After 1066 William the Conqueror replaced all the landowners and bishops of England with his own appointees except for the Bishop of Worcester, Wulstan. Archbishop Lanfranc, who was instrumental in getting the Pope’s support for the ‘crusade’ against England, asked Wulstan to give up his diocese. Tradition says that he thrust his crosier into a gap in the stonework of the tomb of Edward the Confessor and no one could pull it out but Wulstan. Whatever the truth of this, Wulstan alone kept his place under the new regime.
As a young man Wulstan was noticed for his honesty and dedication. He had joined the Benedictine monastery in Worcester in 1038 where he became well known for the way his life and his preaching went together. He walked the walk as well as he talked the talk. His reputation for pastoral work grew and in 1062 he was appointed Bishop of Worcester.
Wulstan was evidently a very attractive man and he had to resist the advances of women all his life and the temptations that went with them. After the Conquest he devoted his life to bridging over the gulf between the Norman conquerors and the beaten English. When two French adventurers tried to rebel against King William in 1075, Wulstan raised a sufficient force to put it down. He had had enough of war and instability.
The French and Italian bishops that came with the Conqueror accepted Wulstan. If a diocese fell vacant Wulstan was invited to look after it and to keep it as an efficient worshipping community until the Pope should appoint another. There is a slight connection with Durham in that Wulstan helped consecrate the new Bishop of Durham in 1081. He protected the church from the depredations of Norman fortune hunters by compiling transcriptions of documents concerning the rights and privileges of church properties.
This is not to say that he appeased William. He claimed and kept the right to govern the lands in his own diocese. The rights he assumed were even recognised in the Domesday Book in 1086. This was not a political stance. Wulstan had the rights and interests of the Christian community at heart. This was especially evident in the way he vigorously championed the cause of slaves being imported from Ireland into Bristol. He was successful in having the trade stopped.
Wulstan became famous as a healer. William of Malmesbury, writing in about 1120, describes how Wulstan blessed a builder as he fell from the roof of Worcester cathedral. The man stood up unharmed and blessed the bishop. He also tells how Wulstan cured a monk who was dying in the throes of a severe fever. Wulstan blessed the monk who recovered immediately. He also cured King Harold’s daughter of a tumour that affected her eyesight by making the sign of the cross over her.
Wulstan was a very unusual bishop for his time. He was the first bishop to pay regular visits to every parish in his diocese to comfort and encourage those communities. He insisted that his clergy tried very hard to live virtuous lives and he was a great supporter of clerical celibacy. He was just as famous for his poverty as for his miracles. He lived a very simple and holy life, spending his nights in prayer and eating very little. He became a vegetarian, it is said, after the smell of a roast goose distracted him from his prayers. Wulstan is a patron saint of vegetarians and dieters.
Wulstan is a saint because of his life devoted to prayer and service of the community in very difficult times. His fame spread throughout Ireland, Scotland and as far as Rome and Jerusalem. His memory was venerated widely very soon after his death in 1095. His burial place in Worcester (destroyed many years later by Henry VIII) soon became a place of pilgrimage and many miracles were attributed to Wulstan’s intercession.
Author: C B Whittle