THE FATHER OF KING ERWIG

Building Legitimacy. Political Discourses and Forms of Legitimation in Medieval Societies, Leiden-Boston, Brill (The Medieval Mediterranean), pp. 107-137, 2004

Contribution to Building Legitimacy. Political Discourses and Forms of Legitimation in Medieval Societies, edited by Isabel Alfonso, Hugh Kennedy and Julio Escalona. ISBN: 978-90-47-40268-8

In what is known as the List of addresses to the foreign rulers of De cerimoniis aulae Byzantinae (II, 48) by , there is an address to a ruler called "king of Francia". This paper is devoted to an attempt to find the answer to the question of who this "king of Francia" might have been. Judging from the fact that in that address both the Roman emperors and the ruler it concerns are given very exalted epithets, the address to the "king of Francia" designates a ruler who was, for various reasons, considered by the imperial chancery more distinguished and more important than other rulers of Western Europe. Current opinion holds that the ruler in question was Otto I and that the address reflects the then prevailing view in Constantinople of Otto as the most serious candidate for the crown of the Western Empire. According to the research of Constantine Zuckerman, the List of addresses, along with other "diplomatic chapters" of the Book of Ceremonies, was composed in 946. In September 944 the marriage was concluded between Romanus II, the son of Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, and Bertha, natural daughter of Hugh, then king of Italy. Describing that event, contemporary Byzantine writers refer to Hugh as the "king of Francia". This paper examines the possibility of linking this "king of Francia" with the one in the List of addresses, on the basis of information concerning King Hugh in another work by emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus -De administrando imperio.

Medieval Marriage. Selected Proceedings of the 2013 Postgraduate Conference held by the Graduate Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Reading, edited by Charlotte Pickard, 2013

Eadwig the All Fair, king of the English (r. 955-957/9), was, according to the majority of eleventh and twelfth century authors who described him, 'a wanton youth, and one who misused his personal beauty in lascivious behaviour'. 1 Chroniclers and hagiographers alike linked this 'shameless conduct' with Eadwig's poor governance of the church and saw his loss of power in Mercia and Northumbria as apt divine punishment. Accounts of his vice centred on a beautiful kinswoman of his, AEthelgifu, and her daughter, AElfgifu, who both 'enticed him to intimacy '. 2 According to the earliest Life of St Dunstan, matters came to a head in January 956 when Eadwig mysteriously abandoned his own coronation feast. Archbishop Oda demanded that the king be found and only Abbot Dunstan of Glastonbury dared to incur the royal wrath. He discovered Eadwig 'wallowing between the two of them in evil fashion, as if in a vile sty'. 3 Dunstan rebuked the women, hauled Eadwig to his feet and dragged the unwilling king back to his coronation banquet. AEthelgifu swore revenge and duly engineered Dunstan's exile.

Anglo-Saxon England, 2016

Scholarly understanding of the reign of Edward the Confessor is hampered by doubt surrounding the date, authorship and purpose of the Vita AEdwardi regis, its chief biographical source. This article rejects readings that see it as a work written after the Conquest, arguing instead that it was begun in 1065-6 and tried to foresee what would happen in that time of upheaval by optimistic inspection of precedents from Godwine family history, tempered by anxious reflections on pagan Antiquity. Through the prophetic insights of history it finely balanced Edith's hopes and fears. The second part of the article considers evidence that helps us to identify an author.

Notes and Queries, 2016

A note describing a new text of a Middle English prophetic quatrain and identifying this quatrain as an excerpt from a longer verse prophecy attributed to Thomas of Erceldoune (New Index of Middle English Verse 365).

Revista de literatura medieval, 2023

Visigothic Symposia 1, 2017

There is solid evidence of the narrow relations – occasionally tense or conflictual, and at other times cordial – that existed between the Catholic church and the monarchy in Visigoth Hispania. In any case, the two sources of power cannot be separated, nor can the history of the seventh century be understood without taking into account the relationship between the church and the monarchy. One piece of evidence for this is the so-called leges in confirmatione concilii: laws enacted by the kings in the council meetings, at which they were to be sanctioned by the ecclesiastical authorities. Of these, scholars can speak of six laws, the first promulgated by King Reccared (586-601) in the Third Council of Toledo in 589, with the others enacted in the reigns of King Erwig (680-687) and King Egica (687-701). However, before these kings and laws, one can observe the legislative role of the councils. The Eighth Council of Toledo (653), in which king Recceswinth submitted to the bishop’s consideration the possibility of cancelling some laws of his father, and royal predecessor, is especially crucial. Recceswinth’s Tomus regius demonstrates the role of the council as a legislative chamber and judicial tribunal, to which the king requested to amend the legal texts as he deemed appropriate. This role would be followed by successive kings, in particular, Erwig and Egica, who would both use several councils to procure the church’s intervention in the drafting or supervision of laws and the promulgation of their leges in confirmatione concilii. In this essay, I analyze these laws, their possible origin, scope and content and their role at the heart of all Visigothic legislation, in which some of the laws promulgated in the councils were included.

Isidorianum, 2023

Though the details about Gregory of Elvira’s personal life and much of his ecclesial work are sparse, we do possess information concerning his pastoral concerns and his position in the Christologi- cal disputes of his era. These insights come from his own writings as well as the comments offered to him and about him from his contemporaries. His writings demonstrate a rather wide-ranging familiarity with west- ern theologians such as Tertullian, Novatian, Lactantius, and Hilary, but Gregory was not simply a cop- yist. He was willing to utilize and then expand upon his sources as he saw fit, and this is especially visible in his Christological materials. This article will examine these influences on Gregory, especially regarding his promotion of the Nicene creed, both from his setting in Roman Spain and from the literary and theolog- ical sources he drew upon. These demonstrate that Gregory support- ed the theology of the Nicene creed even as he learned to refine his own language and expand his defense of the creed and its key term homousios.

South African Journal of Art History, 2000

In this article a manuscript from the Cambridge University Library, viz.: La estoire de Sainte Aedward Ie Rei is discussed with particular reference to its authorship and its possible date of manufacture as well as highlighting its special insights into the nature of medieval kingship.