Æthelweard first witnessed charters as a thegn after the accession of Eadwig in 955, probably because he was the brother of the king's wife, Ælfgifu, although the relationship is unproven. The marriage was annulled on the grounds of consanguinity, and Æthelweard's position was threatened when Eadwig died in 959 and was succeeded by his half-brother Edgar, who was hostile to the faction associated with Eadwig. Æthelweard survived, although he was not appointed to the position of ealdorman until after Edgar's death. In the view of Shashi Jayakumar, "One receives the impression that Æthelweard played his cards right in Edgar's reign, perhaps by treading warily and displaying the same maddening discretion that one finds in his Chronicon.[1]
Æthelweard signed as dux or ealdorman in 973, and was accorded primacy among the ealdormen after 993. He continued to witness until 998, about which time his death may have taken place. Æthelweard's ealdormanry was the Western Provinces, probably the south-west peninsula. His brother Ælfweard, a royal discthegn, or household official, continued to sign as minister until 986.[2]
Æthelweard was the friend and patron of Ælfric of Eynsham, who in the preface to his Old English Lives of saints, addressed Æthelweard and his son Æthelmær.
Family
In the introduction to his Latin Chronicle Æthelweard claims to descend from King Æthelred,[4] while in Book IV he calls Æthelred his atavus, then uses the same term to describe the relationship between the chronicle's recipient, Mathilde, Abbess of Essen, and her great-great-grandfather, King Alfred.[5] According to Patrick Wormald, Æthelweard may have meant that Æthelred was his great-grandfather, great-great-grandfather, great-great-great-grandfather, or merely ancestor,[6] but Sean Miller specifies great-great-grandfather.[7] In 957 King Eadwig, the great-grandson of King Æthelred I's brother, Alfred the Great, was obliged to divorce Æthelweard's likely sister Ælfgifu on the grounds of consanguinity.[3]
It has been postulated that Æthelweard and his siblings Ælfweard, Ælfgifu and Ælfwaru were the children of Eadric, ealdorman of Hampshire. This identification rests on Ælfgifu's possession of the estate of Risborough, which had belonged to Eadric's mother, Æthelgyth, the wife of ealdorman Æthelfrith of Mercia.
One possible construction is that his putative grandfather Æthelfrith was the grandson of King Æthelred I through his son Æthelhelm.[8] This royal connection would go some way to explaining the enormous prestige enjoyed by Æthelfrith's sons.
Assuming that the identification of Æthelweard as the brother of Ælfgifu is correct, his mother was the Æthelgifu whose company Eadwig enjoyed along with her daughter whilst escaping his coronation. Ælfgifu left a bequest to an Æthelflaed, who was either Æthelweard's wife or his sister-in-law.
Æthelweard was father of Æthelmær the Stout, who was ealdorman of the Western provinces towards the end of Æthelred II's reign. Æthelmær was the father of Æthelnoth, who became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1020, and was later regarded as a saint,[9] and of the Æthelweard executed by King Cnut in 1017.[3] Æthelmær has been speculatively identified with the Agelmær named by John of Worcester as brother of Eadric Streona and father of Wulfnoth Cild, who was father of Godwin, Earl of Wessex and grandfather of King Harold II, though the Worcester chronicler makes this Agelmær son of Agelric rather than Æthelweard and the pedigree as a whole has problematic chronology.[5][8][10]
Works
After 975 and probably before 983, Æthelweard wrote the Chronicon, a Latin translation of a lost version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, including material not found in surviving Old English versions.[7] Æthelweard wrote his work at the request of his relative Mathilde, abbess of the Essen Abbey and granddaughter of emperor Otto I and Eadgyth of Wessex. The text only survives in a single copy now in the British Library,[11] which was badly damaged in the Cotton Library fire in 1731, but it had been printed by Henry Savile in 1596.[6] Mathilde probably rewarded him with a copy of Vegetius' work De Re Militari which was written in Essen and has long been in England.
