¹ Translation by Joyce Lionarons at http://webpages.ursinus.edu/jlionarons/wulfstan/wulfstan.html ‘Nu sceal hit nyde yfelian swyðe, forþam þe hit nealæcð georne his timan, ealswa hit awriten is 7 gefryn wæs gewitegod: Post mille annos soluetur Satanas. Þæt is on Englisc, æfter þusend gearum bið Satanas unbunden. Þusend geara 7 eac ma is nu agan syþþan Crist wæs mid mannum on menniscan hiwe, 7 nu syndon Satanases bendas swyðe toslopene, 7 Antecristes tima is wel gehende, 7 ðy is on worulde a swa leng swa wacre’, The Homilies of Wulfstan, ed. Dorothy Bethurum (Oxford, 1957), sermon v, 134–41, at 136–7.

² Psalm 90:4, 2 Peter 3:8.

³ Acts i:7 and Mark 13:32.

⁴ Fredriksen, Paula, ‘Apocalypse and Redemption in Early Christianity from John of Patmos to Augustine of Hippo’, Vigiliae Christianae, 45 (1991), 151–83Google Scholar.

⁵ Ibid.

⁶ A useful survey is Weber, Eugen, Apocalypses Prophecies, Cults and Millennial Beliefs through the Ages (2000)Google Scholar.

⁷ See, now, Palmer, James, The Apocalypse in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸ See, for example, the collection of essays, The Apocalyptic Year 1000: Religious Expectations and Social Change 950–1050, ed. Richard Landes, Andrew Gow and David C. Van Meter (Oxford, 2003).

⁹ Landes, Richard, Relics, Apocalypse, and the Deceits of History: Ademar of Chabannes, 989–1034 (Cambridge, MA, 1995)Google Scholar; idem, ‘Lest the Millennium be Fulfilled: Apocalyptic Expectations and the Pattern of Western Chronography 100–800 ce’, in The Use and Abuse of Eschatology in the Middle Ages, ed. W. Verbeke, D. Verhulst and A. Welkenhuysen (Leuven, 1988), 137–211; idem, ‘The Fear of an Apocalyptic Year 1000: Augustinian Historiography Medieval and Modern’, Speculum, 75 (2000), 97–145.

¹⁰ See the helpful review article by MacLean, Simon, ‘Apocalypse and Revolution: Europe around the Year 1000’, Early Medieval Europe, 15 (2007), 86–106CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹ Ibid.

¹² Roach, Levi, ‘Otto III and the End of Time’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, sixth series, 23 (2013), 75–102CrossRefGoogle Scholar; MacLean, Simon, ‘Reform, Queenship and the End of the World in Tenth-Century France: Adso's “Letter on the Origin and Time of the Antichrist Reconsidered”’, Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire, 86 (2008), 645–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹³ Godden, Malcolm, ‘Apocalypse and Invasion in Late Anglo-Saxon England’, in From Anglo-Saxon to Early Middle English, Studies Presented to E. G. Stanley, ed. Godden, Malcom, Gray, Douglas and Hoad, Terry (Oxford, 1994), 130–62Google Scholar; and idem, ‘The Millennium, Time, and History for the Anglo-Saxons’, in The Apocalyptic Year 1000, ed. Landes, Gow and Van Meter, 155–80, quotation at 155.

¹⁴ Keynes, Simon, ‘Apocalypse Then: England ad 1000’, in Europe around the Year 1000, ed. Urbańczyk, Przemysław (Warsaw, 2001), 247–70Google Scholar, esp. 267.

¹⁵ But see now also Roach, Levi, ‘Apocalypse and Atonement in the Politics of Aethelredian England’, English Studies, 95 (2014), 733–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which appeared after the completion of this lecture.

¹⁶ O’Leary, Stephen, Arguing the Apocalypse: A Theory of Millennial Rhetoric (Oxford, 1998)Google Scholar.

¹⁷ Darby, Peter, Bede and the End of Time (Farnham and Burlington, 2012)Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Brown, Peter, ‘The Decline of the Empire of God: Amnesty, Penace and the Afterlife from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages’, in Last Things: Death and the Apocalypse in the Middle Ages, ed. Bynum, Caroline Walker and Freedman, Paul (Philadelphia, 2000), 41–59Google Scholar, at 58; and idem, ‘Vers la naissance du purgatoire: amnistie et pénitence dans le christianisme occidentale de l’antiquité tardive au Haut Moyen Âge’, Annales ESC, 52.6 (1997), 1247–61.

