Aelfric Archbishop of Canterbury

AElfric Archbishop of Canterbury, consecrated in 996, died in 1006, was a scholar to whom we are indebted for much of our present knowledge of Anglo-Saxon literature. He wrote a Treatise of the Old and New Testaments in Saxon; also a Paschal Homily in Latin and Saxon; in the latter of which he declares himself against the papal doctrine of transubstantiation. Many of his works exist, it is said, in MS., and some few have been published, one in Saxon, viz. Tract. de V. et N. Testamento; and others in Latin, viz. the Paschal Homily. Also two letters, one to Wulfinus, bishop of Sherborne or Salisbury; the other to Wulstanus, archbishop of York, on the same subject, printed at London in 1566, 1623, and 1638. There is, moreover, in the Coll. of Councils (Wilkins, 1, 250, and Labbe, 9, 1003), a letter of this archbishop to Wulfinus, containing a sort of ritual for priests. — Cave, Hist. Lit. anno 980. — Landon, Eccl. Dict. s.v.