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68-399: The Ormulum or Orrmulum is a twelfth-century work of biblical exegesis , written by an Augustinian canon named Orrm (or Orrmin) and consisting of just under 19,000 lines of early Middle English verse. Because of the unique phonemic orthography adopted by its author, the work preserves many details of English pronunciation existing at a time when the language was in flux after

136-561: A Commissary General , each of the two congregations by a Vicar General , and every monastery by a Prior (only the Czech monastery of Alt-Brunn in Moravia is under an abbot ) and every college by a Rector . The members of the Order number both priests and lay brothers . The Augustinians, like most religious orders, have a Cardinal Protector . The Augustinians follow the rule of St. Augustine which

204-472: A monastic community life. Regarding the use of property or possessions, Augustine did not make a virtue of poverty, but of sharing. Their manner of life led others to imitate them. Instructions for their guidance were found in several writings of Augustine, especially in De opere monachorum , mentioned in ancient codices of the eighth or ninth century as the " Rule of St. Augustine ". Between 430 and 570 this life-style

272-634: A General Chapter, again to be held under the supervision of his nephew, Cardinal Annibaldi. During this chapter the following groups of hermits, inter alia , were amalgamated to the Order, which up to then had only consisted of the groups of the Tuscan hermits (including the Hermits of the Holy Trinity): At this Chapter Lanfranc Settala, the leader of the Bonites, was elected Prior General. The belted, black tunic of

340-427: A clerical adaptation of monastic life, as it grew out of an attempt to organize communities of clerics to a more dedicated way of life, as St. Augustine himself had done. Historically it paralleled the lay movement of monasticism or the eremitical life from which the friars were later to develop. In their tradition, the canons added the commitment of religious vows to their primary vocation of pastoral care. As

408-400: A contemplative Order, differs from traditional monastic orders in three ways. 1) They do not take vows of stability, meaning that they can live in one house (called a friary or sometimes a monastery) typically for several years before being moved into a different community of the order. 2) They are engaged in apostolic activity, such as mission work, education, prison ministries, etc. The order

476-453: A dozen saints and numerous members declared blessed by the Church. The Prior General Sebastiano Martinelli was the latest member of the order to be elevated to the cardinalate from 1901 to 1912. Ecclesiastical privileges were granted to the order almost from its beginning. Alexander IV freed the order from the jurisdiction of the bishops; Innocent VIII, in 1490, granted to the churches of

544-590: A fifth of the promised material is in the single manuscript of the work to survive, which is in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Orrm developed an idiosyncratic spelling system . Modern scholars have noted that the system reflected his concern with priests' ability to speak the vernacular and may have helped to guide his readers in the pronunciation of the vowels . Many local priests may have been regular speakers of Anglo-Norman French rather than English. Orrm used

612-447: A major superior and to adopt one of the Rules of community life that were approved by the Church. In 1243 the Tuscan hermits petitioned Pope Innocent IV to unite them all as one group. On 16 December 1243 Innocent IV issued the bull Incumbit Nobis , an essentially pastoral letter which, despite its brevity, basically served as the magna carta initiating the foundation of the Order as it

680-458: A misnomer for they ranked among the friars, and became the fourth of the mendicant orders. The observance and manner of life was mild relative to those times, meat being allowed four days in the week. In August 1256, a number of Williamite houses withdrew from the newly formed mendicant order and were allowed to continue as a separate congregation under the Benedictine rule. The early years in

748-648: A paraphrase of a Gospel reading (important when the laity did not understand Latin), followed by exegesis . The theological content is derivative; Orrm closely follows Bede 's exegesis of Luke , the Enarrationes in Matthoei , and the Glossa Ordinaria of the Bible. Thus, he reads each verse primarily allegorically rather than literally. Rather than identify individual sources, Orrm refers frequently to " ðe boc " and to

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816-657: A political schism of north and south. The Khmer Empire of Cambodia flourished during this century, while the Fatimids of Egypt were overtaken by the Ayyubid dynasty . Following the expansions of the Ghaznavids and Ghurid Empire , the Muslim conquests in the Indian subcontinent took place at the end of the century. Augustinians There are also some Anglican religious orders created in

