Athelstan
(r. 924-39) is one of the most interesting although lesser known
of the late Anglo-Saxon kings of England. He was more than any
other tenth-century king of central importance in consolidating
the kingdom of England based upon the foundations of Alfred the
Great. Athelstan is probably most often recalled as the hero
of the famous poetic entry to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
for 937, known as The Battle of Brunanburh. The exultation
that caused the Chronicler literally to break into song with
that annal in the midst of an otherwise dry listing of consecrations
and deaths is symptomatic of the contemporary fame the warrior
king Athelstan enjoyed, which made him the focus of tenth- to
twelfth-century lore and legend. This article examines that body
of evidence for Athelstan of England as Christian king and hero.
Athelstan was the grandson of Alfred the Great (r. 871-99). The
overriding challenge of Alfred's reign was the descent of the
Danish Vikings in force on England. In a bare five years, from
866 to 870, the raiders-become-invaders had shattered three of
the four old Anglo-Saxon kingdoms - Northumbria, East Anglia,
and Mercia - leaving only Wessex unfallen. Coming to the West
Saxon throne in 871, Alfred managed to hold out and in 878 even
to force the Vikings to a truce, sundering England into a West
Saxon sphere of dominance in the southwest and the Viking "Danelaw"
in the northeast. Alfred then instituted a series of famous reforms,
military and cultural, that laid the groundwork for his son,
Edward the Elder (r. 899-924), and his descendants in the tenth
century to expand across the Danelaw and transform Wessex into
England, a process that would be completed by the reign of King
Edgar the Peaceable (r. 959-75). This feat was foreshadowed,
however, as early as 927 when Edward's son Athelstan first extended
West Saxon rule over Northumbria, gained the submission of the
northern kings in Britain, and ten years later preserved his
dominance, whereupon he claimed an imperial title and called
himself "king of the Anglo-Saxons and emperor of the Northumbrians,
ruler of the pagans and champion of the Britons"[1].
At the end of the tenth century, during the reign of the unfortunate
Aethelred II (r. 978-1016) [2]
when Scandinavian invaders again threatened England, the homilist
Aelfric of Eynsham looked back across the preceding century and
ranked Athelstan as the key figure between Alfred the Great and
Edgar the Peaceable as "kings [who] were often victorious
through God"[3]. Athelstan
carried forward the work of the former and made possible the
glory of the latter.
An aura of religious significance surrounded these events. For
the Christian Anglo-Saxons, the defining characteristic of the
Viking invaders was their paganism [4].
In the late ninth century, when the Christian kingdoms of England
faced annihilation, notions of Christian service and sacrifice
crystallized with the heroic tradition expressed in such Old
English poems as Beowulf to form a new heroic ideal. In
the tenth century, the new ethos of Christian heroism was employed
to great effect by the West Saxon kings in their creation of
a unified kingdom of England.
Athelstan was a central figure in these developments. Yet to
most casual students of history, he is just another of the seemingly
endless "Athels," "Aethels," and "Ethels"
who litter the landscape of late Anglo-Saxon England. The question
of why Athelstan's fame flourished and then faded is outside
the scope of this article, but merits further study. One explanation,
perhaps the most likely, might be simply that historical perspective
ultimately focused on Alfred the Great, whose achievement was
arguably the greater in that it made Athelstan's possible. Another
might be, as suggested by Michael Wood, the "dubious"
circumstances by which Athelstan came to the throne - he was
an illegitimate son of Edward the Elder, with younger half-brothers
who did not carry that taint - and that later West Saxon royalists
"maintained an ambivalent attitude to him and played down
his achievements in favour of the true Alfredian-Edwardian line"
(Wood 1987:126). Neither
theory is ultimately satisfying. Fascination with Alfred above
and beyond his most notable successors seems to have been long
in developing, even to have been a product of post-Conquest,
Anglo-Norman historiography. Aelfric of Eynsham, cited above,
ranked the more recent kings Athelstan and Edgar with Alfred,
and based on the names of his predecessors that Aethelred II
chose to bestow upon his sons (Athelstan for his first son, Alfred
only for his eighth and youngest, once every other predecessor's
name had been exhausted), Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge speculate
that the real hero of the tenth-century consolidation of the
House of Wessex to rulership of all England was Athelstan (Keynes and Lapidge 1983:45-6).
