Archbishop Wulfstan's Ecclesiastical History of the English People

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe present article surveys and analyses the myriad historical allusions in the writings of Archbishop Wulfstan in order to reconstruct a coherent historical perspective informing the composition of many of his works. Wulfstan's hortatory efforts to reform contemporary morals are predicated upon an argument about the maintenance and loss of divine favour. According to Wulfstan, the English arrived with divine favour, a series of West Saxon kings advanced God's laws and were supported by him in turn, but crimes against the Church and the martyred King Edward resulted in the withdrawal of God's favour. The narrative that emerges from Wulfstan's historical allusions extends from the migration period to the reign of Æthelred, but the amount of detailed knowledge behind this narrative appears rather limited. The seven English kings mentioned by name in Wulfstan's writings (Alfred, Edward the Elder, Æthelstan, Edmund, Edgar, Edward the Martyr and Æthelred) ruled within one century of his lifetime, and the references to pre-Alfredian history are plainly derivative. This article concludes by arguing that the limitations of Wulfstan's knowledge shed considerable light on the extent to which the formation of national identity conditioned oral tradition and collective memory in the later Anglo-Saxon period.