SOURCE: “Reinventing the Gospel: Ælfric and the Liturgy,” in Medium Ævum, Vol. 68, No. 1, 1999, pp. 13-31.

[In the following essay, Bedingfield traces ways in which Ælfric strayed from strict interpretation of biblical texts in order to clarify and sharpen the message of his writings.]

Tenth-century Anglo-Saxon England boasts what for many is regarded as the cornerstone of medieval dramatic ritual, the Regularis concordia's Visitatio sepulchri, often dubbed by critics of liturgical drama the first ‘quasi-play’. Because of the dearth of corollary evidence and the scattered nature of liturgical books pertinent to Anglo-Saxon observance, however, the Visitatio, with its ‘Quem quaeritis’ dialogue between the angel and the women at the tomb, is generally treated as singular, and the highly dramatic nature of the liturgy for the other major festivals has been largely dismissed. However, the vernacular preaching that accompanied these rituals, in particular that of Ælfric, reveals the remarkably pervasive influence of this dramatic liturgy on Anglo-Saxon perceptions of Christian history. Besides a few overt passages of liturgical instruction provided by Ælfric, this influence is evident more subtly throughout Ælfric's treatment of biblical figures and events re-enacted in the liturgy. In particular, Ælfric's translations of the pericopes for the major festivals of the church year demonstrate how fully biblical narrative and liturgical commemoration have become conflated for the Anglo-Saxon Church.

The recent edition of Ælfric's First Series of Catholic Homilies by Peter Clemoes has supplied a series of regrettable omissions in Thorpe's edition and translation. When writing an exegesis of a biblical passage, Ælfric generally gives the Latin incipit for the pericope, followed by an Old English rendering, before breaking it down into manageable bits for commentary. One tends to assume, partly due to Ælfric's oft-quoted conservatism regarding biblical translation, that this rendering will be more or less direct, and not particularly noteworthy, except as an example of Ælfric's style of translation, of which we have many others. This assumption is exacerbated by Thorpe's decision to omit much of this Gospel translation, ‘presuming that all readers of the Homilies have a copy of the New Testament either in Anglo-Saxon or English’.¹ In the first volume of his study of Biblical Quotations in Old English Prose Writers,² Cook extracts Ælfric's biblical renderings, but only those in Thorpe, ignoring the longer passages of translation left out in Thorpe's edition. He prints the extracts in their biblical order, with the Vulgate Latin beneath. This system is problematic, in part because the Vulgate in Ælfric's time was still not entirely standardized, and forms derived from variant versions, including the Old Latin, remained in liturgical usage and may have lent themselves to some of the Ælfrician readings. Cook's interest is in correlating these readings (those provided by Thorpe) with the modern Vulgate, again on the assumption that they would correlate fairly closely. As a result, for the passages of translation that Thorpe does include, such as that in Ælfric's First Series sermon for the Purification, he prints only that which does agree with the supplied Vulgate text, replacing exactly what is most interesting in Ælfric's renderings with ellipses and further obscuring the fact that Ælfric's departures from the pericopes are, at times, much more drastic than one tends to expect. In his second volume, reprinting Napier, Cook provides the readings omitted by Thorpe, but again his interest is in comparing them with the Vulgate.³ He presents them, again, in their biblical order, this time leaving in sections that do not fit with the Latin (which, in his first-volume passages, would have been excised and replaced with ellipses), instead replacing matching sections of the Latin with ellipses. Cook's supplementary presentation of these readings is useful in identifying passages that derive from biblical accounts other than that represented in the pericope, but leaves obscure the fact that Ælfric's departures from Scripture are often too substantial to be considered simple paraphrasing, or to be attributed entirely to choices in collation, leading us to wonder from where and why Ælfric has chosen, in several instances, to reinvent the Gospel narrative.

The two main types of changes that Ælfric makes to the pericope are additions and, when translating a narrative represented in multiple Gospels, collation. Ælfric's composite narratives are a particular puzzle, as it is not always clear why he has chosen certain elements from certain Gospels. Certainly, Ælfric will have had various reasons for changing a Gospel narrative. As Jonathon Wilcox points out, Ælfric's fear of translation pertains mostly to ‘naked’ narrative, and he is much less concerned when he knows that he will soon be explaining his rendering point by point.⁴ As a result, many of his changes anticipate his exegesis. The pericopes for Ælfric's First Series sermons for Christmas and for Epiphany (Thorpe keeps the first and omits the second) are straight translation, except for one subtle addition to each. To the Christmas Gospel Ælfric adds, as an appositive to Joseph, ‘Cristes foster-fæder’,⁵ as this fact is central to his subsequent explanation of Joseph's role. To the Epiphany story, besides the name of a quoted prophet, Ælfric adds only one adjective, turning King Herod into ‘þam reþan cyninge herode’ (233), anticipating the interpretation of Herod as the devil, whom we must avoid by taking another way home. Most of Ælfric's additions are of this nature, either explanatory appositives or interpretations commensurate with his exegesis. Some innovations, however, cannot be explained as readily. A good example is Ælfric's Old English rendering of the song of the crowd at the triumphal entry in his First Series sermon for Palm Sunday, as follows:

… (Hosannah to the Son of David. Blessed be the King of Israel, he who came in God's name. Let there be peace in heaven, and glory on high.)

(291)

Rather than following the Vulgate from Matthew xxi.9b (‘osanna Filio David benedictus qui venturus est in nomine Domini osanna in altissimis’), as prescribed in the pericope, he pulls together elements from three different Gospels, producing a song not found anywhere else. In his exegesis, however, he translates and explains exactly the song from Matthew xxi, doubtless because his source at that point had followed the proper Vulgate text. Sometimes, as in this instance, we may find no convincing reason for Ælfric to represent the Gospel this way. In many cases, however, an awareness of the liturgical celebrations that would have surrounded these sermons reveals that, particularly in his reworking of the pericopes for Candlemas, Palm Sunday, and Easter, the weight of the liturgical forms has coloured, if not determined, Ælfric's narrative.

