Determination and interpretation of semantic lexical underspecification in Old English homilies.

ABSTRACT

One of the most challenging problems facing lexical semantics of old texts, like Old English homilies, is to explain how unspecified meanings are "controlled" allowing the proper senses to be selected and deployed to achieve successful goals. The term "underspecification" refers to "some feature value whose overt presence is required on the surface" but "is left underlyingly unspecified and must therefore be provided by a default mechanism" (Trask 1993: 291). The study of lexical underspecification not only sheds light on the semantic behaviour of polysemies by "unpacking" several senses for a single lexical item, it may enable this lexical item to be uniquely understood in the context and it may ultimately help us make suggestions about evolutionary semantic continuity of the word.

In this paper I examine a few lexical items used in Old English homilies and present a possible interpretation of the meanings of such words taking into account the context in which they are used, as well as the author's own explanatory exposition. The Old English words which have been analysed are: leorningcniht, apostol, arendraca, leornere, letanie, ele and prowend.

**********

To those of us who remember Margaret Schlauch's brilliant lectures on medieval and renaissance English prose, always lucid and often witty, it seems astonishing that her trenchant observations made half a century ago are very seldom quoted nowadays. I was not her student but I remember her several books which I studied at that time and I certainly recall her lecture on Mary of Nijmeghen which she delivered in 1962 at the Jagiellonian University on the occasion of my doctoral defence. In this paper I should like to pay my attention to what Margaret Schlauch said about the work of one of the greatest, if not the greatest, Old English homilists, AElfric. When translating and/or adapting the Latin homiletic material he "applied much skill to the task", says Schlauch, "taking pains to simplify, explain and adapt the exposition to his audience" (1956: 92). Taking a few lexical items as examples I shall try to show how he did it, how he coped with alien concepts to make them understandable to his Anglo-Saxon listene rs and readers.

Homilies, generally speaking, could be easily regarded as the domain of religious research: Latin in origin, cut off from laity, hidden behind the walls of medieval monasteries and cathedrals were worlds unto themselves. But they were written not only for the clergy and the clerical society among which the knowledge of Latin was poor, often practically nonexistent (cf. direct statements by homily writers, too well-known to repeat them here) but also "for the sake of the simple and unlearned listeners and readers" for whom the work was intended (Godden 1992: 521). Have a look at the example (1):

1) ic oas boc of ledenum gereorde to engliscre spraece awende. na ourh gebylde miceire lare. ac for oan oe ic geseah 7 gehyrde mycel gedwyld on manegum engliscum bocum. oe ungelaerde menn ourh heora bilewitnysse to miccium wisdome tealdon. 7 me ofhreow p hi ne cuoon ne naefdon oa godspellican lare on heora gewritum. buton oam mannum anum oe p leden cuoon.

(AElfric's Catholic Homilies I 174, 49-54)

'I translated this book from the Latin language to the English speech not because of the confidence in great knowledge but because I saw and heard great heresy in many English books which unlearned men in their simplicity ascribed to great wisdom and I felt sorry that they did not know, neither had they evangelical knowledge in their writings except for those men alone who knew Latin' [RN] (1)

As seen, AElfric's concern about the right religious background of the laity and his care to expose to them moral, ethical and philosophical views of the new Christian faith in an acceptable way to be emotionally relevant and cognitively understandable was one of his crucial aims in adapting the Latin sermons; for that very reason they are of significantly special interest for a historical linguist.

For almost all the extant Old English homilies, editors of the texts have found direct, sometimes indirect sources; they undertook extremely careful and painstaking search for a possible corresponding Latin sentence, phrase or even word (cf. a fairly recent edition of Catholic Homilies by Clemoes and Godden). Going through this original source background one can easily notice that the Old English homilist always made a conscious effort to give his audience and readers the meaning in a clear and digestible vernacular idiom. Thus literal, word for word translations are not a rule, AElfric's "main linguistic point is that Latin and English have different modes of expression which must be observed even in cases where a very literal translation would otherwise be called for", says Godden (1992: 515) referring to the preface of AElfric's translation of Genesis.