884-735: A rule). Augustine's Rule appears again in practice in the eleventh century as a basis for the reform of monasteries and cathedral chapters. Several groups of canons were established under various disciplines, all with the Augustinian Rule as their basis. It was adopted by the Canons Regular of the Abbey of St. Victor in Paris, as well as the Norbertines . The instructions contained in Augustine's Rule formed

952-475: A strict poetic metre to ensure that readers know which syllables are to be stressed. Modern scholars use these two features to reconstruct Middle English as Orrm spoke it. Unusually for work of the period, the Ormulum is neither anonymous nor untitled. Orrm names himself at the end of the dedication: At the start of the preface, the author identifies himself again, using a different spelling of his name, and gives

1020-505: A whole into action". At the same time, Orrm's idiosyncrasies and attempted orthographic reform make his work vital for understanding Middle English. The Ormulum is, with the Ancrene Wisse and the Ayenbite of Inwyt , one of the three crucial texts that have enabled philologists to document the transition from Old English to Middle English. Twelfth-century The 12th century

1088-754: Is also a key part of the Augustinian ethos. Contemporary Augustinian musical foundations include the Augustinerkirche in Vienna, where orchestral masses by Mozart and Schubert are performed every week, as well as the boys' choir at Sankt Florian in Austria, a school conducted by Augustinian canons, a choir now over 1,000 years old. Augustinians have also produced a formidable body of scholarly works. Augustinian friars believe that Augustine of Hippo , first with some friends and afterward as bishop with his clergy , led

1156-505: Is an autograph, with two of the three hands in the text generally believed by scholars to be Orrm's own, the date of the manuscript and the date of composition would have been the same. On the evidence of the third hand (that of a collaborator who entered the pericopes at the head of each homily) it is thought that the manuscript was finished c.  1180 , but Orrm may have begun the work as early as 1150. The text has few topical references to specific events that could be used to identify

1224-466: Is certain that in its modern state the Order is principally founded on spiritual works, those that pertain to the contemplative life. These are as follows: the singing of the divine office; the service of the altar; prayer; psalm singing; devotion to reading or study of sacred scripture; teaching and preaching the word of God; hearing confessions of the faithful; bringing about the salvation of souls by word and example.". The Order expanded beyond Europe to

1292-476: Is divided into 8 chapters (purpose and basis of common life, prayer, moderation and self-denial, safeguarding chastity and fraternal correction, the care of community goods and treatment of sick, asking for pardon and forgiving others, governance and obedience, and observance of the rule). The Augustinians also use the charism or "gift from the Holy Spirit" to guide the communal life. The choir and outdoor dress of

1360-449: Is known today. This papal bull exhorted these hermits to adopt the Rule and way of life of Augustine of Hippo , to profess this Augustinian manner of life in a way that they themselves would decide with regards to their specific charism and apostolate , and to elect a Prior General. The bull also appointed Cardinal Riccardo Annibaldi as their Cardinal protector . The importance of this man in

1428-625: Is the period from 1101 to 1200 in accordance with the Julian calendar . In the history of European culture, this period is considered part of the High Middle Ages and overlaps with what is often called the " 'Golden Age' of the Cistercians ". The Golden Age of Islam experienced significant development, particularly in Islamic Spain . In Song dynasty China an invasion by Jurchens caused

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1496-451: Is under the supervision of a Prior General in Rome, and as an international order they are divided into various Provinces throughout the world, with each Province being led by a Prior Provincial. (3) As an order, they have a special commitment to corporate poverty as opposed to simply the poverty professed by the individual friar. While this is not currently legislated as it was in the origins of

1564-571: The Peterborough Chronicle , shows a great deal of French influence. The linguistic contrast between it and the work of Orrm demonstrates both the sluggishness of the Norman influence in the formerly Danish areas of England and the assimilation of Old Norse features into early Middle English. According to the work's dedication, Orrm wrote it at the behest of Brother Walter, who was his brother both affterr þe flæshess kinde (biologically, "after

1632-683: The Acts of the Apostles , particularly Acts 4:32: "The community of believers was of one heart and mind, and no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they had everything in common." (NAB). By decree of the Holy See, the Augustinian Order was historically granted what was known as exempt status, which placed made it directly dependent on the Pope, meaning that bishops had no jurisdiction with regards to