These three festivals boast some of the most dramatic liturgical ritual in the early medieval Church, and it should not be surprising to find reflections of the ritual in homiletic treatments of their pericopes. In particular, the Candlemas and Palm Sunday processions dominate the liturgical and homiletic treatments of their respective festivals. Dramatic ritual works by establishing identifications between the contemporary participants and biblical figures at certain key moments in the commemorated events. The liturgy establishes and enforces these identifications, such that on Palm Sunday the processing crowd speaks with the voice of the original crowd at the triumphal entry, climactically praising Christ at the entrance to the gates of the church as did the Jerusalemites at the gates of the city. More famously, on Easter Sunday, participants in the Visitatio sepulchri see the proof of the risen Christ with the women at the sepulchre and with them proclaim his resurrection. Through the liturgical establishment of these identifications the power of the triumphal entry and of the resurrection is brought forward to the respective moments of commemoration, and the participants can see what those praising Christ saw, and learn the significance of these events for their Christian lives and for their eternal salvation. Particularly in the case of lay participation, which we clearly have in the processions of Candlemas and Palm Sunday at least, for these identifications to have much meaning the participants need to understand at least the heart of the Latin orations and antiphons that drive them. This is part of the function of vernacular preaching, and Ælfric, amidst his more theologically based exegetical interpretations of the pericopes, gives some attention to explaining these identifications, at times expressly asserting them as liturgical instruction, as he does for Palm Sunday in his First Series sermon. This care for ensuring that his audience understand their role in the key liturgical events at Candlemas, Palm Sunday, and Easter both infects his exegesis and to some degree determines his revisionary interpretations of the Gospel pericopes.

In Ælfric's First Series, the first Old English pericope rendering to differ markedly from the day's reading is that for Candlemas. The consuming liturgical event at Candlemas is the procession of the Christ-representing candles through town to the home church, and Ælfric's version of the Gospel account depends upon it. At the end of his Candlemas sermon, Ælfric describes the day's key event and explains its meaning:

… (Know also, everyone, that it is set in churchly lore that we must on this day bear our lights to church and let them there be blessed, and we must go after with the lights between / amongst God's houses and sing the praise-song that thereto is set. Although some cannot sing, let them nevertheless bear that light in their hands, because on this day was that true light Christ borne to the temple, he who has freed us from darkness and brings us to the eternal light.)

(256-7)

It is central to Ælfric's presentation of the Candlemas liturgy that the participants, whether or not they can sing, see themselves as carrying Christ into the temple. In his Second Letter for Wulfstan, Ælfric again outlines the liturgical action:

… (You shall on the mass-day that is called the Purification of Holy Mary bless candles and bear them with praise-singing, both consecrated and lay, in procession and offer them so burning after the Gospel to the mass-priest with the offering song.)⁶

The phrase ‘ge hadode ge læwede’ is particularly noteworthy, and reflects the more implicit recognition of a mixed audience presented in Ælfric's sermon. In general, due to a lack of evidence, not much can be said about the intended demographics of Anglo-Saxon liturgical ritual. The description used here by Ælfric in his Second Letter for Wulfstan urges us to think of Anglo-Saxon liturgical participants as a juxtaposition of at least two more or less separate groups, interacting with and understanding the same rituals in potentially distinct ways. Particularly when using evidence from the monastic liturgy, one wonders how fully the laity might have related to the themes and images of the festivals, and to what extent they were intended to, throughout the church year. Within Holy Week, the most important witness for the key rituals is the Regularis concordia, a tenth-century monastic document, and it outlines the rituals in such a way that one tends to envision monastic participants. Against this predisposition, however, discussion of the Deposition of the Cross on Good Friday stands out starkly. After describing the Adoratio ritual and its accompanying prayers, the Concordia outlines a practice ‘imitabilem ad fidem indocti uulgi ac neophytorum corroborandum’.⁷ This ceremony is particularly visual, and as described in the Concordia its core signification would come across quite well without a clear understanding of the Latin. One wonders at what point, in the description of the Holy Week rituals, the ‘unlearned common person’ has entered, and at which points he might not be present. Much of this question would depend on venue, for the differences between Holy Week commemoration in Winchester and that in a more parochial context would centre to some degree on the presence of a monastic community and its relationship to the surrounding people, and evidence for the Anglo-Saxon liturgy is generally too scattered and uncertain to say much about liturgical practice at a particular place and a particular time. Perhaps the compilers of the Concordia, recognizing the inconsistent possibility of lay participation in certain places, and perhaps not others (for individual ceremonies), have left it an open question in constructing a document usable throughout the country. As such, Ælfric's indications that the laity are to take an active role in the central liturgy for Candlemas and for Palm Sunday are especially compelling. Besides his inclusions of ‘ge læwede’ in his Letter for Wulfstan, Ælfric's assumption in his sermon for Candlemas that some of the participants might not be able to sing but could still hold candles certainly seems to be targeted at the laity, as is his assertion that on Palm Sunday the palms are distributed to ‘þam folce’.⁸ In any event, as Ælfric makes clear both overtly and in his sermon composition, it is important that all those participating, consecrated or lay, whenever they might be present, be trained to understand fully the significance of their liturgical action. His representation of the pericope for Candlemas reveals this liturgical dynamic.

