WULSTAN (Vulstanus) of Winchester. - Monk of the monastery of St. Peter (later St. Swithun) at Winchester, d. after 1906.
His name appears among the witnesses who subscribed a document of 965, with the appellation 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 Wintoniensis" (that is, "of Winchester"). He was a pupil of St. Æthelwold (v.). Of his life no other information is available.
He wrote in prose a Vita of his master (Acta SS. Ord. 1. Benedicti, V, Venice n.d., p. 628-629, reproduced in PL 137, 81-104), into which is inserted a poem in elegiac couplets on the dedication of the church of Winchester (PL 137, 100 ff.) and a treatise, lost, "de tonorum harmonia," which William of Malmesbury (loc. cit.) asserts to be "valde utile." His greater fame, however, is that of hymnographer. There are known 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 honor of St. Æthelwold (ibid., 104 ff.), sequences for St. Æthelwold (Anal. hymnica, 40 [1902], pp. 180-82), St. Swithun (ibid., 37 [1901], p. 265 ff., and 40 [1902], p. 288 ff.), St. Birinus (ibid., 40 [1902], p. 154 ff.), and Sts. Birinus and Swithun together (ibid., 37 [1901], p. 138 ff.). Blume (v. bibl.) has moreover claimed for V. four abecedarian hymns of 23 elegiac couplets plus two introductory couplets, with rhymed or assonant hexameters, dedicated respectively to St. Æthelwold, to St. Birinus and two to St. Swithun: the first three were in the 12th century reworked by Orderic Vitalis, monk of St-Evroul, who replaced the parts that referred directly to the Church of Winchester (cf. Anal. hymnica, 48 [1905], pp. 9-18).
Frequent in his verses are echoes of Sedulius and of Venantius Fortunatus.