y Bishop AEthelwold, Dunstan resumed the never-ending and
ever-threatened task of teaching the people and clergy; he endowed
monasteries, and like Alfred created new schools and encouraged the
translation of pious works. Under his influence collections of sermons
in the vulgar tongue were formed.[118] Several of these collections have
come down to us: one of them, the Blickling Homilies (from Blickling
Hall, Norfolk, where the manuscript was found), was compiled before
971[119]; others are due to the celebrated monk AElfric, who became abbot
of Eynsham in 1005, and wrote most of his works about this time[120];
another collection includes the sermons of Wulfstan, bishop of York from
1002 to 1023.[121]

These sermons, most of which are translated from the Latin, "sometimes
word for word and sometimes sense for sense," according to the example
set by Alfred, were destined for "the edification of the ignorant, who
knew no language" except the national one.[122]

The congregation being made up mostly of rude, uneducated people, must
be interested in order that it may listen to the sermons; the homilies
are therefore filled with legendary information concerning the Holy
Land, with minute pictures of the devil and apostles, with edifying
tales full of miracles. In the homilies of Blickling, the church of the
Holy Sepulchre is described in detail, with its sculptured portals, its
stained-glass and its lamps, that threefold holy temple, existing far
away at the other extremity of the world, in the distant East.[123] This
church has no roof, so that the sky into which Christ's body ascended
can be always seen; but, by God's grace, rain water never falls there.
The preacher is positive about his facts; he has them from travellers
who have seen with their own eyes this cathedral of Christendom.

AElfric also keeps alive the interest of the listeners by propounding
difficult questions to them which he answers himself at once. "Now many
a man will think and inquire whence the devil came?... Now some man will
inquire whence came his [own] soul, whether from the father or the
mother? We say from neither of them; but the same God who created Adam
with his hands ... that same giveth a soul and life to children."[124]
Why are there no more miracles? "These wonders were needful at the
beginning of Christianity, for by these signs was the heathen folk
inclined to faith. The man who plants trees or herbs waters them so long
until they have