Age of charlemagne mercia guide how to#

The epistles of Boniface stand in a similar position when taken as evidence of Anglo-Saxon political thought, while the letter of Cathwulf has had much written about its place in Early Medieval political thought and the works of Alcuin have also been looked at as political texts. The importance of the HE as a text of kingly advice, political theory and exhortation is often overlooked, as is its impact on the other side of the Channel, in the land of the Franks.

Age of charlemagne mercia guide how to#

Bede has left for us an important cultural heritage in the HE not only was it an example of the art of eighth-century history writing but it was also a manual for ecclesiastics and kings of the period, for it acted as a handbook on how to evangelise a pagan race and how to successfully rule a Christian kingdom Bede is EnglandвЂ™s very own pater historiae. It was meant to produce a response from the Christian reader, for it contained praise for what Bede saw as good and invective against what he saw as bad, designed to advise, encourage, inform and warn, and ultimately to save the soul of the reader and keep him/her on the straight and narrow. The HE is a history of a people as well as a theology of a people, intended for the вЂthoughtful listenerвЂ™ to read and learn from. The HE was written in 731 and Bede used as his chief model the Ecclesiastical History (323) of Eusebius (ob.c.340). from the British Isles) because of their biblical tone. Moreover, how these ideas affected the practical and theoretical basis of Carolingian kingship in the eighth and the ninth centuries needs to be examined ideas that were inherently Insular (i.e.

The ideology they articulated in their writings needs to be explored in detail, as does the evidence of the transmission of the HE across the English Channel, for as a book the HE would have had a markedly wider audience than the epistolary evidence and with the exception of the Letter to Egbert it is the only text that was definitely not written on the Continent.

Within these extant works can be found a fairly sophisticated theory of kingship that was in essence Anglo-Saxon but which had evolved in the works of each writer to meet the needs of their own situation. The surviving works to be focused upon here are BedeвЂ™s Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, hereinafter HE) and his Letter to Egbert BonifaceвЂ™s correspondence (Bonifatii Epistolae) CathwulfвЂ™s letter to Charlemagne, king of the Franks (ob.814, see plate 1) AlcuinвЂ™s Versus de Patribus Regibus et Sanctis Euboricensis Ecclesiae (Poem on the Bishops, Kings and Saints of the Church of York, hereinafter York Poem) and his correspondence. Each had a different background in the church, yet all had an impact upon the kingship of the Frankish dynasty, the Carolingians, by engaging with the contemporary political issues of their day. Their careers as churchmen gave them the opportunity to write down ideas on monarchical government: the rule of kings. All lived in a society that was governed by kings and united under Roman Christianity. The first of these was a monk who lived in the monastery at Jarrow in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria, while the latter three were clerics who were more at home in the palaces and at the courts of Continental monarchs. The geographical area we now call England produced four great political thinkers in the eighth century, the Venerable Bede (ob.735), Boniface (born Wynfrith ob.754), Cathwulf (fl.770s) and Alcuin of York (ob.804). Boniface and the Missionaries on the ContinentДЄbbildung in dieser Leseprobe nicht enthalten Introduction