Wulfstan at Work

Abstract

This article retrieves the hitherto mostly illegible drafts of four short texts by Wulfstan, archbishop of York (d. 1023), in London, British Library, Additional 38651, fols. 57r–58v. The autograph manuscript, which can be dated to the first years of the second millennium, provides not only an authentic basis for the description of Wulfstan’s distinctive style, it also offers unique insights into his compositional method as homilist, his relation to Ælfric of Eynsham at the beginning of his career as archiepiscopal legislator, and the nature of the manuscripts from which a mobile prelate of his day was preaching. The short texts, described, edited, and translated here for the first time, witness Wulfstan’s efforts of reconciling the moral and theological idealism of Ælfric with the realpolitik of his own day.