The thesis is in two parts, 'Manuscript' and 'Text'. The first part considers the post-Anglo-Saxon history of the manuscript, Junius 85 and 86, and then considers the Anglo-Saxon manuscript from the point of view of the activity involved in its production. In Chapter One are noted some of the manuscript's fundamental physical characteristics, its size in relation to other homily collections, the collation of its leaves and the quality of the membrane. Chapter Two deals with the question of the manuscript's provenance, and is ordered in sections each of which considers a particular piece of evidence. A final section summarizes the significance of all the evidence. Aside from a titled transcript made by Junius of part of one of the homilies, all the evidence of the manuscript's history before Junius donated it to the Bodleian Library is that which has accrued to the manuscript over the centuries. The title of Junius's transcript provides evidence that Isaac Vossius possessed the manuscript before Junius, and a key question is that of Vossius's acquisition. It is circumstantially likely that Vossius did not acquire the manuscript in England, and press-marks entered in each volume suggest that the manuscript may have been collected in France by a French bibliophile, Paul Petau, part of whose collection had come into Vossius's possession before the latter moved to England. The evidence of the two volume binding, which seems certainly to pre-date Junius's ownership, does not contradict this, on the face of it, unlikely provenance for an Old English homily collection. Evidence of the manuscript's survival through medieval times resides in a title entered on the first membrane leaf, which is all that survives of a medieval binding, and in a series of jottings. A detailed examination of the writing shows that the title and the jottings are comparable palaeographically, and that both were probably added some time in the late twelfth or early thirteenth centuIy, either in France or England. It seems probable that the jottings, some of whose content gives support to the possibility that the manuscript was in France, were entered while the manuscript was bound, as the title indicates, with a Greek psalter. The manuscript may owe its survival to this binding. Chapter Three turns to the Anglo-Saxon manuscript itself, and it is established that it was written by three main hands. In the absence of any study of eleventh-centuIy insular scripts, a comparative study of the palaeography has not been possible, but by way of contribution to the subject I have tried to characterize the script of the manuscript, as well as giving detailed description of letter forms and their variety in the course of identifying the hands. Chapter Three ends with description of decorative features, particularly of ornamental brackets which are a feature peculiar to Junius 8S and 86. Chapter Four considers the compilation of the manuscript, and it is shown in a separate section how the use of ornamental brackets arose when one scribe made regular use of a feature which another scribe had introduced for practical reasons. The main section (section 4) of Chapter Four draws on the physical and palaeographical evidence already described and discussed and relates it to the texts to show how the manuscript was compiled in at least two stages, with the bulk of the manuscript belonging to a final stage and the rest being remains of a previous stage, though no great space of time separates the two stages. One particular point concerns the status of a translated extract from the apocryphon Visio Pauli, and it is argued that the text was copied, and possibly translated, specifically to expand Homily 1, there having been doubt hitherto on this point. Chapter Five considers some spelling features which are characteristic of Junius 8S and 86, and constitutes a suggestion of an alternative to traditional language descriptions, based on historical phonology, which are of limited value for late Old English manuscripts. The second part of the thesis is the edition of the texts. The editorial aim is to enable consideration of whether the manuscript could have been used for preaching. Each homily is followed by a Commentary whose principal function is to address all difficult readings, and assess how often a failure of sense occurs. When other copies of homilies are thus closely examined it should eventually become possible to assess how much textual difficulty a copy of a homily could bear and still be delivered from the page as a preached sermon. How far the Old English Homiletic manuscripts are representative of an active preaching tradition is yet a matter for much debate. Notes describing the condition of the text in the manuscript accompany the texts, and previous editions are corrected where necessary. A novel form of printing Old English prose has been adopted, whereby sentences are spatially distinguished