The Chronicon was composed in the hermeneutic style almost universally adopted by English scholars writing in Latin in the tenth century. Michael Lapidge defines it as "a style whose most striking feature is the ostentatious parade of unusual, often very arcane and apparently learned vocabulary."[12] The twelfth century historian William of Malmesbury, writing at a time when the style had come to be seen as barbarous, wrote about him "... of Elward, a noble and illustrious character, who attempted to arrange these chronicles in Latin, and whose intention I could applaud if his language did not disgust me, it would be better to be silent".
^Jayakumar, Shashi (2008). "Eadwid and Edgar: Politics, Propaganda, Faction". In Scragg, Donald (ed.). Edgar, King of the English 959-975. Woodbridge, UK: The Boydell Press. pp. 87–99. ISBN978-1-84383-928-6.
^Keynes, Simon. The Diplomas of King Æthelred the Unready 978–1016, 1980
^ abMiller, Sean, "Æthelweard" in The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Michael Lapidge, 2001
^ abBarlow, Lundie W. "The Antecedents of Earl Godwine of Wessex" in New England Historical and Genealogical Register, 1957, vol. 111, pp. 30-38
^Mason, Emma "Æthelnoth (d. 1038)" Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Oxford University Press, 2004 Online Edition accessed 7 November 2007
^David H. Kelley, "The House of Aethelred", in Lindsay L. Brook, ed., Studies in Genealogy and Family History in Tribute to Charles Evans... 1989, pp. 63-93.
^Chronicon de Rebus Anglicis, BL Cotton MS, Otho A.x
Rerum anglicarum scriptores post Bedam praecipui. Chronicorum Ethelwerdi Libri IV. Londini, 1596.
Æthelweard, Chronicon, ed. and tr. Alistair Campbell, The Chronicle of Æthelweard. London, 1961.
Barker, E.E. (ed.). "The Cottonian fragments of Æthelweard's Chronicle." Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 24 (1951): 46–62.
Ælfric, preface to Lives of Saints, ed. and tr. W.W. Skeat, Ælfric's Lives of Saints. 2 vols: vol. 1. Oxford, 1881–1900. 2–7.
Ælfric, preface to his Old English homilies, ed. and tr. Benjamin Thorpe, The Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church. The First Part, Containing the Sermones Catholici, or Homilies of Ælfric. 2 vols: vol 1. London, 1844–1846.
William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum, ed. and tr. R.A.B. Mynors, R. M. Thomson and M. Winterbottom, William of Malmesbury. Gesta Regum Anglorum. The History of the English Kings. OMT. 2 vols. Oxford, 1998.
John of Worcester, Chronicon ex chronicis, ed. Benjamin Thorpe, Florentii Wigorniensis monachi chronicon ex chronicis. 2 vols. London, 1848–1849.
Secondary sources
Campbell, James. "England, c. 991." In The Battle of Maldon: Fiction and Fact, ed. Janet Cooper. London and Rio Grande, 1993. 1–17.
Houts, Elisabeth van. "Women and the Writing of History in the Early Middle Ages: The Case of Abbess Mathilda of Essen and Æthelweard." Early Medieval Europe 1 (1992): 53–68.
Howlett, D.R. "The Verse of Æthelweard's Chronicle." Bulletin Du Cange 58 (2000): 219–24.
Jezierski, Wojtek. "Æthelweardus redivivus." Early Medieval Europe 13.2 (2005): 159–78.
Lapidge, Michael (1993). Anglo-Latin Literature 900–1066. The Hambledon Press. ISBN1-85285-012-4.
Lutz, Angelika. "Æthelweard's Chronicon and Old English poetry." Anglo-Saxon England 29 (2000): 177–214.
Meaney, Audrey L. "St. Neots, Æthelweard and the Compilation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: a Survey." Studies in Earlier Old English Prose, ed. Paul E. Szarmach. Albany, 1986. 193–243.