The Gospel for the day is the account of the presentation of Christ in the temple at Luke ii.22-32, from Luke's explanation of the occasion to the words of Simeon when holding aloft the Christ child, echoed throughout the liturgy as the ‘Nunc dimittis’. Luke is the only evangelist to record this meeting between Christ and Simeon. Luke's explanation of the event, consuming only three verses, was apparently a bit too sparse for Ælfric, and he replaces this section with a passage several times as long.⁹ His revision here is extensive, but of the usual sort, intended to clarify exactly why Christ was being carried to the temple on this particular day. Although Ælfric picks up the Gospel account more closely at verse 25, in which Simeon is introduced, his presentation of Simeon is remarkably expressive. Rather than simply ‘looking forward to the consolation of Israel’, Simeon is … (‘very desirous of the Saviour's advent; and begged God daily in his prayers that he might see Christ before he tasted death’) (249). Rather than simply relating that Christ's coming had been revealed to Simeon, Ælfric makes it causal, explicitly the result of devout worship, of ‘meriting.’ … In contrast to the terse biblical account, Ælfric sets up Simeon as a protagonist, as someone for his audience to see into, and sympathize with, and relate to. His description of Simeon's acceptance of Christ is particularly telling, both as a model of how the Candlemas participants should accept Christ and as a reflection of the liturgical order:

… (And the holy Mary came then to the temple with the child; and the old man Simeon went towards the child and saw the Saviour and knew him gladly, that he was the son of God, the redeemer of all the earth. He took him then in his arms with great ardour, and bore him into the temple and eagerly thanked God, that he could see him. He said then, ‘My Lord, now let me go with peace from this life following your word, because my eyes have seen your Healing One, the one you have prepared before the sight of all people, a light for revelation to the people, and glory for your people Israel.’)¹⁰

The extra-biblical insight that Simeon took the child in his arms ‘with great feeling’ and ‘fervently thanked God’ is sympathetically reflective, and therefore instructive, of how the participants should take the candle and relate to it during the procession.

More striking here, however, is the order of Ælfric's presentation, particularly in that it seems to contradict the account in Luke. In Ælfric, Simeon enters the temple by the direction of the Holy Spirit (after having prayed, been diligent, etc.), sees and recognizes the Christ child, leaves the temple to get to the child, takes it fervently in his arms, and bears it into the temple, all the while zealously giving thanks and praying the ‘Nunc dimittis’. Again, in Ælfric's explication, after a somewhat rhapsodic expansion of the anticipatory prayers of Simeon, Ælfric repeats this order:

… (Mary Christ's mother bore that child, and the old Simeon went towards her, and knew that child through God's revelation, and embraced it, and bore it into the temple.)

(250)

From the biblical account, as repeated in the ‘Cum inducerent’ entrance antiphon, it would seem that Mary and Joseph were the ones to carry the child into the temple, inside of which Simeon accepted him, as follows (Luke ii.27-8):

et venit in Spiritu in templum et cum inducerent puerum Iesum parentes eius ut facerent secundum consuetudinem legis pro eo et ipse accepit eum in ulnas suas et benedixit Deum.

Ælfric unreservedly explains or expands his narratives, but for him actually to usurp the Gospel account here is remarkable, and his reason for doing so must have been compelling. Much of his reason might stem from the fact that the liturgical re-enactment for the day does not resonate with the Gospel account on exactly this point. While striving to establish the sorts of dramatic associations evident in the Palm Sunday and Easter rituals, liturgical commemoration generally tries to match its processional elements with the biblical account, although its primary concern is symbolic, not mimetic. For Candlemas, however, this dynamic is superseded by the desire, as put forth in the Concordia and in Ælfric's Second Letter for Wulfstan, to make the liturgy for Candlemas parallel the liturgy for Palm Sunday. The Palm Sunday liturgy features a procession to an away church, where the palms are blessed and handed out, a procession back to the home church, and a presentation of the palm at the offertory of the mass following the procession. The most powerful moment of this procession is at the gates of the church, as the participants, carrying their palms and singing with the voice of the crowd, exchange praises with those in the city (represented by pueri), and this was the occasion for the ‘Gloria, laus et honor tibi’ composed by Theodulph of Orleans, and for which original verses were composed for the Canterbury Benedictional. By prescription, the directions for Candlemas in the Concordia follow the same format (Symons's translation):

On the Purification of St. Mary candles shall be set out ready in the church to which the brethren are to go to get their lights. On the way thither they shall walk in silence, occupied with the psalms; and all shall be vested in albs if this is possible and if the weather permits. On entering the church, having prayed awhile, they shall say the antiphon and collect in honour of the saint to whom this same church is dedicated. Then the abbot, vested in stole and cope, shall bless the candles, sprinkling them with holy water and incensing them. When the abbot has received his candle from the doorkeeper, the chanting shall begin and the brethren shall receive and light their candles. During the return procession they shall sing the appointed antiphons until they reach the church doors; then, having sung the antiphon Responsum accepit Simeon, with the collect Erudi quaesumus Domine, they shall enter the church singing the respond Cum inducerunt Puerum. Next they shall say the Lord's prayer, and Tierce shall follow; after which, if the brethren were not vested for the procession, they shall vest for the Mass during which they shall hold their lighted candles in their hands until after the Offertory, when they shall offer them to the priest.¹¹

As with Palm Sunday, the highlight of the festival is the procession from the dispersal of the candles to the entrance into the home church. This procession, in the liturgy and in Ælfric, is driven by an association between the liturgical participants and Simeon, an association that dominates the liturgical forms from the vigil ceremony to the presentation of the candles. Throughout the Candlemas liturgy we see something of a deposition of Mary in favour of Simeon, as he who received and held Christ, as the liturgical participants receive and hold the candle, comes to dominate the processional highlights, especially the entrance into the church. This usurpation is reflected in Ælfric's innovative rendering of the Gospel story.

