ABSTRACT
The date of this homily is sufficiently indicated by its title in the MS.: ‘Sermo Lupi ad Anglos quando Dani maxime persecute sunt eos, quod fuit in dies (sic) Æƿelredi regis 1 .’ Wulfstan (or Lupus) was Archbishop of York from 1002 to 1023. His address to the English draws a vivid picture of the terrible demoralization caused by the Danish inroads, in a fiery, impassioned, half poetical language, which forms a complete contrast to the calm elegance of Ælfric's classic prose. The present text is based on the Hatton MS. in the Bodleian (Jun. 99), the only one which gives the entire text, compared with three other MSS., Gott. Nero A I (N.), and the Cambridge MSS. CCC. S. 14 (G. I), and CCC. S. 18 (C. II). All of these MSS. are defective. N. omits only a few words and clauses, but the other two intentionally omit whole passages, C. II being the most abridged of all. It is remarkable that this last MS. systematically cuts out all the strongly denunciatory passages, apparently from the same motives which have induced most of the Chronicles to pass over in silence the battle of Hastings. Although H. is the most complete, the others do not appear to be derived from it, for there are several manifest errors in H. which do not appear in the other MSS. Such an error of H. is manige fleardre (106) for manig fealdre, which is preserved in all the others. An ordinary scribe would hardly have corrected such an error had it occurred in his original.
