SOURCE: Whitelock, Dorothy. “Archbishop Wulfstan, Homilist and Statesman.” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. 4th series (1942): 25-45.

In the following essay, originally delivered as a speech in 1941, Whitelock outlines evidence concerning Wulfstan's life and literary activities in the early eleventh century.

When Wulfstan II, archbishop of York from 1002 and bishop of Worcester from 1002 to 1016, alias Lupus episcopus, died at York on 28 May 1023, his body was taken for burial to the monastery of Ely, in accordance with his wishes.¹ From the twelfth-century historian of this abbey we get the only mediaeval account of the prelate,² a brief, and in some respects unreliable, account. Among other things, it states that miracles were worked at his tomb, but there is no hint elsewhere that Wulfstan had any special claims to sanctity. There was certainly never any question of canonisation; hence there was little motive for the writing of his life by...