The Canterbury Benedictional, the most complete Anglo-Saxon witness for the Candlemas liturgy, does not include any forms for the vigil ceremony, but several other texts do, including the Leofric Collectar, and the forms are largely the same wherever they occur. The purpose of the vigil is to present the images and associations that will be developed the following day. The chapter reading for the day establishes the link between Christ and the candle that will be repeated and developed throughout the festival:

Claritas dei illuminavit templum. lucerna eius est agnus. quem simeon ille diu senex ulnis gestaverat. et in toto mundo regem glorie predicabat.¹²

Dominating the vigil, however, is Simeon, specifically the raising up of Christ by Simeon. Vigils in the Collectar begin with the antiphon ‘O ammirabile commercium’, referring to the meeting of Christ and Simeon, and the chapter reading above features Simeon carrying about the ‘lit’ Christ. The reading for Vespers ends with the antiphon that on the next day will be read as the candle-bearing participants enter the home church:

Cum inducerent puerum ihesum parentes eius accepit eum symeon in ulnas suas et benedixit deum dicens Nunc dimittis domine seruum tuum in pace.¹³

With the ‘Nunc dimittis’, the celebrants take over the voice of Simeon, and this conjunction will be of particular importance in the ceremonies for the next day. Simeon's action of ‘raising up’ is applied repeatedly to the beseechers, and its significance is explained in a key collect for Vespers in the Leofric Collectar (taken from an alternative collect for the day itself from the Gregorian Sacramentary and from the Ad populum in the Leofric Missal, and recurring right before the entrance into the home church in the Canterbury Benedictional):

Perfice in nobis domine gratiam tuam. qui iusti symeonis expectationem implesti. ut sicut ille mortem non videt. priusquam christum dominum videre mereretur. ita et nos vitam optineamus eternam.¹⁴

If the purpose of the vigil is to get the participants into the proper frame of mind for the commemoration of the festival day, that frame of mind involves a sympathetic relationship with Simeon, holding up Christ with him and reaping the benefits of seeing Christ in a way specifically compared to Simeon's reward.

This anticipation comes to fruition in the blessing of the candles in the away church. The candles are asperged, incensed, and handed out singuli singulas (and, according to the apparent order in the Concordia, lit after dispersal), while the participants sing three antiphons (from the Canterbury Benedictional):

Puer ihesus proficiebat etate et sapientia coram deo et hominibus. Nunc dimittis domine seruum tuum in pace quia viderunt oculi mei salutare tuum. Lumen ad revelationem gentium et gloriam plebis tuae israhel.¹⁵

The latter two of these are in the voice of Simeon, from the dramatic declaration of Simeon upon seeing and raising up the Christ child. In the Gospel speech, the last antiphon above is fairly under-emphasized, a more or less tacked-on, appositive metaphor. Its use here and in other places as an independent antiphon reflects how the dominance of the liturgical form, in which the idea of Christ as a light is much more important than it would have been to Simeon, has moulded use of the scriptural story. What is important here is not that the participants see in the ceremony a direct parallel to the events recounted in Luke, but rather that they see Christ in the lit candles and that they, like Simeon, accept him, raise him up, and praise God that they have been allowed to see him. The benediction directly following the dispersal of the candles makes this connection overt:

Omnipotens sempiterne deus. qui hodierna die unigenitum tuum in ulnis sancti symeonis suscipiendum in templo sancto tuo presentasti. te supplices deprecamur. ut hos cereos quos nos famuli tui in tui nominis magnificentia suscipientes gestamus luce accensos. benedicere et sanctificare. atque lumine superne benedictionis accendere digneris. quatinus eos tibi domino deo nostro offerendo. digni et sancto igne tuae dulcissimae caritatis accensi. in templo sancto gloria tua representari mereamur.¹⁶

The conflation of Christ with the candle is explicit here in the idea that the offered candles make present the light of Christ at the presentation to Simeon. Similarly, the conflation of the candle-raising celebrants with the infant-raising Simeon makes clear how the participants should relate to the Christ / candle, and makes their usurpation of Simeon's voice all the more real.

The procession begins, still in the away church, with an antiphon addressed first to Mary, and then to Simeon:

Ave gratia plena dei genetrix virgo ex te enim ortus est sol iustitie illuminans que in tenebris sunt. letare tuum senior iuste suscipiens in ulnas liberatorem animarum nostrarum donantem nobis et resurrectionem.¹⁷

Mary, here, is lauded as the mother of Christ, she who brought forth this light that the participants now carry, and that Simeon is receiving. Another antiphon, sung as the procession leaves the church, praises Mary as both the door of heaven (porta) and she who carries the new light (portat) and this, along with the antiphon ‘Cum inducerent puerum’, makes one want to look for a more established association between the participants and Mary, parallel to the scriptural account in which Mary (with Joseph) carries the Christ child into the temple. This is not to be found, however, as both antiphons end with, and are dominated by, Simeon taking the child in his arms. The primary oration for the procession confirms this emphasis:

Domine ihesu christe qui hodierna die in nostrae carnis substantia inter homines apparens. a parentibus in templo es presentatus. quem simeon venerabilis senex lumine spiritus sancti irradiatus agnovit. suscepit. et benedixit. presta propitius. ut eiusdem spiritus sancti gratia illuminati atque edocti. te veraciter agnoscamus.¹⁸

The propitiation for which the participants beg, described in terms of illumination, is paralleled to the irradiation of Simeon upon holding Christ aloft. The visual correlation here, as the processors are irradiated by their candles, solidifies the sympathetic relationship between them and Simeon.

Notably, in an oration between the ‘Ave gratia’ antiphon and the exit from the church where the candles were blessed, the ‘propitious intercession of blessed Mary’ herself is called for as the celebrants ask God to ‘grant purity for our minds and bodies’. Due to the mythos of Mary's holiness that so dominated Anglo-Saxon perceptions of Christ's mother, she who was, in the commemorated event, being purified is now called upon to purify, and any hint that the purpose of the original event was actually to mark the end of a period of uncleanness on the part of Mary has been strictly avoided. The liturgical participants can no more relate to her in this sense than they can to Christ himself. As sympathetic associations are established in the liturgy, the participants are to think of themselves, within the context of the particular ritual, as one with the original figures scripted for them. These figures can only be ones that they could meaningfully relate to and, by speaking with their voices and perceiving events through their eyes, receive whatever lesson and / or edification was received by them. This cannot meaningfully be done with Christ, any more than it could be with God, which is why for Easter, for example, liturgical participants are made to relate to the three women seeing the evidence of the risen Christ, not the risen Christ himself. Similarly, in a system in which Mary has the same sort of untouchable holiness as does Christ, she is an impossible association. Simeon, however, is not, and is specifically set up in the Gospel text as a model, and the liturgy for Candlemas is dominated by descriptions of him as ‘just and timorous’, repeated assertions that he, expecting Christ, received the promise of God, and his own words, recognizing and proclaiming Christ as a light to drive away the darkness. This association dominates both the monastic liturgy and the mixed procession of monastic and lay, which ends before the home church with an oration explaining its intended result, the ‘Perfice in nobis’.¹⁹ They then sing the ‘Cum inducerent’ and the ‘Nunc dimittis’, in Simeon's voice, as they enter the church for the offering of the candles at the offertory of the mass.