1700-486: The Norman conquest of England . Consequently, it is invaluable to philologists and historical linguists in tracing the development of the language. After a preface and dedication, the work consists of homilies explicating the biblical texts set for the mass throughout the liturgical year . It was intended to be consulted as the texts changed, and is agreed to be tedious and repetitive when read straight through. Only about

1768-414: The Ormulum derives from Orrm's idiosyncratic orthographical system. He states that since he dislikes the way that people are mispronouncing English, he will spell words exactly as they are pronounced, and describes a system whereby vowel length and value are indicated unambiguously. Orrm's chief innovation was to employ doubled consonants to show that the preceding vowel is short and single consonants when

1836-491: The Ormulum never was intended as a book in the modern sense, but rather as a companion to the liturgy . Priests would read, and congregations hear, only a day's entry at a time. The tedium that many experience when attempting to read the Ormulum today would not exist for persons hearing only a single homily each day. Furthermore, although Orrm's poetry is, perhaps, subliterary, the homilies were meant for easy recitation or chanting, not for aesthetic appreciation; everything from

1904-678: The ethos and special charism of the order. The pursuit of truth through learning is key to the Augustinian ethos, balanced by the injunction to behave with love towards one another. These same imperatives of affection and fairness have driven the order in its international missionary outreach. This balanced pursuit of love and learning has energised the various branches of the order into building communities founded on mutual affection and intellectual advancement. Augustine spoke passionately of God's "beauty so ancient and so new", and his fascination with beauty extended to music. He taught that "whoever sings prays twice" ( Qui cantat, bis orat ) and music

1972-423: The vowel is long . For syllables that ended in vowels, he used accent marks to indicate length. In addition to this, he used three distinct letter forms for the letter g depending on how they sounded. He used insular < ᵹ > for the palatal approximant [j] , a flat-topped <ꟑ> for the velar stop [ɡ] , and a Carolingian <g> for the palato-alveolar affricate [d͡ʒ] , although in printed editions

2040-432: The "holy book". Bennett has speculated that the Acts of the Apostles , Glossa Ordinaria , and Bede were bound together in a large Vulgate Bible in the abbey so that Orrm truly was getting all of his material from a source that was, to him, a single book. Although the sermons have been deemed "of little literary or theological value" and though Orrm has been said to possess "only one rhetorical device", that of repetition,

2108-492: The 19th century that follow Augustine's rule. These are composed only of women in several different communities of Augustinian nuns . In a religious community, "charism" is the particular contribution that each religious order, congregation or family and its individual members embody. The teaching and writing of Augustine, the Augustinian Rule , and the lives and experiences of Augustinians over sixteen centuries help define

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2176-777: The Order follows the Constitutions approved in the Ordinary General Chapter of 2007. The government of the order is as follows: At the head is the Prior General, elected every six years by the General Chapter . The Prior General is aided by six assistants and a secretary, also elected by the General Chapter. These form the Curia Generalitia . Each province is governed by a Prior Provincial , each commissariat by

2244-469: The Order forever by a Bull issued in 1497. The holder of the office was Rector of the Vatican parish (of which the chapel of St. Paul is the parish church). To his office also belonged the duty of preserving in his oratory a consecrated Host , which had to be renewed weekly and kept in readiness in case of the pope's illness, when it was the privilege of the papal sacristan to administer the last sacraments to

2312-458: The Tuscan hermits was adopted as the common religious habit , and the walking sticks carried by the Bonites in keeping with eremitical tradition—and to distinguish themselves from those hermits who went around begging—ceased to be used. The 12-year-old religious Order of friars now consisted of 100 or more houses. On 9 April 1256 Pope Alexander IV issued the bull Licet Ecclesiae catholicae (Bullarium Taurinense, 3rd ed., 635 sq.) which confirmed

2380-421: The abbey in 1138, and secondly, the work includes dedicatory prayers to Peter and Paul , the patrons of Bourne Abbey. The Arrouaisian rule was largely that of Augustine, so that its houses often are loosely referred to as Augustinian . Scholars cannot pinpoint the exact date of composition. Orrm wrote his book over a period of decades and the manuscript shows signs of multiple corrections through time. Since it

