[In the following excerpt, Cross and Brown suggest that a military-themed sermon by Abbo of Saint-Germain-des-Prés is a likely source text for Wulfstan's Sermo Lupi ad Anglos.]

‘No work smells less of the study.’ So Dorothy Whitelock firmly concluded her discussion of literary influences bearing on Wulfstan's Sermo Lupi ad Anglos.¹ Yet one written source for two of the three versions of the sermon has been recorded,² the citation of Alcuin's reference to Gildas.³ Professor Whitelock also offered a probable influence from a passage within a manuscript of Wulfstan's ‘Commonplace Book’,⁴ being the lamentation on God's punishment for the sins of the English, in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 190.⁵ A writer's experience, however, from which he creates, derives from his five senses, not least sight and hearing, and that section in Corpus 190 is embedded in a longer series of extracts which allows us to argue that one lamentation and also exhortation to milites provided a literary impetus for the Sermo Lupi.

That impetus, we suggest, came from a sermon by Abbo of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, which has recently been edited by Ute Önnerfors,⁶ although we saw the association independently by reading manuscripts and have decided on this collaborative discussion. Dr Önnerfors edited the sermons of Abbo from four manuscripts, the largest sequence being in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale MS lat. 13. 203 (saec. XII, once Saint-Germain), which she took as her base text, but the earliest manuscript for eight of the sermons is Copenhagen, Royal Library, Gamle Kongelike Samlungen, 1595 (saec. XI¹, before 1023, probably Worcester or possibly York).⁷ The new dating and placing of Copenhagen 1595⁸ derives from Neil Ker's statement, after considerable care and scholarly reservation,⁹ that a distinctive hand, which wrote in Old English on fol. 66v, and added corrections and glosses in Latin elsewhere in the manuscript, was the hand of Wulfstan himself. As Ker said: ‘In a matter of this kind it is hard to drop the word “probably”, but it should be dropped.’¹⁰ Copenhagen 1595 was thus clearly a manuscript which Wulfstan himself ‘proof-read’ and, indeed, contained some of his own works. Dorothy Bethurum used the manuscript as a variant text for Wulfstan's Latin compositions, De Anticristo (Ia), De Baptismo (VIIIa), for some of the excerpts from Isaiah (XI),¹¹ and some of the letters ‘relating to Wulfstan’ (Appendix II); therefore Wulfstan was re-reading and checking some of his own work.

Dr Önnerfors, reasonably, did not realize the importance of this manuscript to Anglo-Saxonists and does not record all corrections and variations of Abbo's sermon in Copenhagen 1595, some of which are relevant to our argument. But her text is available, so we first consider it as a background to identifications of the selections from the sermon in Cambridge Corpus Christi College MS 190.

Within two manuscripts of the ‘Commonplace Book’, British Library MS Cotton Nero A. i and Corpus 190, a section is recorded, entitled in Nero A. i, Item de Militia, with some similarity between the two texts but with greater differences. Robin Aronstam regarded the text in Nero A. i as from the collection now known as the Excerptiones Pseudo-Ecgberti.¹² In this manuscript the section mainly considers that priests should not take part in war, citing the command of Christ to Peter at Gethsemane, the refusal of St Martin to fight in the army of Julian the Apostate, and the role of Moses in the wars of Joshua. The section concludes:

His et aliis multis declaratur exemplis, episcopum, presbiterum, diaconum, vel monachum, nulla portare arma in praelio, nisi tantum ea de quibus legitur: In omnibus sumentes scutum fidei, in quo possitis omnia tela nequissimi ignea extinguere, et galeam salutis assumite, et gladium spiritus, quod est ueroum Dei [Eph 6. 16-17]. Contrarium itaque omnino est ecclesiasticis regulis, post ordinationem redire ad militiam secularem.

In these and many other examples, of bishops, priests, deacons or monks, it is made clear that they are to carry no arms in battle, except only those about which it is read: ‘In all things taking the shield of faith, wherewith you may be able to extinguish all the fiery darts of the most wicked one; and take unto you the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God’ [Eph 6. 16-17, Douai-Reims]. Thus it is wholly contrary to the ecclesiastical rules to return to secular military service after ordination.

Corpus 190 omits the examples about priestly conduct within Nero A. i, merely presents the quotation above without title (substituting Multis autem for His et aliis multis and non licere for in praelio), ends with the citation of Ephesians, and continues with a new section exhorting laymen to fight, entitled De Militia et Victoria Christianorum. ‘From this point there is no further resemblance to the excerpts,’ says Mary Bateson (p. 718), and Dr Aronstam prints none of the material from Corpus 190.

