Unræd: Intellectual Thought and Rule in Æthelredian England

Mid-America Medieval Association, 2019

This paper was presented at the 43rd annual Mid-America Medieval Association Conference (14 September 2019), whose theme was "What Lies Beneath." This paper provides a brief overview of post-Norman Conquest interpretations of the life, personality, and activity of Æthelred II "the Unready" of England, comparing them to what contemporary Anglo-Saxon sources say about the king. Numerous unflattering legends surrounding King Æthelred can be traced to the 12th century historian William of Malmesbury, while material from John of Worcester's 12th century chronicle will also be examined. In addition, popular interpretations from the 19th and 20th centuries show how Æthelred's unenviable reputation has progressed into the modern era. These interpretations are then compared to Anglo-Saxon sources for the activity and behavior of Æthelred. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, for example, portrays the king more favorably-as a relatively typical, if unlucky, Anglo-Saxon king-and the Life of Oswald, while not an unbiased source, casts doubt on his supposed personality flaws. By revisiting these earliest sources, this paper argues that many of the commonly-repeated legends about Æthelred the Unready do not comfortably align with the earliest sources for the reign.

English Studies , 2014

The sometimes unfortunate decisions made by King Æthelred II during his reign have cast him in an unsavory light, so much so that his various accomplishments have been overlooked. The negative anecdotes and unflattering legends chronicled about him after his death by medieval historians such as William of Malmesbury have left a lasting negative impression. Although detailing Æthelred’s failings is a familiar subject, he installed a number of important judicial laws and ecclesiastical charters that proved beneficial to the country during and after his reign. Æthelred’s legal implementations might not offer enough support to repair his reputation from the poor position it holds in the eyes of history’s critics; however, some of his legislative decisions deserve critical attention and commendation. This paper examines the extent to which the medieval justice system was shaped by Æthelred’s judicial policies. Additionally, this paper reconsiders the legislative decisions in the third quarter of Æthelred’s reign which contributed to thriving ecclesiastical, and by association artistic, communities. Perhaps it is easier to focus on Æthelred’s failures because there seems to be no shortage of them; however, the persistent focus on his shortcomings misrepresents him and deprives us of gaining a more accurate image of his character. Despite the continued Viking attacks from AD 993 to 1006, Anglo-Saxon England maintained a generally stable period of governance that contributed to a flourish of literature, liturgical texts, manuscripts and art. Therefore, this paper focuses on the rule of Æthelred II during the final decade of the 10th- century until 1006 in order to shed light on a relatively successful period in which implementation of specific legislative and ecclesiastical policies proved beneficial for Anglo-Saxon England and its future.

The English Historical Review

This article explains why Æthelflaed, ruler of Mercia, mattered to writers of history in twelfth-century England. It argues that these writers evaluated and compared rulers based not on sex or bloodline, but on the quality of a ruler’s achievements relative to the set and scale of challenges the ruler faced. They thought Æthelflaed remarkable because her triumphs for Mercia distinguished her from other rulers. The article shows that a new understanding of attitudes in twelfth-century England towards rulers, past and present, is required. It accounts for the absence of gendered comments about rulers, as well as the presence of non-binary concepts of gender, in medieval writing. It also challenges the enduring idea that Latin writers imposed a shared, Wessex-dominated national vision on the English past. They asserted Mercia’s independence under Æthelflaed’s sole rule, which shows that English regional interests persisted in the historical imagination long after the Norman Conquest.

The life and writings of Aelred of Rievaulx (1110-67) provide some of the most important material for the study of Cistercian monasticism in 12th-century England, Cistercian teachings and beliefs, and the relationship of the order with other ecclesiastical and secular bodies. To date, the corpus of surviving works attributed to Aelred includes almost 200 sermons, 13 treatises and seven historical and hagiographical works. Among modern audiences, Aelred is regarded as one of the foremost thinkers of 12th-century England, at times on par with the great Bernard of Clairvaux, with whom Aelred is known to have had regular contact and with whom Aelred's biographer; a link which inspired Knowles' now famous description of Aelred as the 'Bernard of the North'.(1) Aelred provides the subject for the latest addition to the Brill Companions to the Christian Tradition series. This is a book which easily fulfils Brill's brief to produce 'full balanced accounts at an advanced level' and 'synthesis of debate and the state of scholarship', with particularly notable strengths in the latter.(2) This collection has been curated by Marsha Dutton who, as Professor Emerita at Ohio State University, Executive Editor of Cistercian Publications, editor of several of Aelred's works, and author of numerous studies on Aelred's life and themes within his writings, needs little introduction to Aelred specialists.(3) Dutton is author of two chapters, with the remaining eight authors drawn from the ranks of the established academic field of Aelred and Cistercian studies. This companion makes a worthy and timely addition to Brill's series, focusing on one of the most important thinkers in 12th-century English theology and spirituality, and drawing on a number of recent new editions of Aelred's works, many of which have been produced by Dutton. Dutton's introduction is carefully planned, introducing the reader to Aelred's life and works in just enough detail so as to provide sufficient coverage, but without too much content so as to confuse the novice. Dutton expertly outlines the case for Aelred as a subject for attention, describing his treatises on spiritualism as his 'greatest contribution to Western thought', and portraying Aelred as a 'significant contributor' to his three main fields of writing, noted here as spiritual thought; history-writing, and discourse on English conquests abroad, which is here termed 'paracolonialism' (p. 1). Dutton's summary of Aelredian scholarship reflects on the major trends in Aelred studies from Dumont and Squire to more recent developments, recognising debts owed to modern Cistercian scholars, before setting out the agenda for the rest of the volume.

A companion to Ælfric, 2009

The Age of Alfred: Translation, Adaptation, Innovation, ed. A. Faulkner and F. Leneghan. Studies in Old English Literature, 3, Turnhout, Brepols, 2023

The Old English Orosius (OEO) has been recently reassessed as one of the more effective textual representations of the affirmation of Wessex, not only in local matters – as the defender of the Angelcynn from Viking raids (Pezzarossa 2013) or the ultimate expression of anweald in Britain (Kretschmar 1987) – but also, and much more ambitiously, in whole western Europe (Harris 2001; Leneghan 2015). If we agree with the view of OEO as a manifesto of the newly acquired role of the house of Wessex as heir of the Roman Empire, one would expect to find a sheer amount of innovation in the section related to the Roman empire and its leaders. In fact, the last three books of Orosius’ Historiae (OH) have undergone a massive work of reshaping: Bk 5 and Bk 6 were merged together (OEO Bk 5) and heavily abridged, while Bk 7 (OEO BK 6) was reshaped so that almost each emperor corresponded to one specific chapter. Although these innovations have already been observed by critics, they have never gone beyond the point of mere comment. In this view, particularly interesting is the re-elaboration of the section devoted to Cesar, traditionally acknowledged as the first Roman emperor. In this paper I argue that the goal of the translator is not only to transform Cesar into a positive example of ruler, but also – and more importantly – to create a parallelism with King Alfred’s life and deeds which might be functional to the legitimation of him and his offspring as Britain’s legitimate overlords.

This article consists of a detailed study of a series of extraordinary diplomas issued by King Æthelred ‘the Unready’ during the 990s. These diplomas restore lands and rights to churches which had earlier been despoiled by the king and his advisors and their wording indicates that they were intended as a conscious gesture of penitence. As such, these documents were of central political importance and it is argued that they can be fruitfully mined for evidence of Æthelred’s own thoughts and feelings in these years; these diplomas might well be considered to preserve Æthelred’s own ‘voice’.

Parergon, 2011