page_title: Wulfstan (died 1023)
section_title: Homilist
hierarchical_section_title: Wulfstan (died 1023) / Homilist
caption_attribution_description: English: Photograph of a page in the medieval manuscript Cotton Nero A.i held in the British Library.
context_page_description: Wulfstan was an English Bishop of London, Bishop of Worcester, and Archbishop of York. He should not be confused with Wulfstan I, Archbishop of York, or Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester. He is thought to have begun his ecclesiastical career as a Benedictine monk. He became the Bishop of London in 996. In 1002 he was elected simultaneously to the diocese of Worcester and the archdiocese of York, holding both in plurality until 1016, when he relinquished Worcester; he remained archbishop of York until his death. It was perhaps while he was at London that he first became well known as a writer of sermons, or homilies, on the topic of Antichrist. In 1014, as archbishop, he wrote his most famous work, a homily which he titled the Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, or the Sermon of the Wolf to the English.
  Besides sermons Wulfstan was also instrumental in drafting law codes for both kings Æthelred the Unready and Cnut the Great of England. He is considered one of the two major writers of the late Anglo-Saxon period in England. After his death in 1023, miracles were said to have occurred at his tomb, but attempts to have him declared a saint never bore fruit.
context_section_description: Wulfstan was one of the most distinguished and effective Old English prose writers. His writings cover a wide range of topics in an even greater range of genres, including homilies (or sermons), secular laws, religious canons, and political theory. With Ælfric of Eynsham, he is one of the two major vernacular writers in early eleventh-century England, a period which, ecclesiastically, was still very much enamoured of and greatly influenced by the Benedictine Reform. The Benedictine Reform was a movement which sought to institute monastic standards among the secular clergy, a movement made popular by the churchmen of the Carolingian Empire in the ninth and tenth centuries. The Reform promoted a regular (i.e. based on a regula, or rule) life for priests and clerics, a strict church hierarchy, the primacy of the Roman see, the authority of codified or canonical church law, and stressed the importance of catholic, that is universal, church practices throughout all Christendom. These ideas could only thrive in a social and political atmosphere which recognised the importance of both the clergy's and the laity's obedience to the authority of the church on all things spiritual, and also on many things secular and juridical. This was one of the main theoretical models behind much of Wulfstan's legal and quasi-legal writings. But Wulfstan was not blind to the fact that, in order for this Reform model to thrive in England, the English clergy and laity (especially the laity) needed to be educated in the basic tenets of the faith. Nothing less than the legitimacy of English Christendom rested on Englishmen's steadfastness on certain fundamental Christian beliefs and practices, like, for example, knowledge of Christ's life and passion, memorisation of the Pater Noster and the Apostles' Creed, proper baptism, and the correct date and method of celebrating Easter mass. It is towards the promotion of such beliefs and practices, that Wulfstan engaged in writing a number of homilies dedicated to educating both clergy and laity in those Christian fundamentals which he saw as so important for both the flourishing of Christian lives and the success of the English polity.
  In a series of homilies begun during his tenure as Bishop of London, Wulfstan attained a high degree of competence in rhetorical prose, working with a distinctive rhythmical system based around alliterative pairings. He used intensifying words, distinctive vocabulary and compounds, rhetorical figures, and repeated phrases as literary devices. These devices lend Wulfstan's homilies their tempo-driven, almost feverish, quality, allowing them to build toward multiple climaxes. An example from one of his earliest sermons, titled Secundum Lucam, describes with vivid rhetorical force the unpleasantries of Hell (notice the alliteration, parallelism, and rhyme):
  Wa þam þonne þe ær geearnode helle wite. Ðær is ece bryne grimme gemencged, & ðær is ece gryre; þær is granung & wanung & aa singal heof; þær is ealra yrmða gehwylc & ealra deofla geþring. Wa þam þe þær sceal wunian on wite. Betere him wære þæt he man nære æfre geworden þonne he gewurde.
  "Woe then to him who has earned for himself the torments of Hell. There there is everlasting fire roiling painfully, and there there is everlasting filth. There there is groaning and moaning and always constant wailing. There there is every kind of misery, and the press of every kind of devil. Woe to him who dwells in torment: better it were for him that he were never born, than that he become thus."
  This type of heavy-handed, though effective, rhetoric immediately made Wulfstan's homilies popular tools for use at the pulpit.
  There is good evidence that Wulfstan's homiletic style was appreciated by his contemporaries. While yet bishop of London, in 1002 he received an anonymous letter in Latin praising his style and eloquence. In this letter, an unknown contemporary refuses to do a bit of translation for Wulfstan because he fears he could never properly imitate the Bishop's style. The Chronicle of Ely said of his preaching that "when he spok
caption: A page from a Wulfstan manuscript at the British Library (MS Cott., Nero A.i): Sermo Lupi ad Anglos quando Dani maxime persecuti sunt eos quod fuit anno millesimo XIIII ab incarnatione Domini nostri Jesus Christi
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