Photius is rather too hard on Basil, whose sermons are really stirring and good. The discourses of Andrew of Crete (740) are also excellent; those of John Damascene are poor.
Turning to England, we shall find Bede instructing our Anglo-Saxon forefathers in the faith of Christ and in the mysteries of the Gospel; and Alfric, in 990, compiling homilies in the vulgar tongue, to the number of eighty, and, among others, that famous one on the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist, which Matthew Parker could flourish in the face of his Romish opponents, saying, “What now is become of your boasted argument of apostolic tradition? see here that the novelties with which you charge us are older than the doctrines which you oppose to them!”
Wulfstan, Archbishop of York (1003), is known through one remarkable sermon, “Sermo Lupi ad Anglos quando Dani maxime persecuti sunt eos.”
We have now arrived at the true middle ages, and I will say but little of the history of preaching in that period, as it has already boon treated of by that distinguished ecclesiastical scholar, Dr. Neale, in his volume “Mediæval Sermons.” And, indeed, but for his labours, the bulk of this introduction would necessarily have been extended beyond its due limits, for the middle ages teemed with preachers, and preachers very striking for their originality and depth. The monasteries were great nurseries of preachers, sending forth continually multitudes of carefully trained and orthodox teachers. These preaching monks and friars exercised an immense influence over the uneducated laity, and for long they