The section from Corpus 190 has not been wholly printed but, clearly, deserves analysis.¹³ At p. 138 the manuscript reads:

DE MILITIA ET UICTORIA CHRISTIANORUM

Boni igitur seculares et ueri Christiani uiriliter resistere debent inimicis sancte Dei ecclesie et in preterito corde pro patria pugnare, quoniam ut Iudas Machabeus ait: Melius est mori in bello, quam uidere mala gentis et sanctorum, et reliqua [I Macc 3. 59].¹⁴

Quicumque igitur zelantes zelum Domini in bello ceciderint sancti martyres existunt. Sciendumque est quia inter omnes gladios non potest homo occidi ante terminum a Deo prescitum. Scriptum est enim: Constituisti terminos eius qui preteriri non poterunt [Job 14. 5], et propterea securi possunt Christiani intrare in bellum Domini, uoce ex- /139/ -celsa clamando uel canendo: Kyrieleison. Statimque, Deo auxiliante, fugiet princeps paganorum diabolus cum audierit tam terribilem uocem Christianorum, senseritque fidei Constantiani illorum et deinde fugient ipsi pagani post suum principem diabolum, Christianique habentes deum iudicem et defensorem uictorem existunt per eum qui uiuit et regnat per omnia secula seculorum. Amen.

DE EXORTATIO.

Ambulemus igitur, fratres, dum lucem habemus ne nos tenebre comprehendant [compare Jn 12. 35], nec differamus de die in diem [compare Eccl 5. 8] quia nescimus si uel unius diei spatium habemus uitam corrigendi animamque saluandi. Cotidie enim uidemus quomodo in perditionem uadit mundus et omnis concupiscentia eius, [compare I Jn 2. 17] regnumque nostrum propiis ex gentibus culpis alienigenis datur ad depredandum sicut antiquitus populis Iudeorum pro peccatis contigisse legimus.

DE CAPITUITATE IUDEORUM.

Uere postquam pagani deuastauerunt totum regnum Iudeorum, Domino permittente, pro peccatis populi, ad ultimum uenerunt in Hierusalem ubi erat rex Sedechias et omnes principes eius et, capta ciuitate, occiderunt duos filios Sedechie regis, et omnes principes regni occiderunt gladio coram rege. Et ipsum regem excecauerunt et secum duxerunt captiuum in Babyloniam [compare II Kings 25. 1-7].

Et quotiescumque Iudei Deum irritabant, toties semper ueniebant super illos alienigene, et occidebant et captiuabant eos, et quando se recognoscebant et penitentiam egerunt, confestim uictoriam et pace[m] et abundantiam bonorum, Domino /140/ donante, perceperunt. His exemplis eruditi, conuertamus ad dominum Iesum nostrum qui per prophetam locutus est dicens: Conuertimini ad me et ego reuertar ad uos [compare Zech 1. 3; Mal 3. 7].

DE INTERITU BRITTONUM

Legitur in libro Gilde, Brittonum sapientissimi, quod idem ipsi Brittones propter rapinas et auaritiam principum, propter iniquitatem et iniustitiam iudicum, propter desidiam et neglegentiam predicationis episcoporum, propter luxuriam et pessimos mores populi, non solum patriam perdiderunt, sed ipsi miserrime perierunt.

DE ANGLIS.

Gens quoque Angelorum simillimis uel moribus contaminata piaculis in metu iam ualidissimo titubat quia talis eam nunc consecuta est uindicta qualis non est preteritis audita temporibus.¹⁵

In relation to these extracts from Corpus 190 it is relevant first to note that Abbo's sermon in Copenhagen 1595 has a distinctive title, Sermo ad Milites, against the caption in all the other manuscripts, Sermo aduersus raptores bonorum alienorum. Whether the title was changed by Wulfstan, or that it was the original title, need not be decided, but Ad milites directs the emphasis from predators to defenders, and that is certainly how the controller of Corpus 190 also saw the sermon of Abbo.

