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Archbishop Wulfstan and the Holiness of Society
| Content Provider | Scilit |
|---|---|
| Author | Wormald, Patrick |
| Copyright Year | 2021 |
| Description | Book Name: Anglo-Saxon History: Basic Readings |
| Abstract | Archbishop Wulfstan was one of the half dozen leading influences on the formation of early English culture and on the way that it has been perceived since 1066. Until barely half a century ago, that claim would have seemed incomprehensible. His entry in the old Dictionary of [English] National Biography is instructive. A Mr. "W.H." contributes some thirty-five lines, and concludes by saying that he was not the bishop of London consecrated in 996, and that he perhaps did not write the Old English homilies standing in the name of "Lupus." The New DNB entry (I can assert on impeachable authority) will be ten times as long, and will accept that he was, that he did, and that he wrote a lot more besides.1 Unlike Bede, Alfred, and Ælfric, Wulfstan did not loom large on the horizons of Matthew Parker and other Old English revivalists of the early modern era. Humfrey Wanley was the first to realize that the author of the "Lupus" homilies was probably Wulfstan of York and Worcester. In 1883 Arthur Napier collected the sixty homiletic pieces that Wanley had listed.2 Next, Karl Jost showed that many of these texts drew on a common set of authorities, and that it was not possible to transfer responsibility for most of them to a "Wulfstan-imitator." Jost went on to establish that Wulfstan's hallmarks were imprinted on an important account of the ranks of Christian society known as the Institutes of Polity.3 By then it was becoming clear that all Æthelred's later law-codes were in this increasingly familiar idiom. Dorothies Whitelock and Bethurum proved just how much legislation Wulfstan had drafted, including the giant code of Cnut. They also established a close link between Wulfstan's works and manuscript collections of canonical, pastoral, and liturgical texts that 192appeared to be Wulfstan's sources.4 At the same time, Neil Ker was finding the same distinctive handwriting throughout manuscripts with known or likely Wulfstan associations, sometimes in what seemed an authorial capacity. The logical deduction was that this was the archbishop's own hand. As a result further books where it appears were drawn into his sphere of activity.5 It was thus the piecing together of literary and palaeo-graphical clues that transformed Wulfstan from just another doubtless worthy Anglo-Saxon prelate into a figure of such moment. |
| Related Links | https://api.taylorfrancis.com/content/chapters/edit/download?identifierName=doi&identifierValue=10.4324/9781003249009-8&type=chapterpdf |
| Ending Page | 224 |
| Page Count | 34 |
| Starting Page | 191 |
| DOI | 10.4324/9781003249009-8 |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited |
| Publisher Date | 2021-10-21 |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Subject Keyword | Book Name: Anglo-saxon History: Basic Readings Pieces Society Archbishop English Revivalists Wulfstan's Works Homilies Standing |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Chapter |
