Wulfstan, "Sermo Lupi ad Anglos"

The Sermo Lupi ad Anglos is an admonitory address by Wulfstan, Archbishop of York (d. 1023). Like most of Wulfstan’s works in this genre, it is usually described as a homily. However, this is something of a misnomer. Its Latin title translates as ‘The Sermon of the Wolf to the English’, which is taken from rubrics which begin two versions of the Sermo. The text is found in five different manuscripts and was continually revised by the archbishop.

Unknown photographer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Wulfstan was no stranger to disaster. The Sermo responds directly to the convulsive period from which it emerges. Wulfstan was simultaneously elevated to bishopric of Worcester and archbishopric of York in 1002. Between his elevation in 1002 and 1014 (possibly the first year in which the Sermo was delivered) the nation witnessed: mounting Viking raiding; widespread famine; the martyrdom of Archbishop Ælfheah of Canterbury at the hands of ransom-seeking Vikings; the invasion and subsequent death of Sweyn Forkbeard; the flight and return of King Æthelred II. The Sermo is Wulfstan’s most powerful rhetorical achievement—necessarily so, given the circumstances.
In the Sermo, Wulfstan berates the English people for their various failures as Christians and identifies these moral slippages as the cause of mounting Viking raids on England. He often outlines the theme of his sermons in their opening lines and the Sermo is no exception. Wulfstan immediately decries the nation’s descent into disaster:
Leofan men, gecnawað þæt soð is: ðeos worold is on ofste, ⁊ hit nealæcð þam ende
[Beloved people, know that this is the truth: this world is in haste and approaches the end] (ll. 1–2).
Several passages in the main body of the sermon outline the nation’s sinful failures. For example, his catalogue of sinners currently at large:
Her syndan mannslagan ⁊ mægslagan ⁊ mæsserbanan ⁊ mynsterhatan, ⁊ her syndan mansporan ⁊ morþorwyrhtan, ⁊ her syndan myltestran ⁊ bearnmyrðran ⁊ fule forlegene horingas manege, ⁊ her syndan wiccan ⁊ wælcyrian, ⁊ her syndan ryperas ⁊ reafereas ⁊ woroldstruderas, ⁊ hrædest is to cweþenne, mana ⁊ misdæda ungerim ealra. (ll. 168–73).
[Here are murderers, and kinslayers, and masspriest-killers and monastery-haters; and here are perjurers and murder-plotters and here are prostitutes, child-murderers, and many foul, adulterous fornicators; and here are witches and valkyries; and here are robbers, plunderers, and world-pillagers, and it is quickest to say, sins and misdeeds beyond all reckoning.]
These descriptions of sin are followed by passages describing historical or Biblical accounts of suffering. Wulfstan links these two kinds of passage with explanations demonstrating that the former always causes the latter. The above description of sin is the final such description in the Sermo. Accordingly, Wulfstan pairs it with his most poignant lesson from history:
An þeodwita wæs on Brytta tedum, Gildas hatte, se ewrae be heora misdædum, he he mid heora synnum swe oferlice sweþe God gegræmedon þæt he let æt nihstan Engla here heora eard gepinnan and Brytta dugeþe forþon mid ealle. (ll. 184–8).
[There was a wise man in the time of the Britons, named Gildas. He wrote about their misdeeds, how they so grievously angered God with their sins that at last He allowed the army of the English to take their land and utterly destroy the strength of the Britons.]
Wulfstan warns that the Vikings could very well be God’s next form of punishment, this time exacted upon the English, as the English themselves had been upon the Britons. However, throughout the sermon the possibility of a better future is suggested. The culmination of this redemptive thread is the exhortation which also ends the sermon:
beorgan us georne wið þone weallendan bryne helle pites, ⁊ geearnian us þa mærþa ⁊ þa myrhða þe God hæfð gegearwod þam þe his willan on worolde gewyrcað. God ure helpe. Amen. (ll. 207–211).
[[let us ] protect ourselves zealously from the surging fire of hell-pits and secure for ourselves the glories and the joys which God has prepared for those that work His will in the world. May God help us. Amen.]
Wulfstan begins and ends the Sermo in his most typical fashion: beginning with a call to Leofan men [beloved people] and ending with an exhortation. Wulfstan’s style is often contrasted with that of his close contemporary and occasional correspondent, Ælfric of Eynsham. Wulfstan was influenced by Ælfric’s innovations in rhythmical prose and sometimes recast Ælfric’s work in his own style. Wulfstan’s works are—to generalise—fiery, forceful, and urgent, whereas Ælfric’s are often measured, didactic, perspicuous. Wulfstan is perhaps best known for his use of echoic pairs. He often connects a pair through paronomasia, in which one word or phrase sounds like the other, as in mærþa ⁊ þa myrhða [the glories and the joys]. These pairs are often tautological and usually contain some combination of alliteration, assonance, or rhyme. He is also fond of intensifiers, such as: swyðe [greatly]; ealles to swyðe [all too greatly]; georne [eagerly, earnestly]; wide (widely); witod/witodlice [certain/certainly].