¹⁹ For an excellent wide-ranging discussion, see Forbes, Helen Foxhall, Heaven and Earth in Anglo-Saxon England (Farnham, 2013), 129–328Google Scholar.

²⁰ McC, Milton. Gatch, ‘Eschatology in the Anonymous Old English Homilies’, Traditio, 21 (1965), 117–65Google Scholar; idem, Preaching and Theology in Anglo-Saxon England: Ælfric and Wulfstan (Toronto, 1977); Greenfield, Kathleen, ‘Changing Emphases in English Vernacular Homiletic Literature 990–1225’, Journal of Medieval History, 7 (1981), 283–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar; W. Prideaux-Collins, ‘“Satan's Bonds Are Extremely Loose”: Apocalyptic Expectation in Anglo-Saxon England during the Millennial Era’, in The Apocalyptic Year 1000, ed. Landes, Gow and Van Meter, 289–310.

²¹ Byrhtferth's Enchiridion, ed. Peter S. Baker and Michael Lapidge, Early English Text Society (EETS), SS 15 (Oxford, 1995), 236–7: ‘Iam millenarius peractus numerus secundum numerum humani generis sed in presentia saluatoris est ipsum determinare. Millenarius perfectus est, cuius perfectionem ille nouit, qui cuncta suo nutu potenter creauit.’

²² The Blickling Homilies, ed. R. Morris, EETS, OS 58, 63 and 73 (1874, 1876 and 1880, reprinted in 1 vol., 1967), xi, 116–19: ‘we leorniaþ þæt seo tid sie toþæs digol þæt nære næfre nænig toþæs halig mon on þissum middangearde, ne furþum nænig on heofenum þe þæt æfre wiste, hwonne he ure Drihten þisse worlde ende gesettan wolde on domes dæge, buton him Drihtne anum; we witon þonne hweþre þæt hit nis no feor to þon; forþon þe ealle þa tacno & þa forebeacno þas þe her ure Drihten ær toweard sægde þæt ær domes dæge geweorþan sceoldan, ealle þa syndon agangen, buton þæm anum þæt se awerigda cuma Antecrist nuget hider on middangeard ne com. Nis þæt ðonne feor toþon þæt þæt eac geweorþan sceal; forþon þes middangeard nede on ðas eldo endian sceal ðe nu andweard is; forþon fife þara syndon agangen on þisse eldo. Þonne sceal þes middangeard endian & þisse is þonne se mæsta dæl agangen, efne nigon hund wintra & lxxi. on þys geare. Ne wæron þas ealle gelice lange, ac on þyssum wæs þreo þusend wintra, on sumre læsse, on sumere eft mare.’ Translation from Morris, with a significant emendation of 117, line 36, of ‘ages of the world’ for ‘fore-tokens’; see Wright, Charles D., ‘The Apocalypse of Thomas: Some New Latin Texts and their Significance for the Old English Versions’, in Apocryphal Texts and Traditions in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Powell, Kathryn and Scragg, Donald (Cambridge, 2003), 27–83Google Scholar, at 48 n. 100; and see also Godden, ‘The Millennium’, 157. On the tradition of the six ages in Anglo-Saxon England, see Tristram, Hildegard L. C., Sex aetates mundi. Die Weltzeitalter be den Angelsachsen und den Iren Untersuchungen und Texte, Anglistische Forschungen 165 (Heidelberg, 1985)Google Scholar.

²³ On Æthelred's reign, see Keynes, Simon, The Diplomas of Æthelred the Unready 978–1016: A Study in their Use as Historical Evidence (Cambridge, 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 154–231; Ann Williams, Æthelred the Unready: The Ill-Counselled King (2003); Lavelle, Ryan, AEthelred II King of the English 978–1016 (Stroud, 2004)Google Scholar.

²⁴ Cubitt, Catherine, ‘The Politics of Remorse: Penance and Royal Piety’, Historical Research, 85 (2012), 179–92Google Scholar; Roach, Levi, ‘Public Rites and Public Wrongs: Ritual Aspects of Diplomas in Tenth- and Eleventh-Century England’, Early Medieval Europe, 19 (2011), 182–203CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁵ Sawyer, P. H., Anglo-Saxon Charters: An Annotated List and Bibliography (Royal Historical Society, 1968)Google Scholar, no. 876 (hereafter S); Charters of Abingdon Abbey, ed. S. E. Kelly, Anglo-Saxon Charters vii (2 vols., Oxford, 2000), ii, 477–83, no. 124, and see the discussion by Kelly at cxi–cxv; and Keynes, Diplomas, 98–101 and 176–86.