2448-466: The basis of the Rule that, in accordance with the decree of the Lateran Synod of 1059, was adopted by canons who desired to practice a common apostolic life, hence the title of Canons Regular of Saint Augustine . The Canons Regular follow the more ancient form of religious life which developed toward the end of the first millennium and thus predates the founding of the friars. They represent

2516-584: The canons became independent of the diocesan structures, they came to form their own monastic communities. The official name of the Order is the Canons Regular of St. Augustine (CRSA). The 2008 Constitutions of the Order of St. Augustine states that the Order of Saint Augustine is composed of the following: In addition to these three branches, the Augustinian family also includes other groups: a) religious institutes , both male and female, formally aggregated to

2584-645: The eastern Mediterranean, briefly acquiring a convent in Acre just prior to its conquest in 1291. In the middle of the fourteenth century, the Augustinian Friars acquired the large convent of San Salvatore in Venetian Heraklion (medieval Candia) where they attempted to use the cult of Nicholas of Tolentino to appeal to the local Greek-speaking population. The building stood on Kornaros Square until its demolition in 1970. The Augustinians count among their number over

2652-641: The flesh's kind") and as a fellow canon of an Augustinian order. With this information, and the evidence of the dialect of the text, it is possible to propose a place of origin with reasonable certainty. While some scholars, among them Henry Bradley, have regarded the likely origin as Elsham Priory in north Lincolnshire, as of the mid-1990s it became widely accepted that Orrm wrote in the Bourne Abbey in Bourne, Lincolnshire . Two additional pieces of evidence support this conjecture: firstly, Arrouaisian canons established

2720-688: The foundation of the Order cannot be overstated. As decreed by the bull Praesentium Vobis , the Tuscan hermits came together for a general chapter in March 1244, a chapter presided over by Cardinal Annibaldi. At this chapter the Order formally adopted the Rule of St. Augustine and determined to follow the Roman office with the Cistercian psalter , and to hold triennial elections of the Prior General. The first Prior General

2788-620: The fourteenth century, as well as the last example of the Old English verse homily. It also demonstrates what would become Received Standard English two centuries before Geoffrey Chaucer . Further, Orrm was concerned with the laity. He sought to make the Gospel comprehensible to the congregation, and he did this perhaps forty years before the Fourth Council of the Lateran of 1215 "spurred the clergy as

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2856-484: The friars is a tunic of black woolen material, with long, wide sleeves, a black leather girdle , and a large shoulder cape to which is attached a long, pointed hood reaching to the girdle. The indoor dress consists of a black tunic and scapular , over which the shoulder cape is worn. In many monasteries, white was formerly the color worn in areas where there were no Dominicans . In hot climates Augustinians tend to wear white habits as they are easily distinguishable with

2924-518: The integration of the Hermits of John the Good (Rule of St. Augustine, 1225), the Hermits of St. William (Rule of St. Benedict), the Hermits of Brettino (Rule of St. Augustine, 1228), the Hermits of Monte Favale (Rule of St. Benedict), other smaller congregations, and the Tuscan Hermits into what was officially called the Order of Hermits of Saint Augustine. Almost from the beginning the term "hermits" became

2992-414: The internal affairs of the order. This is now expressed by saying that the order is an institute of pontifical right. The Augustinian friars originated after the older Canons Regular . The friars represented part of the mendicant movement of the 13th century, a new form of religious life which sought to bring the religious ideals of monastic life into an urban setting which allowed the religious to serve

3060-456: The last two letters may be left undistinguished. His devotion to precise spelling was meticulous. For example, he originally used eo and e inconsistently for words such as beon and kneow, which had been spelled with eo in Old English . At line 13,000 he changed his mind and went back to change all the eo spellings in the book, replacing them with e alone ( ben and knew ), to reflect

3128-517: The manuscript before the seventeenth century is unclear. From a signature on the flyleaf we know that it was in van Vliet 's collection in 1659. It was auctioned in 1666, after his death, and probably was purchased by Franciscus Junius , from whose library it came to the Bodleian as part of the Junius donation. The Ormulum consists of 18,956 lines of metrical verse, explaining Christian teaching on each of

