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Introduction Translation of the Life of King Alfred

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Introduction Translation of the Life of King Alfred Notes Introduction 1. Asser’s Life of King Alfred, ed. W.H. Stevenson (Oxford reprint of 1904 edn.), p. vi. 2. Ibid., p. vii. 3. S. Keynes, ‘It is Authentic’, The Times Higher Education Supplement, 8 December 1995, p. 17. 4. S. Keynes, ‘On the Authenticity of Asser’s Life of King Alfred’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, xlvii (1996), 529–51. 5. M. Lapidge, ‘A King of Monkish Fable?’, The Times Higher Education Supplement, 8 March 1996, p. 20. 6. Cf. J. Nelson, ‘Waiting for Alfred’, Early Medieval Europe, vii (1998), 121–2, where the argument is put more cogently. 7. A.P. Smyth, ‘King Alfred’s Issue Carries on Burning’, The Times Higher Education Supplement, 29 March 1996, p. 13. I leave it to others to judge the merits of Mr Howlett’s contribution in the English Historical Review – D.R. Howlett, review of King Alfred the Great by A.P. Smyth, in English Historical Review, cxii (1997), 942–7. 8. Nelson, ‘Waiting for Alfred’, pp. 120–2, 124. 9. E. Christiansen ‘The Rescue of a Great English Ruler’, The Spectator, 13 January 1996, p. 32. 10. J. Campbell, ‘Alfred’s Lives’, The Times Literary Supplement, 26 July 1996, p. 30. 11. R. Abels, Alfred the Great: War, Kingship and Culture in Anglo-Saxon England (London and New York, 1998), pp. 318–26. 12. P. Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith: Queenship and Women’s Power in Eleventh-Century England (Oxford and Malden, 1997). 13. Alistair Campbell’s excellent edition of the Encomium Emmae has been reissued as a Camden Classic with a supplementary introduction by Simon Keynes. A. Campbell ed. (with introd. by S. Keynes), Encomium Emmae Reginae (Roy. Hist. Soc. Cambridge, 1998 reprint of 1949 edn.). 14. M. Lapidge, ‘Byrhtferth and Oswald’, in St. Oswald of Worcester, eds. N. Brook and C. Cubitt (Leicester, 1996), p. 78. Translation of the Life of King Alfred 1. The exaggerated form of address used in the opening lines of this text echoes the language of charters issued in the names of Alfred’s grandsons and great-grand- sons in the later tenth century. See pp. 194–6. 2. The author’s statement that Alfred was born in 849 is at variance with the earliest versions of the West Saxon king-list which claim that Alfred was 23 when he succeeded to the kingship of Wessex in 871. See p. 176. 3. This genealogy is based on that of Alfred’s father, King Æthelwulf, which appears in the composite annal in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 855–58. There is nothing in the genealogy of Æthelwulf as given by the author of the Life of Alfred which does not appear in the overall surviving manuscript tradition of the 855 211 212 The Medieval Life of King Alfred the Great annal of the Chronicle. There are, on the other hand, two omissions – the name of Elsa between Elesa and Gewis, and the three names Wig, Freawine and Freothegar between Gewis and Brond. It is always unsound to base any argument for originality in a text on evidence for omission of material which might well have been left out in error. 4. The author of the Life may have accidentally omitted a line here from his copy of King Æthelwulf’s genealogy in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. See Smyth, King Alfred the Great, pp. 173–4, and Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred the Great, n. 4, p. 228. 5. Sedulius is here, unusually, cited by name as the author of the Carmen Paschale. Byrhtferth of Ramsey also cites Sedulius in his Life of Oswald and in his Manual. 6. The idea that Geata was once worshipped as a god is borrowed from Nennius’ Historia Brittonum (Nennius: British History and the Welsh Annals, ed. and transl. J. Morris (London and Chichester, 1980), p. 26). The author’s confusion of Geata in the West Saxon pedigree with Geta, a character from classical Roman comedy, was probably a wilful device which enabled him to introduce the irrelevant poem of Sedulius in order to pad out his thin narrative. 7. Literally ‘Nilotic (Niliacis) books’. A reference to pagan writings on papyri, perhaps, as opposed to medieval Christian Latin texts written on skins. 8. Oslac the so-called cup-bearer of King Æthelwulf, is known only from this passing reference in the Life of Alfred. See pp. 95–6. 9. I follow Stevenson in translating the Frankish comes (‘count’) as ealdorman. It is clear from the author’s translation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that this is correct. The word comes is also applied by the author to Danish leaders as in Chapter 33. 10. This passage on the legendary history of the Isle of Wight relies on the Anglo- Saxon Chronicle’s annals for AD 530 and 534. 