²⁶ Keynes, Diplomas, 209–28; Williams, Æthelred, 69–150; Keynes, Simon, ‘An Abbot, an Archbishop, and the Viking Raids of 1006–7 and 1009–12’, Anglo-Saxon England, 36 (2007), 151–220CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁷ The Enham code is transmitted in three different vernacular texts, V and VI Æthelred and a Latin version, also designated VI Æthelred. All versions were printed by Liebermann, Felix, Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen (3 vols., reprinted 1960)Google Scholar, i, 236–59, and one text of V Æthelred and the Latin VI Æthelred by Whitelock, Dorothy, in Councils and Synods with Other Documents relating to the English Church I A. D. 871–1204, ed. Whitelock, D., Brett, M. and Brooke, C. N. L. (2 vols., Oxford, 1981)Google Scholar, i, 344–73, See below n. 93 for discussion.

²⁸ Printed in Liebermann, Die Gesetze, 260–2; and Councils, ed. Whitelock, Brett and Brooke, i, 373–82.

²⁹ Stafford, Pauline, ‘Political Ideas in Late Tenth-Century England: Charters as Evidence’, in Law, Laity and Solidarities: Essays in Honour of Susan Reynolds, ed. Stafford, Pauline, Nelson, Janet L. and Martindale, Jane (Manchester, 2001), 68–82Google Scholar.

³⁰ Keynes, ‘An Abbot’.

³¹ For Ælfric's biography and writings, see A Companion to Ælfric, ed. Hugh Magennis and Mary Swan (Brill, 2009), especially Joyce Hill, ‘Ælfric: His Life and Works’; and Cubitt, ‘Ælfric's Lay Patrons’, 35–65 and 165–92.

³² Whitelock, Dorothy, ‘Archbishop Wulfstan, Homilist and Statesman’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, fourth series, 24 (1942), 42–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lionarons, Joyce Tally, The Homiletic Writings of Archbishop Wulfstan (Woodbridge, 2010)Google Scholar; and the essays edited by Townend, Matthew, Wulfstan Archbishop of York (Turnhout, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially Patrick Wormald, ‘Archbishop Wulfstan: Eleventh-Century State-Builder’, 9–27.

³³ Cubitt, Catherine, ‘Personal Names, Identity and Family in Benedictine Reform England’, in Verwandschaft, Name und Soziale Ordnung (300–1000), ed. Patzold, Steffen and Ubl, Karl (Berlin, 2014), 223–42Google Scholar, at 230–7; and see Wormald, ‘Archbishop Wulfstan’, 12–13; and Joyce Hill, ‘Archbishop Wulfstan: Reformer?’, in Wulfstan, ed. Townend, 309–24, at 311–12.

³⁴ See the valuable survey by Gatch, ‘Eschatology’, 117–65.

³⁵ Blickling Homilies, ed. Morris; Princeton, Princeton University Library, W. H. Scheide Collection, MS 71. See also the edition of Richard J. Kelly, The Blickling Homilies: Edition and Translation (2003); and the review by Milton McC. Gatch in Church History, 73.4 (2004), 847–9. Ker, Neil, Catalogue of Manuscripts containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford, 1957)Google Scholar, no. 382; Scragg, Donald, ‘The Homilies of the Blickling Manuscript’, in Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Lapidge, Michael and Gneuss, Helmut (Cambridge, 1985), 299–316Google Scholar; Vercelli Book – Vercelli, Bibliotheca Capitolare, MS cxvii, edited by D. G. Scragg, The Vercelli Homilies and Related Texts, EETS OS 300 (Oxford, 1992), translations available in The Vercelli Book Homilies: Translations from the Anglo-Saxon, ed. Lewis E. Nicholson (Lanham, 1991); Ker, Catalogue, no. 394. For a recent account of the Vercelli homilies, see Zacher, Samantha, Preaching to the Converted. The Style and Rhetoric of the Vercelli Book Homilies (Toronto, 2009)Google Scholar.

