Wessex and England from Alfred to Edgar: Essays on Political, Cultural, and Ecclesiastical Revival

This book is concerned with aspects of the revival of English military, ecclesiastical, and intellectual strength in the period from King Alfred's defeat of the Great Danish Army at Edington in 878 to that of the triumph of Benedictinism in the reign of Edgar, king of England 959-975. Studying intellectual developments of the first half of the tenth century, Dr. Dumville argues that those decades were a period of continuation of the Alfredian renascence, and he looks back into that King's troubled but productive reign to discover new aspects of his thinking and to offer some new interpretation of his actions. These were also the years in which the kingdom of England was formed: attention is therefore given to King Aethelstan, its creator. This series of new studies draws on fresh manuscript-evidence as well as reinterpreting texts long known to historians. By bringing together the testimonies of a wide variety of sources, it seeks to provide the basis on which a new history of the period may be written.