11. The name of the island is missing from MS A. The author of the Life inserts Sheppey in error. The correct location was Thanet, which is also the location given in the Chronicle of Æthelweard. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle specifically tells us that ‘heathen men’ wintered on Sheppey for the first time in 855. 12. The monastery on Sheppey is referred to as though it were still a going concern, which would have been well-nigh impossible because of intense Viking activity from the 860s onwards in the later ninth century. 13. et Londoniam was omitted from the Cotton manuscript according to Wise. Mention of London is also absent from MSS. D, E, F of the Chronicle. But the author of the Life must have known of its inclusion in the earliest Chronicle entry since he goes on to give (inaccurate) details of London’s location. 14. The statement that such a well-known and important town as London belonged to Essex shows that this Life cannot be a contemporary late ninth-century account of King Alfred. London, under the Mercian supremacy, was a key Mercian empo- rium and it continued to be so down to Alfred’s reign under King Burgred. The Chronicle’s statement that King Alfred entrusted London to Æthelred, ealdorman of the Mercians in 886, and that on Æthelred’s death in 911 London fell under the control of King Edward the Elder, shows that London was still identified as a Mercian town when the author of the Life was supposedly writing in 893. 15. The author’s phrase loco funeris dominati sunt (‘they were masters of the place of slaughter’) is repeated many times in his translation of the Anglo-Saxon idiom wælstowe geweald ahton found in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Cf. Chapters 18, 33, 35, 36, etc. Significantly, the author uses the Latinised form of the Anglo-Saxon idiom here, where it is absent from the Chronicle’s annal for 851. Cf. note 109 Notes 213 below. Stevenson, ed., Life of Alfred, pp. 178–9. For the significance of the phrase in helping to identify the cultural origins of the author see p. 120. 16. This record of the battle at Sandwich is inserted in MS A of the Chronicle after events at Wicganbeorg as recorded under this year. MS A originally had the Sandwich episode under annal 845, but it was later erased. The author follows the B Text of the Chronicle in entering it here at the end of 851. 17. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, unlike the author, gives Athelstan his title of ‘king’. He was eldest known son of King Æthelwulf and he had been king of Surrey, Sussex, Kent and Essex since 839. He died in or shortly after 851. 18. The Cotton manuscript gave the year of Alfred’s life as undecimo or ‘eleventh’ in the year 853. Byrhtferth’s version of the Life of Alfred preserved in his Northumbrian Chronicle gave the correct reading of ‘fifth’ year (Historia Regum, ed. T. Arnold (Rolls Ser. London, 1882–85), ii, 70). This error in the Cotton manu- script would imply that Alfred was born in 842–3 rather than in 849 as the author himself had initially calculated. The author’s assessment of Alfred’s age begins to go wrong again for the year 870 in Chapter 32, and his Alfredian age-reckoning continues to present problems from then until the end of the work. 19. Britannia in this case means Wales. 20. The claim that Alfred was anointed king during his infancy cannot be accepted. See p. 197 and cf. Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred the Great, p. 232, n. 19. 21. The information that the Brittonic name for the Isle of Thanet was Ruim was borrowed from Nennius’ Historia Brittonum where it occurs in the same chapter (31) as the statement that Geta was worshipped as a god – information also borrowed by the author of the Life of Alfred (Nennius, ed. and transl. Morris, pp. 26, 67). Keynes and Lapidge (Alfred the Great, p. 69) translate Britannico sermone as ‘Welsh’. It could refer to any form of early medieval Brittonic, including Cornish. 22. For Chippenham as a royal estate, see pp. 107, 118. 23. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, this was the first viking wintering on Sheppey, but the author of the Life does not translate that statement because he had earlier erroneously placed the first wintering on Sheppey back in AD 851. See note 11 on p. 212 above. 24. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle more realistically claims that Æthelwulf gave over a tenth part of his ‘land’ rather than of his kingdom (totius regni) for his own spiri- tual benefit. That in effect is confirmed by the author when he returns to report on King Æthelwulf’s bequest for a second time in Chapter 16.
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