³⁶ See, for example, on the Vercelli Homilies, Wright, Charles D., The Irish Tradition in Old English Literature (Cambridge, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁷ Wright, Charles, ‘Old English Homilies and Latin Sources’, in The Old English Homily: Precedent, Practice, and Appropriation, ed. Kleist, Aaron J. (Turnhout, 2007), 15–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For further nuancing, see Zacher, Preaching, 46–51; and Hill, Joyce, ‘Reform and Resistance: Preaching Styles in Late Anglo-Saxon England’, in De l’homelie au sermon: histoire de la predication medievale, Actes du Colloque internationale de Louvain-la-Neuve, ed. Hamesse, Jacqueline and Hermand, Xavier (Louvain-le-Neuve, 1993)Google Scholar, 15–46. Ælfric did draw upon apocryphal accounts of the Apostles, but retained his critical sense, see O’Leary, Aideen, ‘An Orthodox Old English Homiliary?’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 100 (1999), 15–26Google Scholar; Biggs, Frederick M., ‘Ælfric's Andrew and the Apocrypha’, Journal of the English Germanic Philology, 104 (2005), 472–94Google Scholar; and see De Gregorio, Scott, ‘Thegenlic or Flæsclic: The Old English Prose Legends of St Andrew’, Journal of the English Germanic Philology, 103 (2003), 449–64Google Scholar, and ‘Ælfric, Gedwyld and Vernacular Hagiography: Sanctity and Spirituality in the Old English Lives of SS Peter and Paul’, in Ælfric's Lives of Canonised Popes, ed. Donald Scragg (Western Michigan, 2001), 75–98. A very valuable close study of the aims of one homilist can be found in Lees, Clare, ‘The Blickling Palm Sunday Homily and its Revised Version’, Leeds Studies in English, 19 (1998), 1–23Google Scholar.

³⁸ See, for example, the discussion of Dalbey, Marcia A., ‘Hortatory Tone in the Blickling Homilies. Two Adaptations of Caesarius’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 70 (1969), 641–58Google Scholar; Gatch, ‘Eschatology´, 134–6.

³⁹ Gatch, ‘Eschatology’, 128–34, 151–60. See too Greenfield, ‘Changing Emphases’, esp. at 287–93; Prideaux-Collins, ‘Satan's Bonds Are Very Loose’.

⁴⁰ Lendinara, Patrizia, ‘“Frater non redimit, redimit homo…”: A Homiletic Motif and its Variants in Old English’, in Early Medieval English Texts and Interpretations: Studies Presented to Donald G. Scragg, ed. Treharne, Elaine and Rosser, Susan (Tempe, AZ, 2002), 67–80Google Scholar.

⁴¹ Blickling Homilies, ed. Morris, viii, 96–104.

⁴² Ibid., v, 54–64, at 56.

⁴³ Ibid., x, 106–9.

⁴⁴ On the use of the apocryphal Apocalypse of Thomas, see Förster, Max, ‘A New Version of the Apocalypse of Thomas in Old English’, Anglia, 73 (1955), 6–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gatch, Milton McC., ‘Two Uses of the Apocrypha in Old English Homilies’, Church History, 33 (1964), 379–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Swan, Mary, ‘The Apocalypse of Thomas in Old English’, Leeds Studies in English, NS 19 (1998), 333–46Google Scholar; Wright, ‘The Apocalypse of Thomas’.

⁴⁵ Blickling Homilies, ed. Morris, vii, 94–5: ‘forþon we sceolon nu geþencean, þa hwile þe we magan & motan, ure saula þearfe, the læs we foryldon þas alyfdon tid, & þonne willon þone we ne magon. Uton beon eaþmode & mildheorte & ælmesgeorne, facen & leasunga & æfæste frin urum heortum adoon & afyrran, & beon rihtwise on urum mode wið oþre men; forþon þe God sylfa þonne ne gymeþ nænges mannes hreowe; ne þær nænige þingunga ne beoþ; ac biþ þonne reþra [&] þearlwisra þonne ænig wilde deor, oþþe æfre ænig mod gewurde. & swa myccle swa þæs mannes miht beo mare, & he biþ weligra on þisse worlde, swa him þonne se uplica Dema mare tosecþ’.

