HOMILY (Gr. honiVia, converse) primitively signifies a discourse held with one or more individuals, but in ecclesiastical use it means a discourse held in the church, and addressed by the Miaister to the congregatiou. The practice of explaining in a 'populas form the lessons of Scripture read in the synagogues had prevailed among the Jews, and appears to have been adopted in the Christian churches from the earliest times. Tho discourses employed for this purpose were of the must simple character; but with the exception of one ascribed to Hippolytus (q.v.), we have no sample of this form of com position earlier than the homilies of Origeu in the 3d century. Taking these as a type, the early Christian homily may be described as a popular exposition of a portion of Scripture, accompanied by moral reflections and exhortations. It differs from the sermon (Gr. logos, Lat. oratio) in eschewing all oratorical display, and in following the order of the scriptural text or narrative, instead of being thrown into the form of a rhetorical discourse or a didactic essay. The schools of Alexandria and Antioch appear to have been the great centers of this class of sacred literature, and in the early centuries we find the names.of Hippolytus, Metrodorus, Clement of Alexandria, Dionysius, and Gregory Thaumaturgus as principally distinguished. Put it was iu the following centuries that the homily received its full development in the hands of the oriental fathers, Athanasius, the two Gregories, of Nyssa and of Nazianzum, Basil, the two Cyrils, of Jerusalem and of Alexandria, and, above all, Chrysostom; and in the west, of Ambrose, Augustine, Peter Chrysologus, Leo, and Gregory the great. In later centuries, Venerable Bede, the
popes Sabinian, Leo II. and III., Adrian I., and the Spanish bishops Isidore of Seville and Ildefonsus continued to use the homiletic form; and even in the modern church many preachers have regarded it as the best medium of scriptural instruction; and two different forms of homily are distinguished, the higher and the lower. The former fol lows the order of matter, rather than of any scriptural passages assumed to be expounded; the latter is a purely exegetical and moral exposition of some lesson from the liturgy, or of some other extract from holy Scripture.
It is right to add, however, that this strictly historical acceptation of the name homily is by no means uniformly observed in modern use. The name homily is very frequently used, almost as a synonym for sermon, and siguldes nothing more than a plain, moral discourse, without ornament or rhetorical pretension, but also without any pretension of being molded upon the ancient patristical model.