Æthelstan A: Difference between revisions

 

The Æthelstan A charters commence shortly after King Æthelstan conquered Northumbria in 927, making him the first king to rule the whole of England. The diplomas give the king titles such as "King of the English" and "King of the Whole of Britain", and this is seen by historians as part of a rhetoric which reflected his master's claim for a new status, higher than previous West Saxon kings.

 

==Background==

 

<blockquote>In this period, a diploma can be characterised as a formal and symbolic record, in Latin, of an occasion when the king, acting in a royal assembly, and with the consent of the ecclesiastical and secular orders, created an estate of "bookland" at a specified place, and conveyed it on the privileged terms defined by the "book", or diploma, to a named beneficiary. This act of establishing a particular estate as bookland, so that it could be held henceforth on these privileged terms, could be performed only by the king, in a royal assembly; but the diploma itself served hereafter as the title-deed for the land in question. It established that the land was to be held, with its appurtenances, free from the imposition of worldly burdens, with the exception of military service, bridge-work and fortress-work, and with the power to give it to anyone of its owner's choosing.{{sfn|Keynes|2013|p=43}}</blockquote>

 

==Identity of Æthelstan A==

 

The boundary clauses of the Æthelstan A charters were written in correct [[Old English]], so it is unlikely that he was of foreign origin.{{sfn|Gretsch|1999|p=336}} The witness lists of the Æthelstan A charters consistently place Bishop [[Ælfwine of Lichfield|Ælfwine]] of [[Lichfield]] in Mercia in a higher position than his rank warranted. King Æthelstan was probably brought up in Mercia, and in [[Sarah Foot]]'s view he was probably intimate with Ælfwine before King Edward's death; as Ælfwine disappeared from the witness lists at the same time as the Æthelstan A charters ended, she suggests that he may have been Æthelstan A.{{sfn|Foot|2011|p=98}} Keynes thinks it more likely Æthelstan A was a king's priest from Mercia, who acquired his learning in a Mercian religious house and respected Ælfwine as a fellow Mercian; that Æthelstan A entered Æthelstan's service before he became king and was in permanent attendance on him.{{sfnm|1a1=Keynes|1y=2013| 1pp= 35, 55|2a1=Keynes|2y=1987|2p=186}} David Woodman also considers a Mercian origin likely, pointing out that some Mercian ninth-century charters have borrowings from [[Aldhelm]], an important source of Æthelstan A's style. Woodman also puts forward the alternative idea that Æthelstan A had a connection with [[Glastonbury Abbey]] in [[Wessex]], which appears to have been a centre of learning at this time, and certainly housed many of the texts which informed Æthelstan A's idiosyncratic Latin style.{{sfn|Woodman|2013|pp=223–25}}

 

==Significance of the charters==

The first charter produced by Æthelstan A in 928 described the king as ''rex Anglorum'', "king of the English", the first time that title had been used.{{efn|There is one possible exception. Charter S 395 in 925 uses the title ''rex Anglorum'', but this only survives in a copy and it is unclear whether the title was added later.{{sfn|Foot|2011|p=27, n. 65}} }} By 931 he had become "king of the English, elevated by the right hand of the Almighty to the throne of the whole kingdom of Britain". Some charters were witnessed by Welsh kings, and occasionally by the kings of Scotland and [[Kingdom of Strathclyde|Strathclyde]], signifying acceptance of Æthelstan's lordship. In Keynes's view, it cannot be a coincidence that the charters commenced immediately after the conquest of Northumbria, and Æthelstan A's primary aim was to display the "grandeur of Æthelstan's kingship". Foot argues that the king's inner circle quickly seized on the potential of the conquest for "ideological aggrandizement of the king's public standing". To Keynes, the diplomas "are symbolic of a monarchy invigorated by success, developing the pretensions commensurate with its actual achievements and clothing itself in the trappings of a new political order." He sees the fifty years from 925 to 975 as "the golden age of the Anglo-Saxon royal diploma".{{sfnm|1a1=Keynes|1y=1999|1p=470|2a1=Keynes|2y=2013|2pp=52, 54|3a1=Foot|3y=2011|3pp=27, 92, 213}}

 

Frankish annalists usually recorded a king's location at Easter and Christmas, but this was not a practice of English chroniclers, and the only period in the tenth and eleventh centuries for which historians can construct a partial itinerary of the king's movements is provided by the location of assemblies recorded in Æthelstan A's charters of 928 to 935. Other charters rarely named the place of assembly, apart from a group in the 940s and early 950s known as the "alliterative" charters.{{sfnm|1a1=Keynes|1y=2013|1pp=35–36|2a1=Foot|2y=2011|2pp=80, 82–89}}

 

 

==Style of the charters==

The standard of Latin prose improved in the tenth century, especially after about 960, when the leaders of the Benedictine reform movement adopted the elaborate and ornate style of Latin now called by historians the ''hermeneutic style''. Use of this style, influenced especially by Aldhelm's ''De virginitate'', dates back to King Æthelstan's reign. Æthelstan A borrowed heavily from Aldhelm; he would not copy whole sentences, only a word or a few words, incorporating them in a structure reminiscent of Aldhelm's works.{{sfn|Woodman|2013| pp= 218, 220}} In Woodman's view, "Æthelstan A" varied the language in each charter out of a delight in experimentation and to demonstrate his literary ability.{{sfn|Woodman|2013|pp=236–45}}

 

 

Woodman states that: "whilst it is true that the main impetus for the literary revival of Latin prose occurred from the mid-tenth century, the beginnings of this style of Latin can actually be found rather earlier and in the most unlikely of places. In fact it is ''diplomas'' of the 920s and 930s that are the first to display this distinctive Latin in its most exuberant form."{{sfn|Woodman|2013| pp= 218–19}} According to Scott Thompson Smith Æthelstan A's diplomas "are generally characterised by a rich [[pleonastic]] style with aggressively literary [[proem]]s and anathemas, ostentatious language and imagery throughout, decorative rhetorical figures, elaborate dating clauses, and extensive witness lists. These are clearly documents with stylistic ambitions."{{sfn|Smith|2012| p= 37}} Few listeners would have understood them when they were read out at royal assemblies.{{sfn|Foot|2011|p=133}} In Charter S&nbsp;425 of 934, the second of the two originals to survive, Æthelstan A wrote (in Smith's translation):

 

In S&nbsp;416 of 931, the first original to survive, after the boundary clause in Old English, he reverted to Latin for the anathema against anyone who set aside the charter:

==Sources==

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[[Category:10th-century births]]

[[Category:10th-century deaths]]

[[Category:Anglo-Saxon writers]]

[[Category:Grammarians of Latin]]

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