The Gospel narrative discusses only Simeon's entrance into the temple, that of the parents with the child, the acceptance and ‘raising up’ of Christ by Simeon, and his response, the ‘Nunc dimittis’. The liturgy for Candlemas, instead, has a procession away, a blessing of the candles in another church, a procession home, an entry into the church, and the offering at mass. If one were looking for mimetic correlation, one would point to the ‘Cum inducerunt’ at the entry to the church, describing the parents bringing in the child, and expect a Simeon-based climax in the main mass, in particular at the offertory. However, presentation of this mass in the liturgical witnesses is relatively understated, and the texts are, for the most part, either general or simply repeating passages and chants from earlier stages. In every way, the highlight of the festival is the blessing of the candles and, in particular, the procession through town, up to the entry into the church, as both the care given this part of the liturgy for the day in liturgical books and the force given this part of the festival in the descriptions in the Concordia and Ælfric's Letter, invoking the Palm Sunday liturgy, seem to indicate. For Palm Sunday, the format makes particular sense, as the focus of the day is the procession to Jerusalem and the entry. Candlemas, because of the importance and visual dominance of the candle-lit procession, shifts commemorative focus from the main mass and the offering to a procession that has no meaningful antecedent. As such, one cannot look for associative antecedents based on correlation with the Gospel narrative. Simeon holds up and proclaims Christ at several points, most notably as the candles are received and lit, during the procession, and before entry into the home church. The participants relate to the candle as Simeon did to Christ not so much at points at which Simeon, in the biblical story, would have done so, but at highlights of the liturgical services, the dispersal of the candles, the procession, and in particular the entry into the church, at which time the events of the Bible story might be overridden in favour of establishing an edifying relationship between the participants / Simeon and the candle / Christ. Perhaps the transposition of the ‘Perfice in nobis’ collect to its position in the Canterbury Benedictional and the Missal of the New Minster, following the antiphon ‘Responsum accepit symeon’, is a reflection of this dynamic. At the point of entry, the candle-bearers think of their potential reward, meriting eternal life, as analogous to Simeon meriting to see Christ. Flanked by the ‘Nunc dimittis’ (the second part of both the preceding and the entrance antiphons), the participants might well see themselves as Simeon carrying the Christ child into the temple. As such, for Ælfric it is more important that his audience make this association than that they receive a conservatively accurate account, informing both his expansive treatment of Simeon and his usurpation of the actions of Simeon described in Luke in favour of the liturgically resonant idea of Simeon leaving from the temple, accepting the child outside, and bearing him, recognized, lit, and praised, into the temple.

Ælfric's reinventing of the Gospel narrative is rarely so overt, and the influence of the liturgy is more subtly evident in his collated narrative for Palm Sunday. As noted in his rendition of the song of the crowd at the triumphal entry, there may be no discernible reasons for some of Ælfric's choices in collation. It should be noted generally that liturgical antiphons for Palm Sunday, as for many feast days, often give fused or altered readings from those in the Gospels, and several compositive versions of the song of the Palm Sunday crowd appear, though not, insofar as I have seen, in exactly the formula chosen by Ælfric. Ælfric's love for collation may follow a similar dynamic. Usually, however, when Ælfric draws a passage from an alternative Gospel, he draws an entire passage, a bit too carefully to be purely subconscious, or directionless. The reading for this occasion is the account in Matthew xxi.1-9. The first few passages, up to Jesus' command to the disciples to collect the ass and its foal from the nearby city, are translated fairly closely, and Thorpe gives only this much, cutting off the narrative just at the point at which Ælfric diverges from the pericope. Here he brings in, from Luke, the question of the owners of the donkeys when the disciples try to take them away, changing the plural owners into ‘þæs assan hlaford’, anticipating his contrast between those who seek to oppose God's preaching and ‘se Hlaford’ who overcomes such opposition with manifold miracles. Several of Ælfric's deviations are clearly of this nature, and a few others hint at theological interpretation, as when Ælfric replaces the passive ‘eum desuper sedere fecerunt’ with the more active ‘se hælend rad uppon þam folan’, resonant with the theological point that Jesus rode willingly to his own Passion. A few changes, however, seem to owe something to the liturgy for the day, and these are focused in the latter part of the narrative, as follows:

… (and the Saviour rode upon the foal to the city of Jerusalem. Of this the prophet Isaiah had before prophesied, thus saying, ‘Speak to the daughter of Zion, Look, your king comes to you, very gentle, riding on an ass.’ When the believing folk within the city learned that the Saviour was coming towards them, they went out to him, and threw their cloaks under the ass's feet and made a bridge for the Saviour. Some hewed branches of trees and threw them under the ass's feet, and then some went before, some after, and they all sang, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David. Blessed be the king of Israel, he who came in God's name. Let there be peace in heaven, and glory on high.’)²⁰

The most notable change here is the transposition of Isaiah's prophecy from before the collection of the donkeys in Matthew until after Jesus has begun riding. There is no obvious reason for this transposition, and in his exegesis Ælfric explains the signification of ‘Siones dehtre’ before discussing the saddling of the ass. The presentation of this passage in the liturgy may be important here. This prophecy is reported, in slightly different form, in Matthew and in John. Apart from the reading from John before the blessing of the palms and that from Matthew between the away church and the gates of the home church, this prophecy (from the version in John)²¹ comes only, according to the Canterbury Benedictional, in an antiphon sung as the participants exit the away church, at the beginning of the procession, symbolically just after Christ has begun riding towards Jerusalem.

