The Aelfric Society was a publishing group founded in London (England), during 1842–1856, which published the Homilies of Ælfric of Eynsham

Ælfric of Eynsham

Ælfric of Eynsham was an English abbot, as well as a consummate, prolific writer in Old English of hagiography, homilies, biblical commentaries, and other genres. He is also known variously as Ælfric the Grammarian , Ælfric of Cerne, and Ælfric the Homilist...

 (perhaps Archbishop of Canterbury

Archbishop of Canterbury

The Archbishop of Canterbury is the senior bishop and principal leader of the Church of England, the symbolic head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, and the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Canterbury. In his role as head of the Anglican Communion, the archbishop leads the third largest group...

, during 996–1006) and other works by Anglo-Saxon

Old English language

Old English or Anglo-Saxon is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants in parts of what are now England and southeastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century...

 writers. It is also known as Aelfric Society Publications.

The Ælfric Society was named in honor of Ælfric of Eynsham

Ælfric of Eynsham

Ælfric of Eynsham was an English abbot, as well as a consummate, prolific writer in Old English of hagiography, homilies, biblical commentaries, and other genres. He is also known variously as Ælfric the Grammarian , Ælfric of Cerne, and Ælfric the Homilist...

, a Benedictine monk who wrote a Saxon grammar

Grammar

In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...

 and dictionary (glossary). He had also translated a number of homilies and the Heptateuch

Heptateuch

The Heptateuch is a name sometimes given to the first seven books of the Hebrew Bible. The first five of these are commonly known as "the five books of Moses", the Torah or the Pentateuch; the first six as the Hexateuch. With the addition of the Book of Ruth, it becomes the Octateuch...

 into Saxon language

Saxon language

Saxon language may refer to:* Any of the languages of the Saxons, a Germanic people:** Old English language, Anglo-Saxon, the ancestor of modern English** Old Saxon, the ancestor language of Low Saxon** Middle Low Saxon, language of the Hanseatic League...

. For the society, the Anglo-Saxon scholar Benjamin Thorpe

Benjamin Thorpe

Benjamin Thorpe was an English scholar of Anglo-Saxon.-Biography:After studying for four years at Copenhagen University, under the Danish philologist Rasmus Christian Rask, he returned to England in 1830, and in 1832 published an English version of Caedmon's metrical paraphrase of portions of the...

(1782–1870) edited the homilies, during 1844–1846. Ælfric's Saxon grammar and glossary had been printed, nearly two hundred years earlier, at Oxford in 1639 and 1698.

Publications

The Aelfric Society published several works, including:

• The Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church, containing Sermones Catholici or Homilies of Ælfric (2 volumes, 1844/1846)
• The Legend of Chrysanthus and Daria in Ælfric's Lives of Saints (1846)
• The Dialogue of Salomon and Saturnus (John M. Kemble, 1848)
• The Poetry of the Codex Vercellensis, with an English Translation (John M. Kemble, 1843, 212 pages)