The Trinity Homilies are a collection of 36

homilies A homily (from Greek ὁμιλία, ''homilía'') is a commentary that follows a reading of scripture, giving the "public explanation of a sacred doctrine" or text. The works of Origen and John Chrysostom (known as Paschal Homily) are considered ex ...

found in MS Trinity 335 (B.14.52), held in

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by Henry VIII, King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge ...

. Produced probably early in the thirteenth century in the Early Middle English period, the collection is of great linguistic importance in establishing the development of the English language, since it preserves a number of

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 settlement of Britain, Anglo ...

forms and gives evidence of the literary influence of Latin and

Anglo-Norman Anglo-Norman may refer to: *Anglo-Normans, the medieval ruling class in England following the Norman conquest of 1066 *Anglo-Norman language **Anglo-Norman literature *Anglo-Norman England, or Norman England, the period in English history from 1066 ...

as well as of the vernacular used in sermons for lay audiences. The same manuscript, like that of the

Lambeth Homilies The Lambeth Homilies are a collection of homilies found in a manuscript (MS Lambeth 487) in Lambeth Palace Library, London. The collection contains seventeen sermons and is notable for being one of the latest examples of Old English, written as it w ...

, also preserves a version of the ''

Poema Morale The ''Poema Morale'' ("Conduct of life" or "Moral Ode") is an early Middle English moral poem outlining proper Christian conduct. The poem was popular enough to have survived in seven manuscripts, including the homiletic collections known as the La ...

''.

Date and provenance

The manuscript contains twelve quires totaling 91 folios, with sections written in English Vernacular Minuscule by three or four hands between 1060 and 1220. Two main scribes were responsible for most of the text, working in an alternating manner and easily distinguished by the very different ways in which they wrote the symbol & (a

scribal abbreviation Scribal abbreviations or sigla (grammatical number, singular: siglum) are abbreviations used by ancient and medieval scribes writing in various languages, including Latin, Greek language, Greek, Old English and Old Norse. In modern manuscrip ...

) and the letter ð ("edh", a voiced or unvoiced dental fricative). The MS has

rubric A rubric is a word or section of text that is traditionally written or printed in red ink for emphasis. The word derives from the la, rubrica, meaning red ochre or red chalk, and originates in Medieval illuminated manuscripts from the 13th cent ...

s in red ink, and the initials of each homily are in red or sometimes green. The MS was rebound in October 1984. Produced in the South-east Midlands, the Trinity Homilies may date back to c. 1175, though a usual date range given is 1200–1225. Written in the dialect characteristic of London with possible influence of East Anglian immigrants, it contains

forms, though this may point to a scribe well versed in the older language rather than an Old English

exemplar An exemplar is a person, a place, an object, or some other entity that serves as a predominant example of a given concept (e.g. "The heroine became an ''exemplar'' in courage to the children"). It may also refer to: * Exemplar, a well-known scienc ...

; still, Old English exemplars are a possibility. According to Margaret Laing, the two scribes have very different backgrounds: the first is, she says, a "copier" who more or less faithfully transmits the two dialects of the two exemplars he was working from, and the second was a "'translator' whose language belongs probably in West Suffolk". The Trinity Homilies as well as the Cotton Vespasian Homilies in the Cotton library are cited as evidence of the twelfth-century appearance of devotional prose in dialects from the east of England, of which ''

Vices and Virtues ''Vices & Virtues'' is the third studio album by American pop rock band Panic! at the Disco, released on March 22, 2011, by Fueled by Ramen. Produced by John Feldmann and Butch Walker, the album was recorded as a duo by vocalist and multi-instru ...

'' is representative. This eastern variety of devotional prose is, in general, marked by less ornate language. The Trinity Homilies share five sermons (and the ''

'') with the

. The language used is not to be pinned down to any particular period, since it preserves grammatical qualities (the indirect passive, in the terminology of Cynthia Allen) that were not necessarily still current in the thirteenth century, though their use suggests that the scribes deemed them intelligible for their readership. The homilies also provide the first occurrence of a number of new words derived from

Old French Old French (, , ; Modern French: ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France from approximately the 8th to the 14th centuries. Rather than a unified language, Old French was a linkage of Romance dialects, mutually intelligib ...

, including ''chemise'' and ' ("chasten").

Content

The Trinity Homilies, like the Lambeth Homilies, the

Bodley Homilies Bodley may refer to: Surname * Edward Fisher Bodley (1815–1881), English businessman * George Frederick Bodley (1827–1907), English architect * John Edward Courtenay Bodley (1853–1925), English civil servant and historian * Josias Bodley ...

, the

Cotton Vespasian 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 ...

Homilies, and the

Rochester Anthology Rochester may refer to: Places Australia * Rochester, Victoria Canada * Rochester, Alberta United Kingdom *Rochester, Kent **City of Rochester-upon-Medway (1982–1998), district council area **History of Rochester, Kent ** HM Prison Ro ...

, are written in a time of competing linguistic interests, which has led some scholars to see in their mixed contents (with "a lack of identifying traits" such as "genre, topic, style or authorship") a reflection of those pressures--"the artificially preserved literacy of Latin and A glo- rman and the undisciplined vigour of emerging oral varieties". When the homilies condemn bodily activities, they seem to do so as a critique of the register of vernacular English.

References

External links

Detailed description of Cambridge, Trinity College, B. 14. 52
by

Elaine Treharne Elaine Treharne was born in Aberystwyth, Wales, in 1964. She is a Senior Associate Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and the Roberta Bowman Denning Professor of the Humanities, Professor of English, Courtesy Professor of German Studies and ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Trinity Homilies 12th-century manuscripts 13th-century manuscripts Homiletics Middle English literature Christian sermons