INTRODUCTION The Vita Wulfstani is here printed in full for the first time. In the first edition, that of Henry Wharton, published in 1692, about two- fifths of the Life were omitted.1 Most of the portions suppressed are accounts of miracles which contain some valuable information, but a number of other passages were left out without notice to the reader. Wharton's text was reprinted by Mabillon 2 and Migne,3 but no attempt has been made hitherto to examine the Life with the care required to show its relation to other historical literature of the period. The plan of this edition is to print first the full text of the Vita as preserved in MS. Cott. Claud. A.v. in the British Museum * 1 Anglia Sacra, II, pp. 239 seq. 'Ada Ord. Bened., Saec. VI, ii., p. 836. 3 Patrologia Latina, Vol. 179, p. 1734. 4 MS. Cott. Claud. A.v. is a small volume, 9! in. by 6| in., originally somewhat larger than at present, and seems to comprise three books which once existed separately. The first two are a fourteenth-century Peterborough Chronicle and a twelfth-century copy of William of Malmesbury's Gesta Pontificum, per- haps the best.extant MS. of the first recension. The former is certainly and the latter probably from the Library of Peterborough Abbey. The proven- ance of the third—fo. 135 to the end—is unknown. It is an early collection of saints' lives containing the Life of St. Erkenwald, Bishop of London, the Life and Miracles of St. Wenfred, the Life of St. Neot and the Life of St. Wulfstan. The MS., written towards the close of the twelfth century, is double-columned and, apart from a number of erasures, competently executed. The ornamentation is slight, for but few rubrics are given and the capitals coloured green and red at the beginning of the chapters are plain. The prefatory letter and the prologue to the Vita Wulfstani were placed at the end of the volume by the scribe but are restored to their proper places in the text below. The Vita seems to be written in two contemporary hands : " Pagus . incelebris " (Bk. I, c. 1) and from " quidem " at the opening of fo. 167 to the end of the volume, including the Letter and Prologue, are written in one hand, and the intervening part in the other. vii Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.202.58, on 23 Sep 2021 at 19:41:19, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S2042171000004325 viii INTRODUCTION (the only known copy of the work) with such explanatory notes as seem necessary at the foot of each page. This is followed by a hitherto unpublished abridgment of the Vita contained in MS. B.iv, 396, in the Library of the Dean and Chapter of Durham, collated with three other abridgments from MSS. Harl. 322, Lansd. 436, and Cott. Vesp. E.9. in the British Museum. At the end of the volume is printed an interesting collection of Miracles of St. Wulf- stan and an account of the Canonization and Translation of the bishop, from the Durham MS. Throughout, the punctuation of the MSS. has fteen followed as far as possible, but the editor has inserted capital letters where desirable. The readings of the MSS. have been followed even where they appear to be erroneous, and suggested emendations are given in the footnotes. The authorship of the work was by Wharton correctly attri- buted to William of Malmesbury, who speaks of himself as William in the prefatory letter and makes reference to his Gesta Regum.1 The work was written during the rule of Warin, prior of Worcester, the dates of whose tenure of office are unknown, but may be given as c. 1124 to c. 1143.2 To Warin the Life is dedicated. William indicates in his prefatory letter that his work is a Latin rendering of an earlier Life of Wulfstan, written in Old English by Coleman, a Worcester monk, who in addition to being his chaplain for fifteen years held the office of chancellor of the bishop. Coleman wrote between 1095, the year of Wulfstan's decease, and 1113, when he himself died,3 and his biography is, apart from the twelfth-century annals of the Saxon Chronicle, the last piece of consecutive narra- tive prose written in the Old English language of which we have any knowledge. It is unfortunate that it has not survived,4 1 Bk. Ill, c. 16. Gesta Regum (Stubbs), p. 317 (Threatened Danish invasion of 1085). To " our other writings " the reader is referred for the reason for the ban placed on Archbishop Stigand by the papacy. The refer- ence may be to either the Gesta Regum, p. 244, or to the Gesta Pontificum (Ed. Hamilton), pp. 35-37. More probably the latter was intended. 