Rendering the source lexical meaning requires some ingenuity on the part of the homilist so that the information loss and/or information intrusion be as small as possible. It seems that the Old English language was astonishingly adequate to render a foreign concept (Kastovsky 1992: 309; Godden 1992: 515). In addition to direct loans we often come across loan translations and additional explanatory information making explicit many aspects of meaning which are underlying and implicit in the original. Yet for some cases loan translating has not disclosed their specific meaning and their sense remains fuzzy, ambiguous and underspecified. This is not a marginal aspect of lexical semantics and becomes crucial for a right exegesis especially of a new religious doctrine. In recent years much linguistic research has been concentrated on lexical underspecification and the main representative of this orientation, Pustejovsky, says that "there is no way in which meaning can be completely divorced from the structure that carries it" and further that "the meanings of words should somehow reflect the deeper conceptual structure in the cognitive system, and the domain it operates in" (1998: 5-6). For a historical linguist, the methodology aspects of Pustejovsky's statements are as fascinating as impossible to achieve: what makes the hard problem hard is the mysterious difficulty of explaining cognitively linguistic meanings and their usage. However, I assume that some of these aspects can be disclosed even under these inexplicable circumstances. The homilist's aim is to arrive at a semantic expression that would be most informative to his audience, which often requires on his part an exceptional intuitive invention as a mere rendering, like borrowing that can be even most precise, is often still a meaningless symbol. Consider the following two words: apostle and disciple. Both are direct loans from Latin apostolus (going back to Greek) and discipulus; they are used in Old English as apostol,-es 'one sent', and discipul, -es 'a y outh engaged in study'. (2) Both loans are used in Old English homilies to denote the followers of Christ, e.g.:

2) an of pam cynne comon Cristes apostoli,
   and manega oore, pe aefter his aeriste
   heora aehte beceapodon, and eall paet wuro ledon
   aet oaera apostola fotum, and folgodon Criste
   buton gytsunge, and heora bigleofa
   waes gemaene him eallum mid pam apostolum.
       (Homilies of AElfric, A Supplementary Collection 297, 199-204)
   'And from this tribe came Christ's apostles
   and many others that after his resurrection
   sold their possessions, and all that money
   laid down next to the apostles' feet and followed Christ
   without desire for possessions and their means of subsistence
   was common to all together with apostles.' [RN]

and earlier in the same homily

Hys discipuli pa saedon digellice him betwyann,
Hwaeoer aenig man him brohte mete hider?
        (Homilies of AElfric, A Supplementary Collection 291, 73-74)

'His disciples then said secretely among themselvees
Whether any man brought him food hither.'  [RN]
           (cf. St John 4: 33, and The Acts of the Apostles 4: 33-35)

But the loans themselves can hardly be associated with any native sense and thus are completely incomprehensible puzzles to Old English uneducated people. In order to make these concepts understandable, AElfric provides loan translations: oerendraca 'messenger' for apostle and leorningcniht 'learner' for disciple, which he treats as having the same sense, or as being semantically very close. This ingenously simple solution is often supported by explanatory exposition, as seen from the following passages:

3) ??a siopan geceas he him leorninccnihtas; aerest twelf. ??a we hatao apostolas ?? sint aerendracan. sypoan he geceas twa 7 hundsyfentig. ??a sint genemnede discipuli. ?? sint leorninccnihtas; ??a worhte he fela wundra.

(AElfric's Catholic Homilies 1187, 251)

'Then afterwards he [i.e. Christ - RN] chose disciples, first twelve that we call apostles who are messengers. Subsequently, he chose a hundred and seventy two who are named disciples, who are learners; then he performed many miracles.' [RN]

and similarly

4) oa pe he [i.e. Se haelend crist - RN] waes prittig wintra eald on ?? menniscnysse. oa began he to wyrcenne wundra 7 geceas pa twelf leorningcnihtas pa we apostolas hatao pa waeron mid him aefre sy??an 7 he him taehte ealne ??one wisdom pe on halgum bocum stent. 7 purh hi ealne cristendom astealde;

(AElfric's Catholic Homilies I 325, 4-8)

'Then when he was thirty years old in his incarnation (as a man), he began to perform miracles and chose twelve disciples that we call apostles and they were with him ever since and he taught them all wisdom which is written in holy books, and through them established Christian faith.' [RN]

Though the topic of each homily is different, example (3) comes from the homily about the creation of the world, and example (4) is taken from the homily to be delivered on Tuesday in Rogationtide and is on Lord's prayer, (3) the quoted passages refer to the same events, i.e. choosing disciples and performing miracles.

