Aelfric's Catholic Homilies, First Series: Text

this sure-handed treatment of Aelfric's manuscripts is about as close as the field will ever get to verifiable knowledge about textual relations ... At long last, then, Anglo-Saxon studies has an authoritative edition of The First Series which ... will assist the understanding of a major work by arguably the major vernacular prose writer of the period. * Paul E.Szarmach, Speculum - A Journal of Medieval Studies, Jan 2001 *
The publication of Peter Clemoes's edition of the First Series of Catholic Homilies is a major event in Anglo-Saxon scholarship and, in its mastery of the complexities of manuscript relationships achieved through minute attention to the hundreds of textual details which constitute the evidence, stands as a fitting monument to a career much concerned with AElfric. * Joyce Hill, The Review of English Studies *
Clemoes's pioneering work in discerning and describing the stages of development of AElfric's First Series homilies, presented in great detail in the introduction to this edition (written in 1965), provides the groundwork for our understanding of AElfric's literary programme./ ... the reader of Clemoes's introduction is struck not so much with its age as with the overwhelming amount of work and insight that went into its argument, the importance of which remains undiminished./ For the first time we have an edition that carefully presents AElfric's First Series sermons in their entirety, while explaining and illustrating in humbling detail their intricate development as a series. Its usefulness will be appreciated.../ M. Bradford Bedingfield, Oxford, Medium Aevum, vol 68, no 1