The first section De Militia et Victoria Christianorum in Corpus 190 draws on the final section of Abbo's sermon for idea and phrase, notably in the variant readings of Copenhagen 1595, fol. 37r:

O Francia, custodi temetipsam! Nolite uestros inimicos multiplicare et crescere, sed sicut commendat scriptura: pugnate pro patria uestra; nolite timere mori in bello Dei. Certe si ibi mortui fueritis sancti martyres eritis. Et scitote ueraciter quia nullus homo morietur usque ad suum terminum a Deo prescitum. Inter omnes gladios non potest homo occidi si suus finis non est. Scriptum est enim: Constituisti terminos eius qui preteriri non poterunt [Job 14. 5], et propterea intrate securi in bellum Domini Dei, et cum uos intratis in bellum Dei, clamate omnes uoce magna: Christus uincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat [superscript in Wulfstan's hand: uel kyrrieleison, Christeleison, Christe audi nos]. Et in ipsa hora fugiet princeps paganorum diabolus cum audierit tam terribilem uocem Christianorum, et deinde fugient ipsi pagani post suum principem diabolum. Et sic uos, qui habetis Deum regem et principem, accipietis uictoriam, donante domino nostro Iesu Christo, cui est cum Deo patre et spiritu sancto, regnum et imperium in secula seculorum. Amen.

The verbal echoes are clear, but particular note should be made of the superscript in Wulfstan's own hand: ‘Kyrrieleison …’ (compare Corpus 190: Kyrieleison), which contrasts Abbo's words in the other manuscripts of this sermon: ‘Christus uincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat.’

There is only one verbal echo of Abbo in the section De exortatio, the phrase, as in Copenhagen, fol. 35r: ‘Fratres, omni die uidetis cum uadit istud regnum in perditionem’, which begins Abbo's sermon, but this section is an introduction to the paragraph De Captiuitate Iudeorum where the examples chosen are of Sedecias (Zedekiah) and the Jews. The presentation of both of these examples is verbally close to two separate sections of Abbo's text.

On Sedecias, Copenhagen 1595, fols 36v-37r, reads:

Simile malum euenit Sedechie regi Iudaeorum. Uere postquam pagani deuastauerunt totum regnum Iudeorum /37r/ ad ultimum uenerunt in Hierusalem ubi erat rex Sedechias et omnes principes eius, et, capta ciuitate, occiderunt illi pagani duos filios Sedechie regis, et omnes principes regni occiderunt gladio coram rege, et ipsum regem Sedechiam excecauerunt et secum duxerunt captiuum in Babiloniam.

We note the use of Abbo's word excecauerunt for the blinding, apparently a rare word in classical Latin,¹⁶ which is not used in the Scriptural descriptions of the event (II Kings 25. 7 and Jer 39. 7; 52. 11).

On the Jews, Copenhagen 1595, fols 36r-36v, reads:

Potestis etiam exemplum prendere [MS pendere with deletion-line through pen and ‘r’ superscript, with superscript over the whole word, id est accipere, in Wulfstan's hand?] de Iudeis qui fuerunt ante aduentum Domini. Quantis uicibus illi Iudei peccabant et negabant [MS with deletion-line through et negabant and superscript uel offendebant, in Wulfstan's hand] Dominum Deum, semper ueniebant super illos aliene- / 36v/ -gentes et occidebant eos et captiuabant et incendebant illorum castella. Et tunc recognoscebant se Iudei illi qui fuerant capitiui ducti in aliena regna, et tunc faciebant penitentiam in aliena terra quia [al: quam] non uolebant facere in sua terra. Et propter illam poenitentiam reducebat illos noster Dominus pius in Hirusalem, et donabat eis pacem et abundantiam [second ‘n’ superscript addition by scribe] de omnibus bonis, et totam uictoriam donabat illis contra paganos, donec illi Iudei iuste uiuebant. Similiter uos conuertimini … Reuertimini ad me et ego reuertar ad uos [Mal 3. 7].

Abbo's words are greatly abbreviated by the abstractor, but verbal echoes are apparent, especially as we now know that the sermon was excerpted in Corpus 190.

Dorothy Bethurum noted that Wulfstan used the example once more,¹⁷ in his Old English sermon (VI, ll. 115-21) where he refers to the trials of Sedecias (Zedekiah) within his survey of Scriptural events, and she suggested that he recalled the record in Corpus 190. Within the Old English sermon, Wulfstan placed the general comment on the Jews (as in Corpus 190 and Abbo) more firmly in its correct Scriptural place by numbering the seventy years of captivity (from the prophets, Jer 25. 11-12 and Dan 9. 2) and also saw Abbo's unspecified description of the return of the penitent Jews to Jerusalem accurately as the release of the Jews from Babylon by Cyrus, king of Persia, who promulgated the edict for the building of the temple (II Chron 36. 23, etc.) as charged by God.

