GENERIC FEATURES

Like most monastic customaries, Ælfric's Eynsham ‘letter’ assumes a great deal of prior knowledge on the reader's part. Indeed, as an abridgement of sources already dense and technical, the LME may well compound the interpretative challenges of the genre. Customaries also typically emphasize departures from everyday observance, so it is not surprising that Ælfric gives the most details about customs peculiar to special days or seasons but has comparatively little to say about normal routines. Recognition of these generic qualities should discourage some unrealistic expectations of the ‘letter’, such as the assumption that Ælfric is writing a kind of beginners’ guide to the Benedictine life. On the contrary, he is clearly addressing an audience with some experience of monastic liturgy and discipline. Even if, as he claims in the preface, his monks do not know the Regularis concordia, they would require considerable knowledge of St Benedict's Rule and much else simply in order to make sense of the ‘letter’. The commentary that follows the present edition aims to unpack Ælfric's tightly bundled instructions, to fill in the information that he assumes and to distinguish the unusual or problematic from the routine. The sheer amount of explanation needed to put us on more or less the same footing as Ælfric's intended readers is instructive.

Because study of the details tends, however, to lose sight of the larger organization and emphases of the LME, the present chapter surveys these features and the extent of their correlation to Ælfric's sources.