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Archbishop Wulfstan, Homilist and Statesman1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Extract

When Wulfstan II, archbishop of York from 1002 and bishop of Worcester from 1002 to 1016, alias Lupus episcopus, died at York on 28 May 1023, his body was taken for burial to the monastery of Ely, in accordance with his wishes. From the twelfth-century historian of this abbey we get the only mediaeval account of the prelate, a brief, and in some respects unreliable, account. Among other things, it states that miracles were worked at his tomb, but there is no hint elsewhere that Wulfstan had any special claims to sanctity. There was certainly never any question of canonisation; hence there was little motive for the writing of his life by his contemporaries or successors. When we consider how little we should know of the activities of Dunstan or Oswold if we had been denied the contemporary lives of these saints, it is perhaps not remarkable that political historians of the period refer to Wulfstan, if at all, merely as the author of a sermon, the famous Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, revealing contemporary conditions in England, or as the consecrator of Cnut's church at Ashingdon. Even in ecclesiastical histories Wulfstan is given no prominent place. Some mention his appointment to York, some his refoundation of St. Peter's at Gloucester and his consecration of Ashingdon, none, except recently Professor Darlington, who calls him an ardent reformer, suggest that he had any influence on the Anglo-Saxon church of his time or later.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1942

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References

page 25 note 2 Historia Eliensis (ed. by D. J. Stewart as Liber Eliensis, i. for the Anglia Christiana Society), ii, cap. 87.Google Scholar

page 25 note 3 See my edition of this text in Methuen's Old English Library, 1939, to which subsequent references refer.

page 26 note 1 E.H.R., li. 392.Google Scholar

page 26 note 2 In Hickes, G., Linguarum veterum septentrionalium thesaurus, ii. 140 f.Google Scholar

page 26 note 3 Despite the Dictionary of national biography, which considers the identification made without ‘any convincing reason’.

page 27 note 1 Wulfstan: Sammlung der ihm zugeschriebenen Homilien nebst Untersuchungen über ihre Echtheit, quoted in this article by the number of the homily.

page 27 note 2 Über die Werke des altenglischen Erzbischofs Wulfstan.

page 27 note 3 Including the so-called pastoral letter (Napier, xix–xxii), which begins in one version ‘Wulfstan arcebisceop’.

page 27 note 4 Besides the works cited at p. 15 of my edition of the Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, see Jost, K. in Anglia, xlvii. 105 ff.Google Scholar, and my ‘Wulfstan and the so-called laws of Edward and Guthrum’, E.H.R., lvi. 6 ff.Google Scholar

page 28 note 1 Napier, , xxviii (p. 133).Google Scholar

page 28 note 2 Ibid., xxii (p. 114). It is not possible in translating to give the effect obtained by rhyme and alliteration, e.g., sorgung 7 sargung 7 á singal heof; wanung 7 granung, etc.

page 28 note 3 Even the Lord's Prayer is not proof against their insertion: one Old English version (Napier, , xxviGoogle Scholar) is equivalent to ‘Lead us not into temptation all too greatly’.

page 28 note 4 See Jost, , Anglia, lvi. 305.Google Scholar

page 28 note 5 See my note in E.H.R., lii. 460 ff.Google Scholar

page 28 note 6 ‘Einige Wulfstantexte und ihre Quellen’, Anglia, lvi. 265 ff.Google Scholar

page 28 note 7 Napier, , v and x.Google Scholar Jost has found an earlier version of v in C.C.C.C. MS. 302, which is closer to the Latin original.

page 29 note 1 Napier, , iv and ix.Google Scholar

page 29 note 2 I.e., seniores honorate, iuniores diligite. See Jost, ., op. cit., p. 287.Google Scholar

page 29 note 3 Viz., the first of the five texts printed by Thorpe under this title and the only one with the slightest claim to it, i.e., the rubric in one manuscript.

page 29 note 4 Wulfstan himself seems to have looked back on Edgar's reign as a golden age of law and order. See VIII Atr 37 and ASC 975D. Perhaps there was a tendency in later times at Worcester to attribute undated codes to his reign.

page 30 note 1 Memorials of St. Dunstan (R.S., 1874), p. cvi.Google Scholar

page 30 note 2 Napier, , xi.Google Scholar

page 30 note 3 On pp. 13 f. of my edition of the Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, I suggested that these homilies were authentic, judging by style alone. Since then, I have found their Latin sources in manuscripts otherwise connected with Wulfstan.

page 30 note 4 Cf. infra, pp. 31, 33.Google Scholar

page 30 note 5 Cf. infra, p. 43.Google Scholar

page 30 note 6 Op. cit., p. liv.Google Scholar

page 30 note 7 Haddan, A. W. and Stubbs, W., Councils and ecclesiastical documents relating to Great Britain and Ireland, iii. 579–84.Google Scholar

page 30 note 8 Ibid., iii. 118–21.

