“ He seems to have actually taken part in the work of teaching. Ælfric no doubt gained some reputation as a scholar at Winchester, for when, in 987, the abbey of Cernel (Cerne Abbas, Dorsetshire) was finished, he was sent by Bishop Ælfheah (Alphege) , Æthelwold’s successor, at the request of the chief benefactor of the abbey, the ealdorman Æthelmaer, to teach the Benedictine monks there. He was then in priest’s orders. Æthelmaer and his father Æthelweard were both enlightened patrons of learning, and became Ælfric’s faithful friends. ”

“ It was at Cernel, and partly at the desire, it appears, of Æthelweard, that he planned the two series of his English homilies (ed. Benjamin Thorpe, 1844–1846, for the Ælfric Society) , come piled from the Christian fathers, and dedicated to Sigeric, archbishop of Canterbury (990–994) . The Latin preface to the first series enumerates some of Ælfric’s authorities, the chief of whom was Gregory the Great, but the short list there given by no means exhausts the authors whom he consulted. ”

“ A third series of homilies, the Lives of the Saints, dates from 996 to 997. Some of the sermons in the second series had been written in a kind of rhythmical, alliterative prose, and in the Lives of the Saints (ed. W. W. Skeat, 1881–1900, for the Early English Text Society) the practice is so regular that most of them are arranged as verse by Professor Skeat. ”