Aelfric's Life of Saint Basil the Great: Background and Context

Full study, with text and facing translation, of an influential tenth-century work. The life and thought of Saint Basil the Great [329-79] were a seminal influence on western theology and monasticism, their echoes reaching as far as Anglo-Saxon England: the hagiographic tradition of this saint began in Greek, butby the end of the tenth century had already been translated three times into Latin and once into Old English. This book presents a new edition and translation of the Old English text, pr