Anglo-Saxon Kingship and Political Power PDF Download

Author: Kathrin McCann
Publisher: University of Wales Press
ISBN: 1786832933
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
Works on Anglo-Saxon kingship often take as their starting point the line from Beowulf: ‘that was a good king’. This monograph, however, explores what it means to be a king, and how kings defined their own kingship in opposition to other powers. Kings derived their royal power from a divine source, which led to conflicts between the interpreters of the divine will (the episcopate) and the individual wielding power (the king). Demonstrating how Anglo-Saxon kings were able to manipulate political ideologies to increase their own authority, this book explores the unique way in which Anglo-Saxon kings understood the source and nature of their power, and of their own authority.

Author: Peter Fox
Publisher: Anglo-Saxon Books
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 64

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Book Description
The primary purpose of this book is to be an introduction to the subject of early Anglo-Saxon kingship. Central to that subject is the huge impact that conversion to Christianity had upon Anglo-Saxon kingship. The aim is to answer four major questions: How did kingship manifest itself pre and post conversion and what theories underpinned early Anglo-Saxon kingship? What were the implications of conversion on the practicalities of kingship? How did Christinity interact with kings, was it passive tool, or did it challenge kings? What was the impact of conversion to Christianity on Anglo-Saxon kingship?

Author: Gale R. Owen-Crocker
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
ISBN: 184383877X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
The relationship between Anglo-Saxon kingship, law, and the functioning of power is explored via a number of different angles. The essays collected here focus on how Anglo-Saxon royal authority was expressed and disseminated, through laws, delegation, relationships between monarch and Church, and between monarchs at times of multiple kingships and changing power ratios. Specific topics include the importance of kings in consolidating the English "nation"; the development of witnesses as agents of the king's authority; the posthumous power of monarchs; how ceremonial occasions wereused for propaganda reinforcing heirarchic, but mutually beneficial, kingships; the implications of Ine's lawcode; and the language of legislation when English kings were ruling previously independent territories, and the delegation of local rule. The volume also includes a groundbreaking article by Simon Keynes on Anglo-Saxon charters, looking at the origins of written records, the issuing of royal diplomas and the process, circumstances, performance and function of production of records. GALE R. OWEN-CROCKER is Professor of Anglo-Saxon Culture at the University of Manchester. Contributors: Ann Williams, Alexander R. Rumble, Carole Hough, Andrew Rabin, Barbara Yorke, Ryan Lavelle, Alaric Trousdale

Author: Peter Hunter Blair
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521537773
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 442

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Book Description
This is a lucid, authoritative and well-balanced account of Anglo-Saxon history. The third edition includes an introduction by Simon Keynes. Between the end of the Roman occupation and the coming of the Normans, England was settled by Germanic races; the kingdom as a political unit was created, heathenism yielded to a vigorous Christian Church, superb works of art were made, and the English language - spoken and written - took its form. These origins of the English heritage are Hunter Blair's subject. The first two chapters survey Anglo-Saxon England: its wars, its invaders, its peoples and its kings. The remaining chapters deal with specific aspects of its culture: its Church, government, economy and literary achievement. Throughout the author uses illustrations and a wide range of sources - documents, archaeological evidence and place names - to illuminate the period as a whole. For this edition, Simon Keynes has prepared a thoroughly updated bibliography.

Author: Peter Hunter Blair
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Anglo-Saxons
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description

Author: Barbara Yorke
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134707258
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England provides a unique survey of the six major Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and their royal families, examining the most recent research in this field.

Author: Timothy Venning
Publisher: Amberley Publishing Limited
ISBN: 1445624591
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
A major re-examination of an important period in British history

Author: Rory Naismith
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107160979
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 367

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Book Description
This book brings together new research that represents current scholarship on the nexus between authority and written sources from Anglo-Saxon England. Ranging from the seventh to the eleventh century, the chapters in this volume offer fresh approaches to a wide range of linguistic, historical, legal, diplomatic and palaeographical evidence.

Author: Richard Abels
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317900413
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
This biography of Alfred the Great, king of the West Saxons (871-899), combines a sensitive reading of the primary sources with a careful evaluation of the most recent scholarly research on the history and archaeology of ninth-century England. Alfred emerges from the pages of this biography as a great warlord, an effective and inventive ruler, and a passionate scholar whose piety and intellectual curiosity led him to sponsor a cultural and spiritual renaissance. Alfred's victories on the battlefield and his sweeping administrative innovations not only preserved his native Wessex from viking conquest, but began the process of political consolidation that would culminate in the creation of the kingdom of England. Alfred the Great: War, Kingship and Culture in Anglo-Saxon England strips away the varnish of later interpretations to recover the historical Alfredpragmatic, generous, brutal, pious, scholarly within the context of his own age.

Author: Marc Morris
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 164313535X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 452

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Book Description
A sweeping and original history of the Anglo-Saxons by national bestselling author Marc Morris. Sixteen hundred years ago Britain left the Roman Empire and swiftly fell into ruin. Grand cities and luxurious villas were deserted and left to crumble, and civil society collapsed into chaos. Into this violent and unstable world came foreign invaders from across the sea, and established themselves as its new masters. The Anglo-Saxons traces the turbulent history of these people across the next six centuries. It explains how their earliest rulers fought relentlessly against each other for glory and supremacy, and then were almost destroyed by the onslaught of the vikings. It explores how they abandoned their old gods for Christianity, established hundreds of churches and created dazzlingly intricate works of art. It charts the revival of towns and trade, and the origins of a familiar landscape of shires, boroughs and bishoprics. It is a tale of famous figures like King Offa, Alfred the Great and Edward the Confessor, but also features a host of lesser known characters - ambitious queens, revolutionary saints, intolerant monks and grasping nobles. Through their remarkable careers we see how a new society, a new culture and a single unified nation came into being. Drawing on a vast range of original evidence - chronicles, letters, archaeology and artefacts - renowned historian Marc Morris illuminates a period of history that is only dimly understood, separates the truth from the legend, and tells the extraordinary story of how the foundations of England were laid.