A Brief History of the Anglo-Saxons (57 page)

1
Ullmann,
Short History of the Papacy
, 1972, p. 66.

2
Levison,
England and the Continent
, 1946, p. 57.

3
Ibid., p. 58.

4
Bede,
Ecclesiastical History
, III, 13.

5
Levison,
England and the Continent
, 1946, p. 72.

6
Ayerst and Fisher,
Records of Christianity
, 1977, II, P. 55.

7
Talbot,
Anglo-Saxon Missionaries
, 1981, p. 39.

8
Ibid., p. 74.

9
Ibid., p. 47.

10
Levison,
England and the Continent
, 1946, p. 84.

11
Talbot,
Anglo-Saxon Missionaries
, 1981, p. 96.

12
Ibid., p. 99.

13
These paragraphs are based on Beckett,
Anglo-Saxon Perceptions of the Islamic World
, 2004, pp. 44–52, and the translation of the
Life of Willibald
in Talbot,
Anglo-Saxon Missionaries
, 1981.

14
Ayerst and Fisher,
Records of Christianity
, 1977, II, p. 58.

15
For all the above see Boniface’s letter (Tangl 51) to Pope Zacharias for the year 742; Talbot,
Anglo-Saxon Missionaries
, 1981, p. 100.

16
Talbot,
Anglo-Saxon Missionaries
, 1981, p. 134.

17
Ibid., p. 118.

18
McKitterick, ‘England and the Continent’, 1995.

19
McKitterick,
Uses of Literacy in Early Medieval Europe
, 1990, p. 25.

Chapter 6 – Alcuin of York

An important recent source is
Alcuin of York
(2003), edited by L. A. J. R. Howen and A. A. MacDonald. In this chapter I have used the selected edition of Alcuin’s letters in translation from the Latin by Stephen Allott in
Alcuin of York: His Life and Letters
(1987). This also contains excerpts from his ‘The Bishops, Kings and Saints of York’, of which the Oxford Medieval Texts published a full edition by Peter Godman in 1982. For the legends of St Oswald on the Continent, the standard reference is
Oswald: Northumbrian King to European Saint
(1995), edited by Clare Stancliffe and Eric Cambridge, notably the paper by Annemiek Jansen, ‘The Development of the St Oswald Legends on the Continent’. D. A. Bullough’s entry ‘Alcuin’ in the
New Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
(2004) is recommended.

1
Allott,
Alcuin of York
, 1987, Letter 69, p. 85.

2
Ibid., Letter 160, p. 156.

3
Compare Bolton,
Alcuin and Beowulf
, 1979, and Bullough, ‘What has Ingeld to do with Lindisfarne?’, 1993.

4
Campbell, ed.,
The Anglo-Saxons
, 1991, p. 106.

5
Allott,
Alcuin of York
, 1987, p. 187.

6
Cited in Stancliffe and Cambridge, eds,
Oswald
, 1995, p. 161.

7
Elton,
The English
, 1994, p. 17.

8
Talbot,
Anglo-Saxon Missionaries
, 1981, pp. 189 and 190.

9
Ibid., p. 199.

10
Orchard, ‘Latin and the Vernacular Languages’, 2003, pp. 212–13.

11
Talbot,
Anglo-Saxon Missionaries
, 1981, p. 229.

12
Ibid., pp. 156–7.

13
Levison,
England and the Continent
, 1946, p. 98.

14
Abels,
Alfred the Great
, 1998, p. 73.

15
Campbell, ed.,
The Anglo-Saxons
, 1991, p. 106.

16
Stafford,
Queens, Concubines and Dowagers
, 1983, p. 86.

17
Lapidge, ‘Asser’s Reading’, 2003, p. 39.

18
Garrison, ‘Social World of Alcuin’, 1998, pp. 78–9.

19
Marenbon,
From the Circle of Alcuin to the School of Auxerre
, 1981.

20
Allott,
Alcuin of York
, 1987, pp. 8 and 40.

21
Garrison, ‘Alcuin’, in Lapidge and others, eds,
Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England
, 1999.

22
Ullmann,
Short History of the Papacy
, 1972, p. 1981.

23
Cochrane,
Adelard of Bath
, 1994, p. 5.

24
Bullough, ‘Alcuin’,
ODNB
, 2004.

25
Garrison, ‘Alcuin’, in Lapidge and others, eds,
Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England
, 1999, p. 24.

