Redeemed for Five Shillings
Elfric, the tenth-century English abbot, suggests a practical way of thinking about the Presentation of Christ in the Temple.
990-994
King Ethelred the Unready 978-1016
Elfric, the tenth-century English abbot, suggests a practical way of thinking about the Presentation of Christ in the Temple.
990-994
King Ethelred the Unready 978-1016
Where ancient Judaism favoured the close regulation of society and individual actions by the state, Christianity emphasises individual responsibility, a major influence on the Britain’s famously liberal constitution. Elfric, Abbot of Eynsham in the reign of Æthelred the Unready, gave a rather clever example of how this works in a sermon for Candlemas, kept each year on February 2nd.
GOD, in the old law, commanded his people, that they should offer to him every firstborn male child, or redeem it with five shillings. Of their cattle also, to bring whatever was firstborn to God’s house, and there offer it to God. But if it were an unclean beast, then should the master slay it, or give to God another clean beast.
We need not now hold these commands bodily, but spiritually.
When in our mind something good is brought forth and we turn it to action, then should we account that as God's grace, and consign it to God.
Our evil thoughts or actions we should redeem with five shillings; that is, we should repent of our wickedness with our five senses, which are, sight, and hearing, and taste, and smell, and touch.
So also as the unclean beasts betoken our unclean thoughts and actions, these we should always kill or exchange for pure; that is, we should always destroy our impurity and our wickedness, and forsake evil, and do good.
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.