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Crying wolf: oral style and the Sermones Lupi

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

A. P. McD. Orchard
A. P. McD. Orchard
Affiliation:
Emmanuel College, Cambridge
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Extract

Archbishop Wulfstan enjoyed a high reputation as a stylist amongst his contemporaries; when he was still bishop of London (996–1002) one correspondent spoke of the ‘very sweet wisdom of [his] eloquence and the richness of [his] composition fittingly organised’, whilst the wide dissemination of his sermons and their susceptibility to imitation bear dual witness to his popularity throughout the eleventh century.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 21 , December 1992 , pp. 239 - 264
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

1 Wulfstan's sermons are ed. Bethurum, D., The Homilies of Wulfstan (Oxford, 1957).Google Scholar This edition supersedes that of Napier, A.S., Wulfstan. Sammlung der ihm zugeschriebenen Homilien nebst Untersuchungen über ihre Echtheit I. Text und Varianten (Berlin, 1883)Google Scholar, which, however, contains a number of other anonymous sermons considered below. I have restricted my discussion by taking Bethurum's edition to represent the corpus of Wulfstan's sermons in order to avoid unnecessary complications. There are important studies of Wulfstan's sermon style and his historical context by, for example, Whitelock, D., ‘Archbishop Wulfstan, Homilist and Statesman’, TRHS 24 (1942), 25–45Google Scholar; McIntosh, A., ‘Wulfstan's Prose’, PBA 35 (1949), 109–42Google Scholar; Jost, K., Wulfstanstudien (Bern, 1950)Google Scholar; Bethurum, D., ‘Wulfstan’, in Continuations and Beginnings: Studies in Old English Literature, ed. Stanley, E.G. (London, 1966), pp. 210–46Google Scholar; Gatch, M.McC., Preaching and Theology in Anglo-Saxon England: Ælfric and Wulfstan (Toronto, 1977).Google ScholarThe contemporary comment quoted here is found in a Latin letter to Wulfstan ptd Bethurum, The Homilies of Wulfstan, p. 377Google Scholar, and trans. Bethurum, , ‘Wulfstan’, p. 211.Google Scholar

2 Bethurum, , The Homilies of Wulfstan, pp. 88–91.Google Scholar For doubts on Bethurum's conclusions, see Campbell, J.J., ‘Classical Rhetoric in Old English Literature’, in Medieval Eloquence: Studies in the Theory and Practice of Medieval Rhetoric, ed. Murphy, J.J. (Berkeley, CA, and London, 1978), pp. 173–97, esp. 187–9.Google Scholar

3 Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, ed. Whitelock, D., 3rd ed. (London, 1963), p. 37.Google Scholar

4 Whitelock, D., ‘Two Notes on Ælfric and Wulfstan (ii): Gildas, Alcuin and Wulfstan’, MLR 38 (1943), 125–6Google Scholar; idem, Sermo Lupi, pp. 65–6; Bethurum, D., ‘Archbishop Wulfstan's Commonplace Book’, PMLA 57 (1942), 916–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Whitelock, , ‘Two Notes’, p. 125.Google Scholar

6 Whitelock, , Sermo Lupi, p. 35, n. 3.Google Scholar

7 Cross, J.E. and Brown, A., ‘Literary Impetus for Wulfstan's Sermo Lupi’, Leeds Stud. in English n.s. 20 (1989), 271–91.Google Scholar

8 Bethurum, , The Homilies of Wulfstan, p. 95.Google Scholar

9 Ibid. p. 97.

10 The texts given are as follows: Ælfric 1 is the version edited by Thorpe, B., The Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church, 2 vols. (London, 1844–1846) I, 258Google Scholar; Ælfric 2 is the version ed. Thorpe, ibid. II, 596; the Wulfstan version is from Serm. 7a, lines 8–13.

11 Cook, A.S., ‘The Evolution of the Lord's Prayer in English’, Amer. jnl of Philol. 12 (1891). 59–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 For gemiltsian, see Serm. 7, line 138; 14, line 52 and 18, line 31; for miltsian, see Serm. 10c, lines 168 and 191 and 14, line 43; for foster, see Serm. 20a, line 39; for forgyfan, see Serm. 1, line 138 (as a doublet in gemildsian & mycel forgyfan).On gylt, which never occurs in Wulfstan's works, see further Gneuss, H., ‘On the Origin of Standard Old English’, ASE 1 (1972), 63–83Google Scholar, especially 78, and Jost, , Wulfstamtudien, p. 156.Google Scholar

