ABSTRACT
Wulfstan, possibly a native of the fenlands around Ely, was bishop of London from 996 to 1002. Thereafter he was bishop of Worcester and simultaneously archbishop of York until 1016, when he delegated Worcester and continued in York until his death on 28 May 1023. As time goes on, and more research is done, ever fewer of the 26 homilies attributed to him are reconfi rmed as his. This diminishing status of authorship nonetheless reveals how infl uential Wulfstan’s own prose-style, a strongly rhythmical use of words in alliterative pairs, was to his active preaching contemporaries. His style began as a product of its time, and proof of this is found in the most unlikely place, in The Sibyl’s Prophecy, an Icelandic poem of c. 1000, which contains echoes of the Christian formulae in general English use. Indeed the relationship with Scandinavians defi ned Wulfstan’s career. In 1016, when the Danes succeeded in turning England into part of a Danish empire under Cnut, son of Sveinn Forkbeard, Wulfstan normalised the regime change. Cnut, who ruled 1016 – 35, let Wulfstan draft a new set of laws, promoted English Christianity internationally with his journeys to Rome across Ottonian Europe, resided in Winchester rather than in Denmark, and in short became more English than the dynasty he had supplanted.