These two extracts show how well acquainted AElfric was with the original meaning of words he was going to translate, and still it seems that for one reason or other he did not care to make them openly distinct and used them interchangeably as if they were synonyms. That thay are not is obvious form such uses as:

5) Augustinus oa gehadod cyrde to his biscopstole. and asende aerendracan to rome

(AElfric's Catholic Homilies II 79, 228)

'Then Augustine was appointed to his episcopal see, and sent messenger(s) to Rome' [RN]

If the word cerendraca were substituted by apostol or leorningcniht, the meaning would be extremely difficult to grasp. Similarly, at the beginning of the same homily we read about Gregory the Great that

6) He is rihtlice engliscre oeode Apostol.

(AElfric's Catholic Homilies II 72, 5)

'He is rightly the apostle of the English' [RN]

Obviously, one cannot say that he was engliscre oeode leorningcniht 'the disciple of the English'. Neither can the word leorningcniht be exchanged for apostol in such contexts as:

7) Ne bio na se leorningcniht furoor ponne his lareow;

(Homilies of AElfric, A Supplementary Collection 498, 22; 503, 134)

'The disciple is not above his teacher' [RN]

(cf. Mt 10: 24 "The disciple is not above his master", AS leorning-cniht, Lindisfarne oegn, Rushworth leornere, Latin discipulus)

An apostle or a messenger would be completely out of place here: 'the apostle, the messenger is above his master'. The lexicalization of the notion disciple, learner, follower, etc., appears not to be fully established in Old English as this meaning can be expressed also by other items such as leornere or degn, for example:

(8) Se haelend oa tobraec oa hlafas. and sealde his leomerum.
     (AElfric's Catholic Homilies II 233, 101)
    'the Lord broke the loaves of bread and gave his disciples'
    [RN] (cf. St Mark 8: 1-9)

(9) 7 mio oy gesaett geneolecedon to him oeignas his (Lindisfame)
    7 pa he waes gesett him eodun to his discipuli & his paegnas
     (Rushworth)
    (in the Anglo-Saxon versions there are his leorningcnihtas or
     his leorningcnihtes)

    et cum sedisset accesserunt ad eum discipuli (Latin, St Mt 5:
     1)'and when he was set, his disciples cam unto him'
                                        (Authorized Holy Bible)

These textual samples show that it was a hard task for a homilist to give in his own language clear-cut equivalents of foreign words with their semantic underspecification no matter how well he knew the source language. According to my observations, AElfric tried to convey the most essential and general semantic aspects which his audience could understand. Thus, apostle and disciple are synonymous when they denote the twelve Christ's followers (see example (3): leorninccnihtas ... pa we hataa apostolas sint aerendracan), under other circumstances they are not synonyms.

Not all lexical elements, however, are so complex cognitively or perhaps fuzzy (?), there are also much clearer and simpler cases which allow the homily writer to explicate a new word with its qualia in an easily comprehensible way. Take as an example a Latin word litania 'litany'. In the homily called In Letania Maiore 'the Greater Litany' (Rogationtide), which originally referred to "the three days of fasting, prayer and procession" (Godden 2000: 145/3), the opening sentence is:

10) pas dagas sind gehatene. letanie. (AElfric's Catholic Homilies
                                                         I 317, 2)
    'These days are called litany' [RN]

The only semantic component of letanie is included in the phrase kas dagas, but it does not define the meaning of the word, neither does it give any entailment which the word may evoke in various sentential contexts. It is almost certainly a mistaken belief to imagine that the Old English audience know what kind of days they were, therefore AElfric immediately adds some clarification:

p sint gebeddagas.
'that are the prayer days' [RN]

However, such a description is far from being satisfactorily informative and a good deal of underspecification remains undisclosed. Since any day can be a day of prayer, AElfric's ingenious language intuition was telling him that further specification of the meaning was demanding; he goes on explaining that but this characteristic is missing from the previous exposition. Instead, AElfric focuses his attention on the functionally relevant features of the meaning of praying. Though fasting, singing and procession are supposed to be observed on the three days of Rogationtide, it is praying that AElfric concentrated on when explaining the sense of litanie. The underspecification of the lexical semantics in this case is only partially made explicit.

  on bpisum dagum we sceolon gebiddan ure eorolicra waestma.
   genihtsumnysse: 7
  us sylfum gesundfulnysse 7 sibbe. 7 bp git mare is ure synna
   forgifenysse;
                       (AElfric's Catholic Homilies I 317, 2-5)

  'on these days we should pray for abundance of our earthly frui
   (prosperity),
  and for our health and peace so that yet greater be forgiveness
   of our sins'
  [RN]

In some other homily we read that the litany is sung:

11) oa hwile bpe bpaet folc oa letanias sungon;
                       (AElfric's Catholic Homilies II 77, 161)
    'while that people sang litanies' [RN]

The two examples presented so far indicate that the homilist made some choice and out of several underspecified aspects selected those that in his opinion would have been most easily understood, those that refer rather to pragmatic aspects (not metaphoric-figurative, though), those that from the point of view of religion and faith were most illuminating.