13 See The Exeter Book, ASPR 3, 223Google Scholar(The Lord's Prayer I); The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems, ASPR 6, 70(The Lord's Prayer II) and 77Google Scholar(The Lord's Prayer III). The fact that the last two of these verse renderings are found in manuscripts of the Old English prose translation of the Benedictine Office now assigned to Wulfstan has led naturally to the speculation that the verses, like the prose, are Wulfstan's work. For a rebuttal of such a theory, see Ure, J.M., The Benedictine Office: an Old English Text, Edinburgh Univ. Publ. in Lang. and Lit. 11 (Edinburgh, 1957), 25 and 44.Google ScholarUre's arguments that a hand other than Wulfstan's was responsible for these verse renderings can be strengthened considerably by comparing their diction with Wulfstan's and Ælfric's as shown above, on pp. 241–2: in every relevant case their wording agrees with the Ælfrician versions against Wulfstan.Google Scholar

14 Paris Psalter 79.5, 114.5, 115.6 and 117.23; Meters of Boethius 18, 19 and 20; see Paris Psalter and Boethius, ASPR 5, 46, 99–100, 103 and 175–7 respectively.Google Scholar

15 On the literary relations between Ælfric and Wulfstan, see particularly Clemoes, P., ‘The Old English Benedictine Office, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 190, and the Relations between Ælfric and Wulfstan: A Reconsideration’, Anglia 78 (1960), 265–83Google Scholar, and, more recently, Ogawa, H., ‘Revised Syntax in Wulfstan's Rewritings of Ælfric's Prose’, Aspects of English Linguistics: in Memory of Professor Saburo Ohe (Kyushu, 1989), pp. 3–17.Google Scholar Further comparisons of the two texts considered below are given by Bethurum, , The Homilies of Wulfstan, pp. 304–6Google Scholar; McIntosh, , ‘Wulfstan's Prose’, pp. 121–2Google Scholar; and especially the doctoral dissertation by Zimmermann, G.O., ‘Die beiden Fassungen des dem Abt. Aelfric zugeschreibenen angelsächsischen Traktats uber die siebenfaltige Gabe des Heiligen Geistes’ (Leipzig, 1888).Google Scholar

16 McIntosh, , ‘Wulfstan's Prose’, p. 121.Google Scholar The dangers of interpreting Wulfstan's characteristic and compulsive reworking of Ælfric's prose too literally are well illustrated by Kennedy, A.G., ‘Cnut's Law Code of 1018’, ASE 11 (1982), 57–81, at 67Google Scholar, who quotes Wulfstan's recasting in the second Old English letter which Ælfric sent him of Ne drincan æt wynhuse, ne druncengeorn beon to Ne drincan æt winhusum ealles to gelome, ne to druncangeorn wurðan (from Die Hirtenbriefe Ælfrics, ed. Fehr, B. (Hamburg 1914Google Scholar; repr. with supplement by Clemoes, P., Darmstadt, 1966), p. 134).Google Scholar

17 See further Bethurum, The Homilies of Wulfstan, pp. 304–6.Google Scholar

18 Cf. further (a), (b) and (c) below, pp. 248–9.Google Scholar

19 The word gehaten occurs in Wulfstan's sermons only at Serm. 12, lines 41, 45, 65 and 72.

20 Wulfstan's preference for drihten over hælend, unique amongst eleventh-century prose authors, can be matched in both earlier prose and, perhaps more significantly, in Old English verse. By reference to A Concordance to the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, ed. Bessinger, J.B. Jr, and Smith, P.H. (Ithaca, NY, 1978), it can be calculated that throughout the extant corpus of Old English poetry the word hælend and its declensional forms occur seventy-two times in all, whilst the word drihten, used both in a secular and (predominantly) religious sense, and its declensional forms, is found no less than 1,139 times.Google Scholar

21 Kinard, J.P., A Study of Wulfstan's Homilies: their Style and Sources (Baltimore, MD, 1897); Jost, Wulfstanstudien; McIntosh, ‘Wulfstan's Prose’Google Scholar; Bethurum, , The Homilies of Wulfstan, esp. pp. 87–98.Google Scholar

22 Cf. the comments of Kinard, A Study of Wulfstan's Homilies, pp. 19–20Google Scholar; Jost, , Wulfstanstudien, pp. 159–76Google Scholar; Bethurum, , The Homilies of Wulfstan, pp. 89–90.Google Scholar

23 I count 28,676 words in Wulfstan's extant sermon corpus (as edited by Bethurum), and a vocabulary of 4,608 separate forms. If we exclude variants caused through accidence, it is remarkable that Wulfstan's active vocabulary throughout these twenty-five sermons is something less than 4,000 words.

24 I count 7,365 words in Beowulf, and 2,360 separate forms; 4,467 words in Daniel, and 1,708 separate forms; 9,279 words in Andreas, and 3,438 separate forms.