⁴⁶ Gatch, ‘Eschatology’, 127–8; Foxhall Forbes, Heaven and Earth, 116–18; and see, for example, the collection of texts in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Junius 85 + 86, Gneuss, no. 642, discussed by Jonathan Wilcox, ‘The Use of Ælfric's Homilies: MSS Oxford Bodleian Library, Junius 85 and 86 in the Field’, in A Companion to Ælfric, ed. Magennis and Swan, 345–68.

⁴⁷ The Vercelli Homilies, ed. Scragg, 259–60; see Ælfric's Catholic Homilies: Introduction, Commentary and Glossary, ed. Malcolm Godden, EETS SS 18 (Oxford, 2000), 660; and Clayton, Mary, ‘Delivering the Damned: A Motif in Old English Homiletic Prose’, Medium Aevum, 55 (1986), 92–101Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ See the analyses of Dalbey, ‘Hortatory Tone in the Blickling Homilies’; Zacher, Preaching.

⁴⁹ This separation is beginning to break down; see, for example, Snooks, B., The Anglo-Saxon Chancery (Woodbridge, 2015Google Scholar); Bremmer, Rolf, ‘The Final Countdown: Apocalyptic Expectations in Anglo-Saxon Charters’, in Time and Eternity: the Medieval Discourse, ed. Jaritz, Gerhard and Moreno-Riaño, Gerson (Turnhout, 2003), 501–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Woodman, D., ‘Æthelstan A and the Rhetoric of Rule’, Anglo-Saxon England, 42 (2013), 217–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁰ The examples are numerous and predate the reign of Æthelred. See, for example, on the aging of the world and the approaching End, S 909 and S 912 dated to 1004 and 1005; on the uncertainty of leaving earthly inheritance to heirs, e.g. S 846, S 848 and S 904; on the admonitions of the wise or the Fathers on the need to gain heavenly riches, S 834, S 835. For the trope of the deterioration of the world at the end of time in literary texts, Cross, J. E., ‘Aspects of Microcosm and Macrocosm in Old English Literature’, in Studies in Old English Literature in Honor of Arthur G. Brodeur, ed. Greenfield, S. (Eugene, 1963), 1–22Google Scholar; and see Godden, ‘The Millennium’, 156.

⁵¹ S 880; J. M. Kemble, Codex Diplomaticus Aevi Saxonici (6 vols., 1839–48), no. 686. On the drafting of this charter, see Keynes, Diplomas, 110–11 and 124; and Cubitt, Catherine, ‘The Tenth-Century Benedictine Reform in England’, Early Medieval Europe, 6.1 (1997), 92Google Scholar.

⁵² Stafford, ‘Political Ideas in Late Tenth-Century England’.

⁵³ Roach, ´Public Rites and Private Wrongs´.

⁵⁴ S 891.

⁵⁵ S 893; Charters of Rochester, ed. A. Campbell, Anglo-Saxon Charters i (1973), no. 32, 42–4, at 43: ‘credens me et gratiam inunenire in conspectu apostoli . qui in populo suo mitissimus apparuit . et pro crucifigentibus se exorauit’. And see also below n. 57.

⁵⁶ Blickling Homilies, ed. Morris, vii, 94–6.

⁵⁷ This allusion is obscure and I have not been able to trace this reference to Andrew's final intercession in the published editions. However, it may echo Christ's own intercession on the cross since Andrew's death echoes that of Christ. I hope to return to this problem in a later publication. See the passions published by in Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha, ed. R. A. Lipsius and M. Bonnet (3 vols., 1891–1903), ii. 1, 1–37. For the transmission of the apocryphal passions to England, see Biggs, Frederick M., The Apocrypha: Sources of Anglo-Saxon Culture (Kalamazoo, 2007)Google Scholar, 38–9 and 42; and Biggs, ‘Ælfric's Andrew’.

⁵⁸ S 895; Charters of Sherborne, ed. M. A. O’Donovan, Anglo-Saxon Charters iii (Oxford, 1988), no. 11, 39–44; and see Simon Keynes, ‘King Æthelred's Charter for Sherborne Abbey, 998’, and also his ‘Wulfsige, Monk of Glastonbury, Abbot of Westminster (c. 990–3), and Bishop of Sherborne (c. 993–1002)’, both in St Wulfsige and Sherborne Essays to Celebrate the Millennium of the Benedictine Abbey 998–1998, ed. Katherine Barker, David A. Hinton and Alan Hunt (Oxford, 2005), 10–14 and 53–94.