More compelling, however, is Ælfric's syntax in his description of the crowd's actions. Towards the end of his sermon, Ælfric explicitly links his liturgical participants with the branch-bearing crowd, establishing this link as the preoccupying thought of those bearing palms:

… (everywhere in God's church the priest shall bless palm-twigs on this day, and they so blessed distribute to the folk, and then God's people shall sing the praise-song that the Jewish folk sang to Christ when he drew near to his passion. We imitate these believers of that folk with this deed because they bore palm-twigs with praise-singing to the Saviour.)

(297)

This association is nurtured by the antiphons that the participants were to sing throughout the procession, focused on the actions and words of the crowd descending upn Jesus. As Jesus approaches the city gates, the crowd splits into those who go before and those who follow behind. Ælfric makes much of this distinction, explaining those who went before as the patriarchs and prophets who lived before Christ, and the crowd following as those who have turned to the faith, and continue to, after his incarnation, all singing the same song. Deshman notes that for the Palm Sunday illustration in the Benedictional of Æthelwold the following crowd are not, as was traditional in Palm Sunday illustration, the apostles, but are rather a body of palm-bearing townspeople.²² As such, this illustration is focused on the split crowd, those who went before and those who follow behind, surrounding Christ at the gates of Jerusalem. The liturgical highlight of the day, as made explicit both in the Concordia and in the Canterbury Benedictional, is the ‘Gloria laus’, sung as an exchange between the palm-bearing crowd and pueri who had been instructed to go on before and wait inside the city gates. The splitting of the crowd, symbolized by the sending forth of the pueri, is liturgically central, and Ælfric seems to draw it into sharper focus in his narrative, changing a subordinate clause (‘The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed’) into a coordinate (‘b eodon þa sume beforan. sume bæftan’). Perhaps the liturgical importance of the splitting of the crowd, all singing together, has coloured his description of their actions, giving extra weight to what, for his audience, might be taken as liturgical instruction.

Ælfric's choices in collation when composing his account of Christ's resurrection for his First Series Easter sermon are more starkly original, and in some ways more clearly dependent on the liturgy.²³ Thorpe gives only the first verse of the reading that Ælfric is following, beginning with Matthew's account of the Jews' petition for guards, and omits entirely Ælfric's version of the resurrection story, one of his most interesting compilations. That this account is going to be distinct is immediately clear from its cast of characters. Biblical commentators have always striven to reconcile the inconsistent Gospel accounts of exactly which women were involved in the events of Easter weekend. Pope, in a long note to his first supplementary homily of Ælfric, for the Nativity, discusses some of the problems involved in the Gospel lists of the women present at the crucifixion. Following a string of suppositions, Ælfric, seemingly following Haymo, asserts that the mother of James and John, the sons of Zebedee, was Mary Salome (the third woman at the tomb on Easter morning according to Mark), and that she was a sister of the Virgin Mary. Jerome, Augustine, Gregory, and Bede, as Pope shows, followed a different line of supposition in conflating these accounts, one that conflicts with the position apparently taken by Ælfric.²⁴ The question of which women were at the tomb is equally problematic, and Ælfric's Matthew-based solution is particularly curious. The synoptic Gospel accounts present women who saw where Jesus's body was laid on Good Friday, those who bought and/or prepared spices, and those who approached the tomb on Easter morning (John is distinct, and tells only of Mary Magdalene finding the empty tomb). Luke's account is general, discussing ‘mulieres quae cum ipso venerant de Galilaea’ (Luke xxiii.55a), and the same nameless band of women seems to perform all three functions. Matthew and Mark give more detail, and it is from Mark that Ælfric draws many of his innovations to his Matthew base, despite the fact that these two accounts are somewhat hard to reconcile. Mark tells us that ‘Maria autem Magdalene et Maria Ioseph aspiciebant ubi poneretur’ (Mark xv.47), and then gives us a separate set of women for the purchase of the spices (Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome²⁵), and it seems by syntax to be these three who approach the tomb on Easter morning. Witnessing the burial, Matthew has ‘Maria Magdalene et altera Maria’ (Matthew xvii.61), which fits well enough with Mark, but Matthew makes no mention of the purchase of spices, and for Easter morning relates simply, ‘venit Maria Magdalene et altera Maria videre sepulchrum’ (Matthew xxviii.1b).

A bit of creative juggling might have brought the accounts together, specifically alternative interpretations of Matthew's ‘the other Mary’ and the assumption of a silent third Mary at the tomb, but Ælfric takes a surprisingly original tack, and one that has no obvious purpose. On Good Friday, according to Ælfric,

… (Then beheld Mary the Saviour's mother and the women who were with her where he was buried, and they went to the city and Mary Magdalene and Mary James's mother bought precious ointment that is made to anoint the bodies of dead men, that they might decay more slowly, and then the women went on this day at dawn, and wanted to prepare his body, as was the custom there in that nation.)

(299-300)

There seems to be no authority for including Mary Christ's mother amongst those witnessing the burial. The genearl account in Luke might allow for it and, less likely, one might interpret ‘the other Mary’ to mean the Virgin, but Mark's account, from which Ælfric takes the bulk of his collated additions, leaves no room for her. Also curious, Ælfric, in bringing in from Mark the purchase of the ‘precious ointment’, reduces the number of purchasers from three to two, Mary Magdalene and Mary Jacobi. This reduction leaves him with (possibly, by syntax) these two women approaching the tomb on Easter morning, bringing it more or less into accord with the Matthew base, and perhaps this is his reason here. If so, however, this care for consistency with Matthew makes his addition of Mary Christ's mother on Good Friday and his implicit expansion of the number of women present at the burial beyond two all the more inexplicable. Further, in Ælfric it is not so clear as it seems to be in Mark that the women who bought the spices were the ones to approach the empty tomb. Rather than resorting to the unspecific (implied in the Latin) pronoun ‘they’, as does Mark, Ælfric relates that ‘eodon ða ða wimmen on þisum dæge on ærnemerien’. The construction here separates this bit somewhat from the account of the ointment purchase, leaving unclear exactly to which group ‘ða wimmen’ refers, and therefore just how many women were involved. Perhaps this is Ælfric's purpose here, for in leaving his audience with an indefinite number of unspecified women he makes it easier to make the association between the liturgical participants and the women at the empty tomb.