Those same Anglo-Norman historians who seem to have set Alfred's
reputation on its trajectory of development toward his being
styled "the Great" by the seventeenth century continued
to have a fascination with Athelstan - most notably William of
Malmesbury, whose account provides the major narrative of the
later king. Enduring legends surrounding this king would ultimately
make him the subject of a Middle English romance as late as the
fourteenth century (ed. Trounce
1951). Ultimately, however, the much greater fame of his
grandfather would eclipse Athelstan's own reputation.
Despite which, Athelstan was likely a more important figure to
tenth-century contemporaries, particularly to his peers on the
continent, than were any of his predecessors. Athelstan's pride
of place within that larger European context can be inferred
from the marriage alliances formed in his generation between
his sisters and the most powerful men on the continent.[5]
The marriages of West Saxon princesses to Hugh the Great in West
Francia and the future Otto the Great in East Francia in 926
and 928 respectively are significant in the context of early
tenth-century continental history. In both cases the dynasties
that supplanted the Carolingians in old Francia gained alliance
with a ruling family claiming a pedigree even more venerable
than the Carolingians, namely the West Saxon House of Cerdic
(Williams, et al., 1991,
s.v. "Athelstan"). Nevertheless, it was their current
successes in winning back those areas of England which had fallen
under Viking rule that made the West Saxon kings such attractive
allies in the wider world (Stenton
1971:344). In that achievement, Athelstan was as key a figure
as was his grandfather. This fact was doubtless recognized by
the Anglo-Saxon Chronicler in his poetic celebration of the battle
at Brunanburh in 937 whereby Athelstan preserved his overlordship
in the north of England against an alliance between Olaf Guthfrithson,
the son of the Norse king whom Athelstan had driven out of York
ten years before, and Constantine, king of the Scots, reduced
to submission by Athelstan in 927 and again in 934 [6].
That famous poem - for despite S. A. J. Bradley's caveat [7] the stark contrast between
the Chronicle entry for 937 and especially the brief annotations
that immediately precede it make it obvious that here we have
an annal of a different color, so to speak - merits at least
brief discussion. It deploys the traditional formulaic diction
of Germanic heroic poetry in lauding Athelstan's crucial victory
at Brunanburh. Oddly enough, although one (manuscript F) of the
two Chronicle manuscripts (mss. E and F) mentioning the battle
in a much shorter, non-poetic entry makes clear that "with
the help of Christ they had the victory,"[8]
such an explicit sense of Christian militancy is missing from
the poem itself. But the poem does convey an indefinable "feel"
of Christian exultation and almost seems to invoke the watchful
eye of God over the battlefield:
The field grew wet with men's blood from when in the morning-tide
that glorious star, the sun, glided aloft and over earth's plains,
the bright candle of God the everlasting Lord, to when that noble
creation sank to rest[9]
.
There are certain similarities between The Battle of Brunanburh
and the Old High German Ludwigslied, a short poem celebrating
in clearly martial Christian terms (and within one year of the
event) the 881 victory won by the West Frankish King Louis III
over the Vikings at the Battle of Saucourt [10].
John Bostock (1976:241)
bluntly assessed the latter poem as "a glorification of
the Church Militant, and of the king, its servant." The
historical events are portrayed as entirely in God's hands, from
the coming of the Vikings as a scourge on the Frankish people
because of their sins, to Christ's calling Louis to battle to
help the repentant people, to the Frankish victory through the
valor of Louis[11]. In
his discussion of the fundamental literary nature of Brunanburh
and Ludwigslied, Alois Wolf (1991:81)
saw the two texts as comparably "steeped in patriotism,
king, Christianity, and territory." For Brunanburh,
John Hill would recently agree in a perceptive discussion of
the poem as one in a series of late ninth- to tenth-century chronicle
entries having as their purpose the construction of a new mythology
of Christian kingship in service to the House of Wessex (Hill 2000:93-107). It is interesting
that specific notice is taken in the first lines of the presence
of Athelstan's half-brother and successor Edmund I (r. 939-46),
fighting at his side (Hill
2000:95, 105). Edmund would, of course, be the subject of
another of those aforementioned entries in a poem commemorating
his own 942 conquest of five boroughs in the by now Christianized
Danelaw as a "redemption" of an oppressed Christian
people:
Long had the Danes under the Norsemen
Been subjected by force to heathen bondage,
Until finally liberated by the valour of Edward's son,
King Edmund, protector of warriors [12].
