Old English Legal Writings

Archbishop Wulfstan of York (d. 1023) was a powerful clergyman and the most influential political thinker of pre-Conquest England. An advocate for the rights and privileges of the Church, he authored the laws of King Aethelred and King Cnut in prose that combined the rhetorical flourishes of a master homilist with the language of law. Some works forged a distinctive style by adding rhythm and alliteration drawn from Old English poetry. In the midst of Viking invasions and cultural upheaval, Wulfstan articulated a complementary relationship between secular and ecclesiastical law that shaped the political world of eleventh-century England. He also pushed the clergy to return to the ideals of their profession. Old English Legal Writings is the first publication to bring together Wulfstan's works on law, church governance, and political reform. When read together, they reveal the scope and originality of his thought as it lays out the mutual obligations of the church, the state, and the common people. This volume presents new editions of the Old English texts alongside new English translations.
"Many of the texts in this volume are edited here for the first time in English and likewise for the first time within the context of Wulfstan's thought and career. In bringing together editions of his most significant works on law, politics, and ecclesiastical governance, this anthology is thus intended to shed light on the range of Wulfstan's legal writings while also demonstrating the vibrancy of English political thought in the decades before the Norman Conquest. Over the course of his career, Wulfstan composed a variety of tracts on such topics as the proper exercise of royal authority, the inviolability of ecclesiastical sanctuary, and the structure of the ideal society. Although the extent to which these tracts reflected actual practice remains unclear, they nonetheless provided Wulfstan with the opportunity to promote his views on how best to govern a Christian kingdom. It is in these texts that we see Wulfstan honing his distinctive "homiletic style," combining the moral admonitions and rhetorical flourishes of a sermon with the legalistic vocabulary and causal syntax of a law code. Wulfstan draws these two seemingly incompatible genres together through the use of a vigorous prose idiom that borrows the rhythm, alliteration, and occasionally even something resembling the meter of Old English poetry. This mingling of genres is the result of neither accident nor carelessness on Wulfstan's part: rather, it reflects the archbishop's view of his ecclesiastical and legislative roles as two halves of a single enterprise. For Wulfstan, the minister and lawgiver share the same obligation to safeguard the political stability and moral integrity of the community"--
Andrew Rabin is a professor of English at the University of Louisville.