3196-430: The needs of the people in an apostolic capacity. At this time a number of eremitical groups lived in such diverse places as Tuscany , Latium , Umbria , Liguria , England, Switzerland, Germany, and France. The Fourth Council of the Lateran of 1215 issued the decree Ne nimium to organise these small groups of religious people by requiring them to live in community, to hold elective chapters, to be under obedience to

3264-652: The order by a decree of the Prior General (this would include the Augustinians of the Assumption , the Sisters of St. Rita , etc.); b) other groups of lay Augustinians; c) lay faithful affiliated to the Order. The Augustinian, or Austin, friars (OSA), are a mendicant order. As consecrated religious, they pray the Liturgy of the Hours throughout the day. This Latin Church order, while

3332-617: The order indulgences such as can only be gained by making the Stations at Rome; Pope Pius V placed the Augustinians among the mendicant orders and ranked them next to the Carmelites . Since the end of the 13th century the sacristan of the Papal Palace was always to be an Augustinian friar, who would be ordained as a bishop . This privilege was ratified by Pope Alexander VI and granted to

3400-457: The order's history featured a great devotion to learning, to study, to prayer, to service of the poor, and to defense of the Pope and the Church – a particular charism of the Order rooted in the fact that it is the only Order in the history of the Church to be founded directly by a Pope. In his work The Life of the Brothers , the 14th-century Augustinian historian and friar Jordan of Saxony writes:"It

3468-470: The order, this is to be a distinguishing mark of their lives as a community. As consecrated religious, Augustinians profess the evangelical counsels of chastity, poverty, and obedience. They follow the Rule of St. Augustine, written sometime between 397 and 403 for a monastic community Augustine founded in Hippo (in modern day Algeria), and which takes as its inspiration the early Christian community described in

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3536-585: The overly strict metre to the orthography might function only to aid oratory . Although earlier metrical homilies, such as those of Ælfric and Wulfstan , were based on the rules of Old English poetry , they took sufficient liberties with metre to be readable as prose. Orrm does not follow their example. Rather, he adopts a "jog-trot fifteener" for his rhythm, based on the Latin iambic septenarius , and writes continuously, neither dividing his work into stanzas nor rhyming his lines, again following Latin poetry. Orrm

3604-405: The period of composition more precisely. Only one copy of the Ormulum exists, as Bodleian Library MS Junius 1. In its current state, the manuscript is incomplete: the book's table of contents claims that there were 242 homilies, but only 32 remain. It seems likely that the work was never finished on the scale planned when the table of contents was written, but much of the discrepancy

3672-480: The pope. The sacristan had always to accompany the pope when he traveled, and during a conclave it was he who celebrated Mass and administered the sacraments . He lived at the Vatican with a sub-sacristan and three lay brothers of the order (cf. Rocca, "Chronhistoria de Apostolico Sacrario", Rome, 1605). Augustinian friars, as of 2009, still perform the duties of papal sacristans, but the appointment of an Augustinian bishop-sacristan lapsed under Pope John Paul II with

3740-406: The pronunciation. The combination of this system with the rigid metre, and the stress patterns this meter implies, provides enough information to reconstruct his pronunciation with some precision; making the reasonable assumption that Orrm's pronunciation was in no way unusual, this permits scholars of the history of English to develop an exceptionally precise snapshot of exactly how Middle English

3808-716: The retirement of Petrus Canisius Van Lierde in 1991. In papal Rome the Augustinian friars always filled one of the Chairs of the Sapienza University , and one of the consultorships in the Congregation of Rites . The Discalced Augustinians were formed in 1588 in Italy as a reform movement of the Order and have their own constitutions, differing from those of the other Augustinians. The Augustinian Recollects developed in Spain in 1592 with

3876-475: The same goal. Currently, though, they are primarily found serving in pastoral care . The Augustinian Hermits, while following the rule known as that of St. Augustine, are also subject to the Constitutions, first drawn up by Augustinus Novellus (d. 1309), Prior General of the order from 1298 to 1300, and by Clement of Osimo. A revision was made at Rome in 1895. The Constitutions were revised again and published at Rome in 1895, with additions in 1901 and 1907. Today,