The view presented
in both these poems had been set within a short time, by 955,
when both entries were written into the so-called "Parker
Chronicle" (= ASC ms. A; Fulk
and Cain 2003:223; Whitelock
1955:109).
The fame of King Athelstan, the hero of the first of these nearly
contemporary tenth-century English chronicle-poems, "putting
all his predecessors to shade by his piety, and all the glories
of their triumphs by the splendour of his own,"[13]
was such that he became a focal point around whom accrued a great
deal of perhaps legendary material[14].
The major narrative account of Athelstan appears in the twelfth-century
De Gestis Regum by William of Malmesbury (whence the above
quotation regarding Athelstan's piety). It has long been accepted,
based on William's word and reputation as a historian [15], that he based his account
of Athelstan upon a no longer extant tenth-century Latin poem
concerning the deeds of Athelstan[16]--
William was for his part unambiguous:
Concerning this king, a firm opinion is current among the English,
that no one more just or learned administered the State. A few
days ago I discovered that he was versed in letters, from a certain
very old book, in which the author struggled with the difficulty
of his matter, unable to express his meaning as he wished. I
would append here his words for the sake of brevity, if he did
not range beyond belief in praise of the prince, in that kind
of expression which Tullius [Cicero], the king of Roman eloquence,
in his book on rhetoric calls bombastic. The custom of that time
excuses the diction; the affection for Athelstan, who was still
alive, lends colour to the excess of praise. I shall add, therefore,
in a familiar style a few matters which may seem to augment the
record of his greatness [17].
The nature of William's
source, and whether it was authentically tenth-century has, however,
been the subject of considerable debate in recent years. On the
basis that extracts from two extended verse quotations included
by William do not display the arcane style and vocabulary, called
"hermeneutic," that appears almost without exception
in tenth- to eleventh-century Anglo-Latin compositions. Michael
Lapidge seemed to overturn the historical orthodoxy when he rejected
a tenth-century source for William's poems, and by implication
for the narrative as a whole[18].
There followed a polarization of opinions, from those regarding
William's reliability as a source for Athelstan to be irredeemably
tarnished[19] to those
who have risen to William's defense [20].
Most notable among the defenders is Michael Wood, who soon responded
to Lapidge that a genuinely contemporary tenth-century poem -
perhaps the "bella ethel[s]tani regis" which
appears in a thirteenth-century catalogue entry at Glastonbury
(presently in Trinity College, Cambridge, Ms. R S 33 [f. 103v]),
noticed by Lapidge himself (1981:61
n. 6) but apparently rejected by him as William's source - does
indeed underlie William of Malmesbury's twelfth-century account.
Wood proposed that William paraphrased the verses from the tenth-century
hermeneutic poem, a practice William demonstrably followed elsewhere
(Wood 1983:265-6 incl.
265 n. 78)[21]. William's
words reveal his own recognition and assessment of the tenth-century
style - "[t]he custom of that time excuses the diction"
- and he stated his own intention to tell the story "in
a familiar style." More recently, Wood has persuasively
analyzed William's narrative, demonstrating how well the events
he described - from a quaint story of Alfred the Great's honoring
his very young grandson (Athelstan was born in 894; Alfred died
in 899) with arms and royal insignia, through the lad's fostering
in Mercia with his aunt, Aethelflaed, and her husband, ealdorman
Aethelred, even to a surprising report of criticism regarding
the king's complacency before the battle at Brunanburh - fit
into the realities of the tenth century and have not the character
that would be expected of a twelfth-century forger, especially
one at Malmesbury where Athelstan was revered as a benefactor
(Wood 1999:149-68). Despite
Lapidge's objection, the old consensus that the poetic source
which William claimed for his Athelstan-material "ha[s]
the authority of a contemporary" (Stenton
1971:339 n. 2) has not been refuted. It remains possible,
if not probable, that not only in the Old English Chronicler's
heroic meter was the hero of Brunanburh judged worthy of early
poetic celebration.