⁵⁹ Charters of Burton Abbey, ed. P. H. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters ii (1979), no. 28, 48–53. On Benedictine foundation charters, see also Keynes, Simon, ‘King Æthelred's charter for Eynsham (1005)’, in Early Medieval Studies in Memory of Patrick Wormald, ed. Baxter, Stephen, Karkov, Catherine, Nelson, Janet L. and Pelteret, David (Farnham, 2009), 451–73Google Scholar, esp. 456–9.

⁶⁰ Charters of Shaftesbury Abbey, ed. S. E. Kelly, Anglo-Saxon Charters v (Oxford, 1996), no. 29, 114–22. On Æthelred and the cult of Edward the Martyr, see Keynes, Simon, ‘The Cult of King Edward the Martyr during the Reign of Æthelred the Unready’, in Gender and Historiography Studies in the Earlier Middle Ages in Honour of Pauline Stafford, ed. Nelson, Janet L., Reynolds, Susan and Johns, Susan M. (2012), 115–26Google Scholar.

⁶¹ See Kelly's notes, Charters of Shaftesbury, 120–1.

⁶² Ibid., 115–16.

⁶³ S 904; Kemble, Codex, no. 707.

⁶⁴ Stafford, Pauline, Queen Emma and Queen Edith: Queenship and Women's Power in Eleventh-Century England (Oxford, 1997), 139–40Google Scholar, 153.

⁶⁵ S 937; Charters of Abingdon, ed. Kelly, no. 129, 503–7.

⁶⁶ Keynes, Diplomas, 186–93; Cubitt, ‘Ælfric's Lay Patrons’, 171–84.

⁶⁷ See Gatch, Preaching and Theology, 12–104; Godden, ‘Apocalypse and Invasion’, 131–42, and ‘The Millennium’, 158–67; and Hill, Joyce, ‘Ælfric and Wulfstan: Two Views of the Millennium’, in Essays on Anglo-Saxon and Related Themes in Memory of Lynne Grundy, ed. Roberts, Jane and Nelson, Janet (2000), 231–5Google Scholar. Godden, ‘The Millennium’, 166–7, argues that Ælfric's apocalyptic urgency diminishes over his writing career.

⁶⁸ Ælfric's Catholic Homilies: The First Series Text, ed. Peter Clemoes, EETS SS 17 (Oxford, 1997) (hereafter CH i), 174–5: ‘eac for ðam ðe menn behofiað godre lare swiðost on þisum timan þe is geendung þyssere worulde. 7 beoð fela frecednyssa on mancynne ær đan þe se ende becume. swa swa ure drihten on his godspelle cwæð on his leorningcnihtum; þonne beoð swilce gedreccednyssa swilce næron næfre ær fram frymþe middangeardes; Manega lease cristas cumað on minum naman cweðende ic eom crist. 7 wyrcað fela tacna 7 wundra to bepæcenne mancynn…7 butan se ælmihtiga god ða dagas gescyrte. eall mennisc forwurde ac for his gecorenum he gescyrte ða dagas; Gehwa mæg þe eaðelicor ða toweardan costnunge acuman ðurh godes fultum. gif he bið þurh boclice lare getrymmed, for ðan ðe ða beoð gehealdene þe oð ende on geleafan þurhwuniað’. Translation from The Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church: The First Part containing The Sermones Catholici or Homilies of Aelfric, ed. and trans. Benjamin Thorpe (2 vols., 1844–6), i, 3–5.

⁶⁹ Godden, Malcolm, ‘Ælfric and the Vernacular Prose Tradition’, in The Old English Homily and its Background, ed. Szarmach, Paul E. (Albany, 1978), 99–117Google Scholar, at 99–102.

⁷⁰ Dominique Iogna-Prat, ‘Continence et virginité dans la conception clunisienne de l’ordre du monde autour de l’an mil’, Comptes-rendus de l’academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres (1985), 127–46; MacLean, ‘Reform, Queenship and the End of the World’.

⁷¹ CH i, no. 40, 524–30, at 525–6; and see Ælfric's Catholic Homilies: Introduction, ed. Godden, 334–44.

⁷² See the discussion in Godden, ‘The Millennium’, 158–62, and in his Ælfric's Catholic Homilies: Introduction, ed. Goddard, 334–44.

