Wulfstan (Wulstan) (c.1008–95), Benedictine monk, bishop of Worcester. Born of Anglo-Saxon parents at Itchington (Warwicks.), Wulfstan was educated at the abbeys of Evesham and Peterborough, where he excelled both in piety and in sport. In c.1033 he entered the household of Brihteah, bishop of Worcester. After he was ordained priest, he was offered a richly endowed church, but he refused it. Instead he became a Benedictine monk at Worcester cathedral priory. He soon became master of the boys, later cantor and sacristan. In c.1050 he became prior of this small community of only twelve monks: he regained lands which had been alienated, reformed the finances, and improved the monastic observance. He was specially zealous in preaching, baptizing, and counselling.
In 1062 the bishop of Worcester, Aldred, was promoted to the diocese of York. The papacy refused to allow him to hold the see of Worcester in plurality, as had been sometimes customary since the impoverishment of the York see through Viking action. Papal legates, then in England, recommended instead that Wulfstan should become the new bishop of Worcester. This choice was approved by King Edward the Confessor and his council; Wulfstan was consecrated bishop by Aldred. He became one of the best examples of combining effectively the tasks of both monastic superior and diocesan bishop. He is the first English bishop known to have made systematic visitation of his diocese. He encouraged the building of churches on his own manors and on those of lay lords, he zealously promoted clerical celibacy, and insisted on the use of stone, instead of wooden, altars. Later he rebuilt his cathedral, of which his crypt remains, somewhat altered, today. He took his full share in the cathedral services and would comment in English on the Latin reading at his table. During his episcopate, indeed, Worcester became one of the most important centres of OE literature and culture. He was specially devoted to the English saints, notably Bede, to whom he dedicated a church, Dunstan, and Oswald, a predecessor in his see, whose abstinence and generosity to the poor he imitated and surpassed.
Inevitably he was drawn into the political movements of his time. In 1066 King Harold sent him as his envoy to the Northumbrians to ensure their loyal support. Wulfstan was unsuccessful but not blameworthy. After the battle of Hastings, which he recognized as decisive, he was one of the first bishops to submit to William the Conqueror. He remained one of the few Englishmen to retain high office to the end of the Conqueror's reign and beyond. In the barons' risings of 1074 and 1088 he was loyal to the Crown and defended the strategic castle of Worcester against the insurgents.
Another notable achievement was his abolition of the trade in slaves from Bristol to Viking Ireland by his persistent and persuasive preaching. This was contemporary with the successful efforts of Lanfranc for the same end.
He supported Lanfranc's policy of reform. Worcester became a suffragan of Canterbury, ending its earlier ambivalent relation to York. Wulfstan sent his favourite disciple to Canterbury for further education and contact between the two communities was fostered by Eadmer. A late legend, implicitly contradicted by the confidence of contemporaries, was that he was poorly educated. In its crude form it can be safely rejected. He was probably neither more nor less learned than many of his Anglo-Saxon episcopal contemporaries.
He was described by his biographer, the monk Coleman, as ‘of middle height… always in good health…neither lavish nor niggardly in the choice of clothes and in his general standard of living’. He died at the age of eighty-seven, a venerable survivor of a past age.
His cult began almost at once and cures were reported at his tomb. William Rufus had it covered with gold and silver, but the relics were translated only in 1198. From 1200 full and detailed records of the cures were kept in preparation for the canonization, which was granted by Innocent III in 1203. King John held his memory in special esteem and was buried close by him. In 1216 his shrine was stripped to pay a levy of 300 marks made by Prince Louis of France, but a new translation was made to a shrine, more splendid than before, in 1218. On this occasion the abbot of St. Albans, William of Trumpington, took back to his abbey a rib of the saint and built an altar over it. In 1273 Edward I made thank-offerings at Wulfstan's shrine, after the Conquest of Wales.
Only one ancient church in England was dedicated to Wulfstan, but his feast was very widely celebrated in monastic and diocesan calendars. Feast: 19 January; translation, 7 June.
Bibliography
Click here for a list of abbreviations used in this bibliography.
- AA.SS. Ian. II (1643), 238–49; the lost OE Life by his chaplain Coleman was the basis of the admirable Latin Life by William of Malmesbury, ed. R. R. Darlington, Vita Wulfstani (C.S., 1928), Eng. tr. by J. H. F. Piele (1934); R. Flower, ‘A Metrical Life of St. Wulfstan of Worcester’, Nat. Lib. of Wales Jnl., i (1940), 119–30. See also J. W. Lamb, St. Wulfstan, Prelate and Patriot (1933); M.O., pp. 74–8, 159–63; D. H. Farmer, ‘Two Biographies by William of Malmesbury’, in Latin Biography (ed. T. A. Dorey, 1967), pp. 157–76; D. H. Turner, The Portiforium of St. Wulfstan (H.B.S., 1971); E. Mason, St. Wulfstan of Worcester (1990); M. Winterbottom and R. M. Thomson (edd.) William of Malmesbury: Saints' Lives (2002)