The contacts, we think, between Abbo's sermon and the Corpus extracts, continue, since the next section De interitu Brittonum, which is certainly an abstract from Alcuin's letter to Ethelheard (with a little addition), as is well known,¹⁸ may have been incited by a reference given in Abbo's sermon just before the example of Sedecias (Zedekiah).

At Copenhagen 1595, fol. 36v, Abbo exhorts his fellows:

Et si uos uultis iacere in luxuria semper sicut equus et mulus, quibus non est intellectus [Ps 31. 19], multum est timendum ut non ueniat super nos tam grande malum cum nos sapimus uenisse super regem et super comites et super episcopos Brittonarum. Certe rex Conam [with superscript ‘ro’ between ‘o’ and ‘n’ = coronam] fugit et laxauit suum regnum; similiter et alii principes, episcopi et comites fugerunt et facti sunt peregrini in aliena terra.

The Latin of the uncorrected text appears to name a king, and both Jean Leclerq and Ute Önnerfors have looked for a King Conan of Brittany. Leclerq thought that Abbo was recalling Conan Meridec (Meriadoc), legendary founder of Brittany,¹⁹ but surviving early accounts of the legendary exploits of this man portray him as a conquering adventurer, not as a fleeing exile,²⁰ and a moralist such as Abbo in this sermon might look for a real secular example, perhaps more contemporary with his sermon, which was written in the 920s, after 922.²¹ Ute Önnerfors (p. 240) found the Conans of Brittany too late for Abbo's account, the first recorded being Conan le Tort, who became Count of Rennes in 970. Unfortunately she then concluded that Abbo was describing conditions in England during the ninth-century Scandinavian invasions, although no English king, even a subordinate rex or dux, would be named as rex Brittonarum at this time. And there was some evidence of a collapse of the Breton state before Norse assault about the turn of the ninth and tenth centuries. Alan the Great of Brittany had defeated the Norsemen in 888, but at his death some twenty years later, as noted in the Chronicle of Nantes,²² no king, duke or defender rose to oppose the Scandinavians, and his sons were wanting. The Normans laid waste all Brittany, and the counts, viscounts, and mathiberni (‘local lords’) were scattered throughout Francia, Burgundy, and Acquitaine. Flodoard's Chronicle for 919 emphasizes the devastation:²³

Nortmanni omnem Brittaniam in Cornu-Galliae, in ora scilicet maritima, sitam depopulantur, proterunt atque delent, abductis, venditis, ceterisque cuncti eiectis Brittonibus.

Having abducted, sold, and driven out all the rest of the Britons, the Northmen laid waste, crushed, and destroyed the bounds of Brittany, certainly to the sea-coast.

Historians debate the matching of primary records, but Abbo in Paris could surely have known of this contemporary loss of Breton independent power and could have added to the primary records of his time by naming the king, Conan.

Whoever this king was, however, a suggestive identification still remained to be read in Abbo's sermon, about a rex Brittonarum in a similar situation nearer home. The controller of the extracts in Corpus 190 turned, not to the primary historic source about the Britons, Gildas, but to Alcuin's report and rephrasing of Gildas's words in the letter to Ethelheard. The letter as a whole is extant in British Library Cotton Vespasian A. xiv, within a collection of Alcuin's letters ‘almost certainly made for Wulfstan’,²⁴ itself a manuscript in which the Archbishop made corrections and undoubtedly read. It is not surprising that Bethurum could illustrate verbal echoes of this very extract of Alcuin's Latin within a version of the vernacular Sermo Lupi.

Since Bethurum and Whitelock have both emphasized the influence of the ‘Commonplace Book’ on Wulfstan's writings generally and, in a minor way, on the Sermo Lupi particularly, we turn now to Abbo's sermon, which, with two of Alcuin's letters, forms the main source for the unusual group of extracts in Corpus 190.²⁵

Abbo's audience in the early tenth century faced the same national enemy as Wulfstan's countrymen about a century later, the Scandinavians in large force. Both sermons castigate those who despoil the property and goods of their own people and of the church, men of power who live in vice and by vicious acts, instead of facing an enemy from abroad. Both refer to troubles caused by the wrath of God on a sinning nation through his agent, the pagani. Abbo begins his address, fol. 35r:

Fratres, omni die uidetis cum uadit istud regnum in perditionem. Nostri homines, uillani et serui et ancille, et toti qui nostras uillas tenebant et nostras terras arabant unde nos et uictum et uestimenta habere deberemus, et unde nos caballos et arma comparabamus, iam sunt mortui aut capituati … Quid faciemus nos modo? Certe Deus est nobis iratus, et propterea ueniunt super nos tanta mala de paganis et de sterilitate terre.

