The Blickling homilies are a collection of anonymous homilies from Anglo-Saxon England. They are written in Old English, and were written down at some point before the end of the tenth century, making them one of the oldest collections of sermons to survive from medieval England, the other main witness being the Vercelli Book. Their name derives from Blickling Hall in Norfolk, which once housed them; the manuscript is now Princeton, Scheide Library, MS 71.
The Homilies
The homilies in the collection deal primarily with Lent, with items for Passion Sunday, Palm Sunday and Holy Week, as well as homilies dealing with Rogation Days, Ascension Day and Pentecost. The rest of the homilies in the collection are saints’ feast days.
As numbered in the first edition of the homilies, by Richard Morris, the contents are:
Incarnation of the Lord (In Natali Domini) Quinquagesima/Shrove Sunday (Dominica Prima in Quinquagesima) The First Sunday in Lent (Dominica Prima in Quadragesima) The Third Sunday in Lent (Dominica Tertia in Quadragesima) The Fifth Sunday in Lent (Dominica V in Quadragesima) Palm Sunday (Dominica VI in Quadragesima) Easter Day (Dominica Pascha) Rogation Monday (To Þam Forman Gangdæge), called "Soul's Need" by Morrris Rogation Tuesday (To Þam Oþerum Gangdæge), called "Christ the Golden-Blossom" by Morris Rogation Wednesday (To Þam Þriddan Gangdæge), called "The End of This World is Near" by Morris Ascension Thursday (On Þa Halgan Þunres Dei) Pentecost Sunday (Pentecostent - Spiritus Domini) Assumption of the Virgin Mary (Sancta Maria Mater Domini Nostri Iesu Cristi) The Birth of John the Baptist (Sancte Iohannes Baptista Spel) The Story of SS Peter and Paul (Spel Be Petrus ond Paulus). Compare Passio sanctorum Petri et Pauli. A Fragment The Feast of St Michael the Archangel (To Sancte Michaheles Mæssan), called "Dedication of St Michael's Church" by Morris The Feast of St Martin (To Sancte Martines Mæssan) St Andrew (S. Andreas); lacks beginning and ending.
Origin and audience of the collection
Little is known about the origin of the homilies or their intended audience. In the assessment of D. G. Scragg, the manuscript
is in origin a collection, put together, perhaps over a period of time, from a number of sources ... the scribes took care to put together a book which followed a preconceived design, following the chronology of the church year, and they perhaps took individual items from different sources, rather than blocks of items.
There is little overlap with the homilies of the Vercelli Book, from south-eastern England, suggesting that the Blickling Homilies were gathered in a different regional and intellectual milieu; the language of the Homilies suggests a Mercian origin'. The collection does have some overlaps with another homily collection, MS Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 198, whose origins are also poorly understood, but which are likely to have been in the West Midlands.
Meanwhile, although it is surely significant that the homilies were in Old English rather than Latin, 'little sense of a specific congregation or reading audience prevails in this collection of ancient and commonplace materials for the instruction of Christian folk', and the intended audience of the material is essentially unknown.
Blickling Homily XVI
The most famous and extensively studied of the Blickling Homilies is XVI (XVII in the numbering of Morris's edition), 'To Sanctae Michaeles Mæssan' ('On St Michael's Mass', generally celebrated on September 29 in tenth- to eleventh-century Anglo-Saxon England). The homily is not noted for being well composed, but for its relationship with Anglo-Saxon pilgrimage to Italy on the one hand, and some striking similarities with the Old English poem Beowulf on the other.