The Life of English in the Mid-Twelfth Century: Ralph D’Escures’s Homily on the Virgin Mary

Rewriting English Literary History 1042–1215

“…Homilies are dominant, with one scholar counting 122 such texts for the period 1100–1225 alone (Greenfield 284). Some of these homilies, such as the translation of Ralph d’Escures’ sermon for the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, were undoubtedly composed after the Conquest (Treharne ‘Life of English’), but many are based on earlier models, with difficult content and outdated lexis or syntax replaced whenever the homilist’s meaning was liable to be misunderstood (Swan ‘Old English Made New’; Treharne ‘Life and Times’; Faulkner ‘Archaism, Belatedness, Modernisation’). While it is recognised that copying these texts was a pragmatic imperative, not an exercise in archival preservation (Treharne ‘English in the post‐Conquest Period’ 404; pace Hahn 72n24), there been little agreement on their likely readership, with scholars variously suggesting monastic pueri or conversi , members of the lower clergy with little Latin and no French, viri idonei employed to preach vicariously on behalf of the cathedral clergy and secular vowesses (Treharne ‘Reading from the Margins’ 353–4; Fischer ‘Vocabulary of Very Late Old English’ 31; Millett ‘Pastoral Context’ esp.…”

“…‘Making their Presence Felt’ 421); Anglo‐Norman may have been most vigorous in the South East and Home Counties (Rothwell 259). Though Elaine Treharne has suggested the maintenance of a ‘ Regularis concordia network’ into the 12th century and Ralph Hanna has written interestingly on the exemplars used in the compilation of the Lambeth Homilies (Treharne ‘Life and Times’ 212; Hanna ‘LPL 487’; also Sisam; Millett ‘Pastoral Context’), the paths through which English texts circulated are not well known. Analysing English post‐Conquest texts regionally may ultimately also help place the vast body of unprovenanced material.…”