25 Olszewska, E.S., ‘Alliterative Phrases in the Ormulum; some Norse Parallels’, in English and Medieval Studies Presented to J.R.R. Tolkien on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday, ed. Davis, N. and Wrenn, C.L. (London, 1962), pp. 112–27.Google Scholar

26 Examples of such nominal and adjectival compounds in un- favoured by Wulfstan include: unclænncss; uncopu; uncræft; undæd; ungelimp; ungerim; ungesælig; ungetreow; ungifu; ungepanc; ungod; ungyld; unhal; unlagu; unlar; unlytel; unnyt; unræd; unriht; unrot; unsælig; unpeaw; unwær; unwæstm; unweder; unwill; and unwisdom.

27 Throughout the sermons, deofol and Antecrist are invoked 151 times; Crist only sixty-eight times; God 591 times.

28 Cf. the remarks of Stuart, C.I.J.M., ‘Wulfstan's Use of leofan men’, ES 45 (1964), 39–42.Google Scholar

29 The interjection eala is by far the commonest, occurring no fewer than twenty-four times in fifteen sermons.

30 So we find anrædne geleafan (4, line 88) and on rihtan geleafan (4, line 91); rihtne geleafan (7, line 21) and soðan geleafan (7, line 22); anrædne geleafan (7a, line 18) and rihtne geleafan (7a, line 19); anrædne geleafan (8c, line 15) and rihtne geleafan (8c, line 19).

31 The classic exposition of the concept of the fixed epithet is still that of Parry, M., ‘Studies in the Epic Technique of Oral Verse-Making I. Homer and Homeric Style’, Harvard Stud. in Classical Philol. 41 (1930), 73–147CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, ‘Studies in the Epic Technique of Oral Verse-Making II. Homeric Language as the Language of an Oral Poetry’, Harvard Stud. in Classical Philol. 43 (1932), 1–50.Google Scholar Parry's views on the fixed epithet have been re-examined most recently by Shive, D.M., Naming Achilles (Oxford, 1989).Google Scholar The astonishing proliferation of oral-formulaic studies in a large number of literatures can be gauged by the score or more of bibliographies published; see now Foley, J.M., Oral Formulaic Theory and Research: an Introduction and Annotated Bibliography (New York, 1985), which contains a useful historical overview of the subject on pp. 11–77.Google Scholar

32 Bethurum, , The Homilies of Wulfstan, pp. 282–6Google Scholar; this same sermon is analysed from a different perspective and translated by Gatch, , Preaching and Theology in Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 106–7 and 236–7.Google Scholar

33 For parallels, see particularly the following: [1] 7, line 26; 8b, line 85; 13, line 65; 17, line 34. [2] 8c, line 40; 10c, line 45. [3] 20a, line 99; 20b, line 140. [4] 5, line 115; 20a, line 44; 20b, line 57; 20c, lines 49 and 66. [7] 4, lines 11 and 15; 6, line 203. [8] 4, line 78; 5, line 46. [9] 4, line 2; 5, line 52. [12] 4, lines 68 and 86. [13] 3, line 74; 20a, line 129; 20b, line 176; 20c, line 200. [14] 2, line 72; 3, line 79; 5, line 119; 6, line 216; 7, lines 23 and 172; 10c, line 202; 12, line 93; 18, line 146; 20a, line 130.

34 One might compare, for example, ecclesia genamod (10c, line 43; 18, line 71), Eua genamod (6, line 36), genamod Iuno (12, line 48) and Lucifer genemned (6, line 29). Jon Wilcox points out to me that the phrase rihtlice and wærlice is also found in a similar setting in the anonymous homily In letania maiore, ed. Bazire, J. and Cross, J.E., Eleven Old English Rogationtide Homilies (Toronto, 1982), no. 8, lines 42–3. On the further links between this anonymous homily and Wulfstan's sermons, see below, n. 40.Google Scholar

35 For the classic application of this oral-formulaic theory to Old English, see Magoun, F.P., ‘The Oral-Formulaic Character of Anglo-Saxon Narrative Poetry’, Speculum 28 (1953), 446–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The notion that in Anglo-Saxon England literate authors were also using oral-traditional methods of composition is firmly supported by Benson, L.D., ‘The Literary Character of Anglo-Saxon Formulaic Poetry’, PMLA 81 (1966), 334–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Orchard, A.P.McD., ‘The Poetic Art of Aldhelm’ (unpubl. PhD dissertation, Cambridge Univ., 1990), pp. 76–151.Google Scholar Further evidence of a modern sermon-tradition by literate authors working within an oral- traditional framework is given by Rosenberg, B.A., The Art of the American Folk Preacher (Oxford, 1970)Google Scholar and ‘The Formulaic Quality of Spontaneous Sermons’, Jnl of Amer. Folklore 83 (1970), 3–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36 McIntosh, , ‘Wulfstan's Prose’, pp. 114–22.Google Scholar