And later, fol. 35v:

Sed quomodo potestis uos Deo placere et uictoriam habere qui semper habetis uestras manus plenas de periuriis et de rapinis? Quantis uicibus uos ambulatis in aliquo itenere, semper manducatis pauperes homines et predatis uillas ecclesiarum Dei; et propterea sunt uestrae manus ligate de catenis peccatorum et non potestis habere uictoriam.

So Abbo continues to speak of other vices and vicious acts, fol. 36r:

Nec de rapina sola uos debetis abstinere, uerum et de luxuria et de fornicatione et de ebrietate, que est mater luxurie. Certe propter ista et propter multa alia peccata non possunt uestri homines habere uictoriam.

And then, in a similar vein to Augustine in De Civitate Dei, Book V, chapter 12ff., he notes how God helped the Romans because of their virtues, although they were pagani: ‘quia iuste uiuebant et caste et sobrie, propterea uincebant et conquirebant omnes gentes’ (fol. 36r), and how he helped the Jews after captivity when they returned to his ways, in the passage abstracted for Corpus 190 above.

You too, says Abbo, should return to God (reinforcing his statement with Scriptural testimony (Mal 1. 3) and if ‘non amplius uiuatis de rapina sola sed de uestra iustitia’ (fol. 36v), in that hour God will return to you.

Then follow the passages cited above from Copenhagen 1595 about King Conan and about Sedecias (Zedekiah), and, finally, Abbo apostrophizes his Frankish lay compatriots to fight with the help of God, in another passage abstracted from the section De Militia et Victoria Christianorum within Corpus 190 and quoted above.

Our term ‘impetus’ does not mean ‘sole source’, since there are many elaborations and examples in Wulfstan's Sermo Lupi which are rightly identified by reference to events and activities of Wulfstan's own time and would have greater impact because of such reference to experienced events. In her edition, Dorothy Whitelock noted (p. 35) that sermons were ‘not uncommon’ about calamities falling on a nation as a punishment for sins. But Abbo's sermon was read at least twice for its copying in Copenhagen 1595, once for selection, once for correction by the Archbishop. It was also abstracted for Corpus 190 in a series of extracts, in effect giving authority and example for laymen to live in the ways of God but not to fear to die in the war of God. Both preachers exhort their listeners or readers to justum bellum in defence of their own lands against not only attackers but enemies of God. No doubt Wulfstan was impressed by Abbo's verve and, directly through the sermon or indirectly through the Corpus extracts, was incited to produce his own sermon with appropriate contemporary reference but with the same purpose.

.....

ENGLISH TRANSLATION [OF ABBO'S SERMON]

THE SERMON TO THE KNIGHTS²⁶

Brothers, every day you see how²⁷ this realm is going to ruin. Our peasants²⁸ and servants and maidservants and all of those who used to keep our farms and plough our lands, [in the other texts: ‘and paid us their²⁹ tribute’³⁰] whence we should have had both our food and our clothing and with which we used to buy our horses and armour, now are dead or captives. What need we have without these people! We ourselves know neither how to plough nor sow the lands, nor prune nor cultivate³¹ the vines. What shall we do now? Surely God is angry with us, and this is why all these evils from pagans and from the barrenness of the soil come upon us. Surely, as blessed Augustine says, ‘The earth accuses us to the Lord’, and every day cries out that it cannot bear such wicked dwellers upon it. And for this reason the land does not yield us good harvests, nor fruits of the trees, nor grass in the pastures, as it did in the time of good men. Truly, as the Lord says, ‘There is no good tree that makes bad fruit, nor a bad tree making good fruit’ [Lk 6. 43]. The good tree is the good person who makes good fruit, that is, good works; the bad tree is the bad person making bad fruit, that is, bad works. So, if ever you have been bad trees before now, from now on be good trees, that is, good men, and make the fruit of good works, and in that instant God will have pity and mercy on you.

