THE HOMILIES Wulfstan composed based on his legal codes and the Institutes of Polity are probably the least read and commented on of all. Bethurum omitted them from her edition on the grounds of genre, and scholars interested in Wulfstan's legal writing are understandably inclined to work with full legal texts rather than homiletic adaptations. Yet the homilies are interesting in their own right, demonstrating those portions of Wulfstan's legal and political writings that he considered important enough to include in his preaching. Moreover, because these homilies were for the most part composed towards the end of the archbishop's life, they show the maturation of Wulfstan's thought on issues that had occupied him throughout his career, including the education and duties of priests (Napier 52 and 53), the proper behavior of both clergy and laity (Napier 50 and 59), the payment of tithes and other church dues (Napier 22, 23, and 61), and last but not least, the preparation of the faithful for the advent of Antichrist and the end of the world (Napier 50). These homilies make it clear that although Wulfstan did not distinguish between homily and law code in regard to content, he did in fact make some distinction in terms of genre: the homilies cite the legal codes verbatim, but they are also reshaped and adapted for oral delivery.

Napier 52 and 53, extant only in K and rubricated To mæsseprostum and To mæssepreostum respectively, together comprise a shortened and adapted version of chapter 19 of the Institutes of Polity; Karl Jost's parallel-text edition demonstrates that the homilies are closest to the version of Polity found in I and rubricated Be sacerdan. Napier 53 follows immediately after 52 in the manuscript, and because there is no break in Polity at the point of the second rubric, the two are best considered as a single text. The intervening rubric may, as suggested in Chapter 2, be a correction of the misspelled rubric of 52, or it may simply be an ornamental division at a point at which a modern editor would no doubt place a paragraph break.