“We ne motan deman ymbe þæt”: Clerical Judgment in Ælfric of Eynsham’s Lives of Saints Swithun, Edmund, and Æthelwold
William E. Bolton
The prolific late Anglo-Saxon homilist and hagiographer, Ælfric of Eynsham (ca. 950-ca. 1010), is well-known to scholars for the meaningful editorial changes he made while condensing Latin saints’ lives translating them into Old English. This essay focuses on one aspect these - way dealt with depictions ecclesiastic officials’ participation in secular legal affairs. Evidence from his English Swithun Edmund, abbreviation life Æthelwold, suggests that hagiographer was hostile notion clerics should involve themselves judgment criminals, whether or not judgments resulted defendants’ executions. Ultimately, I argue Ælfric’s anxiety over ecclesiastics affairs makes him an idiosyncratic cipher understanding culture.
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