NEWLY RECOVERED ENGLISH HOMILIES FROM COTTON OTHO A. XIII

London, British Library, Cotton Otho A. xiii, a composite manuscript, was badly damaged in the 1731 Cotton Library fire, and most of its contents were lost. Among the texts destroyed were 13 Middle English homilies. The incipits and explicits of these homilies appearing in Humphrey Wanley's catalogue from 1705 are the only material from the texts hitherto available to scholars. This article edits and discusses brief extracts from at least four of these homilies from a transcription made by the Cotton librarian Richard James, which now survives in Oxford, Bodleian Library, James 27 (ca. 1625 × 1638). The remaining homilies of Otho A. xiii, known only through Wanley's catalogue, are also discussed and, when possible, identified and compared with possible sources, analogues, and surviving versions of the texts. An analysis of the contents and language of the Otho Homilies suggests a date of ca. 1200 and a possible Midlands origin for this part of the manuscript. Despite their fragmentary survival, the Otho Homilies represent an important source for those who study late-12th century English preaching, as they are closely related to the so-called Lambeth and Trinity Homilies, the two largest surviving English homily collections from the period.