⁷³ CH i, no. 40, 609–12.

⁷⁴ Ælfric's Lives of Saints, ed. Walter W. Skeat, EETS 76 and 82 (2 vols., 1881–5; repr. 1966), 304–5: ‘þes tima is ende-next and ende þyssere worulde . and menn beoð geworhte wolice him betwynan . swa þaet se fæder winð wið his agenne sunu . and broðor wið oþerne to bealwe him sylfum’.

⁷⁵ Ælfric's Catholic Homilies: The Second Series Text, ed. Malcolm Godden, EETS SS 5 (Oxford, 1979) (hereafter CH ii), no. 39: ‘The Lord's day will come like a thief in the night. Men often say, Lo, now doomsday comes, because the prophecies are gone by, which were made concerning it. But war shall come upon war, tribulation upon tribulation, earthquake upon earthquake, famine upon famine, nation upon nation, and yet the bridegroom comes not. In like manner the six thousand years from Adam will be ended, and yet the bridegroom will tarry. How can we then know when he will come.’ Translation from Homilies, ed. Thorpe, ii, 569.

⁷⁶ Ælfric's Catholic Homilies: Introduction, ed. Godden, 654–6, 658.

⁷⁷ CH ii, no. 39, 373: ‘Some heretics said that the holy Mary, the mother of Christ, and some other saints, should after the doom, harrow the sinful from the devil’, translation from Homilies, ed. Thorpe, ii, 573. On this, see Godden, ‘Ælfric and the Vernacular Prose Tradition’, 101–2; Clayton, ‘Delivering the Damned’; Clayton, Mary, The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge, 1990), 253–7Google Scholar.

⁷⁸ Homilies of Ælfric: A Supplementary Collection, ed. John C. Pope, EETS 259 and 260 (2 vols., 1967–8), ii, 783.

⁷⁹ Contra Godden, ‘The Millennium’, 166–7. I hope to return to Ælfric's continuing apocalyptic concerns in a separate article.

⁸⁰ Homilies, ed. Bethurum, 278–98; Gatch, Preaching and Theology, 105–16; Lionarons, Homiletic Writings, 43–74.

⁸¹ These are nos. 1a (in Latin), 1b, 2–5, in Homilies, ed. Bethurum, 113–41. They are accessible in a translation by Joyce Lionarons at http://webpages.ursinus.edu/jlionarons/wulfstan/wulfstan.html, from which my translations are taken.

⁸² Homilies, ed. Bethurum, 58.

⁸³ Malcolm Godden, ‘The Relations of Wulfstan and Ælfric: A Reassessment’, in Wulfstan, ed. Townend, 353–74, at 370. And see the important review, cited by Godden: John C. Pope, review of Dorothy Bethurum, The Homilies of Wulfstan, in Modern Language Notes, 74 (1959), 338–9.

⁸⁴ Wulfstan Sammlung der ihm zugeschriebenen Homilien nebst Untersuchungen über ihre Echtheit, ed. Arthur Napier (Zurich, repr. Dublin, 1967). On the difficulties of dating the Sermo Lupi, see Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, ed. Dorothy Whitelock, rev. edn (1976), 1–5; Homilies, ed. Bethurum, 22–4; and Godden, ‘Apocalypse and Invasion’, 143–6; Dien, Stephanie, ‘Sermo Lupi ad Anglos: The Order and Date of the Three Versions’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 76 (1975), 561–70Google Scholar; eadem, ‘The Thematic Structure of the Sermo Lupi ad Anglos’, Anglo-Saxon England, 6 (1977), 175–95; and Jonathan Wilcox, ‘Wulfstan's Sermo Lupi ad Anglos as a Political Performance 16 February 1014 and Beyond’, in Wulfstan, ed. Townend, 388–92, and valuable summary and insights by Keynes, ‘An Abbot’, 203–13, who notes on 209 the evidence for a version preached in 1012. See too Lionarons, Homiletic Writings, 147–63. Joyce Lionarons, ‘Napier Homily L: Wulfstan's Eschatology at the Close of his Career’, in Wulfstan, ed. Townend, 413–28.