Generally speaking, it seems that this was the way AElfric's mind worked; the same method is encountered when he explained the meaning of word referring to nonsophisticated, nor religiously conditioned natural objects, such as olive, olive oil and scorpion.

First, let us have a closer look at the word olive and olive oil which now and then appear in the homiletic material. The Latin terms were probably familiar to the majority of clergy or at least to those that visited southern Europe. They are found in the Bible and the Gospels quite often as Latin oleum, oliva and quite naturally oleum as most often used was borrowed into Old English as ele. (4) At the very start the new word ele might have been simple and comprehensible to those that knew what it denoted but it must have been strange and meaningless to illiterate laity. As in other cases the homilist, AElfric, described what the word signifies saying

12) Ele wyxt on treowum, eall swa win deo;
    ac pa elebeamas beoo maran on waestme,
    and pa berian grytran, and hy man gaderao and wringo,
    and man et pone ele, swa swa we etao buteran,
    on manegum estmettum, and he is metta fyrmest.
    Man deo hine to leohte eac on oam lande
    on faegerum leohtfatum, for oan pe he faet is,
    and wynsumlice byrno binnan Godes cyrcan;
    he is swioe deorweoroe, and hine man deo to fulluhte,
    and to Godes penungum, ponne he gehalgod bioo.
        (Homilies of AElfric, A Suplementary Collection 552, 132-141)

    'Oil (olives) grows on the trees, likewise the wine (vine) does
    but the olive-trees produce more fruit
    and the berries are bigger; and they are gathered
    and pressed and people eat this oil as we eat butter;
    out of many delicacies it is the best of food.
    it is used for light, also in that land
    in beautiful lamps, because it is fat
    and pleasantly burns within God's churches,
    it is very precious, and it is used for baptism,
    and for God's service, when it is hallowed' [RN]

Notice that AElfric uses ele both for olives (fruit) and oil (liquid fat). This is the word which easily enters into the process of compounding, compare

ele-bacen - 'oil baked', Latin: olec coctus eleatus

ele-beamen - 'of or belonging to the olive tree', Latin: oleaginus

ele-berge - 'an olive' (oil berry), the fruit of an olive-tree, Latin: oliva

wyn-ele - pleasant oil,

and many, many others. Bosworth does not contain a loan originating from Latin oliva, Modem English olive is first recorded in c 1200 (from French). Going back to our extract it is important to emphasize that AElfric's explanation is not found in the original text on which the homily is based. He gives a fairly detailed description of the plant, tree, of the production of oil, and finally, of its application. The information about ele given by AElfric was not only crucial to a proper understanding of the meaning of the word but also much wider and more detailed than it seemed necessary for the context. The attempt on the part of the homilist to familiarize an alien concept is a clear indication of how deeply involved he was in making his text comprehensible. Beside any literal use of the sense of the word oil there are also situations when it is used in a symbolic, figurative sense, for example in a parable about ten virgins (AElfric's Catholic Homilies II 328: 45, cf. St. Matthew 25: 1-13) where it symbolize s true love, as it is the nature of oil that it will rise above every fluid: pour oil upon water or another fluid, the oil will flood above, pour water upon oil, and the oil will break through and swim above.