Lapidge's more unassailable contribution in that same aforementioned
article is his recovery from obscurity, edition, and extensive
discussion of three other tenth-century Latin poems associated
with Athelstan. Two of these poems in particular demonstrate
indisputably how contemporaries viewed that king [22].
One, the Carta Dirige Gressus, Lapidge assigned to the
immediate aftermath of the events of 927 when Athelstan expelled
Olaf Sihtricson from York, entered into a pact with Constantine,
king of the Scots, and gained the submission of the princes of
the north. In Lapidge's meticulous reconstruction based upon
one of the two independent, but both corrupted, versions of the
poem, the poet exulted:
Whom he now rules with this
England [now] made whole:
King Athelstan lives
glorious through his deeds![23]
The other poem, the
Rex Pius Æðelstan, comes from a similar historical
context. Lapidge strongly suggests that it is in fact associated
with the aftermath of Athelstan's 937 triumph at Brunanburh (Lapidge 1981:97, incl. n.
158). Consider the first few lines of the Latin poem:
Holy king Athelstan, renowned through the whole world,
- whose esteem flourishes
and whose honour endures everywhere,
- whom God set as king
over the English, sustained by the foundation
- of the throne, and
as leader of [His] earthly forces,
- plainly so that this
king himself, mighty in war, might be able
- to conquer other fierce
kings, treading down their fierce necks [24].
Athelstan is God's
warrior, whom He has set over the English to lead His people,
supported by God to victory in war. The last verse quoted above
uses terms recalling some of the more martial among the Psalms
(e.g., Psalm 58).
A vaguely Old Testament flavor imparted to Athelstan's kingship
in the Rex Pius
Æðelstan
becomes explicit
in a prayer for victory traditionally associated with this same
king. It appears immediately adjacent to one version of the Carta
Dirige Gressus in a manuscript of unknown provenance. Both
poem and prayer were written into the manuscript by the same
hand, which probably dates to the early eleventh century[25].
In the nineteenth century, Walter de Gray Birch printed in his
Cartularium Saxonicum what he entitled the "Prayer
of Aethelstan" in both Latin and, from yet another manuscript,[26] in Old English:
O Lord God Almighty King of Kings and Lord of Lords in Whose
might every victory lies and every war is crushed, grant to me
that Thy might may fortify my heart so that, relying on Thy strength
and relying on my own hands and powers I may fight well and act
manfully, so that my enemies may fall in my sight and may collapse
just as Goliath collapsed before Thy servant David and just as
the people of Pharaoh before Moses in the Red Sea; and just as
the Philistines fell before the people of Israel; and [just as]
Amalek collapsed before Moses and the Canaanites before Joshua,
so let my enemies fall under my feet, and let them come against
me by one path and let them flee from me by seven paths; and
may God crush their arms and smash their swords and melt them
in my sight just as wax melts before a fire, so that all the
peoples of the earth may know that the name of Our Lord Jesus
has been invoked upon me; and let Thy name be magnified, O Lord,
among my adversaries, O Lord God of Israel [27].
Despite Birch's endorsement,
the tradition associating this prayer specifically with Athelstan
is considered doubtful by modern commentators [28].
Nevertheless, an early eleventh-century copyist's placement of
the prayer adjacent to a poem clearly celebrating the king's
overlordship in Northumbria testifies to the early date of just
such a tradition.
Taken together, the poems and the prayer quoted above reveal
the view of Athelstan as a powerful warrior king that was current
in the tenth and early eleventh centuries. The prayer is replete
with stark martial imagery, drawn from the Old Testament, which
would be appropriately assigned to God's own warrior celebrated
by the author of the Rex
Pius Æðelstan.
