Word Finder - homilies

definition

A sermon, especially concerning a practical matter.

definition

A moralizing lecture.

definition

A platitude.

All this time he was preaching every day, writing homilies, disputations, lectures, and finding time to work hard at his great work the Summa Theologiae.

The king consents, the saint is acclaimed, the bodies of the thirty-seven martyrs solemnly interred, and the king, after fasting five, and listening to Gregory's homilies for sixty days, is healed.

In 1 547 appeared the Homilies prepared under his direction.

Before Lightfoot's time commentaries, especially on the epistles, had not infrequently consisted either of short homilies on particular portions of the text, or of endeavours to enforce foregone conclusions, or of attempts to decide with infinite industry and ingenuity between the interpretations of former commentators.

In Sicily he was engaged in translating the Homilies of Origen when he died in 410.

The most important parts are the homilies on Jeremiah, the books of Moses, Joshua and Luke, and the commentaries on Matthew, John and Romans.

Tomlinson, The Prayer Book, Articles and Homilies (1897), a polemical work from the Protestant point of view, but scholarly and based on a mass of contemporary authorities to which references are given; the bishop of Exeter, The Ornaments Rubric (London, 1901), a pamphlet.

On these two letters which are found in the Clementine Homilies, see Smith's Dict.

He also wrote homilies on various subjects, and a speech againt usurers, printed with other works in Migne, Patrologia Graeca, c. i.

In the literature as it survives many different branches of writing are represented - homilies in prose and verse, hymns, exposition and commentary, liturgy, apocryphal legends, historical romance, hagiography and martyrology, monastic history and biography, general history, dogmatics, philosophy and science, ecclesiastical law, &c. But the whole is dominated by the theological and ecclesiastical interest.

When we put aside one or two exceptionally fine pieces, like the hymn of the soul in the apocryphal Acts of Thomas, the highest degree of excellence in style is perhaps attained in staightforward historical narrative - such as the account of the PersoRoman War at the beginning of the 6th century by the author who passes under the name of Joshua the Stylite, or by romancers like him who wrote the romance of Julian; by biographers like some of those who have written lives of saints, martyrs and eminent divines; and by some early writers of homilies such as Philoxenus (in prose) and Isaac of Antioch (in verse).

He was the author of many commentaries, homilies, epistles, canons and hymns.

The first series of forty homilies is devoted to plain and direct exposition of the chief events of the Christian year; the second deals more fully with church doctrine and history.

His Latin Grammar and Glossary 2 were written for his pupils after the two books of homilies.

A third series of homilies, the Lives of the Saints, dates from 996 to 997.

With the opening of the diet in 1890, politics again obtruded themselves into newspaper columns, but as practical living issues now occupied attention, readers were no longer wearied by the abstract homilies of former days.

It was probably during the earlier years of his episcopate that Philoxenus composed his thirteen homilies on the Christian life.

Of the excellence of his style and of his practical religious zeal we are able to judge from the thirteen homilies on the Christian life and character which have been edited and translated by Budge (London, 1894).

As his quotations from Scripture appear to be made from the Peshitta, he probably wrote the homilies before he embarked upon the Philoxenian version.2 Philoxenus wrote also many controversial 'works and some liturgical pieces.

In his hands, as may be seen from the 19 homilies on Jeremiah that have been preserved in the Greek (and others in the Latin of Rufinus), the crude homily of his predecessors began to take a more dignified, orderly and impressive form.

The homilies of Beda are marked by a tender devoutness, and here and there rise to glowing eloquence.

The English Book of Homilies was compiled because competent preachers were comparatively rare.

Homilies, legends, traditional sayings and explanations, in fact every form of Haggadic expansion are utilized by the Targumist, so that at times his works convey the impression more of a late Midrash than of a translation.

The result of his studies there was the translation of the Chronicon of Eusebius, with a continuation 1 of twenty-eight homilies of Origen on Jeremiah and 1 Cf.

Earlier in life he had a great admiration for Origen, and translated many of his works, and this lasted after he had settled at Bethlehem, for in 389 he translated Origen's homilies on Luke; but he came to change his opinion and wrote violently against two admirers of the great Alexandrian scholar, John, bishop of Jerusalem, and his own former friend Rufinus.

Not a few homilies of that age survive, denouncing the deferring of baptism, and urging on parents the duty of initiating their young children.

When, therefore, we find such phrases in Greek and Latin homilies of the period of 3 50 to 550 we must regard them as elaborate make-believe.

It is impossible exactly to estimate the influence which these teachers exerted on the general trend of religious opinion in England; in any case, however, it was not unimportant, and the Articles of Religion and official homilies of the Church of England show unmistakably the influence of Calvin's doctrine.

This story is much amplified in the account given by St John of Damascus in the homilies In dormitionem Mariae, which are still read in the Roman Church as the lesson during the octave of the feast.

