Eleven major scholars of the Anglo-Saxon period consider Alfred the Great, his cultural milieu, and his achievements. With revised or revived views of the Alfredian revival, the contributors help set the agenda for future work on a most challenging period. The collection features the methods of history, art history, and literature in a newer key and with an interdisciplinary view on a period that offers less evidence than inference. Major themes linking the essays include authorship, translation practice and theory, patristic influence, Continental connections, and advances in textual criticism. The Alfredian moment has always surprised scholars because of its intellectual reach and its ambition. The contributors to this collection describe how we must now understand that ambition.

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.

This book is a comprehensive study of political thought at the court of King Alfred the Great (871–99). It explains the extraordinary burst of royal learned activity focused on inventive translations from Latin into Old English attributed to Alfred's own authorship. A full exploration of context establishes these texts as part of a single discourse which placed Alfred himself at the heart of all rightful power and authority. A major theme is the relevance of Frankish and other European experiences, as sources of expertise and shared concerns, and for important contrasts with Alfredian thought and behaviour. Part I assesses Alfred's rule against West Saxon structures, showing the centrality of the royal household in the operation of power. Part II offers an intimate analysis of the royal texts, developing far-reaching implications for Alfredian kingship, communication and court culture. Comparative in approach, the book places Alfred's reign at the forefront of wider European trends in aristocratic life.

Asser's Life of King Alfred, written in 893, is a revealing account of one of the greatest of medieval kings. Composed by a monk of St David's in Wales who became Bishop of Sherborne in Alfred's service and worked with him in his efforts to revive religion and learning in his kingdom, this life is among the earliest surviving royal biographies. It is an admiring account of King Alfred's life, written in absorbing detail - chronicling his battles against Viking invaders and his struggle to increase the strength and knowledge of his people, and to unite his people at a time of conflict, uncertainty and war.

The famous German Church Historian Rev. Professor Dr.J.H. Kurtz called King Alfred the greatest and noblest of all the monarchs England has ever had. King Alfred applied all the energy of his mind to the difficult problems of government; to the emancipation of his Christian country by driving out the Pagan Danish invaders and robbers; and then to improving the internal condition of the land. Alfred is perhaps best of all remembered for his famous Law Code. King Alfred's Book of Laws or Dooms came forth from the laws of Kent, Mercia and Wessex. All these attempted to blend the Mosaic Code with the Christian principles of Celto-Brythonic Law and old Germanic customs...the laws of Alfred, continually amplified by his successors, grew into that body of Customary Law which was administered as the 'Common Law' by the Shire and the Hundred Courts.

The first critical edition of Alfred the Great's domboc ('book of laws') in over a century.

The Old English manuscript whose charred and burnt remains are now MS BL Cotton Otho B. xi was written at Winchester during the reign of Æthelred, partly in the middle of the tenth century and partly about the middle of the first half of the eleventh. In its pristine state it contained Anglo-Saxon texts of some importance, including a collection of laws. Unfortunately, the manuscript fell victim to the Cottonian fire of 1731 and was largely destroyed. Before the fire, however, in 1562, Otho B. xi was transcribed practically in its entirety by the antiquarian Laurence Nowell, whose work formed the basis for the printed edition of the Anglo-Saxon Laws contained in William Lambarde's Archaionomiaof 1568.The present edition offers a brief discussion of the laws of the Anglo-Saxons as they survive in manuscripts and printed editions and then concentrates on the work of Nowell and Lambarde. Two Laurence Nowells and at least three Nowell transcripts of Cotton Otho B. xi are known to modern scholarship and require consideration before proceeding to an edition of what can be reconstructed of MS BL Cotton Otho B. xi. The texts of the law codes known as II Athelstan, V Athelstan, Iudex, and Alfred and Ine found originally in MS BL Cotton Otho B.xi are printed from the Nowell transcript contained in MS BL Additional 43703, while on facing pages the corresponding passages from Lambarde's Archaionomiaare reproduced. Variants from the other Nowell transcripts of the same texts are noted, manuscript relations are discussed in an appendix, and a select bibliography is offered. The importance of the present edition is that it makes it easier to compare the Otho B. xi text and Lambarde's printed version than is possible with Felix Liebermann's Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen. Comparison of the Nowell and Lambarde texts with one another shows that there can be little doubt that Lambarde for his Archaionomiaused Otho B. xi or a transcript of it made by Nowell Comparison of the Nowell and Lambarde texts with the other extant manuscript and printed versions casts some further light on the relations between the surviving law codes of the Anglo-Saxons.