The manuscript contexts of both the Carta Dirige Gressus
and the Rex
Pius Æðelstan
furthermore highlight the reputation of Athelstan as a great
benefactor of the church in England, which can be seen through
a number of manuscripts associated with him in one way or another.
As catalogued, surveyed, and interpreted by Simon Keynes (1985), these books afford
us a glimpse at a warrior king who, like his grandfather Alfred,
actively supported scholarship (at least one of the manuscripts,
as noted below, was likely a product of Athelstan's own court)
and thus in a different way than noted by Aelfric of Eynsham
carried forward the work of Alfred and made possible the reform
of the English church during the reign of Edgar. In the context
of the age, such benefaction as Athelstan practiced inevitably
carried political and military connotations.
The Rex Pius
Æðelstan
was written into a late ninth- or early tenth-century Gospel
manuscript of continental origin on the occasion of Athelstan's
donation of the Gospel to Christ Church Canterbury (Lapidge
1981:94; Keynes 1985:150-51).[29] The manuscript context
of the Carta Dirige Gressus is even more significant for
the relationship of king and church in the military context of
the early- to mid-tenth century. One of the two extant versions
of the poem appears in a Durham manuscript known to have been
at Chester-le-Street in the tenth century (Lapidge
1981:84).[30] Athelstan
was quite generous to the congregation of St. Cuthbert at Chester-le-Street.[31] From the later (after
995) residence of the monks, Symeon of Durham in his early twelfth-century
compilation, the Historia Regum, included the news, based
upon an annal embellishing the bare Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
entry for 934 that "King Athelstan went into Scotland .
. . and ravaged much of it,"[32]
that Athelstan "came to the tomb of St. Cuthbert, commended
himself and his expedition to his protection, and conferred on
him many and diverse gifts befitting a king . . . He then subdued
his enemies, laid waste Scotland."[33]
By his many gifts, Athelstan marshaled the Northumbrian saint's
aid against his enemies.
There is earlier evidence
than the Historia Regum for an increasingly close association
of the tenth-century English kings with the guardians of St.
Cuthbert's relics, and for that association in the unsettled
conditions of the north to be cast in military terms. The Historia
de Sancto Cuthberto, a curious document the bulk of which
dates from the mid-tenth century (Simpson
1989:397-411; Rollason
1989:144-9), seems largely motivated by such connections
- sections 26 and 27 are the likely source regarding the tale
of Athelstan's donation. This work pushes the relationship back
to the days of King Alfred. On the eve of Alfred's decisive triumph
at Edington in 878, St. Cuthbert is said to have appeared to
him and assured the king of his own and God's aid to victory.[34] The Durham monks posited
a tradition of West Saxon devotion to St. Cuthbert, urged on
Edward the Elder by his father Alfred and by Edward on his own
son Athelstan, and continuing under Athelstan's brother and successor
Edmund.[35]
There is also evidence for West Saxon overtures to St. Cuthbert
independent of the Durham monks' own tradition. Among the gifts
of Athelstan to Chester-le-Street was a tenth-century West Saxon
codex most likely prepared especially for the occasion of this
royal donation, containing Bede's eighth-century prose and verse
Lives of the sixth-century St. Cuthbert, with a frontispiece
illustrating the king presenting the book to St. Cuthbert.[36] In the first half of
the tenth century a relationship between the West Saxon kings
and the congregation of St. Cuthbert would have been mutually
beneficial. The monks would gain a measure of protection against
threats from the Scots to the north and the Viking kings still
intermittently reigning in York to the immediate south; the West
Saxons gained powerful spiritual support and hence a measure
of legitimacy in their bid to dominate Northumbria, where they
had no historic claim. The inclusion of various episcopal and
royal records in this book, including a list of popes, alongside
the Cuthbert material may have had the purpose of fostering a
sense of unity, both ecclesiastical and national, between the
north and south of England (Keynes
1985:181). Such a strategy of spiritual or ecclesiastical
patronage was employed by tenth-century West Saxon kings elsewhere.
