VOLSTANO (VULSTANUS) DI WINCHESTER

VOLSTANUS (Vulstanus) of WINCHESTER. - A monk of the monastery of St Peter (later St Swithun) in Winchester, died after 996.

His name appears among the witnesses subscribing to a document of 965, with the title of *minister*. William of Malmesbury (De gestis regum Anglorum, II, 149; ed. W. Stubbs, in Rerum Britanniae medii aevi scriptores, XC, London 1887, p. 166) calls him *cantor Wintonensis* (i.e., of Winchester). He was a pupil of St Æthelwold (q.v.). No further details of his life are known.

He wrote in prose a Life of his master (Acta SS. Ord. s. Benedicti, V, Venice n.d., pp. 628 ff., reprinted in PL 137, 81-104), which includes an elegy in elegiac couplets on the dedication of the church of Winchester (PL 137, 100 ff.) and a lost treatise, *De tonorum harmonia*, which William of Malmesbury (loc. cit.) declares to be “valde utile.” His chief renown, however, rests on his hymn-writing. Among his works are a metrical epistle on the life of St Swithun (PL 137, 107-14), two hymns (one in elegiac couplets, the other in Sapphic strophes) in honour of St Æthelwold (ibid., 104 ff.), sequences for St Æthelwold (Anal. hymnica, 40 [1902], pp. 180-82), St Swithun (ibid., 37 [1901], pp. 265 ff. and 40 [1902], pp. 288 ff.), St Birinus (ibid., 40 [1902], pp. 154 ff.), and St Birinus and Swithun together (ibid., 37 [1901], pp. 138 ff.). Blume (q.V. BIBLICA.) has moreover claimed for V. four alphabetical hymns of 23 elegiac couplets plus 4 introductory couplets, with rhymed or assonant hexameters, dedicated respectively to St Æthelwold, St Birinus and two to St Swithun; the first three were in the 12th century reworked by Orderic Vital, monk of St-Évroul, who substituted passages referring directly to the church of Winchester (cf. Anal. hymnica, 48 [1905], pp. 9-18).

Frequent echoes of Sedulius and Venantius Fortunatus are found in his verse.