1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Wulfstan

WULFSTAN, archbishop of York from 1003 until his death in May 1023, and also bishop of Worcester from 1003 to 1016, is generally held to be the author of a remarkable homily in alliterative English prose. Its title, taken from a manuscript, is Lupi sermo ad Anglos, quando Dani maxime prosecuti sunt eos, quod fuit anno 1014. It is an appeal to all classes to repent in the prospect of the imminent day of judgment, and gives a vivid picture of the desperate condition of England in the year of King Aethelred II.'s flight (1014). Of the many other homilies ascribed to Wulfstan very few are authentic. Subsequent legislation, especially that of Canute, bears clear traces of his influence.

See the edition of his homilies by A. Napier (Berlin, 1883); also the same writer's Uber die Werke des altenglischen Erzbischofs Wulfstan (Göttingen dissertation, 1882), and his paper in An English Miscellany (Oxford, 1901, pp. 355 f.); also A. Brandl in H. Paul's Grundriss der germanischen Philologie (2nd ed., 1901-1909), ii. pp. 1110-1112.