There is later evidence that Athelstan also supported the shrines
of St. John of Beverley and St. Wilfrid at Ripon. A ring preserved
at Bury St. Edmunds in East Anglia bears as its inscription the
names of St. John of Beverley and Athelstan (Rollason
1989:152-3, incl. fig. 6.4). In the 990s, Abbo of Fleury
attested an independent tradition that Athelstan solicited tales
of the East Anglian royal martyr to Viking aggression, St. Edmund
[37].
In addition to gifts of books as described above, holy relics
played a crucial role in the West Saxon program of marshaling
the cults of non-West Saxon saints to their cause [38].
The royal relic-collection made up the king's haligdom,
which accompanied him always, from at least the late ninth century,
when Asser testified that King Alfred kept candles burning "in
the presence of the holy relics of a number of God's chosen saints
which the king had with him everywhere"[39].
Royal possession of relics from throughout England is a clear
indication of the breadth of West Saxon influence (Rollason
1989:153 ff.). King Athelstan stands out among the relic-collectors
of late Saxon England. Several churches' traditions attributed
their own collections to his religious largesse - one of them
was Malmesbury, perhaps explaining that abbey's devotion to him
[40]. Athelstan was well-known
as an ardent collector of relics from far and wide. The prologue
to an Old English relic-list from Exeter (which church received
one-third of Athelstan's collection) (Rollason
1989:160), tells how royal agents purchased "with the
king's earthly treasure the most valuable treasures of all -
holy relics"[41].
A letter from the prior at St. Samson's at Dol in Brittany testifies
to knowledge of Athelstan's interest in relics even beyond the
shores of England[42].
Such a widely known reputation attached to the West Saxon king
probably prompted the gifts which Hugh the Great, the count of
Paris whose son would be the first Capetian king, sent to Athelstan
in 926 when he solicited Athelstan's sister's hand in marriage
as mentioned above. The nature of the relics sent by Hugh is
intriguing with regard to the question of the saints' aid in
war and the consequent sanctification of the warrior. According
to William of Malmesbury, among Hugh's gifts were:
the sword of Constantine the Great, on which could be read the
name of the ancient owner in letters of gold; on the pommel also
above thick plates of gold you could see an iron nail fixed,
one of the four which the Jewish faction prepared for the crucifixion
of our Lord's body; the spear of Charles the Great, which, whenever
that most invincible emperor, leading an army against the Saracens,
hurled it against the enemy, never let him depart without the
victory; it was said to be the same which, driven by the hand
of the centurion into our Lord's side, opened by the gash of
that precious wound Paradise for wretched mortals; the standard
of Maurice, the most blessed martyr and prince of the Theban
legion, by which the same king was wont in the Spanish war to
break asunder the battalions of the enemies, however fierce and
dense, and to force them to flight [43].
The significance of
these gifts has been much discussed. Michael Wood speculated
that for William they symbolized a "translatio imperii,"
"transfer of imperium," from the Carolingians to the
West Saxon Cerdicings, and that Athelstan through receipt of
these gifts and their Carolingian associations aspired to the
Carolingian legacy of empire (Wood
1983:267)[44]. More
significant here are the martial associations of the relics.
The three relics described by William of Malmesbury include not
only a banner associated with a martyred soldier of the early
church (St. Maurice, killed with the Theban Legion ca. 287 for
refusing to make pagan sacrifice) but also relics of the Passion
either used as a weapon (the Holy Lance) or used to hallow a
weapon (the Nails from the Crucifixion fixed into Constantine's
sword). The Sword of Constantine and its pommel-relic find curious
parallel in the Abingdon sword-hilt, originating in Alfredian
Wessex, incorporating the symbols of the Four Evangelists [45]. The association of the
gift relics with the Emperors Constantine and Charlemagne is
interesting beyond the idea of a "translatio imperii"
- the two emperors were warriors championing Christendom against
enemies both pagan and Muslim.[46]
Finally, the timing of the gifts in the context of continental
developments associating relics with warfare is interesting.
Although evidence is scarce for England, it is known that in
this period relics were increasingly brought onto continental
battlefields, serving as standards which invoked the aid of the
saints (Erdmann 1977:24)[47]. Much later tradition
did portray Athelstan wearing into battle at Brunanburh in 937
what may well have been another of the gifts sent by Hugh. According
to a fourteenth-century Malmesbury monk, "the holy cross
which he [Athelstan] bore around his neck in battle is yet venerated
at Malmesbury among the holy relics, as is fitting"[48].