But how can you please God and get a victory, you who have your hands forever full of perjuries and plunderings? Whenever you travel on some journey, you are devouring the poor and plundering the estates of God's churches; and this is why your hands are shackled by the chains of sins, and you are unable to gain a victory. The Lord God himself orders every one of us, saying, ‘If you wish to be perfect, go, sell everything you have and give [it] to the poor’ [Mt 19. 21]. Our Lord commands you to give your goods to the poor, and contrariwise you take theirs! Holy Scripture indeed says concerning you plunderers, ‘Neither shall the greedy possess the kingdom of God’ [I Cor 6. 10]. But therefore, if you want to get peace and victory, do what Zachaeus the rich Jew did. Do you want to know what he did? He came to our Lord and questioned him: ‘Lord, what shall I do in order to have eternal life?’ The Lord answered him: ‘If you wish to have eternal life, return fourfold whatever you have taken.’ And Zachaeus did so, fearing the Lord and fearing Hell, he returned four shillings to the person he had taken one shilling of silver from, and for one measure of wine he returned four measures. He did the same with other things which he took, and you, whoever can, do the same. And let him who cannot, promise before God and His angels and before the priests that³² he will no longer be a plunderer or a ravager among the estates of the holy [Wulfstan adds: ‘or in the goods of the poor’], and so you will have God for your helper in all your troubles.

And you must withhold yourselves not only from plundering, but also from lust and fornication, and from drunkenness, which is the mother of lust. Surely it is because of these and of many other sins that your men [other manuscripts: ‘(you) vassals’] cannot gain a victory. And if you refuse to accept the example of your own good forefathers who defended this realm before you, at least accept that of the Romans, who were heathens before the Lord Christ was born of the Virgin Mary. These Romans, indeed, because they lived righteously, chastely, and soberly, conquered and defeated all nations. You can also take an example from the Jews who were before the Lord's Coming. As many times as those Jews sinned and denied [Wulfstan's gloss: ‘or offended’] the Lord God, foreign nations always came upon them, and slew and captured them, and burned their strongholds. And then the Jews who had been led captive into foreign realms confessed their wrongdoing³³ and then did penance in a foreign land because they would not do it in their own land. And because of that penance, our merciful Lord brought them back to Jerusalem and gave them peace and abundance of all good things, and gave them total victory against the heathens, so long as those Jews lived righteously. You, likewise, turn to Our Lord, and live righteously, and soberly, and chastely without concubines, for as blessed Augustine says: ‘The man who has a concubine is an adulterer whether he intends it or not, and the concubine is an adulteress whether she intends it or not.’

Brothers, listen to what Our Lord is crying to us every day: ‘Return to Me, and I shall return to you’ [Mal 3. 7], and wherefore, if you truly turn to God and fear His saints and vow to God that you will no longer live by plunder but rather by your justice, in that hour Our Lord at once will return to you, and if you will lie in lust always ‘As the horse and the mule in whom is no understanding’ [Ps 31. 9], it is much to be feared that so great an evil will come upon us as³⁴ the one we know has come upon the king and counts and bishops of the Bretons. King Conam indeed has fled [altered in C to: ‘The king indeed has fled the crown’] and abandoned³⁵ his realm; just so the other chief men, bishops and counts have fled and have become strangers in a foreign land. A like evil happened to King Zedekiah of the Jews. Indeed, after the heathens had devastated the whole realm of the Jews, at last they came to Jerusalem where King Zedekiah was and all of his chief men, and, after seizing the city, the heathens killed the two sons of King Zedekiah and killed all the chief men of the realm with the sword in the king's presence, and they blinded King Zedekiah himself and led him captive with them to Babylon.

France, defend yourself!³⁶ Do not multiply and increase³⁷ your enemies, but as scripture commands, fight for your fatherland; do not fear to die in God's battle. Surely, if you are killed in it, you will be holy martyrs. And learn truly that no man will die until the term foreknown by God.

Among all swords no man can be slain, if it is not his own end. For it is written: ‘Thou hast set up its limits which cannot be crossed’ [Job 14. 5]. And so, go safe into the Lord God's battle; and when you enter into God's battle, all cry out with a great voice, ‘Christ conquers, Christ rules, Christ reigns’. And at that moment the Devil, the leader of the heathens, will flee upon hearing such a terrifying shout from the Christians, and then those heathens will flee after their leader the Devil. And so you, who have God as your king and leader, will gain the victory, by the gift of Our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom, with God the father and the Holy Spirit, is rule and reign into ages of ages, Amen.

Notes

1. Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, edited by Dorothy Whitelock, third revised edition (London, 1963), p. 37. Subsequent references appear in text.

2. In The Homilies of Wulfstan, edited by Dorothy Bethurum (Oxford, 1957), the three versions are edited under the number XX, pp. 255-75, and changes are discussed at pp. 22-24.