37 Hollowell, I.M., ‘On the Two-Stress Theory of Wulfstan's Rhythm’, PQ 61 (1982), 1–11Google Scholar; Sheets, L.A., ‘Wulfstan's Prose: a Reconsideration’ (unpubl. PhD dissertation, Ohio State Univ., 1964), esp. pp. 92–120Google Scholar; Kubouchi, T., ‘A Note on Prose Rhythm in Wulfstan's De Falsis Deis’, Poetica 15–16 (1983), 57–106.Google Scholar

38 Bethurum, , The Homilies of Wulfstan, p. 158Google Scholar; Bethurum has here preferred the reading of Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 419 (her B) against that of both Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 201 and Oxford, Bodleian Library Hatton 113 (her C and E), despite the evidence of her own stemma, p. 11.Google Scholar

39 Bethurum, , The Homilies of Wulfstan, pp. 101–4.Google Scholar

40 The anonymous In letania maiore is ed. in an Appendix to Tristram, H.P., ‘Vier altenglische Predigten aus der heterodoxen Tradition’ (unpubl. dissertation, Freiburg Univ., 1970), pp. 431–7Google Scholar; the passage in question occurs at lines 182–90. For a more accessible text, see Bazire, and Cross, , Eleven Old English Rogationtide Homilies, pp. 104–14 (lines 131–7).Google Scholar

41 The anonymous De temporibus Antichristi is ed. Napier, Wulfstan, as no. XLII; the passage in question occurs on p. 203Google Scholar, lines 13–20. Wulfstan's own authorship of this sermon is rejected by both Whitelock (Sermo Lupi, p. 14, n. 2Google Scholar) and Jost, (Wulfstanstudien, pp. 218–21Google Scholar), but McIntosh, (‘Wulfstan's Prose’, p. 142, n. 32Google Scholar) believes ‘on rhythmical evidence’ that the section from p. 202Google Scholar, line 4 to the end, which includes the passage in question, is ‘probably by Wulfstan’. See now, however, Wilcox, J., ‘Napier's “Wulfstan” Homilies XL and XLII: Two Anonymous Works from Winchester?’, JEGP 90 (1991), 1–19.Google Scholar

42 The anonymous Sunnandæges spell is ed. Napier, Wulfstan, as no. XLIII; the passage in question occurs on p. 209, lines 14–25.Google Scholar

43 Cf. the comments of Bethurum, , The Homilies of Wulfstan, pp. 1–2.Google Scholar

44 Godden, M.R., ‘Old English Composite Homilies from Winchester’, ASE 4 (1975), 57–65Google Scholar; Scragg, D.G., ‘Napier's “Wulfstan” Homily XXX: its Sources, its Relationship to the Vercelli Book and its Style’, ASE 6 (1977), 197–211. See now further Wilcox, ‘Napier's “Wulfstan” Homilies XL and XLII’.Google Scholar

45 On the various versions and their relationships, see Whitelock, , Sermo Lupi, pp. 1–5.Google ScholarBoth, Bethurum, The Homilies of Wulfstan, pp. 22–3Google Scholar, and Whitelock, , Sermo Lupi, pp. 2–5Google Scholar, believe that the shortest version (Serm. 20a) is the earliest, and that the longer versions represent successive stages in the expansion of the sermon; Dien, S., ‘Sermo Lupi ad Anglos: the Order and Date of the Three Versions’, NM 76 (1975), 561–70, on the contrary, believes that the longest version (Serm. 20c) is original, and that the other versions represent subsequent abridgments.Google Scholar

46 See Bethurum, , The Homilies of Wulfstan, pp. 242–5, 276–7, 351–3 and 364–5.Google Scholar

47 Peabody, B., The Winged Word: a Study in the Technique of Ancient Greek Composition as Seen principally though Hesiod's Works and Days (Albany, NY, 1975).Google Scholar

48 Creed, R.P., ‘The Beowulf-Poet: Master of Sound-Patterning’, in Oral Traditional Literature: a Festschrift for Albert Bates Lord, ed. Foley, J.M. (Columbus, OH, 1981), pp. 194–216Google Scholar; Orchard, , ‘The Poetic Art of Aldhelm’, pp. 119–33.Google Scholar

49 I am grateful to Jon Wilcox and Malcolm Godden for their generous criticism and advice in the composition of this paper.

50 The text of Wulfstan's Serm. 9 is from Bethurum, The Homilies of Wulfstan, pp. 185–9 (lines 18–106)Google Scholar; the text of Ælfric's version is from Napier, Wulfstan, no. VIII, pp. 56/ 12–60 /2.Google Scholar