Interestingly, the
military relics described above did not exhaust Hugh's gifts
to Athelstan in 926, which also included:
a piece of the holy and adorable Cross enclosed in crystal, where
the eye, penetrating the substance of the stone, could discern
what was the colour of the wood and what was the quantity[49].
Wood calls attention
to a piece of "Carolingian rock crystal which hangs today
in the Early Medieval Room in the British Museum, still in the
chain by which it could be hung round the neck, its back grooved
to hold a wooden sliver of the True Cross" (Wood
1999:165). Although records fail regarding the provenance
of this amulet before the modern period, Wood makes the obvious
connection with the fourteenth-century chronicler's Cross-relic
worn by Athelstan in battle at Brunanburh.
And here we have come full circle, because current at least by
the early twelfth century, perhaps much earlier if William did
indeed derive the following incident from his tenth-century source,
was the tradition that King Athelstan of England benefitted from
direct and open divine intervention at Brunanburh [50].
During that celebrated battle,
by chance his [Athelstan's] sword [gladius] fell from
its scabbard; wherefore, when all things were full of dread and
blind confusion, he invoked God and St. Aldhelm [of Malmesbury],
and replacing his hand on the scabbard he found a sword [invenit
ensem], which today is kept in the kings' treasury on account
of the miracle. It can, as they say, be engraved on one side,
but never inlaid with gold or silver. Relying on this gift from
God, and at the same time, because it was now getting light,
attacking the Norseman [Olaf Guthfrithson], unwearied he put
him to flight with his army the whole day until evening [51].
Considering the passage
as a whole, it is doubtful that invenit ensem would be
better translated "found the sword," i.e., that the
ensis found was the gladius lost. The intriguing
possibility that Athelstan carried into battle at Brunanburh
the relic-laden sword of Constantine must be rejected in favor
of the more intriguing probability that here we have a second
"holy sword" associated with Athelstan. Whence came
that sword - with its reportedly mysterious qualities - later
ages are left only to speculate, although for William of Malmesbury's
twelfth-century readership I imagine that certain conclusions
were obvious, that "gift from God" would be taken literally.
King Athelstan of England stands squarely in the middle of a
trajectory of development in ideas of Christian heroism and kingship
in the late Anglo-Saxon period. His grandfather, King Alfred
the Great of Wessex, had cultivated such notions in rallying
his Christian kingdom to defend against the pagan Vikings in
the ninth century. The Viking age would ultimately transform
the map of England. Over the course of the tenth century, Alfred's
successors - most notably Athelstan - would take the offensive
in a West Saxon conquest of those areas of England that had fallen
to the invaders, and create a situation in which further developments
in the idea of Christian kingship would in effect split it off
from ideas of Christian heroism. Just consider the "Christological
kingship" exemplified by Edgar the Peaceable's famous and
highly symbolic coronation on Pentecost 973 and the heroic defeat
suffered by ealdorman Byrthnoth of Essex at Maldon in 991 at
the hands of new Scandinavian raiders. With the exception of
the single notice regarding his brother, comrade at Brunanburh,
and successor Edmund as the rescuer of the "Five Boroughs,"
the kings of later Anglo-Saxon England were not celebrated in
such heroic terms as had been Athelstan. By no stretch of literary
convention could Aethelred II, "the Unready," (r. 978-1016)
be rendered a hero. But in the same age, even in defeat, Byrhtnoth,
a non-royal warrior of the nobility, did gain such renown as
a saint and martyr [52].
From the sources examined here, it is clear that Athelstan held
a crucial place in tenth-century English affairs, recognized
in an early but enduring fame, cultivated by his own piety and
use of religious bonds and symbolism to rally support for the
West Saxon royal program of expansion. As celebrated in various
martial poems and relics traditionally associated with his reign
and battles, Athelstan captured the imagination of an age as
the exemplar of the kind of Christian king and hero who had conquered
the Danelaw and created England.
