The politics of remorse: penance and royal piety in the reign of AEthelred the Unready

Abstract

In 993 King Æthelred the Unready made a public declaration of remorse for sins commited in his youth. This article examines the royal privilege to the abbey of Abingdon (S 876) which records this council, and the penitential style of kingship adopted by Æthelred from 993 evidenced in a remarkable series of restitutions of ecclesiastical property and grants to churches. It argues that his penitential policy should be viewed in a continental context of the political deployment of penance, and that it was initially adopted to enhance Æthelred's kingship. It demonstrates how reflexes of the king's repentance can be seen in the homilies of Ælfric and suggests that the great penitential decree of 1009, drafted by Archbishop Wulfstan of York, both continued this penitential policy and moved beyond it to extend royal remorse for wrongdoing to national penitence.

Law and legal culture in Anglo‐Saxon England

“…Although they differ in their views of royal power and the degree to which the governing apparatus of pre-Conquest England can be regarded as centralized, both treat pre-Conquest England as a largely functional political community capable of sustaining social hierarchies, redressing crime and other forms of extra-legal violence and preserving a degree of continuity from one generation to the next. It is for this reason that a number of recent studies have sought to take a middle road, recognizing that the crown was supported by a largely stable administrative infrastructure, though one frequently limited by the competing demands of Church, aristocracy and at times even local community (Cubitt, 2007(Cubitt, , 2011Hudson, 2000;Hyams, 2004;Jurasinski, 2015Jurasinski, , 2019Lambert, 2017;Molyneaux, 2015;Rabin, 2007Rabin, , 2020Roach, 2013aRoach, , 2013bRumble, 2013). One might reasonably say that Wormald's thesis has not been so much overturned as moderated.…”

The currency of power in late Anglo‐Saxon England

“…These messages would have found a fertile reception at the court of Æthelred II. Educated by monastic reformers, Æthelred was steeped in the tradition that a king's actions and the fate of his realm were interwoven in the eyes of God (Cubitt, , ; Molyneaux, , pp. 223–30; Roach, , , , ).…”

The voice of the king in ‘King Edgar's Establishment of Monasteries’

“…48 The 'penitential' character of AEthelredian politics in this period, usefully explored by Roach and by Catherine Cubitt, did not arise in isolation but drew on deeper West Saxon norms and Edgar's specifi c example. 49 Indeed, as Keynes has observed, much of the Abingdon narrative reads as a pointed inversion of Edgar's earlier actions. 50 Whereas the young Edgar had benefi ted from AEthelwold's admonition and instruction, the Abingdon charter identifi es AEthelwold's own death in 984 as the key turning point in AEthelred's reign, after which the king and his people began to suff er various affl ictions (angustiae).…”