Cohen, Zeke 2019 History Thesis Title: The Earliest English Law Code?: Reexamining the Origins of the Law Code of King Æthelberht of Kent Advisor: Eric Knibbs Advisor is Co-author: None of the above Second Advisor: Released: release now Authenticated User Access: Yes Contains Copyrighted Material: No THE EARLIEST ENGLISH LAW CODE? Reexamining the Origins of the Law Code of King Æthelberht of Kent by ZEKE COHEN Professor Eric Knibbs, Advisor A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honors In History WILLIAMS COLLEGE Williamstown, Massachusetts April 15, 2019 2 Table of Contents Acknowledgments…………………………………………………....3 Map of Anglo-Saxon England, c. 600……………………………….4 Timeline………………………………………………………………5 Introduction………………………………………………………….6 The First English Law Code Chapter One…………………………………………………………17 Examining and Decentering Bede’s Ecclesiastical History Chapter Two…………………………………………………………49 Comparisons and Textual Analysis Chapter Three……………………………………………………….78 Answering the Who, When, and Why of ÆC Conclusion…………………………………………………………...98 Our View of Early Anglo-Saxon England Bibliography…………………………………………………………102 3 Acknowledgments Writing this thesis has been the highlight of my academic career. Far from tiring of the topic as the months went by, I found myself getting more excited, invested, and certain that I had inadvertently waded into one of the most interesting areas of history. I would neither have considered writing a thesis in this area, nor found researching and writing it so rewarding, were it not for the guidance of Professor Eric Knibbs. He always steered me in the right direction, kept me grounded whenever I was worried I had met a dead end, and offered invaluable advice, even from a continent away. I appreciate the assistance of Professor Eiko Maruko Siniawer, who led our Thesis seminar and was a helpful resource throughout the year. I would also like to thank the other members of the thesis seminar, particularly Lindsay Klickstein, Ross Hoch, and Pat Smith. I greatly appreciate the support that I felt from them throughout the year. Thank you to the many members of the Williams community, especially my teammates on the Cross Country and Track teams, who encouraged my excitement, assuaged my fears, gave impromptu pep talks, and showed more interest in the affairs of seventh century Kent than they perhaps felt. I am especially grateful for my friends on and off campus, including David Azzara, Austin Anderson, Lucas Estrada, Jesse Facey, Gabriel Lerner, Chris Avila, Kenneth Marshall, Ian Concannon, and Victoria Kingham. I am tremendously grateful for the love, support, advice, and last-minute edits I received from Julia Gunther throughout the year. She made doing this thesis as easy as it could have been. Finally, although a couple of sentences will never suffice, I would like to thank my extended family, my parents, and my brother, Sam. Their love, guidance, and example, this year and always, has been formative and sustaining. 4 Map of Anglo-Saxon England, c. 6001 1 Mike Christie, English Kingdoms 600, online image, Wikimedia, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:English_kingdoms_600_-_2.png 5 Timeline of Key Events 410: The Romans, facing internal strife, leave Britain; evidence of economic, political, cultural collapse. c. 440s: The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes invade Britain from northern Germany. 476: The Western Roman Empire officially collapses. 481-643: Barbarian successor states control formerly imperial territory, begin issuing law codes. c. 589: Æthelberht becomes king of Kent. 597: Augustinian mission reaches Kent; Æthelberht converted to Christianity. 597-616/8: Æthelberht ostensibly issues eponymous law code. 616/8: Æthelberht dies; Eadbald becomes king of Kent. 640: Eadbald dies; Eorcenberht becomes king of Kent. 664: Eorcenberht dies; Egbert becomes king of Kent. Archbishop of Canterbury, Deusdedit, dies, leaving archdiocese without oversight. 669: Theodore of Tarsus arrives in Canterbury by way of Rome to assume Archbishopship. 673: Egbert dies; Hlothere becomes king of Kent. 679-685: Hlothere and Eadric issue eponymous law code. 685: Hlothere dies; Eadric becomes sole king of Kent. 686: Eadric dies; further political disruption in Kent with multiple foreign rulers. c. 690: Wihtred begins reign; Archbishop Theodore dies. 695: Wihtred issues eponymous law code. 731: Bede writes Ecclesiastical History of the English People, mentioning Æthelberht’s code. c. 899: Alfred the Great of Wessex issues eponymous law code, mentioning Æthelberht’s code. 1122-4: Æthelberht’s code, along with Hlothere and Eadric’s and Wihtred’s, compiled in still- surviving manuscript, the Textus Roffensis. 