Stenton, Frank Merry. "Æthelweard's Account of the Last Years of King Alfred's Reign." In Preparatory to Anglo-Saxon England, being the Collected Papers of Frank Merry Stenton, ed. D.M. Stenton. Oxford, 1970. 8–13. Published previously in English Historical Review 24: 79–84.
Whitbread, L. "Æthelweard and the Anglo-Saxon chronicle." English Historical Review 74 (1959): 577–89.
Winterbottom, Michael. "The Style of Æthelweard." Medium Aevum 36 (1967): 109–18.
Wormald, Patrick (2004). "Æthelweard [Ethelwerd] (d. 998?), chronicler and magnate". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/8918. Retrieved 29 March 2017. (subscription or UK public library membership required)
Æthelweard, historian, this, article, needs, additional, citations, verification, please, help, improve, this, article, adding, citations, reliable, sources, unsourced, material, challenged, removed, find, sources, Æthelweard, historian, news, newspapers, book. This article needs additional citations for verification Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed Find sources AEthelweard historian news newspapers books scholar JSTOR April 2010 Learn how and when to remove this template message AEthelweard also Ethelward d c 998 was an ealdorman and the author of a Latin version of the Anglo Saxon Chronicle known as the Chronicon AEthelweardi He was a kinsman of the royal family being a descendant of the Anglo Saxon King AEthelred I of Wessex the elder brother of Alfred the Great Contents 1 Career 2 Family 3 Works 4 See also 5 References 6 Primary sources 7 Secondary sources 8 External linksCareer EditAEthelweard first witnessed charters as a thegn after the accession of Eadwig in 955 probably because he was the brother of the king s wife AElfgifu although the relationship is unproven The marriage was annulled on the grounds of consanguinity and AEthelweard s position was threatened when Eadwig died in 959 and was succeeded by his half brother Edgar who was hostile to the faction associated with Eadwig AEthelweard survived although he was not appointed to the position of ealdorman until after Edgar s death In the view of Shashi Jayakumar One receives the impression that AEthelweard played his cards right in Edgar s reign perhaps by treading warily and displaying the same maddening discretion that one finds in his Chronicon 1 AEthelweard signed as dux or ealdorman in 973 and was accorded primacy among the ealdormen after 993 He continued to witness until 998 about which time his death may have taken place AEthelweard s ealdormanry was the Western Provinces probably the south west peninsula His brother AElfweard a royal discthegn or household official continued to sign as minister until 986 2 In 991 AEthelweard was associated with archbishop Sigeric in the conclusion of a peace with the victorious Danes from Maldon citation needed and in 994 he was sent with Bishop AElfheah of Winchester to make peace with Olaf Tryggvason at Andover 3 AEthelweard was the friend and patron of AElfric of Eynsham who in the preface to his Old English Lives of saints addressed AEthelweard and his son AEthelmaer Family EditIn the introduction to his Latin Chronicle AEthelweard claims to descend from King AEthelred 4 while in Book IV he calls AEthelred his atavus then uses the same term to describe the relationship between the chronicle s recipient Mathilde Abbess of Essen and her great great grandfather King Alfred 5 According to Patrick Wormald AEthelweard may have meant that AEthelred was his great grandfather great great grandfather great great great grandfather or merely ancestor 6 but Sean Miller specifies great great grandfather 7 In 957 King Eadwig the great grandson of King AEthelred I s brother Alfred the Great was obliged to divorce AEthelweard s likely sister AElfgifu on the grounds of consanguinity 3 It has been postulated that AEthelweard and his siblings AElfweard AElfgifu and AElfwaru were the children of Eadric ealdorman of Hampshire This identification rests on AElfgifu s possession of the estate of Risborough which had belonged to Eadric s mother AEthelgyth the wife of ealdorman AEthelfrith of