What certainly carries liturgical resonance here is the introduction to the Matthew pericope of the ‘precious ointment’ bought after the burial and carried by the women to the empty tomb. Ælfric's most jarring innovation, however, comes right at the end, after the words of the angel to the women:

… (Then lay inside the tomb that sheet in which he had been wound, and the women turned then to Christ's disciples, with great fear and with great joy, and would tell them of Christ's resurrection.)

(300)

There is no mention of Christ's burial cloth in Matthew or in Mark. Luke and John each mention the gravecloth, but in each case it is seen and/or handled by Peter or John, and nowhere in the four accounts is there any relationship between the women and the cloth. Here, however, the fact of the gravecloth, the symbol and proof of Christ's resurrection, is transferred to the women, who then turn to proclaim it to the apostles. The source of this innovation, as of the introduction of the ointment, may be in the liturgy, as set forth in the Concordia's famous Visitatio sepulchri. The Concordia's instructions for this occasion re-enact a story that is partly composite and partly original in its symbolism, as follows (in Symons's translation):

While the third lesson is being read, four of the brethren shall vest, one of whom, wearing an alb as though for some different purpose, shall enter and go stealthily to the place of the ‘sepulchre’ and sit there quietly, holding a palm in his hand. Then, while the third respond is being sung, the other three brethren, vested in copes and holding thuribles in their hands, shall enter in their turn and go to the place of the ‘sepulchre’, step by step, as though searching for something. Now these things are done in imitation of the angle seated on the tomb and of the women coming with perfumes to anoint the body of Jesus. When, therefore, he that is seated shall see these three draw nigh, wandering about as it were and seeking something, he shall begin to sing softly and sweetly, Quem quaeritis? As soon as this has been sung right through, the three shall answer together, Ihesum Nazarenum. Then he that is seated shall say Non est hic. Surrexit sicut praedixerat. Ite, nuntiate quia surrexit a mortuis. At this command the three shall turn to the choir saying Alleluia. Resurrexit Dominus. When this has been sung he that is seated, as though calling them back, shall say the antiphon Venite et videte locum, and then, rising and lifting up the veil, he shall show them the place void of the Cross and with only the linen in which the Cross has been wrapped. Seeing this the three shall lay down their thuribles in that same ‘sepulchre’ and, taking the linen, shall hold it up before the clergy; and, as though showing that the Lord was risen and was no longer wrapped in it, they shall sing this antiphon: Surrexit Dominus de sepulchro. They shall then lay the linen on the altar.²⁶

The Concordia arms the women at the tomb with thuribles of incense meant to represent the ointment bought by the women in Mark with which to anoint Christ's body,²⁷ and gives them the extra-biblical honour of taking up the ‘gravecloth’ and turning to show it to the ‘disciples’, announcing the resurrection as commanded by the angel. While relating a story dissimilar from any of the individual Gospel accounts, the outline of this ritual resonates well with Ælfric's account particularly on those details that differ from Matthew. It is specifically these women, carrying ointment to the sepulchre, that Ælfric admonishes his audience to emulate:

(But this deed betokens something to be done in God's church. We who believe in Christ's resurrection, we come truly to his tomb, with precious ointment, if we are filled with the odour of holy virtue, and if we with the glory of good works seek our Lord.)

(302)

The sympathetic association with the holy women established so creatively in the liturgy is both reflected in and strengthened by Ælfric's reinvented version of the Gospel story.

In his Second Letter for Wulfstan, following skeletal instructions for Candlemas, Ash Wednesday, and Palm Sunday, Ælfric makes clear his first priority regarding liturgical participation, and indeed of much of his literary career, asserting that ‘gyf hwa nyte hwæt þis getacnige, he leornige æt oðrum menn on leden oððe on englisc’ (‘if anyone does not know what this signifies, let him learn it from others, in Latin or in English’).²⁸ Ælfric's first concern, particularly in his First Series sermons, is that his audience understand clearly how they are supposed to relate to the grand, highly symbolic, and often interpretative rituals in which the events of Christian history are relived, and through which they are primarily understood. When these rituals differ from the strict biblical account, Ælfric feels free not only to paraphrase and elaborate but actually to change the biblical story to make clear its deeper significance for his audience, to allow the Christ-carrying processors, and the palm-waving crowd before the city gates, and the holy women at the tomb to relive these events by appreciating not so much what happened, but … [‘what this signifies’].

Notes

1. Homilies of Ælfric, ed. Benjamin Thorpe, I, Ælfric Society (London, 1844), n. 1, p. vii.

2. A. S. Cook, Biblical Quotations in Old English Prose Writers (London, 1898) and Biblical Quotations in Old English Prose Writers, 2nd series, Yale Bicentennial Publications (New York, 1903).

3. Cook explains his inclusion of these passages in the preface to his second volume: ‘After the appearance of the first volume, Napier printed in the Archiv für das Studium der Neueren Sprachen und Litteraturen, vols. 101 and 102, the complete Gospel extracts on which certain of Ælfric's Homilies were based, and which had been abbreviated in Thorpe's edition. These I have now reproduced from Napier's text. They of course duplicate to some extent, as Napier pointed out, the matter contained in the first volume, but it seemed worth while to present them here at length, notwithstanding this consideration’ (Cook, Biblical Quotations, 2nd series, p. viii). Cook does not, however, present the complete Gospel extracts intact. At times, as is the case in the first part of Ælfric's rendering of the pericope for Easter in his First Series sermon for the day, Ælfric's innovations seem closer to one of the other Gospel accounts. Recognizing this, Cook breaks up this passage, giving the first part as Mark xv.47 and xvi.1-4 (Cook, Biblical Quotations, 2nd series, p. 155) and the bulk as Matthew xxviii.2-13, 15 (Cook, Biblical Quotations, 2nd series, p. 151). As was the case with Cook's excisions in the first volume passages, Ælfric's innovations are swallowed by Cook's Vulgate-based structure.

