Some twelfth-century views of the Anglo-Saxon past

Campbell, James

doi:10.1484/j.peri.3.61

Cited by 54 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…The medieval manuscripts of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia R e g m Britanniae would be three times as numerous as those ofthe EcclesiasticalHistoy. I t s advantages included the requisite Trojan origin, a model of the whole British Isles (and more besides) ruled from London, slight interest in sin and its consequences, and perhaps not least that very little of it was true (Campbell 1984). Yet God's Englishmen did after all have a longer future than Arthur's Britons.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Engla Lond:the Making of an Allegiance

Wormald¹

1994

J Historical Sociology

179

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Taking as its starting-point, Philip Abrams' celebrated perception (1988) that the state is an 'ideological artefact . . . historically constructed, this essay seeks an explanation of the unrivalled longevity and durability of the English state in the fact that it was the first European political organism to exploit with complete success the model of obligatory coherence supplied by the Old Testament in the history of Israel and its relations with its Maker. This model had been applied to the early history of Anglo-Saxon Christianity by the Venerable Bede (73 1) in a work of unexampled literary power. The Anglo-Saxons' subsequent experience of the near-obliteration of their Christian polity by pagan Vikings lent the Biblical and Bedan messages a particular point. King Alfred and his dynasty were thus provided with an ideological blueprint which meant that their otherwise by no means unusual early medieval hegemony could command the allegiance of potential dissidents in a way that none of its counterparts were ultimately able to do.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Engla Lond:the Making of an Allegiance

Wormald¹

1994

J Historical Sociology

179

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“…Twelfth-century Latin writers' views of 'the Anglo-Saxon past' have been presented on a spectrum running between two extremes: on one end, as a product of post-Conquest nostalgia 177 or revival of 'the' English nation and English identity; 178 on the other, as proprietary, colonial voices of an Anglo-Norman elite imposing a new 'Englishness' and seeking to 'write the English out of their own history'. 179 Recent work on what 'the Anglo-Saxon past' looked like from the twelfth century has stressed that writers perceived continuity across the Norman Conquest.…”

Section: IIImentioning

confidence: 99%

Æthelflaed and Other Rulers in English Histories, c.900–1150

Winkler

2022

The English Historical Review

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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.

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“…For Hippolyte Delehaye, an early historian of hagiography, these texts represent “certain audacious fabrications, products of lying and ambition [which] have for long misled over-credulous minds and unwary critics” (Delehaye 1998, 78). More recent historians have been equally damning: “the authors of these Vitae were writing chronological nonsense; and what is more, avoidable nonsense… They did not care: or anyway, they did not bother” (Campbell 1986, 225). This sense of frustration arises from the expectation that hagiography ought to be historical, that these texts ought to be historically accurate.…”

Section: The Rehabilitation Of Folklorementioning

confidence: 99%