⁸⁵ Homilies, ed. Bethurum, ii, 119–22. For the relative dating of the eschatological sermons, see Homilies, ed. Bethurum, 282, who establishes the order, ii, iii, ia and ib, iv and v. And see Sara M. Pons Sanz, Norse-Derived Vocabulary in Late Old English Texts Wulfstan's Works: A Case Study (Odense, 2007), 25. Wulfstan's eschatological sermons are discussed by Godden, ‘The Millennium’, in their order of printing in Bethurum, rather than her chronological order.

⁸⁶ Homilies, ed. Bethurum, iii, 123–7.

⁸⁷ Ibid., ia and ib – the Old English represents a modified version of the Latin.

⁸⁸ Ibid., iv, 128–33, at 128: ‘Nu bið swype rape Antecristes tima’; ibid., 129: ‘Đa ðe wæron forðferde for hund gearum oððon gyt firnor, wel þa magan beon nu geclænsode. We motan nyde þæt stiðre þolian, gyf we clæne beon sceolon þonne se dom cymð, nu we þæne fyrst nabbað þe þa hæfdon þe wiðforan is wæron.’

⁸⁹ Ibid., v, 134–41.

⁹⁰ II Timothy 3:1–9; Homilies, ed. Bethurum, v, 134–41; ibid., 136: ‘Ne man God ne lufað swa swa man scolde, ne manna getrywða to ahte ne standað, ac unriht ricsað wide 7 side, 7 tealte getrywða syndon mid mannum, 7 þæt us gesyne on mænigfealde wisan, gecnawe se ðe cunne.’

⁹¹ The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition V, MS C, ed. Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe (Cambridge, 2001), 91, ‘Her on þissum geare wæs se micla hungor geond Angelcyn swylce nan man ær ne gemunde swa grimne.’

⁹² Homilies, ed Bethurum, iv, lines 68–9, 138. The interpolation is present in the two earliest of the three MSS of this homily, but is omitted in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS 343. See Lionarons, Homiletic Writings, 62–7, who argues with Jost and Pope, for its possible original inclusion in the sermon. Karl Jost, Wulfstanstudien, Schweizer Anglistische Arbeiten 23 (Bern, 1950), 191–2, and Pope, review, 338–9. For this interpolation, see http://webpages.ursinus.edu/jlionarons/wulfstan/IVframe.html, accessed 20 May 2015.

⁹³ Councils, ed. Whitelock, Brett and Brooke, c. 7, i, 366. The Enham code survives in one Latin (VI Æthelred) and two Old English texts (V and VI Æthelred). The vernacular VI Æthelred, printed by Liebermann, Die Gesetze, i, 246–9, c. 7; 248 also contains this prohibition. Wormald, Making, 332–5, argues that this text is a later revision by Wulfstan, closer in time to 1018. He raised the possibility that the Latin V Æthelred may also represent a later text. But for an alternative view, see Councils, ed. Whitelock, Brett and Brooke, i, 338–43; Jost, Wulfstanstudien, 35–43; and Kenneth Sisam, ‘The Relationship of Æthelred's Codes V and VI’, in his Studies in the History of Old English Literature (Oxford, 1953; repr. 1998), 278–87, and Keynes, ‘An Abbot’, 177–8.

⁹⁴ Councils, ed. Whitelock, Brett and Brooke, cc. 40 and 40.1, i, 373.

⁹⁵ On the close relation between Wulfstan's preaching and his lawcodes, see Lawson, M. K., ‘Archbishop Wulfstan and the Homiletic Element in the Laws of Æthelred II’, English Historical Review, 107 (1992), 565–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and see Wormald, Patrick, The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century (Oxford, 1999), 451–4Google Scholar. Wormald suggests the Old English VI Æthelred may have been preliminary to Wulfstan's 1018 code and notes its similarities to the sermon, Wulfstan Sammlung, ed. Napier, no. L, an eschatological homily. See my discussion of the parallels between Wulfstan's eschatological preaching and his lawcodes forthcoming in the Review of English Studies (2016).

⁹⁶ Wormald, ‘Archbishop Wulfstan’, 244.

⁹⁷ Wormald, Making, 453.

⁹⁸ O’Leary, Arguing the Apocalypse, 10.

⁹⁹ See above n. 37.

¹⁰⁰ The Latin VI Æthelred opens with a statement that Æthelred issued the rulings, prompted by the urgings of himself and Archbishop Ælfheah of Canterbury, and it concludes with a note stating that the leading men swore to observe them, see Councils, ed. Whitelock, Brett and Brooke, c. 40.2, i, 362 and 373.