Judith is a homily written by abbot

Ælfric of Eynsham Ælfric of Eynsham ( ang, Ælfrīc; la, Alfricus, Elphricus; ) was an English abbot and a student of Æthelwold of Winchester, and a consummate, prolific writer in Old English of hagiography, homilies, biblical commentaries, and other genres ...

around the year 1000. It is extant in two manuscripts, a fairly complete version being found in Corpus Christi College Cambridge MS 303, and fragments in British Library MS

Cotton Otho This is an incomplete list of some of the manuscripts from the Cotton library that today form the Cotton collection of the British Library. Some manuscripts were destroyed or damaged in a fire at Ashburnham House in 1731, and a few are kept in othe ...

B.x, which came from the

Cotton Library The Cotton or Cottonian library is a collection of manuscripts once owned by Sir Robert Bruce Cotton MP (1571–1631), an antiquarian and bibliophile. It later became the basis of what is now the British Library, which still holds the collection ...

. The homily is written in

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th c ...

alliterative prose. It is 452 verses long. The story paraphrases the Biblical original closely. Ælfric ends the homily with a detailed exegetical interpretation of the story, which he addresses to nuns. In the first 190 lines, Ælfric introduces king Nebuchadnezzar and

Holofernes In the deuterocanonical Book of Judith, Holofernes ( grc, Ὀλοφέρνης; he, הולופרנס) was an invading Assyrian general known for having been beheaded by Judith, a Hebrew widow who entered his camp and beheaded him while he was ...

, the leader of his army, whom he charges with conquering the land of the

Jews Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

. Holofernes complies and subdues most countries to the west of

Assyria Assyria ( Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , romanized: ''māt Aššur''; syc, ܐܬܘܪ, ʾāthor) was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization which existed as a city-state at times controlling regional territories in the indigenous lands of the ...

, except Bethulia, a Jewish town which resists the invader. At this point Judith is introduced. As in the Bible, Judith is depicted as a wealthy, independent widow, who after the death of her husband has chosen to remain single and lead a clean and chaste life (lines 203-207). In his exegesis, Ælfric again stresses Judith's cleanness and

chastity Chastity, also known as purity, is a virtue related to temperance. Someone who is ''chaste'' refrains either from sexual activity considered immoral or any sexual activity, according to their state of life. In some contexts, for example when ma ...

(lines 391-394). Judith is depicted as pious and steadfast in her traditions, even bringing her own food to the Assyrian's tent (lines 270-272). Ælfric thus represents Judith as a figure of identification for the nuns. Ælfric also stresses Judith's eloquence. She talks her way into the Assyrian's camp (lines 237-241), she talks Holofernes into drinking too much and falling asleep (lines 248-277) and after she has beheaded Holofernes she motivates the Bethulians to fight (lines 312-354).

Notes

References

* Assmann, Bruno (ed.), "Abt Ælfric's angelsächsische Homilie über das Buch Judith," ''Anglia'', 10 (1888), 76-104; repr. in ''Angelsächsische Homilien und Heiligenleben'', Bibliothek der angelsächsischen Prosa, 3 (Kassel, 1889; repr. with a supplementary introduction by Peter Clemoes, Darmstadt, 1964), pp. 102–16 (previously the standard edition). * Clayton, Mary, 'Ælfric's Judith: Manipulative or Manipulated?', ''Anglo-Saxon England'', 23 (1994), 215-227. * Lee, S. D. (ed.), ''Ælfric's Homilies on 'Judith', 'Esther' and 'The Maccabees' ''(1999), http://users.ox.ac.uk/~stuart/kings/ (now the standard edition) * Magennis, H., 'Contrasting Narrative Emphases in the Old English Poem ''Judith'' and Ælfric's Paraphrase of the Book of Judith', ''Neuphilologische Mitteilungen'', 96 (1995), 61-66. {{Refend Christian sermons Old English literature 11th-century Christian texts

See also

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References