3. Dorothy Bethurum, ‘Archbishop Wulfstan's Commonplace Book’, PMLA, 57 (1942), 916-29 (pp. 920-21); see also Whitelock, Sermo Lupi, pp. 65-66.

4. Whitelock, Sermo Lupi, p. 35, note 3, citing verbal echoes of the Latin extract in the vernacular Sermo Lupi.

5. N. R. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford, 1957), p. 70, indicates that the present manuscript was ‘two probably distinct manuscripts’, the first, ‘in Latin, written mainly in saec. XI¹’. The extract, from this section, at p. 142, was printed by Mary Bateson, ‘A Worcester Cathedral Book of Ecclesiastical Collections, made c. 1000 a.d.’, English Historical Review, 10 (1895), 712-31 (p. 731)—subsequent references appear in text.

6. Ute Önnerfors, Abbo von Saint-Germain-des-Prés, 22 Predigten: kritische Ausgabe und Kommentar, edited by Alf Önnerfors, Lateinische Sprache und Literatur des Mittelalters, 16 (Frankfurt, 1985). Her comment on Paris BN lat. 13.203 (below) is on p. 62. Subsequent references appear in text.

7. Folios 26r-40v.

8. The old dating, saec. XI, was recorded in Ellen Jørgensen, Catalogus Codicum Latinorum Medii Aevi Bibliothecae Regiae Hafniensis (Copenhagen, 1926), p. 43.

9. Neil Ker had not made up his mind when he wrote the Catalogue (note 5, above)—see his comments on manuscripts now associated with Wulfstan.

10. N. R. Ker, ‘The Handwriting of Archbishop Wulfstan’, in England before the Conquest: Studies in Primary Sources Presented to Dorothy Whitelock, edited by Peter Clemoes and Kathleen Hughes (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 315-31. On Copenhagen 1595, see pp. 319-21. For the quotation see p. 315.

11. Bethurum, Homilies, under the titles and numbers stated.

12. Robin Ann Aronstam, ‘The Latin Canonical Tradition in Late Anglo-Saxon England: the “Excerptiones Egberti”’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1974), presents the text for this section on pp. 114-15. The text, from BL Cotton Nero A. i only, had been presented by B. Thorpe, Ancient Laws and Institutes of England, 2 vols (London, 1840), II, 126.

13. As argued below, the following extracts are taken from Abbo's sermon, which is translated at the end of this essay. An idiomatic translation might obscure the relationship of the Latin phrases in the sermon and the excerpts.

14. Ælfric cites the Scriptural verse in his Lives of Saints, edited by Walter W. Skeat, EETS, OS 76, 82, 94, 114 (London, 1881-1900; reprinted in 2 vols, 1966), II, 88, and later, 112, praises the actions of Judas Machabeus in physical war.

15. The extracts in Corpus 190 continue (pp. 140-43) as follows:

    i. p. 140, l. 13, De predatione Nordanimbrorum, extracts from Alcuin's letter to Ethelred, King of Northumbria, as in Two Alcuin Letter-books; from the British Museum MS Cotton Vespasian A xiv, edited by Colin Chase (Toronto, 1975), p. 53, l. 22 - p. 54, l. 35; p. 55, ll. 56-67 (Corpus 190, p. 141, l. 15). There are variations from the Vespasian text.

    ii. p. 141, l. 15, scriptural quotations from Paulus apostolus, cf. Gal 5. 26; from Isaias propheta, Is 3. 16-17, 18, 19, abbreviated and adapted. Then follows an unidentified comment: ‘Super uacua igitur et deo odibilis indumenti et ornamenti superstitio signum est arrogantie et superbie et luxurie’; followed by a quotation from Sapientia, as Prov 8. 13; followed by a comment: ‘Uariis enim modis humani generis aduersarius indesinenter circuit querens quos capiat uitiorum laqueis, id est, uana gloria, superbia, auaritia, gula et luxuria. Hec enim et alia multa retia sunt diaboli quibus infelicium animas decipit et ad interitum pertrahit nisi uera penitentia subuenerit’ (p. 142, l. 5).

    iii. p. 142, l. 5 - p. 143, l. 4 (De tribulationibus). The section was published by Bateson, ‘A Worcester Cathedral Book’, p. 731, with the comment: ‘Alcuin?’. But Whitelock, Sermo Lupi, p. 35, n. 2, states, with reasons, ‘It sounds more like a work of Ethelred's reign’.

    iv. p. 143, l. 5 - p. 143, l. 14. A story of Amasias, the king who hired men for his army, but was rebuked because he had not asked for God's help, echoing II Chron 25. 6-8 and introduced by the phrase: ‘Multis enim indiciis luce clarius apparet, quia uictoria non in multitudine militum sed in magnitudine meritorum consistit’. (These comments may save a little time for those concerned with the collaborative project to record the sources of Old English literary texts—Anglo-Latin section.)