4. Ælfric's Prefaces, ed. Jonathan Wilcox, Durham Medieval Texts 9 (Durham, 1994), pp. 37-8.

5. Ælfric's Catholic Homilies: The First Series, ed. Peter Clemoes, EETS, ss 17 (Oxford, 1997), p. 190.

6. Die Hirtenbriefe Ælfrics, ed. Bernhard Fehr, Bibliothek der angelsächsischen Prosa 9 (Hamburg, 1914), p. 216.

7. Regularis concordia, ed. and trans. Dom Thomas Symons (London, 1953), p. 44.

8. Ælfric's Catholic Homilies, ed. Clemoes, p. 297.

9. Ibid., p. 250. Ælfric's expansion of these passages is a bit too much for Cook's schema, who for Luke ii.22-4, in his first volume, can only refer us back to Thorpe.

10. Ibid. Presumably recognizing the disparities between this passage and the Gospel account, Cook excises most of it, before the translation of the ‘Nunc dimittis’ providing only ‘He hine genam ða on his earmas, … and þancode georne Gode’ (Cook, Biblical Quotations, p. 189).

11. Regularis concordia, ed. Symons, pp. 30-1.

12. The Leofric Collectar, ed. E. S. Dewick, Henry Bradshaw Society 45 (London, 1914) p. 45.

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid, p. 46.

15. The Canterbury Benedictional, ed. Reginald Maxwell Woolley, HBS 51 (London, 1917), p. 83. The Missal of the New Minster, ed. D. H. Turner, HBS 93 (London, 1962), has only the latter two of these here.

16. The Canterbury Benedictional, ed. Woolley, p. 83.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid, p. 84.

19. As mentioned above, this text appears as a collect in the Leofric Collectar for Vespers on the vigil and as the Ad populum, the final reading for the main mass, in The Leofric Missal, ed. F. E. Warren (Oxford, 1883) and in The Missal of Robert of Jumièges, ed. H. A. Wilson, HBS 11 (London, 1896) (in The Gregorian Sacramentary, ed. H. A. Wilson, HBS 49 (London, 1915), it rests in the same position, after the Ad complendum, but is simply labelled ‘Alia’, which does not necessarily mean that it would have followed liturgically, but simply that it could be considered as an alternative collect). In the Missal of the New Minster, which, unlike the other missals, has the Ordo for the Blessing of the Candles and the procession, it appears only in the same position as that discussed here from the Canterbury Benedictional, having been moved from the end of the mass to the end of the procession. The placement of this text in our two main witnesses reveals a discrepancy between them and the summary account in the Concordia. For the set of forms proclaimed just before and during the entrance into the home church, the Concordia prescribes the antiphon ‘Responsum accepit Simeon’, the collect ‘Erudi quaesumus Domine’ (the Gregorian collect for the main mass, also in the Leofric Missal), and, concurrent with the entrance, the ‘Cum inducerent puerum’, followed by Tierce (focused thematically, in the Leofric Collectar, on the expectation of ‘just and timorous’ Simeon), and then the mass. The Missal of the New Minster and the Canterbury Benedictional have replaced the collect ‘Erudi quaesumus’ (which now follows the ‘Cum inducerent’, inside the church) with the passage that had ended the mass, the ‘Perfice in nobis’. (There is no indication of a break for Tierce in either text, and Symons tells us that this detail is peculiar to the Concordia.) One wonders whether this placement of the ‘Perfice in nobis’, directly before the entrance into the church, is a later development, a deliberate shift of this passage to this position rather than just an anticipatory echo of the Ad populum of the mass, as the only witness to provide both the processional forms and the forms for the mass, the Missal of the New Minster, has no Ad populum, ending with the old Gregorian Ad complendum as its Postcommunio, such that the ‘Perfice’ is not repeated. Robert has the ‘Perfice’ as the final mass text, called ‘Ad vesperum’, but the leaf of the manuscript that had dealt with the entrance to the church is lost. The Winchcombe Sacramentary, ed. Anselm Davril, HBS 109 (London, 1995), gives only a few forms for the day, but it does have ‘Erudi quaesumus’ as a Collect ad processionem and ‘Perfice’ as its Ad vesperas. This seems to be more in agreement with the account in the Concordia (as the account in Robert might be), and the early date of this book (late tenth century) may be important in this regard.

20. Ælfric's Catholic Homilies, ed. Clemoes, pp. 290-1.

21. Although Ælfric's version of Isaiah's prophecy seems to come from Matthew's account, its failure to mention the second donkey makes it resemble that in John almost as closely.

22. The Benedictional of Æthelwold, ed. Robert Deshman, Studies in Manuscript Illumination 9 (Princeton, 1995), p. 77.

23. Ælfric's Catholic Homilies, ed. Clemoes, pp. 299-300.

24. Cf. Homilies of Ælfric: A Supplementary Collection, ed. John C. Pope, I, EETS, os 259 (London, 1967), n. 5b, p. 217.

25. As Pope tells us, Salome was, by a later tradition, known as Mary Salome, hence the (more modern) general description of the women at the tomb as the Three Marys.

26. Regularis concordia, ed. Symons, pp. 49-50.

27. Both the Benedictional of Æthelwold and the Missal of Robert of Jumièges portray, for Easter, the three women at the tomb, holding not jars of ointment but liturgical thuribles and receiving the words of the angel at the mouth of the tomb.

28. Die Hirtenbriefe Ælfrics, ed. Fehr, p. 216.

I am immensely grateful to Professor Malcolm Godden for his generous advice and guiding comments.