Another example which I would like to discuss, also metaphorically used in the Gospel, demands some explication of its unspecified features. It is Latin scorpius, Scorpio which had not equivalent in Old English, and for which Old English prowend was used. Phonetically these two words have nothing in common, neither are they semantically related: Latin scorpio which goes back to Greek scorpio is akin to Old English scearfian 'to cut off, scrape', while prowend is a nominal created from the verb prowian to 'suffer'. Although easily recognizable phonetically and categorially the Old English prowend hardly ever is likely to be associated with an animal. Speculating a bit one can say that there are some qualia in the meanings of scorpion and suffering caused by a severe sting of the worm. That the verb prowian can be a causative in Old English is attested by Bosworth which cites the Lindisfarne version of the Gospel (Mt. 17: 12) where the word prowend with such a meaning is found, although later altered to georowe d:

13) 7 sunu monnes georowed bio from him...
    'Likewise shall also the Son of man
       suffer of them'                          (Authorized Holy Bible)

    Latin: et filius hominis passurus est ab
                                       eis

Godden in his Commentary to AElfric's Catholic Homilies says: "The OE gospels give only a gloss for scorpio ('paet is an wyrmcynn') but AElfric's term prowend is known to other Old English writers" (cf. Bosworth) (Godden 2000: 149). Because thought and meaning arise mainly through the association of ideas, here suffering and the venomous scorpion, the lexical underspecification was additionally given an overt manifestation. The new object which appears in the evangelical text on which AElfric based his homily (Luke 11: 12) is first introduced by the wyrm pe is gehaten prowend 'the worm that is called prowend'.

14) gift he bitt aeges syld he him pone wyrm p is gehaten prowend;
                             (AElfric's Catholic Homilies I 319, 57)

    'if he asks for an egg he gives him a wor which is called scorpion
                            (i.e. a type of a serpent, snake)' [RN]

(cf. the Anglo-Saxon version of the Gospel)

gyf he bit ag. segst pu raeco he him scorpionem paet is an wyrmcynn;

'if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion?'

(Authorized Holy Bible)

AElfric repeats this in his exegesis of the Gospel, saying

15) He cwaeo pa ooer bigspel: hwilc faeder wile syllan his cylde stan. gif hit him hlafes bitt? oooe naedran:

gif hit fisces bitt? o66e bone wyrm browend gif hit

aeges bit; (AElfric's Catholic Homilies I 320, 97)

'Then he says another parable: which father would give his child a stone, if he asks him for bread? or a snake (serpent?) if he asks for a fish? or that worm browend if he asks for an egg?' [RN]

Later, elaborating on this parable AElfric interprets the significance of an egg and a scorpion according to a well-spread idea which equates fish, egg, and bread with faith, hope and charity. The egg is contrasted with a scorpion in the following two passages:

16) p aeg getacnao hiht: for oi pe fugelas ne tymao swa
    swa oore nytenu: Ae aerest hit bio aeg. 7 seo moder
    syooan mid hihte bred p aeg. to bridde; swa eac ure
    hiht: ne becom na gyt to oam be he hopao. ac is swilee he
    si aeg; ponne he haefo p him behaten is. he bio fugel;
                       (AElfric's Catholic Homilies I 321, 1109)

'That egg signifies hope: because birds do not reproduce like other animals. But first there is an egg and the mother afterwards with hope hatches that egg to a young chic. Similarly our hope, it does not yet happened to that he hopes but he is like an egg. Then he has that is promised him. It is a bird' (Bosworth: so also our hope has not arrived at that for which it hopes) [RN]

Further, the egg, a metaphor for hope, is contrasted with a scorpion which means death:

17) Se wyrm prowend: be is geset ongean p aeig: is aettren.
    7 sliho mid pam taegle to deaoe; pa oing be we geseoo
    on pisum life: pa sind ateorgendlice; pa oe we ne
    geseoo 7 us synd behatene; hi sind ece: strece paerto
    pinne hiht: 7 Andbida. oo p ou hi haebbe. Ne loca pu
    underbaec. ondraed be bone prowend. be geaetrao mid pam
    taegle; Se mann locao underbaec. be geortruao godes
    mildheortnysse: bonne bio his hiht geaetrod mid baes
    browendes taegle; Ac we sceolon aegoer ge on earfoonyssum.
    ge on gelimpe 7 on un.gelimpe. cweoan swa swa se witega
    cwaeo; Ic herige minne drihten on aelcne timan ... bonne
    bio ure hiht gehealden wio baes wyrmes slege...
                     (AElfric's Catholic Homilies I 321, 124-126)

'The worm scorpion which is placed in contrast to an egg is poisonous and strikes with its tail to death The things which we see are transient (fading, perishable?), those that we do not see and are promised are everlasting; extend to that object your hope and wait until you have it Do not look backwards, be afraid of the scorpion which poisons with its tail The man looks backwards who doubts in God's mercy, then his hope is poisoned by the scorpion's tail But we should say both in hardship and in good fortune and in misfortune so as the prophet says, I praise my lord all the time ... then our hope is preserved in opposition to the worm's blow.' [RN]

