ordinary people in an extraordinary situation, could be seen as conflicting with some of the principles of hagiographical writing, certainly as practiced by Ælfric. The legend is also extravagant in its plot and allows only a passive role for the saints themselves.

Furthermore, in including the legend in the Second Series of Catholic Homilies at all Ælfric might be said to be contradicting his declared intentions for the collection. He announces in the Old English Preface that the book is intended to include not monastic saints but only those saints whom the English nation honors with feast days … (p. 2, line 40). The Seven Sleepers do not come into this category, as Ælfric himself implies at the beginning of his account of them, when he informs his audience that the feast of the Seven Sleepers is kept two days after that of St. James … (184-85). This sentence suggests that the congregation being addressed in the homily would not be present when the feast was being celebrated.

The legend of the Seven Sleepers fits in with the overall principles of the Catholic Homilies, however, in that it has a strongly doctrinal theme. This theme draws Ælfric to the Seven Sleepers in the first place, and when he does turn to this celebrated tale it is in such a way as singlemindedly to give prominence to its edifying purposes, doctrinal and exemplary, and to reduce, or omit, everything else. Ælfric gets rid of those aspects that could be thought of as distracting from pure edification, and he presents his story with his customary evenness of narrative progression and serenity of tone. Further detail is not needed in his treatment and might even be counterproductive. What remains, although somewhat severe and lacking the discursive richness of the longer Old English version of the legend of the Seven Sleepers, provides a refined and abstracted example of what Ælfric would have regarded as sound hagiographical writing. In this text we see Ælfric assimilating the legend of the Seven Sleepers more fully to the conventions and principles of early medieval hagiography, as he practiced them. His practice is “purer” and more uncompromising than that of some of his contemporaries. In reflecting this practice the Sanctorum Septem Dormientium is characteristically Ælfrician.²⁴

Notes

1. Ælfric's Catholic Homilies: The Second Series: Text, ed. Malcolm Godden, EETS SS 5 (Oxford, 1979), “Sanctorum Septem Dormientium,” pp. 247-48. References to this text are by line number.

2. Walter W. Skeat, ed. Ælfric's Lives of Saints, EETS OS 76, 82, 94, and 114 (London, 1881-1900; reprinted as two vols., 1966), vol. 1, pp. 488-541; I have also edited this vita separately, The Anonymous Old English Legend of the Seven Sleepers, Durham Medieval Texts 7 (Durham, England, 1994). References in the present chapter are to Skeat's edition, by line number.

3. See Patrick H. Zettel, “Ælfric's Hagiographic Sources and the Latin Legendary Preserved in BL MS Cotton Nero E i and CCCC MS 9 and Other Manuscripts,” dissertation, Oxford University (1979), pp. 192-91. The text of the passio is edited by P. Michael Huber, in his “Beitrag zur Visionsliteratur und Siebenschlaferlegende des Mittelalters, I Teil: Text,” Beilage zum Jahresbericht des humanistischen Gymnasiums Metten (1902-3): 39-78. References to this edition are by page and line number.

4. See my article, “The Anonymous Old English Legend of the Seven Sleepers and its Latin Source,” Leeds Studies in English, n.s. 22 (1991): 43-56.

5. In the Gregory of Tours version referred to in note 11, Constantinus appears not at the end of the list but after Martinianus (p. 762, 2).

6. See London, BL Cotton Nero E. i, Part II, fol. 55r, i, 41; compare Huber's edition of the passio, p. 61, 7. The British Library MS referred to here and in subsequent notes (by folio, column, and line number) is the earlier of the two MSS containing the Cotton-Corpus text of the passio. It was written at Worcester c. 1060 (text of Seven Sleepers, fols. 53r-56r). The other copy appears in the later eleventh-century MS, Salisbury, Cathedral Library 222 (formerly Oxford, Bodleian Library, Fell 1), fols. 35v-41v.

7. See Cotton Nero, fol. 56r, i, 15-16; Huber, “Beitrag zur Visionsliteratur,” p. 69, 12.

8. See Cotton Nero, fol. 53v, ii, 24; Huber, ibid., p. 47, 8.

9. Note especially the MSS Namur 53 and Brussels 9290. The article referred to in note 4 shows that these MSS throw significant light on the source of the anonymous Old English version of the legend.

10. The Cotton-Corpus reading “memoriam maximam,” which Zettel (p. 193) identifies as the source of Ælfric's “mære cyrcan” (230) and which he contrasts with the “memoriam Maximiani” of Huber's “Beitrag zur Visionsliteratur,” (p. 78, 5), is not significant, because Huber's collations show that most MSS of the passio have maximam instead of Maximiani.

11. Edited by B. Krusch, in Passiones Vitaeque Sanctorum Aevi Merovingici, ed. B. Krusch and W. Levison, MGH, Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum, VII, ii, (Hannover and Leipzig, 1919-20), Appendix, vol. 1, pp. 757-69. References to this edition are by page and line number.