16. C. T. Lewis and C. Short, A Latin Dictionary (Oxford, 1879, impression of 1955), s.v. excaeco.

17. Bethurum, ‘Commonplace Book’, p. 921, referring to Napier's edition of the sermon; Bethurum, Homilies, pp. 297-98.

18. Bateson, ‘A Worcester Cathedral Book’, p. 718, first noted this.

19. Jean Leclercq, ‘Le florilège d'Abbon de Saint-Germain’, Revue du Moyen Âge Latin, 3 (1947), 113-40 (p. 120).

20. See J. S. P. Tatlock, ‘The Dates of the Arthurian Saints' Legends’, Speculum, 14 (1939), 345-65 (pp. 361-65), and the studies noted there.

21. See Max Manitius, Geschichte der Lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters, 3 vols (Munich, 1911-31), I (1911), 585, and Patrizia Lendinara, ‘The Third Book of the Bella Parisiacae Urbis by Abbo of Saint-Germain-des-Prés and its Old English Gloss’, Anglo-Saxon England, 15 (1986), 73-89 (p. 74, note 5). One of the recipients of the sermons was Fulrad, bishop of Paris 921-27.

22. La Chronique de Nantes, edited by R. Merlet (Paris, 1896), pp. 80-82.

23. Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptorum III, edited by G. H. Pertz (Hanover, 1839), p. 368.

24. Ker, ‘Handwriting’, p. 326, noting the corrections in Wulfstan's own hand, pp. 326-27.

25. Bethurum ‘Commonplace Book’, p. 921, cites from Alcuin's full letter as source for the Sermo Lupi. The Corpus 190 extract has some variations: neglegentiam predicationis episcoporum for pigritiam p. e.; pessimos mores populi for malos m. p. But the Corpus extract could equally well have been the source for the Sermo Lupi, since Wulfstan elaborates in his normal vernacular style.

26. So titled in the index of Paris text 13.203 (A) as well as in Copenhagen 1595 (C); textual title in A, B, and D is ‘Sermon to the Plunderers of Others' Goods’. There has been disagreement as to whether miles in tenth-century Frankish contexts may mean ‘knight’ (‘domestic’ knight) or just ‘soldier’, ‘même pas toujours un cavalier ou un vassal ou un serviteur armé’—L. Genicot, ‘Les recherches relatives a la noblesse médiévale’, Academie Royale de Belgique, Bulletin de la Classe de Lettres et des Sciences morales et politiques, 61 (1975), 45-68 (pp. 65-66). The addresses of this sermon and of others by Abbo are, however, as seen below, ‘vassals’ who are spoken to not only as though they are responsible for the income from the lands which support them, but, more importantly, as though they are of the same social class as the intended speaker—most probably a bishop or archbishop.

27. cum, representing the Old French com, from quomodo. Compare W. von Wartburg, Französisches etymologisches Worterbuch (FEW) (Bonn, Leipzig, and Basel, 1928-), 2, ii (1946), 1542.

28. villani. See FEW, 14 (1961), 453; OF vilain, eleventh century onward.

29. suum. Compare FEW, 12 (1966), 482, on survivals of a plural sense in Old French.

30. censum. OF cens; FEW, 2, i (1940), 580-83.

31. FEW, 3 (1934), 663-64—cf. especially OF fouee, noun.

32. quo. OF qued, que etc. Compare FEW, 2, ii (1946), 1466-67, s.v.

33. regognoscebant se. See F. Niemeyer, Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus (Leiden, 1976), p. 888, sense 6 (with examples); A. Blaise, Lexicon Latinitatis Medii Aevi (Turnhout, 1975), p. 772.

34. cum = OF com or come.

35. laxauit. Compare FEW, 5 (1950), 226-27, with OF relaissier ‘… quitter, abandoner’, and equivalent Old Spanish from the Silos Glossaries.

36. O Francia custodi temetipsam. Over these words C had an added long phrase, now erased; an ultraviolet photo suggests a possibility of its having contained Saxonia.

37. multiplicare et crescere. The phrase is a Biblical reminiscence, but cf. FEW, 2, ii (1946), pp. 1323, 1328, for French and dialect development of a transitive use of the second verb.