Where the Middle Ages Begin
The only English monarch ever to have had the epithet ‘the Great’, Alfred’s reputation reaches down to us through the years. Christian hero, successful defender of England against the Vikings, social and educational reformer. There is a man and a life buried amid the myths. Within these pages, discover Alfred’s dramatic story.
Therefore a man never attains virtue and excellence through his power; rather he attains power and authority through his virtue… Study wisdom, therefore, and when you have learned it, do not neglect it, for I say to you without hesitation that you can attain authority through wisdom
Now that we are learning to hear Asser’s voice not through the ears of the Victorians, but with our own ears, with no reason at all to fear the voice of an intelligent and sophisticated hagiographer, we will at last be hearing a voice which Alfred himself heard.
What little we know about Alfred the Great’s mother comes to us from the biography of Alfred written by his great friend, Bishop Asser.
Ealhswith was a Mercian princess who married Alfred, Anglo-Saxon king of Wessex.
The kings of medieval England, besides using history for the entertainment of themselves and their courts, turned it to practical purposes. They plundered history-books for precedents and other evidences to justify their claims and acts. They also recognised its value as propaganda, to bolster up their positions at home and strengthen their hands abroad.
Alfred was forced to flee with his family to safety in the woods and eventually made his way to the island of Athelney in the marshes of Somerset.
Researchers believe that a pelvic found discovered over fifteen years ago belongs to an English king: either Alfred the Great or his son Edward the Elder.
Deals with childrens’ literature in medieval England. Kinds of literature heard by children in England; Examples of rhymes used by medieval children; Ways of linking rhymes with children.
The author investigates the question of whether King Alfred translated Latin texts into English. According to the author, modern scholarship seems to conclude that Alfred did compose the extant translations of a number of texts, although there are questions about Alfred’s linguistic and intellectual skills.
The Origins of Local Society in late Anglo-Saxon England Hirokazu Tsurushima Paper given at: The Third Japanese-Korean Conference of British History (2008) Abstract The purpose of this paper is to show the issues surrounding the origins of local society in late ‘Anglo-Saxon’ England, by examining a single original document from 968. A local society not […]
Boethius, Gregory the Great, Alfred the Great, Stephen Langton and Thomas More
Her deeds are largely forgotten, but as Alex Burghart explains, Æthelfæd turned a cornered kingdom into a powerhouse that defeated the Welsh and the Vikings
‘Alfred found learning dead, and he restored it. Education neglected, and he revived it. The laws powerless, and he gave them force. The Church debased, and he raised it. The land ravaged by a fearful enemy, from which he delivered it. Alfred’s name shall live as long as mankind respects the past.’
I seek to explore the impacts of the Danish Vikings upon King Alfred the Great and the Anglo-Saxon people of the ninth century
King Alfred, ‘England’s Darling’ (849 – 900) suffered from a painful illness for much of his life, the nature of which has been the source of some speculation among Anglo-Saxonists.
One can trace the reason for these curious editorial developments to two factors: (1) the inaccessibility of the tenth-century manuscript, which everyone thought was destroyed in the 1731 fire, until its burnt remains were recovered at the British Museum in the 1830s; and (2) an overpowering edition-in-progress of the twelfth-century manuscript by the great seventeenth-century scholar Francis Junius, with extensive collations from the missing tenth-century manuscript.
Why did the Vikings suddenly appear in the late eighth century?
A great deal of modern scholarship pertaining to the reign of Alfred the Great (871-899) rests upon the Life of King Alfred, a biography purported to have been written by Asser, a Welshman from St. David’s, in or shortly after AD 893.
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