Dei gracia basileos Anglorum: Imperial Models for Æthelstan’s British Hegemony

Description

By the year 927, Æthelstan († 939) had claimed the crowns of Mercia, Wessex and Northumbria. While his grandfather Alfred the Great († 899), father Edward the Elder († 924), and aunt Æthelflæd († 918) had laid the groundwork for this expansion of West Saxon authority, Æthelstan was the first ruler to achieve the unification of the various early medieval English kingdoms. Sarah Foot (2011) names him as ‘the first king of England’. More than this though, he brought Cornwall under direct rule and purportedly held hegemony over both Scotland and the principalities of Wales. Michael Wood (1983) holds that Æthelstan ruled an empire.

The assertion that Æthelstan reigned over a British empire is a problematic one by modern definitions (Firth, 2018). Yet there are familiar things here: a central authority governing a periphery; indirect rule via subreguli in those peripheries; the adoption of the language of empire. It is on this latter that this paper focuses. Æthelstan’s coins declared him rex totius Britanniae, his charters claimed for him the same title and even imperator or basileus. Focusing on the charter evidence, this paper argues that Æthelstan’s titles evolved throughout his reign from the simplicity of rex Anglorum to the more grandiose imperial terms. It takes the position that he or his clerics consciously adopted imperial terminology and that, even posthumously, this held inherent within it a certain claim to legitimacy and authority, as witnessed by its continued use in later forged Æthelstanian charters.

Period	29 Jun 2022
Event title	Monarchy and Empire: Kings & Queens Conference 11
Event type	Conference
Location	Nantes, FranceShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International