These symbols seem to capture at least some of the structure of thought and concept through association, analogy, comparison and the like. One may wonder why it was just a scorpion that was selected to symbolize death, lack of hope, and not any other animal, but this is not our concern here. Perhaps a remark on this may be somewhat relevant: according to a Latin medieval bestiary of the 12th century it was believed that the scorpion which was classified with worms "is an animal which is mostly germinated without sexual intercourse, out of meat or wood or any earthly thing. People agree that, like scorpion, they (the worms [RN]) are never born from eggs" (The Bestiary 1960: 191). The idea of egg which is strongly significant in the religious sense is lacking from the scorpion which together with poison is bringing death.

These few examples illustrate both the power and the limitations of language. It seems that AElfric creatively applied all explanatory resources to make lexical items at least less underspecified. Historical linguists recognize that the language processes like underspecification, word-formation, etc. have a limited utility in word semantics research and the matching cognitive conceptualizations are still undiscovered. Of the many intriguing features of the meaning spotted during historical investigations, the most notable is flexibility feature of word senses and the underlying mental processes we do not fully understand. In the quest to unlock the many mysteries of historical word semantics one should, like Margaret Schlauch, read and reread original texts all the time and investigate for oneself their conceptual background.

(1.) Most Modern English renderings of Old English examples are my own suggestions [RN], for those that are not -- reference sources are provided.

2 Other words given by the dictionary are scholar and disciple; Bosworth also quotes AElfric's "Glossary" discipulus vel mathites. Latin mathema of Greek origin means 'teaching, symbol offaith'.

(3.) The editor says: "AElfric's choice of the Lord's Prayer as his theme for the occasion has no parallel in any of the homiliaries which he is known to have used, and there is no evidence of its use as a pericope, but it is used as the theme for a homily in Litaniis in the shorter homiliary of Rabanus Maurus ... which suggests that there may have been an established link with Rogationtide" (Godden 2000: 153).

(4.) Old English ele entered into the language as an early borrowing to undergo the process of i-umlaut, but it was borrowed too late for consonant gemination. (Cf. Wright and Campbell).

REFERENCES

Campbell, A.

1959 Old English grammar. Oxford: At the Clarendon Press.

Godden, Malcolm R.

1992 "Literary language", in: Richard Hogg (ed.), 490-535.

Godden, Malcolm R.

2000 AElfric's Catholic Homilies: Introduction, commentary and glossary. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hogg, Richard

1992 The Cambridge history of the English language. Vol. 1. The beginnings to 1066. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kastovsky, Dieter

1992 "Semantics and vocabulary", in: Richard Hogg (ed.), 290-408.

Pustejovsky, James

1998 The generative lexicon. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.

Schlauch, Margaret

1956 English medieval literature and its social foundations. Warszawa: Panstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe.

Trask, Robert Lawrence 

1993 A dictionary of grammatical terms in linguistics. London -- New York: Routledge.

White, T. H.

1960 The bestiary: A book of beasts being a translation from Latin bestiary of the twelfth century made and edited by T. H. White. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

Wright, Joseph -- Elizabeth Mary Wright

1908 Old English grammar. London: Oxford University Press.

PRIMARY SOURCES

AElfrics Catholic Homilies I, see Clemoes.

Aelfric's Catholic Homilies II, see Godden.

Clemoes, Peter (ed.)

1997 Aelfric's Catholic Homilies. The 1st series. Text. EETS, No. S. S. 17. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Godden, Malcolm R. (ed.)

1979 Aelfric's Catholic Homilies. The 2nd series. Text. EETS, S. S. 5. London: Oxford University Press.

Homilies of Aelfric, see Pope.

The Holy Bible

1959 The Holy Bible (containing the Old and New Testaments; commonly known as The Authorized (King James) Version). Chicago: The Gideons International.

Liuzza, R. M. (ed.)

1994 The Old English version of the Gospels. 2 vols. EETS. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

[2000] [Reprinted].

Pope, John C. (ed.)

1967 Homilies of AElfric. A supplementary collection. 2 vols. EETS, Nos 259, 260. London: Oxford University Press.

[1968] [Reprinted].

Skeat, Walter W. (ed.)

1887 The Gospel according to Saint Matthew. (In Anglo-Saxon, Northumbrian, and Old Mercian versions). A new edition. Cambridge: At the University Press.