3944-574: The texts used in the mass throughout the church calendar. As such, it is the first new homily cycle in English since the works of Ælfric of Eynsham ( c.  990 ). The motivation was to provide an accessible English text for the benefit of the less educated, which might include some clergy who found it difficult to understand the Latin of the Vulgate , and the parishioners who in most cases would not understand spoken Latin at all. Each homily begins with

4012-505: The title of medieval Latin non-fiction works that the term speculum literature is used for the genre. The Danish name is not unexpected; the language of the Ormulum , an East Midlands dialect, is stringently of the Danelaw. It includes numerous Old Norse phrases (particularly doublets, where an English and Old Norse term are co-joined), but there are very few Old French influences on Orrm's language. Another—likely previous—East Midlands work,

4080-488: The ugliest of manuscripts". The parchment used in the manuscript is of the lowest quality, and the text is written untidily, with an eye to economical use of space; it is laid out in continuous lines like prose, with words and lines close together, and with various additions and corrections, new exegesis, and allegorical readings, crammed into the corners of the margins (as can be seen in the reproduction above). Robert Burchfield argues that these indications "suggest that it

4148-404: The work a title: The name Orrm derives from Old Norse , meaning worm , serpent or dragon . With the suffix of "myn" for "man" (hence "Orrmin"), it was a common name throughout the Danelaw area of England. The metre probably dictated the choice between each of the two forms of the name. The title of the poem, Ormulum , is modeled after the Latin word speculum ("mirror"), so popular in

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4216-405: Was Friar Matthew, followed by Adjutus and Philip. In the papal bull Pia desideria , issued on 31 March 1244, Pope Innocent IV formally approved the foundation of the Order. In 1255 Innocent's successor, Pope Alexander IV , issued the papal bull Cum Quaedam Salubria summoning all the various groups of Augustinian hermits and the Hermits of Saint William to send two representatives to Rome for

4284-505: Was a 'workshop' draft which the author intended to have recopied by a professional scribe". It seems curious that a text so obviously written with the expectation that it would be widely copied should exist in only one manuscript and that, apparently, a draft. Treharne has taken this as suggesting that it is not only modern readers who have found the work tedious. Orrm, however, says in the preface that he wishes Walter to remove any wording that he finds clumsy or incorrect. The provenance of

4352-459: Was carried to Europe by monks and clergy fleeing the persecution of the Vandals. In the thirteenth century, the various eremitical groups that composed the Augustinian Hermits faced the threat of suppression by the papacy based on their lack of antiquity. To overcome this, the friars forged a historical connection to St Augustine, and made an especial point to demonstrate that they received the Rule directly from Augustine himself. The Augustinian rule

4420-405: Was humble about his oeuvre: he admits in the preface that he frequently has padded the lines to fill out the metre, "to help those who read it", and urges his brother Walter to edit the poetry to make it more meet. A brief sample may help to illustrate the style of the work. This passage explains the background to the Nativity : Rather than conspicuous literary merit, the chief scholarly value of

4488-631: Was in use by a wide range of groups across early and high medieval Europe, and there is no historical evidence that the Augustinian Friars were in any way founded by St Augustine himself. Rather, the friars invented these links after the Order was threatened with suppression in 1274 at the Second Council of Lyons. While in early Medieval times the rule was overshadowed by other Rules, particularly that of St. Benedict , this system of life for cathedral clergy continued in various locations throughout Europe for centuries, and they became known as Canons regular (i.e. cathedral clergy living in community according to

4556-434: Was probably caused by the loss of gatherings from the manuscript. There is no doubt that such losses have occurred even in modern times, as the Dutch antiquarian Jan van Vliet , one of its seventeenth-century owners, copied out passages that are not in the present text. The amount of redaction in the text, plus the loss of possible gatherings, led J. A. W. Bennett to comment that "only about one fifth survives, and that in

4624-431: Was pronounced in the Midlands in the second half of the twelfth century. Orrm's book has a number of innovations that make it valuable. As Bennett points out, Orrm's adaptation of a classical metre with fixed stress patterns anticipates future English poets, who would do much the same when encountering foreign language prosodies. The Ormulum is also the only specimen of the homiletic tradition in England between Ælfric and

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