page 30 note 9 Wilkins, D., Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, i. 212–14.Google Scholar

page 30 note 10 See infra, p. 43.Google Scholar

page 30 note 11 owe my knowledge of it to Mr. Neil Ker, who pointed out that it contained the penitential letters mentioned below.

page 31 note 1 Cf. infra, p. 33.Google Scholar

page 31 note 2 One cannot be certain, while the manuscript remains inaccessible, whether the extract is Wulfstan's exact source, which is contained in C.C.C.C. 265.

page 31 note 3 Infra, pp. 31.Google Scholar

page 31 note 4 Published by Holthausen, F. in Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum, xxxiv (Neue Folge, xxii), p. 228.Google Scholar

page 31 note 5 E.H.R., x. 712.Google Scholar

page 31 note 6 Like the Copenhagen manuscript, it has Ælfric's two Latin pastoral letters immediately followed by the source of Wulfstan's homily De baptismate and a treatise on the mass. The two manuscripts share also Amalarais, Ecloge de officio misse.

page 32 note 1 Infra, p. 36.Google Scholar

page 32 note 2 It is the interest taken in this code at Worcester that has preserved it ior us, for the only other manuscript is the Worcester Nero E. i.

page 32 note 3 It has hitherto been dated late eleventh-century.

page 32 note 4 See Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, p. i.Google Scholar

page 33 note 1 Englische Studien, xlvi. 337 ff.Google Scholar His other arguments are not very cogent. The manuscript contains Ælfric's pastoral letter for Wulfsige as well as those for Wulfstan, but so does the undoubtedly Worcester manuscript Junius 121. It has a text made up of passages from Athelwold's Regularis concordia and Amalarius, the authorities combined by Ælfric when writing for monks at Eynsham. This is an argument for the authorship of the work, but not for the provenance of the manuscript, for the compilation for the Eynsham monks has been preserved only in a Worcester manuscript, C.C.C.C. 265, and if Ælfric sent a copy of the one work, he may easily have done the same with this one. Since writing this article Fehr has realized that the version of the Excerptiones Pseudo-Ecgberti in C.C.C.C. 190 is not the one used by Ælfric. See his Die Hirtenbriefe Ælfrics in altenglischer und lateinischer Fassung, p. cv.Google Scholar This greatly weakens his case for an Eynsham origin for this manuscript.

page 33 note 2 See Feiler, E., Das Benediktiner-Offizium.… Ein Beitrag zur Wulfstanfrage (Anglistische Forschungen 4)Google Scholar, and Fehr, , Englische Studien, xlvi. 337 ff.Google Scholar

page 33 note 3 Cf. infra, p. 43.Google Scholar

page 33 note 4 Wulfstan does not use the first paragraph (as printed in Migne, Patrologia Latina, cxxxii. 764 ff.Google Scholar), but begins with the section Vere, fratres charissimi, hoc debetis scire unde fuit incoeptum hoc exemplum, i.e., the passage in C.C.C.C. 190. The Old English omits parts of Abbo's sermon, but I do not know if the Latin in this manuscript does so also, as it is at present inaccessible.

page 34 note 1 Englische Studien, xlvi. 344.Google Scholar Cf. infra, p. 35.Google Scholar

page 34 note 2 Cf. supra, p. 28.Google Scholar

page 34 note 3 Jost, , op. cit., pp. 278 f.Google Scholar

page 34 note 4 Fehr, , Die Hirtenbriefe Ælfrics…, p. xi.Google Scholar

page 34 note 5 Ibid., pp. 222–7.

page 34 note 6 Op. cit., 713.Google Scholar

page 35 note 1 P. cix.

page 35 note 2 The letter deals with a range of subjects, the bars to entry into the priesthood, the limitation of the consecrating of the chrism to Holy Thursday, the abuse by which wine is mixed with water at baptism, the participation of the clergy in battle, etc. The passage in which Ælfric discusses the lawfulness of Caesarian section must have some connexion with the Ely tradition that Wulfstan was born in this way.

page 35 note 3 Ethelred's Vth and VIth codes.

page 36 note 1 Norman Conquest, i. 368.Google Scholar

page 36 note 2 I.e. the edicts which all the optimates have sworn to keep.

page 36 note 3 Cf. supra, p. 29.Google Scholar

page 36 note 4 E.H.R., lvi. 1 ff.Google Scholar

page 36 note 5 See Jost, , op. cit., pp. 293 f.Google Scholar

page 36 note 6 The sentiment has not been expressed in general terms in previous legislation. The English code does not translate the Latin, but gives a summary in its own words, and borrowing is therefore more difficult to prove. In my opinion there is enough similarity to make it highly probable. The most relevant passage reads: ‘Castigandi sunt enim rei diris flagris vel vinculis et in carcerem mittendi sunt et trabibus includendi et plumis piceque perfusi ad spectaculum publicum in cippum mitti debent et diversis þenis cruciandi sunt ne anime pro quibus ipse dominus passus est, in eterna pena dispereant.’ The Old Knglish statute (V Atr 3, 3. 1) reads: ‘7 ures hlafordes gerædnes 7 his witena is, pæt man Cristene men for ealles to lytlum io deaðe ne fordeme; ac elles geræde man friðlice steora folce to pearfe, 7 ne forspille for litlum Godes haudgeweorc 7 his agenne ceap þe he deore gebohte’, in which friðlice steora seems to summarise the various alternatives of the Latin canon. Wulfstan has already given a closer rendering of the last phrase of the Latin in the previous statute: þæt man þa sawla ne farfare þe Crist mid his agenum life gebohte. For the complete canon, see Bateson, M., op, cit., pp. 726 f.Google Scholar

page 37 note 1 See pp. 15 f. of this homily.

