Table Of ContentAlfred the Great
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Alfred the Great
Papers from the Eleventh-Centenary Conferences
Edited by the late
TIMOTHY REUTER
First published 2003 by Ashgate Publishing
Published 2016 by Routledge
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Copyright © 2003 Timothy Reuter
The editor has asserted his moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to
be identified as the editor of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any
form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
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without permission in writing from the publishers.
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Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only
for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Alfred the Great. - (Studies in early medieval Britain)
1.Alfred, King of England 2.Great Britain - Kings and
rulers - Biography 3.Great Britain - History - Alfred,
871-899
I.Reuter, Timothy
942' .0164'092
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Alfred the Great / edited by Timothy Reuter.
p. cm. -- (Studies in early medieval Britain)
Papers originally delivered at a conference at the Wessex Medieval Centre, University
of Southampton, Sept. 1999 and in London in Oct. 1999.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-7546-0957-X (alk. paper)
1. Alfred, King of England, 849-899--Congresses. 2. Great Britain--History--Alfred,
871-899--Congresses. 3. Anglo-Saxons--Kings and rulers--Biography--Congresses. 4.
Great Britain--Kings and rulers--Biography--Congresses. 5. Wessex (England)--Kings
and rulers--Biography--Congresses. I. Reuter, Timothy. II. Series.
DA153 .A39 2003
942.01'64'092--dc21
[B]
2002071148
ISBN 9780754609575 (hbk)
ISBN 9781138248304 (pbk)
Typeset by Manton Typesetters, Louth, Lincolnshire, UK.
STUDIES IN EARLY MEDIEVAL BRITAIN – 3
Contents
Foreword vii
Preface ix
Abbreviations xi
List of illustrations xv
INTRODUCTION
1 Placing King Alfred 3
James Campbell
THE SOURCES
2 Asser’s reading 27
Michael Lapidge
3 Alfredian arithmetic – Asserian architectonics 49
David Howlett
4 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the idea of Rome in Alfredian
literature 63
Susan Irvine
5 Ædificia nova: treasures of Alfred’s reign 79
Leslie Webster
ALFREDIAN LITERATURE
6 The Alfredian canon revisited: one hundred years on 107
Janet Bately
7 The form and function of the preface in the poetry and prose of
Alfred’s reign 121
Allen J. Frantzen
8 The player king: identification and self-representation in King
Alfred’s writings 137
Malcolm Godden
vi CONTENTS
ALFREDIAN GOVERNMENT AND SOCIETY
9 Alfredian government: the West Saxon inheritance 153
Nicholas Brooks
10 The power of the written word: Alfredian England 871–899 175
Simon Keynes
11 Alfred’s coinage reforms in context 199
Mark Blackburn
12 The origin of Alfred’s urban policies 219
David Hill
13 Alfred and London 235
Derek Keene
14 Succession and inheritance: a gendered perspective on Alfred’s
family history 251
Pauline Stafford
15 Alfred the Great, the micel hæ≤en here and the viking threat 265
Richard Abels
16 Alfred’s new longships 281
Edwin and Joyce Gifford
ALFRED AND CONTEMPORARY RULERSHIP
17 Alfred’s Carolingian contemporaries 293
Janet L. Nelson
18 Alfred the Great and Arnulf of Carinthia: a comparison 311
Anton Scharer
19 Alfred’s contemporaries: Irish, Welsh, Scots and Breton 323
Wendy Davies
20 The ruler as instructor, pastor and wise: Leo VI of Byzantium and
Symeon of Bulgaria 339
Jonathan Shepard
ALFRED AS ICON
21 Alfredism: the use and abuse of King Alfred’s reputation in later
centuries 361
Barbara Yorke
Index 381
Foreword
The Studies in Early Medieval Britain are intended to illuminate the history and
society of the island of Britain and of its various regions between the fifth and
the twelfth centuries. The series will include volumes devoted to different as-
pects and phases of that long period, between the collapse of Roman imperial
authority and the establishment of French-speaking aristocracies in different
areas in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. It is planned to be a focus for
interdisciplinary collaboration between historians, archaeologists, philologists
and literary and cultural scholars. It will respect the differences between their
disciplines, but facilitate communication between them. A very substantial body
of evidence survives from the early Middle Ages, but much of it is fragmentary
and difficult to understand. The task of early medievalists is to master the
necessary technical skills without weakening the fascination of their subject.
