St. Wulfstan in Kempsey

This is a story from the life of Saint Wulfstan, about how the water he had washed his hands in after mass was used to cure a leper.

Reference: Winterbottom, M. (2002). William of Malmesbury: Saints' Lives: Lives of Ss. Wulfstan, Dunstan, Patrick, Benignus and Indract (Oxford Medieval Texts). Oxford: OUP.

Page 75 -77

7. There is a vill in the see called Kempsey¹ where Wulfstan was staying because it could supply the necessities of life. There was a pauper there, come from Kent, who had taken his seat among others begging for their daily alms. Poor fellow, quite apart from his neediness, what they call the King's Evil² had crept up on him, infecting all his limbs with its slow wasting that you would have said he did not have a real body at all, but was carried around in a living corpse³. Everyone shuddered at the sight of him, for he dripped all over with a festering pus. And everyone shrank from listening to him, for they thought he did not so much talk as wail tunelessly. For example, the bishop's steward Arthur⁴, on whose testimony this and other stories rest, though the pauper frequently begged him not to think it demeaning to talk with him, more than once turned away. 2. Finally, out of respect for an oath in God's name, he paused and gave him a chance to talk. In a low murmur scarcely to be understood, the man gasped out that he came from Kent, and (as he could see) was wracked by an appalling disease. He had three times been told in a vivid dream to look to the revered bishop for a hope of a cure, and that was why he had come; he begged Arthur in God's name to let his master know this. The servant handed on the message, but had a unfriendly reception, for Wulfstan had no thought of exposing himself to the perils of glory among men. Indeed he said it was not for him to attempt any miracle, let alone one so great as this. 3. Arthur should go and give the sick man food and clothing, to compensate him for this kindness at least for the fatigue of the journey. And so the pauper's message would have been in vain if the thoughtful priest Æthelmær⁵ had not intervened. So respected was this man's life that he would have won second place for holiness after Wulfstan himself had he not made his sanctity burdensome by the sternness of his character. It is a fact that the bishop often cut himself off short in the middle of some pleasant conversation¹ if the priest winked or nodded his disapproval. But to balance this (?), Æthelmær was so chaste and sober that envy could find no handle for justified criticism, and friendship no scope for false praise. Taking all this into account, the bishop had a high regard for him, and heard his mass avidly every day, for they had a competition in religious observance: no day was to go by without a mass being offered. 4. So Æthelmær gave the sick man a lodging, comforting and coddling him. What is more, he contrived a way of obtaining surreptitiously from the bishop a miracle he could not extort openly. He made use of the water with which Wulfstan had washed those holy hands after mass. The priest gave this to the servant I have mentioned and told him to pour it into the patient’s bath. In went the leper, a horrid sight with his spotty skin². But miraculously the swollen boils went down, the deadly poison drained away, and, in a word, his whole skin was rejuvenated and became as clear as a child’s. The itchy scabs on his head disappeared, and his hair was renewed as his locks grew again.

¹ Kempsey (Worcs), formerly an independent minister, by Wulfstan’s time an Episcopal estate centre, later an Episcopal manor. S154 JW s.a. 868, Dyer Lords and Peasants, p.11, 28-30, 36-7, 45; Sims-Williams, Religion and Literature, pp 170-1, 375-6.

² GP, c. 73 (p 145), and below, in 18. 1. See GR, c 222 n, for the various diseases which went under the name of the ‘King’s Evil’ To the literature cited there, add K. Manchester and C. Roberts, ‘The palaeopathology of leprosy in Britain, a review’, World Archaeology, xxi (1989), 265-72 ³ Cf GP, c. 276 (p 440)

⁴ As Mason comments (p. 178 n 66), the name is not common in this period. This man may therefore be Arthur the Frenchman, in 1086 a tenant of Westminster Abbey in Powick (Worcs) DB 16 Worcestershire, 8 10e

⁵ In GP, x 141 (p 282), William mistakenly calls him Egelricus. He was probably Æthelmær the priest, whose death is entered in the Calendar in Bodl. Libr, MS Hatton 113 (S. XI, Worcester), on 29 March pr. E S Dewick and W. H. Frere, The Leofric Collectar compared with the Collectar of St Wulfstan, together with Kindred Documents of Exeter and Worcester (2 vols., Henry Bradshaw Soc , xlv, 1914 for 1913, lvi, 1921 for 1918), ii 601

¹ A striking reminiscence of Suet , Tib xxi, 2 ‘ut nonnumquam remissiores hilariorwsque sermones superueniente eo abrumperet’ (not employed in GP loc cit.).

² In GP , c 73 (p 145) is another description of a leper, said to have the ‘King’s Disease’.

© 2001 - Andy Morrall

Last updated 1^st November 2003.

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