12. See further note 10. For memoria as meaning “shrine,” see J. F. Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minoris (Leiden, 1976), and A. Souter, A Glossary of Later Latin to 600 a.d. (Oxford, 1949), s.v.

13. Note Ælfric's own statement on this in his “Passion of Chrysanthus and his Wife Daria” … (lines 341-45, Skeat, Æfric's Lives, vol. 2, p. 396)

14. See Ernst Honigmann, “Stephen of Ephesus (April 15, 448-Oct. 29, 451) and the Legend of the Seven Sleepers,” Studi e Testi 173 (1953): 125-68.

15. See M. McC. Gatch, Preaching and Theology in Anglo-Saxon England: Ælfric and Wulfstan (Toronto and Buffalo, N.Y., 1977), pp. 86-88. For Thorpe's edition of this homily, see The Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church. The First Part, Containing the Sermones Catholici, or Homilies of Ælfric, ed. Benjamin Thorpe, 2 vols. (London, 1844 and 1846), vol. 1, pp. 230-39 (the addition to this homily occurs at the point corresponding to Thorpe's p. 236, between lines 22 and 23). Subsequent references to the First Series of the Catholic Homilies, other than to the unpublished addition, are to Thorpe's edition, by page number.

16. Gatch, Preaching and Theology, pp. 87-88.

17. The text is that of CCCC 188, p. 172. I also examined the texts of the passage in CCCC 178 (p. 242); London, BL Cotton Faustina A. ix (fol. 149v); and Cotton Vitellius C. v (fol. 95v). The other MSS that contain the addition are Oxford, Bodleian Library, Hatton 114 (fol. 96r ff.); and Cambridge, Trinity College B.15.34 (p.40 ff.). I am particularly grateful to P. A. M. Clemoes for allowing me to see his collation of the passage, which he carried out in preparing his dissertation, “Ælfric's ‘Catholic Homilies,’ First Series: The Text and Manuscript Tradition,” 2 vols., dissertation, Cambridge University (1956).

18. On Ælfric's approach to hagiography see further my article, “Contrasting Features in the Non-Ælfrician Lives in the Old English Lives of Saints,” Anglia 104 (1986): 319-27.

19. Dorothy Bethurum, “The Form of Ælfric's Lives of Saints,” Studies in Philology 29 (1932): 522.

20. Raymon S. Farrar, “Structure and Function in Representative Old English Saints' Lives,” Neophilologus 57 (1973): 88.

21. See especially Hippolyte Delehaye, Les Légendes Hagiographiques, 4th ed., Subsidia Hagiographica, 18a (Brussels, 1955), ch. 2 (Delehaye sees the stylization and simplicity of saints' legends as being due to the limited intellectual capacity of their popular audiences); and R. Aigrain, L'Hagiographie: Ses Sources, Ses Methodes, Son Histoire (Paris, 1953), especially pp. 195-290.

22. Regis Boyer, “An Attempt to Define the Typology of Medieval Hagiography,” in Hagiography and Medieval Literature: A Symposium, ed. H. Bekker-Nielson, P. Foote, J. Højgaard Jørgensen, and P. Nyberg (Odense, Denmark, 1981), p. 28. See also S. C. Aston, “The Saint in Medieval Literature,” Modern Language Review 65 (1970): xxxiv. Note too the Ælfric quotation given in note 13.

23. Charles W. Jones, Saints' Lives and Chronicles in Early England (Ithaca, N.Y., 1947), p. 74.

24. I wish to thank Mary Clayton for her helpful comments on an earlier draft of this essay.

Abbreviations and Short Titles

ASE: Anglo-Saxon England (cited as a periodical by volume and year)

ASPR: Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, in 6 vols. ed. G. P. Krapp and E. V. K. Dobbie (New York, 1931-42; 2d printing 1958-65)

BHL: Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina, 2 vols. (Brussels, 1898-1901)

BL: British Library, London (in citations of manuscripts)

BN: Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris (in citations of manuscripts)

CCCC: Cambridge, Corpus Christi College (in citations of manuscripts)

CCSL: Corpus Christianorum Series Latina, cited by volume

CSEL: Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, cited by volume

CUL: Cambridge, University Library (in citations of manuscripts)

EEMF: Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile

EETS: Early English Text Society (cited in the various series: OS, Original Series; ES, Extra Series; SS, Supplementary Series)

Ker, Catalogue: N(eil) R. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford, 1957)

MGH: Monumenta Germaniae Historica, cited by subseries and volume

PG: Patrologia Graeca, ed. J. P. Migne (Paris, 1857-67), cited by volume and column

PL: Patrologia Latina, ed. J. P. Migne (Paris, 1844-91), cited by volume and column