He was a famous preacher, and many of his homilies, including a series of lenten lectures on the Hexaemeron, and an exposition of the psalter, have been preserved.

His extant works are - (i) a speech before Arcadius, De regno; (2) Dio, sive de suo ipsius instituto, in which he signifies his purpose to devote himself to true philosophy; (3) Encomium calvitii (he was himself bald), a literary jeu d'esprit, suggested by Dio Chrysostom's Praise of Hair; (4) De providentia, in two books; (5) De insomniis; (6) 157 Epistolae; (7) 12 Hymni, of a contemplative, Neoplatonic character; and several homilies and occasional speeches.

Among the authors whose works were found specially serviceable in this way may be mentioned the Venerable Bede, who is credited with no fewer than 140 homilies in the Basel and Cologne editions.

Prior to Charlemagne .it is probable that several other collections of homilies had obtained considerable popularity, but in the time of that emperor these had suffered so many mutilations and corruptions that an authoritative revision was felt to be imperatively necessary.

Though thus attributed here to Alcuin, who is known to have revised the Lectionary or Comes Hieronymi, the compilation 176 homilies arranged in order for all the Sundays and festivals of the ecclesiastical year; and probably was completed before the year 780.

Hence an important form of literary activity came to be the translation of the homilies approved by the church into the vernacular.

Thus we find Alfred the Great translating the homilies of Bede; and in a similar manner arose iElfric's Anglo-Saxon Homilies and the German Homiliarium of Ottfried of Weissenburg.

The Books of Homilies referred to in the 35th article of the Church of England originated at a convocation in 1542, at which it was agreed "to make certain homilies for stay of such errors as were then by ignorant preachers sparkled among the people."

Certain homilies, accordingly, composed by dignitaries of the lower house, were in the following year produced by the prolocutor; and after some delay a volume was published in 1547 entitled Certain sermons or homilies appointed by the King's Majesty to be declared and read by all parsons, vicars, or curates every Sunday in their churches where they have cure.

In 1563 a second Book of Homilies was submitted along with the 39 Articles to convocation; it was issued the same year under the title The second Tome of Homilies of such matters as were promised and instituted in the former part of Homilies, set out by the authority of the Queen's Majesty, and to be read in every Parish Church agreeably.

Of the twelve homilies contained in the first book, four (the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th) are probably to be attributed to Cranmer, and one (the 12th) possibly to Latimer; one (the 6th) is by Bonner; another (the 5th) is by John Harpsfield, archdeacon of London, and another (the 11th) by Thomas Becon, one of Cranmer's chaplains.

The second book consists of twenty-one homilies, of which the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 7th, 8th, 9th, 16th and 17th have been assigned to Jewel, the 4th to Grindal, the 5th and 6th to Pilkington and the 18th to Parker.

It is a series of metrical homilies on the Ten Commandments, the Seven Deadly Sins and the Seven Sacraments, illustrated by a number of amusing stories from various sources.

Ebed Jesu in the 14th century mentions it together with Letters and Homilies, as well as the Tragedy, or a Letters to Cosmas, the Theopaschites (of which some fragments are still extant) and the Liturgy, which is still used by the Nestorian Church.

Schwegler published also an edition of the Clementine Homilies (1847), and of Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History (1852); in philosophy Ubersetzung and Erlciuterung der aristot.

By the king's desire he undertook the vindication of the practices of confirmation, absolution, private baptism and lay excommunication; he urged, but in vain, the reinforcement of an ancient canon, "that schismatics are not to be heard against bishops"; and in opposition to the Puritans' demand for certain alterations in doctrine and discipline, he besought the king that care might be taken for a praying clergy; and that, till men of learning and sufficiency could be found, godly homilies might be read and their number increased.

Proceeding upon such lines as these, the Jews wove together their Midrashic homilies or sermons where, though we may find much that seems commonplace, there are illuminating parables and proverbs, metaphors and similes, the whole affording admirable examples of the contemporary thought and culture, both of the writers and - what is often overlooked - the level of their hearers or readers.

Hebrew was included, while the Greek and Latin classics were neglected; the Homilies of Macarius took the place of Thucydides.

Finally, we should mention in this connexion the text on which are based the pseudo-Clementine Homilies and Recognitiones (beginning of the 3rd century).

Among these we must mention the JudaeoChristian Gnostic Cerinthus, also the Gnostic Ebionites, of whom Epiphanius (Haer.) gives us an account, and whose writings are to be found in a recension in the collected works of the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions and Homilies; to the same class belong the Elkesaites with their mystical scripture, the Elxai, extracts of which are given by Hippolytus in the Philos.

Genesis is but slightly abridged, but Job, Kings, Judges, Esther and Judith as well as the Maccabees are mere homilies epitomized from the corresponding Old Testament books.