The Cambridge Old English Reader

Little is known about Wulfstan before he was appointed bishop of London in 996, though he seems to have had family connections in the East Midlands, around Peterborough or Ely. Thereafter, however, he became a prominent and influential figure in church and state, being involved among other things in the drawing up of lawcodes for two kings, Æthelred and Cnut. In 1002, he was appointed bishop of Worcester and archbishop of York and held the two sees in plurality until 1016, after which he retained York until his death in 1023.

Four sermons in Latin and twenty-two in OE have been identified as Wulfstan's, though the number of the latter should certainly be put higher, in view of several fragments which show his highly distinctive style (discussed below). Their subjects are often eschatological – dealing, that is, with ‘end things’: death, judgement, heaven and hell – or they offer guidance on specific aspects of faith, such as baptism. Among Wulfstan's other known works are the Institutes of Polity, which sets out the distribution of authority among members of church and state, and the Canons of Edgar, a handbook of instruction for the secular clergy.

The sermon De falsis deis is preserved in a single copy in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Hatton 113, a two-volume homiliary (a collection of homilies) compiled at Worcester between 1064 and 1083 for the presiding bishop (another Wulfstan); it contains several items by Ælfric, as well as most of Wulfstan's sermons. De falsis deis is in fact an expansion of part of one of Ælfric's homilies (not one of the main collection of Sermones catholicae), which in turn drew on the work of a sixth-century continental writer, Martin of Braga. Pagan practices had survived into Christian times in England and Wulfstan denounced them regularly in his works; each of the lawcodes with which he was involved includes injunctions against such practices. With his archiepiscopal see at York, in a strongly Scandinavian area, he may have been particularly aware of the problem.

The equation of Germanic deities with classical counterparts was well established in the early medieval period, with consequences still visible today in the names of the days of the week in Germanic and Romance languages.