2 Nicholas, who was probably his predecessor, died in 1124 (Weaver, John of Worcester, p. 18). His successor Ralf is said to have died in 1143 (Anglia Sacra, I, p. 548). Warin was certainly prior in 1137 (Weaver, op. cit., p. 41), and according to the Charter of Ralph Pincerna of Oversley relating to the foundation of Alcester priory, Warwickshire, was in office in 1140 (Monasticon, IV, p. 175). » Flor. Wig. (Thorpe), II, p. 66. 1 There can be little doubt that it was Coleman's Life which was sent to the Pope during the negotiations to secure the canonization of Wulfstan in the early thirteenth century. Probably it was never sent back to England. See below, pp. xlvii, 149. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.202.58, on 23 Sep 2021 at 19:41:19, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S2042171000004325 INTRODUCTION ix but for historical purposes the Vita is a substitute of the highest value, for there are many indications, particularly in the hitherto imprinted parts, that William of Malmesbury followed Coleman's work closely without altering the order of events, as he claims to have done. The many references to Coleman as being present at some miracle, or riding next to the bishop and interceding for some afflicted person, or inserting or omitting from time to time the names of witnesses, all show how closely William adhered to the original.1 The alterations made by the translator seem to have been slight 2 and his additions few.8 Though he unfortunately omitted the names of many of the witnesses inserted by Coleman, he mentions a number of persons concerning whom we have inform- ation from other sources.4 Wherever the Life can be tested it gains credit, and the fidelity of the translation seems to be such as to justify the claim that it is entitled to a place among the con- temporary authorities for the latter half of the eleventh century. By the middle of the twelfth century, the Old English language was evidently becoming unfamiliar to the monks at Worcester, who before that time requested William of Malmesbury to trans- late Coleman's work into Latin. William visited Worcester during the priorate of Nicholas (c. 1113-1124), who became his personal friend, when in search of materials for the historical works which he was preparing. He made little use of Coleman's Life in the Gesta Regum, but the section relating to Wulfstan in the Gesta Pontificum is clearly a resume of the earlier biography. The Vita Wulfstani occupies a minor place among the works of William of Malmesbury. As a translation it may be compared with the Passio Sancti Indracti Martyris, which is attributed to him and is based 1 References to Coleman are to be found in the following chapters of the Life : Book I, c. 1, c. 4 ; Book II, c. 1, c. 4, c. 9, c. 10, c. 13, c. 16, c. 18, c. 19, C. 22 ; Book III, c. 10, c. 16. The story of the plasterer who spurned the preaching of Coleman seems to come straight from the irate chaplain. William also states that he had translated back into Latin passages from the Life of St. Gregory which, together with many others, Coleman had put into English. * He ended the first book with the Norman Conquest instead of with Wulfstan's elevation to the bishopric. He also suppressed long passages of rhetoric and quotations from saints' Lives (I, c. 16) and excluded the sections in which Coleman had described with much verbiage the episcopal office rather than Wulfstan's Life (III, c. 18). 8 For material derived from Prior Nicholas, see III, c. 9, c. 10, c. 13, andc. r7. 4 e.g. Ailsi of Longney (II, c. 17), Sewy of Ratcliffe (II, c. 22) and Swertlin of Wycombe (II, c. 9), concerning whom see the footnotes to the chapters. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.202.58, on 23 Sep 2021 at 19:41:19, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S2042171000004325 x INTRODUCTION upon a vernacular account now lost.1 The Life of Wulfstan may also be compared with the Life of St. Aldhelm,2 for the composition of which William made some use of the earlier Life by Faricius, abbot of Abingdon.8 The underlying Life by Coleman is the last example of the practice established in the Old English Church from the early eighth century by which the life of a bishop of outstanding merit was recorded within a few years of his death by some person in close touch with him.