Illuminating the Middle Ages debate, Battle of Ideas 2012

Three ASNCs past and present, namely recent graduate Albert Fenton; Dr Levi Roach (Lecturer in Medieval History, University of Exeter); and Dr Elizabeth Boyle (Affiliated Lecturer in ASNC and Research Fellow of St Edmund's College, Cambridge), teamed up with cultural commentator Lindsay Johns to discuss the significance of the Middle Ages at the Battle of Ideas 2012 at London's Barbican. You can watch the video here:

Recent ASNC news ...

Congratulations to Dr Levi Roach and Dr Helen Foxhall Forbes (both of whom studied ASNC at undergraduate and postgraduate level), who have both been appointed to lectureships in Medieval History at the University of Exeter.

Indeed, further congratulations are due to Levi for recently winning the Royal Historical Society's Alexander Prize for his article ‘Public Rites and Public Wrongs: Ritual Aspects of Diplomas in Tenth- and Eleventh-Century England’, Early Medieval Europe 19 (2011), 182-203.

Also, congratulations to Emily Lethbridge who has been awarded a 3-year post-doc at the new Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Iceland.

Some members (past and present) of the ASNC Department were signatories to a letter in the Irish Times protesting the proposed destruction of Carraig Breac House, former home to Celtic scholar Whitley Stokes (1830-1909). The subsequent decision not to grant permission for the demolition led to this article by Irish Times environment editor, Frank McDonald.

And finally, Dr Elizabeth Boyle has been causing trouble, as usual ...

Return to Anglo-Saxon government?

Dr Levi Roach writes:

Anglo-Saxon government—and specifically assemblies—have received some interesting coverage recently. The self-proclaimed ‘Mercian witan’ in particular has been promoting the idea that modern democracy needs to return to its ‘Anglo-Saxon roots’. Implied in all this, of course, is that all got much worse in 1066 and that the period before was a veritable golden age of democracy.

Unfortunately, however, it quite patently was not so, as Professor Matthew Innes and Dr Ryan Lavelle rightly pointed out when consulted about the matter. Although it would broadly speaking be true to say that the Anglo-Saxon period saw a greater degree of equality than the later Middle Ages, the difference is only one of degrees. Anglo-Saxon society was at no point truly egalitarian and from the first arrival of these peoples in what was to become England we have good evidence for local chieftains and aristocrats; the rich and powerful, just like the poor, have always been with us. Moreover—and perhaps more importantly—all evidence suggests that the inequalities within English society were growing, not shrinking during the Anglo-Saxon period. Thus if the Normans made things worse, they were treading the same path taken by many English aristocrats and noblemen before them.

This is not, however, to say that there was no ‘grass roots’ consultation in the Anglo-Saxon politics. In an era before large-scale taxation and standing armies governance was a matter of ‘self-rule at the king’s command’. Indeed, large-scale royal assemblies (or ‘meetings of the witan’)—which, it should be noted, continued to be held under the Normans—were a regular feature of politics and it is clear that kings and aristocrats sought to work with, rather than against the people whenever possible. Kingship was dependent upon consensus and this gave the people some say, even at times at a local level. Nevertheless, this was not democracy as we know it: local assemblies were run by aristocrats and larger assemblies by the king. At every level those with greater wealth and influence had more say. What we are witnessing is not an ideal system from which modern government might learn, but rather the constraints placed on rulers before bureaucratic means of governance had developed in earnest. Or, put differently, if Anglo-Saxon rulers were less oppressive than their Norman successors, it was certainly not for want of trying!

ASNC awarded Junior Research Fellowship

Congratulations to Levi Roach, a PhD student in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic, and a member of Trinity College, Cambridge, who has just been elected to a Junior Research Fellowship at St John's College, Cambridge, beginning in October 2011. Levi proposes to work on the following project for duration of his Fellowship:

Over the next three years I will embark on an exciting new research project, provisionally entitled ‘Apocalypse and Atonement around the Year 1000: Æthelred “the Unready”’ and Otto III in Comparison’. My intention is to investigate how discourses of penance and apocalypticism influenced kingship and politics at court in England and Germany in the 990s and early 1000s. Specifically, the study will focus on how the rulers of these two kingdoms, Æthelred II (better known to posterity as ‘the Unready’) and Otto III reacted to contemporary apocalyptic and eschatological fears. It has long been noted that a degree of millennial anxiety is visible in this period, and it has likewise long been appreciated that discourses of penance and repentance played an important role at Æthelred’s and Otto’s courts. My intention, however, is to look at the intersection between these two, which has yet to receive detailed commentary. The aim will be to investigate both how fears of the Last Judgement may have helped fuel concerns about penance and atonement, and how on the other hand such apocalyptic anxieties themselves may have been in part a product of contemporary concerns about sin and repentance. It is my contention that these concerns about apocalypse and atonement came together in a unique fashion in the 990s, in part—though certainly not only—in response to the approaching millennium. It is, therefore, no accident that both Æthelred and Otto are known to have performed penance, and equally no accident that in both cases this seems to have taken place in the later 990s.[1]

[1] That Otto III performed penance is well established and S. Hamilton, ‘Otto III’s Penance: a Case Study of Unity and Diversity in the Eleventh-Century Church’, Studies in Church History 32 (1996), 83–94, surveys the evidence admirably. The evidence for Æthelred’s penance is more circumstantial, but compelling nonetheless. It has yet to receive detailed treatment in print, but will be discussed at length in two forthcoming studies: C. Cubitt, ‘The Politics of Remorse: Penance and Royal Piety in the Reign of Æthelred the Unready’, Historical Research (forthcoming); and L. Roach, ‘Public Rites and Public Wrongs: Ritual Aspects of Diplomas in Tenth- and Eleventh-Century England’, Early Medieval Europe 19 (forthcoming 2011). I am grateful to Dr. Cubitt for making her paper available to me in advance of publication. For the time being, see also her insightful remarks in ‘Ælfric’s Lay Patrons’, in A companion to Ælfric, ed. M. Swan and H. Magennis (Leiden, 2009), pp. 165–92, at 171–5.

Queen Eadgyth in Magdeburg

Levi Roach writes:

This week's discovery of what purports to be Queen Eadgyth's body in Magdeburg, Germany, will, if confirmed scientifically, certainly be an important one. It has long been known that Eadgyth was laid to rest in Magdeburg, but since her body was transferred from its original tomb in 1510 it was not known precisely where it might lie. Although the body alone tells us little new about the politics of the era, it provides an opportunity to reflect upon the events of the early tenth century and gives us a tangible counterpart to the evidence of our written sources.

Eadgyth and Otto, Magdeburg Cathedral

Eadgyth was the daughter of King Edward (899-924), the son and successor of Alfred the Great (876-99), and the sister of King Æthelstan, the first king to rule all of the English (924-39). She ended up in Germany as a part of a dynastic alliance forged between Æthelstan and his continental neighbour, King Henry I of East Frankia/Germany (919-36). The kings arranged that she be sent over to wed Henry's eldest son, Otto (the later Otto I or Otto 'the Great' of Germany), thus confirming the pact. This was an important alliance indeed as it brought together the two most powerful European rulers of the time: Henry, who ruled a massive kingdom, stretching from Schleswig-Holstein in the north to the Swiss and Austrian Alps in the south; and Æthelstan, who had successfully taken York from the vikings, for the first time unifying all of what was to become England.