Wulfstan’s list of sinners contains several other typical stylistic features. Nominal compounds feature heavily. These are noun phrases which are made up of two or more nouns, functioning together as a single noun. His sinners’ list is full of such compounds some of which are unique to him. For example, morþorwyrhtan is formed by combining morþor [murder] with wyrhtan, the plural form of wyrhta, meaning a worker, maker, or artificer. So, morþorwyrhtan are those who work or make murder. Also amongst Wulfstan’ sinners are wælcyrian [Valkyries]. Words derived and borrowed from Old Norse are another feature of Wulfstan’s style. This is not surprising, as for much of his career he was Archbishop of York, which had a significant Scandinavian population. The most consistent borrowing in his vocabulary is lagu [law] which he always prefers to the Old English ae.
Although it is not so much a feature of style as it is a compositional technique, Wulfstan often reuses passages of text. As mentioned above, he freely recycled Ælfric’s work, but he also repurposed his own material, often across genres. For example, the short phrase, ⁊ utan don swa us þearf is [and let us as is necessary for us] (l. 199) appears not only in the Sermo, but in eleven other of Wulfstan’s homilies. It can also be found in one of his law-codes for Cnut (known as II Cnut) and in his treatise on social order, The Institutes of Polity. He also recycled longer passages, such as the above passage on Gildas and the Britons. This is translated from a Latin letter written by Alcuin of York in the late eighth century, the time of the earliest Viking raids on Northumbria.
Select Bibliography
Digitised Manuscripts:
Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 201 (pp. 82–86)
Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 419 (pp. 95–112)
London, British Library, MS Cotton Nero A i (fols 110r–115r)
Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Bodl. 343 (fols 143v–144v)
Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Hatton 113 (fols 84v–90v)
Editions:
Bethurum, Dorothy, ed., The Homilies of Wulfstan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957).
Napier, Arthur, ed., Wulfstan: Sammlung der ihm zugeschriebenen Homilien nebst Untersuchungen über ihre Echtheit (Berlin: Waldmann, 1883).
Whitelock, Dorothy, ed., Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, 3rd edn (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1977).
Extracts above are all taken from Whitelock (1977).
Criticism:
Cubitt, Catherine, ‘On Living in the Time of Tribulation: Archbishop Wulfstan’s Sermo Lupi Ad Anglos and Its Eschatological Context’, in Writing, Kingship and Power in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Rory Naismith and David A. Woodman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), pp. 202–33.
Dance, Richard, ‘Sound, Fury, and Signifiers; or Wulfstanʼs Language’, Wulfstan, Archbishop of York, ed. Townend, pp. 45–52.
Godden, Malcolm R., ‘Apocalypse and Invasion in Late Anglo-Saxon England’, in From Anglo-Saxon to Early Middle English: Studies Presented to E. G. Stanley, ed. by Malcolm Godden, Douglas Gray, and Terry Hoad (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 130–62.
———, ‘The Relations of Wulfstan and Ælfric: A Reassessment’, in Wulfstan, Archbishop of York, ed. Townend, pp. 353–74.
Hollis, Stephanie, ‘The Thematic Structure of the Sermo Lupi’, Anglo-Saxon England 6 (1977), 175–95.
Keynes, Simon, ‘An Abbot, an Archbishop, and the Viking Raids of 1006–7 and 1009– 12’, Anglo-Saxon England 36 (2007), 151–220.
Lionarons, Joyce Tally, The Homiletic Writings of Archbishop Wulfstan, Anglo-Saxon Studies, 14 (Cambridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2010).
McIntosh, Angus, ‘Wulfstan’s Prose’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 34 (1948), 109–142.
Townend, Matthew, ed., Wulfstan, Archbishop of York: The Proceedings of the Second Alcuin Conference, Studies in the Early Middle Ages, 10 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004).
Whitelock, Dorothy, ‘Archbishop Wulfstan, Homilist and Statesman’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 24 (1942) 25–45.
Wilcox, Jonathan, ‘Wulfstan’s Sermo Lupi ad Anglos as Political Perfomance: 16 February 1014 and Beyond’, in Wulfstan, Archbishop of York, ed. Townend, pp. 375–96
Wormald, Patrick, ‘Archbishop Wulfstan and the Holiness of Society’, Anglo-Saxon History: Basic Readings, ed. David A. E. Pelteret (New York: Garland, 2000), pp. 191–224
James Titterington is a DPhil candidate the University of Oxford, currently working on a literary reassessment of Archbishop Wulfstan of York which considers all genres of his corpus.