6 Introduction: The Earliest English Law Code In 597 CE, forty men landed on the island of Thanet, just off of the east coast of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Kent in southeastern England.2 Led by a monk named Augustine, these men had been sent by Pope Gregory in Rome, for the purpose of converting the pagan Anglo- Saxons to Roman Christianity. The powerful Kentish monarch, Æthelberht, met them there. Æthelberht, a pagan, was one of the descendants of the northern Germanic tribal invaders—the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes—who, 150 years prior, had been invited to Britain to repel a Pictish3 invasion, but had instead decided to stay and conquer. The missionaries made Æthelberht nervous. Although he had some familiarity with Christianity, being married to a Frankish Christian, we read that “he took care that they should not meet in any building, for he held the traditional superstition that, if they practiced any magic art, they might deceive him and get the better of him as soon as he entered.”4 Through chanting and prayers, the missionaries succeeded in convincing Æthelberht to grant them a dwelling in Canterbury—which eventually became the powerful archdiocese of Canterbury—although he insisted that “I cannot consent to accept [the words and promises you bring] and forsake those beliefs which I and the whole English race have held so long.”5 Undeterred, the missionaries in Canterbury emulated the apostles, praying, preaching, engaging in asceticism, and “[confirming the truth of] their most precious promises…by performing many miracles.”6 These miracles evidently won over Æthelberht, who “at last…believed and was baptized.”7 2 Other kingdoms in Anglo-Saxon England include Wessex, Essex, Northumbria, Mercia, and East Anglia. 3 Scottish. 4 Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, edited and translated by Judith McClure and Roger Collins. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969, i.25, 39. 5 Ibid., 40. 6 Ibid., 41. 7 Ibid. 7 With Æthelberht converted, the missionaries set their sights on the rest of England. They encountered large pockets of British Christians8 as well as Irish Christian missionaries, the latter of whom also were attempting to convert the Anglo-Saxons to their version of Christianity. The rivalry between the Irish and Roman Christians for the soul of Anglo-Saxon Christianity remained a live issue for several decades, with each claiming responsibility for the conversion of various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Not until the Synod of Whitby in 664, when the Northumbrian monarch Oswiu decreed that his kingdom would follow the customs of the Romans rather than the Irish, was it clear which form of Christianity would dominate England. Æthelberht himself remained to the end a pious, Roman Christian king. We read that he died on 24 February [either 616 or 618, denoted 616/8], twenty-one years after he had accepted the faith, and was buried in the chapel of St Martin, within the church of the Apostles St Peter and St Paul, where his queen, Bertha, also lies. Among other benefits which he conferred upon the race under his care, he established with the advice of his counsellors a code of laws after the Roman manner. These are written in English and are still kept and observed by the people. Among these he set down first of all what restitution must be made by anyone who steals anything belonging to the church or the bishop or any other clergy; these laws were designed to give protection to those whose coming and whose teaching he had welcomed.9 The “code of laws” that Æthelberht established before his death (henceforth denoted as ÆC) is known as the earliest English law code. Proving its ascription and determining why it may have been drafted are the primary focuses of this thesis. *** Almost everything we know about Æthelberht and his conversion to Christianity we owe to the Northumbrian monk named Bede.10 Bede entered the monastery of St. Peter in Wearmouth at age 7, in about 680, where he spent the rest of his life. Bede wrote several dozen works, 8 The British were a different ethnicity from the English, as well as from the Picts and the Irish. 9 Bede, Ecclesiastical History, ed. and trans. by McClure and Collins, ii.5, 78. 10 Bede was beatified as a saint after death. He is commonly referred to as the Venerable Bede. 8 mostly biblical commentaries. Toward the end of his life, in 731, he wrote his magnum opus, The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, or the HE. This is a long, comprehensive, and exquisitely detailed narrative in which Bede traces the history of England from the Roman occupation of Britain through his own times. His history recounts the Anglo-Saxon invasion, the Augustinian mission and conversion of Æthelberht, later Irish missions, disputes over the correct date of Easter, and the then-present state of the English and Britain itself. It has been seen as the earliest attempt to write down a national history.11 The HE is notable for providing a clear view of an otherwise murky period. It is our best narrative source for early Anglo-Saxon history.12 Scholars rely heavily on Bede to determine what events occurred and how society was structured during the early Anglo-Saxon period. The HE also bears important implications for students of the reign of Æthelberht and his eponymous law code, ÆC.