page 37 note 2 KCD 898; Robertson, A. J., Anglo-Saxon Charters, lxxxiii.Google Scholar

page 37 note 3 E.H.R., lvi. 1 ff.Google Scholar

page 38 note 1 Anglia, xlvii. 105 ff.Google Scholar

page 38 note 2 I print as prose, since phrases of an approximately equal length, with almost a verse rhythm, are a feature of Wulfstan's style. Einenkel actually suggests that the Sermo Lupi ad Anglos is a poem, in Anglia, vii.Google Scholar Anzeiger, , pp. 200 ff.Google Scholar

page 38 note 3 Earle, J. and Plummer, C., Two Saxon chronicles parallel, ii. 152.Google Scholar

page 38 note 4 See also the strong case for the Worcester origin of the later part of D made by SirAtkins, Ivor, E.H.R., lv. 8 ff.Google Scholar

page 39 note 1 Gesta pontificum (R.S. 1870), p. 250.Google Scholar

page 39 note 2 Historia Eliensis, loc. cit.

page 39 note 3 Ed. Thorpe, B., i. 156.Google Scholar

page 39 note 4 ASC 996 F. On the identity of this bishop of London with the homilist and later archbishop, see my article in E.H.R., lii. 460 ff.Google Scholar

page 39 note 5 See supra, p. 31.Google Scholar The group occurs also in the Bodleian MS. Barlow 37, fo. 12.

page 39 note 6 See supra, pp. 28, 34.Google Scholar

page 39 note 7 Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, pp. 12 f.Google Scholar

page 40 note 1 Napier, , p. 79.Google Scholar

page 40 note 2 Even if he knew of the manuscript of German customary law which Lupus wrote for Count Eberhard of Friuli, or of his composition of synodal acts, we have no evidence for Wulfstan's own legal activities as early as his use of the name Lupus.

page 40 note 3 Napier, , xixxxii.Google Scholar

page 40 note 4 E.g. Napier, , ii and iii.Google Scholar

page 41 note 1 I hope to make a special study of this text later.

page 41 note 2 Ethelred's VIIth code.

page 41 note 3 Napier, , xxxv and xxxvi.Google Scholar

page 41 note 4 Ll. 75–80. See also note to 11, 79 ff.

page 41 note 5 ASC 1014 D. Homily xxxvii, a sermon preached at the consecration of a bishop, may belong to this occasion or to his consecration of Æthelnoth as archbishop of Canterbury in 1020 or of Edmund as bishop of Durham about the same year.

page 41 note 6 For details concerning the information in this paragraph, see Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, pp. 8 ff.Google Scholar

page 42 note 1 For example, I take it that in referring to the mercy shown in this code Freeman is thinking chiefly of the attempt to stop the slave trade (V Atr 2, VI. 9) and to limit the application of the death penalty (supra, p. 36Google Scholar). The first subject occurs in the Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, the second comes from a continental canon preserved at Worcester in a manuscript with other Wulfstan sources.

page 42 note 2 VI Atr. 10. 2.

page 43 note 1 VI Atr. 28. 2 f.

page 43 note 2 Ibid., 29.

page 43 note 3 V Atr. 28.

page 43 note 4 Ibid., 30.

page 43 note 5 Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, pp. 41 f. Cf.Google Scholar Alcuin to Archbishop Æthel-heard, M.G.H., Abt. iv, Epistolae Karolini Ævi, ii. 47.Google Scholar The letter is contained in full in C.C.C.C. MSS. 190, 265, and in Vespasian A. xiv, and the sentence in question is entered separately on fo. 139 of C.C.C.C. MS. 190; see supra, p. 33.Google Scholar

page 43 note 6 For example, he frequently stresses the cowardice of bishops who do not preach to the people of their sins, using the texts quoted by Aleuta again and agata when writing to contemporary bishops: clama et ne cesses; exalta quasi tuba vocem tuam; canes muti non valentes latrare.

page 44 note 1 Fehr, , op. cit., p. 226.Google Scholar

page 44 note 2 Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, p. 8.Google Scholar Atkins, , op. cit., p. 19Google Scholar, calls attention to the scarcity of information about him in Worcester documents.

page 44 note 3 Supra., p. 34†.Google Scholar

page 44 note 4 Micah, vi. 8.Google Scholar

page 44 note 5 Fehr, , op. cit., p. 227.Google Scholar

page 45 note 1 Historia Eliensis, loc. cit.