AELFRIC, called the "Grammarian" (c. 955-1020, Eng lish abbot and author, was educated in the Benedictine monastery at Winchester under Aethelwold, who was bishop there from 963 to 984. Aelfric gained some reputation as a scholar at Win chester, for when, in 987, the abbey of Cernel (Cerne Abbas, Dorsetshire) was finished, he was sent by Bishop Aelfheah (Alphege), Aethelwold's successor, at the request of the chief benefactor of the abbey, the ealdorman Aethelmaer, to teach the Benedictine monks there. He was then in priest's orders. Aeth elmaer and his father, Aethelweard, were both enlightened patrons of learning, and became Aelfric's faithful friends.
It was at Cernel, and partly at the desire, it appears, of Aethelweard, that he planned the two series of his English homi lies (ed. Benjamin Thorpe, 1844-46, for the Aelfric Society), compiled from the Christian fathers, and dedicated to Sigeric, archbishop of Canterbury (990-94). The Latin preface to the first series enumerates some of Aelfric's authorities, the chief of whom was Gregory the Great. In the preface he regrets that, except for Alfred's translations, Englishmen had no means of learning the true doctrine as expounded by the Latin fathers. The first series of 4o homilies is devoted to plain and direct exposition of the chief events of the Christian year; the second deals more fully with church doctrine and history. Aelfric de nied the immaculate birth of the Virgin (Homilies, ed. Thorpe, ii. 466), and his teaching on the Eucharist in the Canons and in the Sermo de sacrificio in die pascae (ibid. ii. 262, et seq.) was appealed to by the Reformation writers as a proof that the early English church did not hold the doctrine of transubstantiation.
A Testimonie of Antiquitie, skewing the auncient fayth in the Church of England touching the sacrament of the body and blonde of the Lord here publikely preached, printed by John Day (1567). It was quoted in John Foxe's Actes and Monuments (ed. 161o).
Grammar and Glossary (ed. J. Zupitza in Sammlung englischer Denkmaler, vol. i., 188o), were written for his pupils after the two books of homilies. A third series of homilies, the Lives of the Saints, dates from 996 to 997. Some of the sermons in the second series had been written in a kind of rhythmical, alliterative prose, and in the Lives of the Saints (ed. W. W. Skeat, 1881-190o, for the Early English Text Society) the practice is so regular that most of them are arranged as verse by Prof. Skeat. By the wish of Aethelweard he also began a paraphrase (ed. by Edward Thwaites as Heptateuchus, Oxford, 1698) of parts of the Old Testament, but under protest, for the stories related in it were not, he thought, suitable for simple minds. It has been suggested that this part of his life was chiefly spent at Winchester; but his writings for the patrons of Cernel, and the fact that he wrote in 998 his Canons as a pastoral letter for Wulfsige, the Bishop of Sherborne, the diocese in which the abbey was situated, afford presumption of continued residence there. He became, in 1005, the first abbot of Eynsham or Ensham, near Oxford, another foundation of Aethelmaer's. After his elevation he wrote an abridgment for his monks of Aethelwold's De consuetudine mo nachorum, adapted to their rudimentary ideas of monastic life ; a letter to Wulfgeat of Ylmandun (i.e., Ilmington on the borders of Warwickshire and Gloucestershire) ; an introduction to the study of the Old and New Testaments (about ioo8, ed. William L'Isle in 1623) ; a Latin life of his master Aethelwold; a pastoral letter for Wulfstan, archbishop of York and bishop of Worcester, in Latin and English; and an English version of Bede's De Tem poribus. The Colloquium, a Latin dialogue designed to serve his scholars as a manual of Latin conversation, may date from his life at Cernel. It is safe to assume that the original draft of this, afterwards enlarged by his pupil, Aelfric Bata, was by Aelfric, and represents what his own scholar days were like. The last mention of Aelfric Abbot, probably the grammarian, is in a will dating from about 1020.
of Aelfric's career are in B. Ten Brink's Bibliography.-Sketches of Aelfric's career are in B. Ten Brink's Early English Literature (to Wiclif), trans. H. M. Kennedy, New York, 1883, p. 105-12, and by J. S. Westlake in The Cambridge History of English Literature (vol. i., 1907, p. 116-129). An excellent bibliography and account of the critical apparatus is given in R. Willker's Grundriss zur Geschichte der angelsiichsischen Litteratur (Leipzig, 1885, P. 452-80). See also the account by Prof. Skeat in pt. iv. p. 8-61 of his edition of the Lives of the Saints, already cited, which gives a full account of the mss., and a discussion of Aelfric's sources, with further bibliographical references; and C. L. White, Aelfric, a New Study of his Life and Writings (1898) in the "Yale Studies in English." The Canons and the pastoral to Wulfstan were printed by B. Thorpe in Ancient Laws and Institutes of England (1840), and the life of Aethelwold was included by J. Stevenson in the Chron. Monast. de Abingdon (vol. ii., p. 253-66, Rolls Series, 1858). For the version of Aethelwold's De Consuetudine Monachorum see E. Breck, A Fragment of Aelfric (Leipzig, 1887), and for the version of Bede's De Temporibus, Oswald Cockayne, Leechdoms, Wortcunning and Starcraft (vol. iii. p. xiv-xix. and p. 233 et seq:, Rolls Series, 1866). Alcuini Interrogationes, Sigewulfi Presbyteri in Genesin • (ed. G. E. McLean, Halle, 1883) is attributed to Aelfric by its editor. There are other isolated sermons and treatises by Aelfric printed in Grein's Bibl. V. A. S. Prosa (vol. iii.).
