Sermo Lupi Ad Anglos - Authorship and Dating

Authorship and Dating

Though Wulfstan's name is never directly attached to the 'Sermo Lupi, there is no question of Wulfstan's authorship. The text of the Sermo Lupi has survived in five manuscripts, a number of which associate the homily with Wulfstan's nom de plume, Lupus. The five manuscripts represent the text in three versions, one shorter and two longer. It is generally accepted that the shorter version is the original, and that one of the longer versions is a later authorial revision; that is, Wulfstan composed the homily, then later re-worked and expanded it. These versions thus provide an opportunity to study the practices of an Old English writer as he revises his own work.

The longer version, which Wulfstan probably revised himself, exists in a manuscript known to have been annotated and worked over by the archbishop; in fact, there are many corrections to the Sermo Lupi in this manuscript which were carried out by Wulfstan's own pen. The rubric, or title, for the Sermo Lupi in this manuscript reads: Sermo Lupi ad Anglos quando Dani maxime persecuti sunt eos, quod fuit anno millesimo XIIII ab incarnatione Domini nostri Iesu Cristi, 'The sermon of the Wolf to the English at the time when the Danes harried them, which was in the 1014th year from the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ.' Thus the date at which the revision was made was probably 1014. This was the year that Æthelred returned to England from Normandy and resumed his position as king of the English. It is also the year of a great royal council, at which Æthelred and his Witan published a new law code. There is good reason to associate these events with a special oral delivery of the Sermo Lupi by Wulfstan to the re-constituted English Witan. It seems significant that the Sermo Lupi specifically mentions Æthelred's exile, recalling it with regret.