26
Robertson,
History of German Literature
, 1962, p. 18.

Chapter 7 – Viking Raiders, Danelaw, ‘Kings’ of York

The Danelaw
(1992) by Cyril Hart and
Vikings and the Danelaw: Select Papers from the Thirteenth Viking Congress
(2001), edited by James Graham-Campbell and others, both carry fascinating essays on the subject.
Viking Empires
(2005) by Angelo Forte, Richard Oram and Frederik Pedersen, a survey of Scandinavian culture in general from the first century AD to the late thirteenth, appeared as this book was going to press. Of more interest from an Anglo-Saxon and British perspective is H. R. Loyn’s
The Vikings in Britain
(revised 1994) and
Blood of the Vikings
(2000) by Julian Richards. David Rollason’s
Northumbria 500–1100
(2003) is the major contemporary survey of its subject and of special interest in its treatment of the ‘kings’ of York.

1
O Croínin, ‘Writing’, 2003, p. 170.

2
Keynes, ‘The Power of the Written Word’, 2003, p. 17.

3
Swanton,
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
, 1996, p. 55.

4
Richards,
Blood of the Vikings
, 2000, p. 78.

5
Ibid., p. 20.

6
Stafford, ‘Kings, Kingships, and Kingdoms’, 2003, p. 38.

7
Gillingham, ‘Britain, Ireland and the South’, 2003, p. 231.

8
Cited in Abels,
Alfred the Great
, 1998, p. 285.

9
Hunter Blair,
Introduction to Anglo-Saxon England
, 1956, p. 70.

10
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
, ‘E’ annal 870.

11
See Lawson,
Cnut
, 2004, pp. 164–6, for much of this paragraph.

12
Crawford, ‘The Vikings’, 2003, p. 57.

13
Blair,
Church in Anglo-Saxon Society
, 2005, p. 293.

14
Crawford, ‘The Vikings’, 2003, p. 61.

15
Blair,
Church in Anglo-Saxon Society
, 2005, p. 312.

Chapter 8 – The Wessex of Alfred the Great

There is a plethora of books to draw on. Of recent biographies, John Peddie’s
Alfred: Warrior King
(1999) is admired for its handing of his military record; David Sturdy’s
Alfred the Great
(1995) makes revealing comparative use of the actual texts of the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
relating to its subject.
Alfred the Great: War, Kingship and Culture in Anglo-Saxon England
(1988) by Richard P. Abels is a lucid account of the reign within its historical context. Alfred P. Smyth’s
King Alfred the Great
(1995) is in danger of being dominated by his protracted argument that Asser’s biography of the king was in fact the work of a forger.
Alfred the Great: Asser’s Life of King Alfred and Other Contemporary Sources
(1983), edited and translated by Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge, is on the other side of the debate. An important survey of Alfredian studies is provided by
Alfred the Great: Papers from the Eleventh-Centenary Conferences
(2003), edited by Timothy Reuter. Finally, of the many recent works of special interest, one would mention
The Defence of Wessex:The Burghal Hidage and Anglo-Saxon Fortifications
(1996), edited by David Hill and A. R. Rumble. A specialist study of particular interest is
Kings, Currency and Alliances: History and Coinage in Southern England in the Ninth Century
(1998), edited by Mark A. S. Blackburn and David N. Dumville.

1
Blackburn, ‘Alfred’s Coinage Reforms in Context’, 2003, p. 205.

2
Cochrane,
Adelard of Bath
, 1994, p. 58.

3
Whitelock, ed.,
English Historical Documents:
I, p. 810.

4
Blackburn, ‘Alfred’s Coinage Reforms in Context’, 2003, p. 207.

5
Foard, ‘Field Offensive’, p. 13.

6
Bede’s Ecclesiastical History
, ed. Colgrave and Mynors, 1969, p. 26, n.

7
Lapidge, ‘Asser’s Reading’, 2003, p. 46.

8
Abels,
Alfred the Great
, 1998, p. 14.

9
Crawford, ‘The Vikings’, 2003, p. 56.

10
Wallace-Hadrill, ‘The Franks and the English’, 1950.

11
Keynes, ‘The Power of the Written Word’, 2003, p. 176.

12
Wormald,
Making of English Law
, 1999, p. 450.

13
Keynes, ‘The Power of the Written Word’, 2003, p. 175.

14
Kelly, ‘Literacy in Anglo-Saxon Lay Society’, 1990, p. 59.

15
O Croínin, ‘Writing’, 2003, p. 286.