← Table of contents
A Literary History of the English People, from the Origins to the Renaissance

Note 325 — from the Origins To the Renaissance (continued 4)

Reading edition

Among the collections of English sermons from the twelfth to the fourteenth century, see "An Old English Miscellany," ed. Morris, Early English Text Society, 1872, 8vo; pp. 26 ff., a translation in English prose of the thirteenth century of some of the sermons of Maurice de Sully; p. 187, "a lutel soth sermon" in verse, with good advice to lovers overfond of "Malekyn" or "Janekyn."—"Old English homilies and homiletic treatises ... of the XIIth and XIIIth centuries," ed. Morris, E.E.T.S., 1867-73, 2 vols. 8vo; prose and verse (specimens of music in the second series); several of those pieces are mere transcripts of Anglo Saxon works anterior to the Conquest; p. 159, the famous "Moral Ode," twelfth century, on the transitoriness of this life: "Ich em nu alder thene ich wes," &c., in rhymed verse (cf. "Old English Miscellany," p. 58, and "Anglia," i. p. 6).—"The Ormulum, with the notes and glossary of Dr. R. M. White," ed. R. Holt, Oxford, 1878, 2 vols. 8vo, an immense compilation in verse, of which a part only has been preserved, the work of Ormin, an Augustinian canon, thirteenth century; contains a paraphrase of the gospel of the day followed by an explanatory sermon; cf. Napier, "Notes on Ormulum" in "History of the Holy Rood Tree," E.E.T.S., 1894—"Hali Meidenhad ... an alliterative Homily of the XIIIth century," ed. Cockayne, E.E.T.S., 1866, in prose.—"English metrical Homilies," ed. J. Small, Edinburgh, 1862, 8vo, homilies interspersed with exempla, compiled ab. 1330.—"Religious pieces in prose and verse," ed. G. G. Perry, E.E.T.S., 1867; statement in a sermon by John Gaytrige, fourteenth century, that "oure ffadire the byschope" has prescribed to each member of his clergy "opynly, one ynglysche apone sonnondayes, preche and teche thaym that thay hase cure off" (p. 2).

Explore with AITake your curiosity a little further.

Reading settings