There is a large public, lay and academic, whose interest in the origins of our
society, culture, and institutions has been whetted at school, college or univer-
sity, by local studies in adult education or by popular television programmes.
The Studies in Early Medieval Britain will therefore seek to reach this public by
eschewing inaccessible jargon, and by explaining the early medieval past with
the help of good illustrations and diagrams. The objective is to maintain the
highest standards of scholarship, but also of exposition. It will therefore be open
both to works of general synthesis and to monographs by specialists in particular
disciplines attempting to reach a wider readership. It will also include collabora-
tive studies by groups of scholars.
It is a great pleasure to welcome to the series a volume devoted to the
reign, times and reputation of King Alfred of Wessex. King Alfred was one of
the giants of the early Middle Ages, who played a key role in the development of
an English kingdom and of an English culture. The contributors to this volume
have not been able to do justice to all his multi-faceted talents and achievements,
but they have pointed the way towards a reassessment of his roles. Behind this
volume lies a memorable conference held in the University of Southampton in
September 1999 in celebration of the 1100th anniversary of the king’s death.
That gathering owed much to the drive and enthusiasm of the late and much
lamented Professor Timothy Reuter, who had selected the speakers and chaired
the organizing committee and who then undertook the key editorial work of
forging a balanced volume from the proceedings to fit this series. It is therefore
a great sadness that Timothy’s premature demise prevented him from seeing the
published form of a volume that he had done so much to create. Professor David
Hinton has very kindly stepped into the breach and has steered the volume
viii FOREWORD
through its final stages at press, thus enabling it to remain very much a South-
ampton product. It is my hope that this volume will serve as a bright memorial
to the contribution that Tim Reuter made to the development of early medieval
studies in Britain. It should also redound to the continued credit of the Univer-
sity of Southampton’s wisdom in establishing its Wessex Medieval Centre, in
which he was so much involved.
NICHOLAS BROOKS
University of Birmingham
October 2002
Timothy Reuter died on 14 October 2002, not long after he had sent the text of
Alfred the Great to the publisher. A fuller tribute to him will appear with a
collection of his essays being prepared by Professor Janet Nelson; meanwhile,
this book will be a memorial to the work that he so often did so unstintingly for
others.
DAVID A. HINTON
University of Southampton
April 2003
Preface
Alfred has had an iconic resonance for modern English (conceivably even
‘British’) history and consciousness since Ruskin’s time at the latest, as
Barbara Yorke shows in her contribution below (Chapter 21). Given that fact,
but far more importantly the shifts in our approach to our more recent past,
it seemed both inevitable and necessary that we should commemorate the
eleven-hundredth anniversary of Alfred’s death with an international confer-
ence. This was held under the auspices of the Wessex Medieval Centre at the
University of Southampton in September 1999; another, smaller but also
illustrious group of lectures was delivered a month later in London in asso-
ciation with a small exhibition held there to commemorate the centenary.
Almost all of the papers given at the two events are gathered in this present
volume, though three contributors either could not deliver in time or else
have planned to publish elsewhere. Fortunately, Michael Lapidge has been
able to contribute the paper which he was prevented by other commitments
from delivering in person at the Southampton conference, so this volume
will substantially advance our study and understanding of a significant pe-
riod in English (and indeed Archipelagic) history, and in particular it will
provide, for the first time on this scale, a full contextualization of Alfred by
setting him against contemporary rulers right across Europe, even examining
the striking parallels with contemporary Bulgarian and Byzantine rulers. It
also allows Alfred the writer and literary patron to meet Alfred the ruler and
warrior.
The volume has gone to press as quickly as was practicable, given the
editor’s other commitments and the difficulties of getting copy and responses
to queries from nearly two dozen separate contributors. Editors of volumes
like this should keep their curses (few, in my case) to themselves, but should
ensure that they do not leave anyone unthanked who should be thanked. I am
grateful to Professor Nicholas Brooks for taking this volume on for the
distinguished series he edits, and to Ashgate for being supportive and under-
standing as I worked my way through editing the volume. I am also grateful
to my contributors, most of whom answered my pedantic queries promptly
and put up with my editorial delays with very good grace. And I am deeply
grateful to my family for tolerating my absences ‘editing Alfred’ along with
all the other similar absences. Although references to the debts academics
owe to their families are in danger of becoming even more of a mere literary
commonplace than some of the topoi we as historians expect to find in
writers like Asser, they illustrate a profound truth about topoi: these are
