t gentle father
Sigeric, that you will vouchsafe to correct, by your care, whatever
blemishes of malignant heresy, or of dark deceit, you shall meet with in
my translation, and then permit this little book to be ascribed to your
authority, and not to the meanness of a person of my unworthy character.
Farewell in the Almighty God continually. Amen."[100]

I have before alluded to the care observed by the scribes in copying
their manuscripts, and the moderns may deem themselves fortunate that
they did so; for although many interpolations, or emendations, as they
called them, occur in monkish transcripts, on the whole, their integrity,
in this respect, forms a redeeming quality in connexion with their
learning. In another preface, affixed to the second collection of his
homilies, AElfric thus explains his design in translating them:

"AElfric, a monk and priest, although a man of less abilities than are
requisite for one in such orders, was sent, in the days of King AEthelred,
from Alphege, the bishop and successor of AEthelwold, to a monastery which
is called Cernel, at the desire of AEthelmer, the Thane, whose noble birth
and goodness is everywhere known. Then ran it in my mind, I trust,
through the grace of God, that I ought to translate this book out of the
Latin tongue into the English language not upon presumption of great
learning, but because I saw and heard much error in many English books,
which ignorant men, through their simplicity, esteemed great wisdom, and
because it grieved me that they neither knew, nor had the gospel learning
in their writing, except from those men that understood Latin, and those
books which are to be had of King Alfred's, which he skilfully translated
from Latin into English."[101]

From these extracts we may gain some idea of the state of learning in
those days, and they would seem, in some measure, to justify the opinion,
that the laity paid but little attention to such matters, and I more
anxiously present the reader with these scraps, because they depict the
state of literature in those times far better than a volume of conjecture
could do. It is not consistent with my design to enter into an analysis
of these homilies. Let the reader, however, draw some idea of their
nature from the one written for Easter Sunday, which has been deemed
sufficient proof that the Saxon Church ever denied the Romish doctrine of
transubstantiation; for he there expressly states, in terms so plain
that