Conclusion
Over a decade into his career as an at-times reluctant biblical translator, Ælfric had now produced an epistolary sermon which contained a succinct summary of the entire Bible as well as providing basic instruction in its meaning. Like the bulk of the Heptateuch before it, the
Treatise was composed to meet the continuing demand for biblical translations among the unlearned, be they members of the laity or poorly educated secular clergy. However, while the translations included in the Heptateuch for the most part dealt with problematic passages in the Old Testament by simply leaving them out, the
Treatise eschews translation in favour of brief summaries of key biblical figures and episodes. Indeed, in its preference for exegesis and paraphrase over the plain translation of the ‘naked’ text, the
Treatise reflects Ælfric’s own unease with the entire project of making biblical material available to the laity in Old English prose for private, unsupervised reading.
1 Cf. Stanton, Culture of Translation, p. 141: ‘his solution of freer scriptural translation acknowledged just how much of the writer is in the translation, recognized the impossibility of displacing all the interpretive function onto external institutional practices, and found a better way to integrate translation and interpretation into the text itself.’ Supplementing the summary of the biblical narrative are a series of homiletic passages that explain core aspects of Christian doctrine, typological interpretations of the Old Testament and brief biographies of significant figures in biblical history. The
Treatise could thus serve as a true ‘book for many’, a
Libellus (‘short book’) providing an abbreviated account of the contents of the Bible together with the tools to unlock its hidden, spiritual meaning for
bellatores,
laboratores and
oratores alike.
The
Treatise provides a first glimpse of the idea, if not the reality, of an English Bible.
2 Another codex compiled in this period, MS Junius 11, appears to have been conceived as an abbreviated vernacular version of salvation history running from the Fall of the Angels to Judgement Day in Old English verse: in its present state the manuscript contains Genesis A (and B), Exodus, Daniel and Christ and Satan, though material has been lost after the text of Daniel. See above, pp. 15, 79 n. 8. In Ælfric’s vision, this project would not take the form of a single volume but rather, as the Old English word for ‘Bible’, bibliotheca, implies, a small library comprising essential biblical and exegetical works in English. Many of these books were composed by or associated with Ælfric himself, among them various biblical translations, homilies, sermons and paraphrases.
3 Clemoes argues that Ælfric conceived of his own body of work as a carefully planned ‘literary enterprise’ carried out to completion, centred on ‘universal history’ and ‘Christ’s redemption of man’ (‘Chronology of Ælfric’s Works’, pp. 57–8). Despite their evident popularity, there could be no place for apocrypha such as the Gospels of Nicodemus and Pseudo-Matthew in Ælfric’s English
bibliotheca: as the
Treatise repeatedly emphasises, there are only four gospels. Ælfric’s silence on the
Wessex Gospels in the
Treatise, as well as the work of anonymous homilies, indicates that he viewed his own
Catholic Homilies as a more suitable summary of the Gospels for a broad audience. This small library of sanctioned biblical translations, adaptations and interpretations would ensure that English
oratores,
bellatores and
laboratores would have access to
Cristes gesetynsse (‘Christ’s Scripture’) in their own language.
4 So comprehensive was this corpus of Old English biblical prose that Wulfstan does not appear to have felt the need to compose any free-standing biblical translations in all his prolific career as a writer. On Wulfstan’s possible knowledge of Ælfric’s Judges, see above, pp. 212–13. On the use of biblical excerpts in Wulfstan’s homilies and those influenced by his writing, see Winfried Rudolf, ‘Quoting the Bible in Times of Trouble: Wulfstan and the Story of Saul and Jonathan in Napier Homily xxxvi’, in Sermons, Saints, and Sources, ed. Hall and Rudolf, pp. 137–70. On Wulfstan’s appropriation of the voice of the Old Testament prophets, see Andy Orchard, ‘Wulfstan as Reader, Writer, and Rewriter’, in The Old English Homily, ed. Kleist, pp. 311–41, at 314–16. For a recent discussion of Wulfstan’s use of biblical tropes in his writings, see Pareles, Nothing Pure, pp. 118–38. For discussion of Wulfstan’s homilies more generally, see Gatch, Preaching and Theology, pp. 18–22, 105–28; and Joyce Tally Lionarons, The Homiletic Writings of Archbishop Wulfstan, Anglo-Saxon Studies 14 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2010).