Mercia One possible construction is that his putative grandfather AEthelfrith was the grandson of King AEthelred I through his son AEthelhelm 8 This royal connection would go some way to explaining the enormous prestige enjoyed by AEthelfrith s sons Assuming that the identification of AEthelweard as the brother of AElfgifu is correct his mother was the AEthelgifu whose company Eadwig enjoyed along with her daughter whilst escaping his coronation AElfgifu left a bequest to an AEthelflaed who was either AEthelweard s wife or his sister in law AEthelweard was father of AEthelmaer the Stout who was ealdorman of the Western provinces towards the end of AEthelred II s reign AEthelmaer was the father of AEthelnoth who became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1020 and was later regarded as a saint 9 and of the AEthelweard executed by King Cnut in 1017 3 AEthelmaer has been speculatively identified with the Agelmaer named by John of Worcester as brother of Eadric Streona and father of Wulfnoth Cild who was father of Godwin Earl of Wessex and grandfather of King Harold II though the Worcester chronicler makes this Agelmaer son of Agelric rather than AEthelweard and the pedigree as a whole has problematic chronology 5 8 10 Works EditAfter 975 and probably before 983 AEthelweard wrote the Chronicon a Latin translation of a lost version of the Anglo Saxon Chronicle including material not found in surviving Old English versions 7 AEthelweard wrote his work at the request of his relative Mathilde abbess of the Essen Abbey and granddaughter of emperor Otto I and Eadgyth of Wessex The text only survives in a single copy now in the British Library 11 which was badly damaged in the Cotton Library fire in 1731 but it had been printed by Henry Savile in 1596 6 Mathilde probably rewarded him with a copy of Vegetius work De Re Militari which was written in Essen and has long been in England The Chronicon was composed in the hermeneutic style almost universally adopted by English scholars writing in Latin in the tenth century Michael Lapidge defines it as a style whose most striking feature is the ostentatious parade of unusual often very arcane and apparently learned vocabulary 12 The twelfth century historian William of Malmesbury writing at a time when the style had come to be seen as barbarous wrote about him of Elward a noble and illustrious character who attempted to arrange these chronicles in Latin and whose intention I could applaud if his language did not disgust me it would be better to be silent See also EditHouse of Wessex family treeReferences Edit Jayakumar Shashi 2008 Eadwid and Edgar Politics Propaganda Faction In Scragg Donald ed Edgar King of the English 959 975 Woodbridge UK The Boydell Press pp 87 99 ISBN 978 1 84383 928 6 Keynes Simon The Diplomas of King AEthelred the Unready 978 1016 1980 a b c Anglo Saxon Chronicle Antonia Gransden Historical Writing in England c 500 to c 1307 1993 p 37 a b Alfred Anscombe The Pedigree of Earl Godwine in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 1913 3rd Series vol 7 pp 129 150 a b Wormald AEthelweard a b Miller Sean AEthelweard in The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo Saxon England ed Michael Lapidge 2001 a b Barlow Lundie W The Antecedents of Earl Godwine of Wessex in New England Historical and Genealogical Register 1957 vol 111 pp 30 38 Mason Emma AEthelnoth d 1038 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Oxford University Press 2004 Online Edition accessed 7 November 2007 David H Kelley The House of Aethelred in Lindsay L Brook ed Studies in Genealogy and Family History in Tribute to Charles Evans 1989 pp 63 93 Chronicon de Rebus Anglicis BL Cotton MS Otho A x Lapidge pp 105 135 136 139Primary sources EditRerum anglicarum scriptores post Bedam praecipui Chronicorum Ethelwerdi Libri IV Londini 1596 AEthelweard Chronicon ed and tr Alistair Campbell The Chronicle of AEthelweard London 1961 Barker E E ed The Cottonian fragments of AEthelweard s Chronicle Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 24 1951 46 62 AElfric preface to Lives of Saints ed and tr W W Skeat AElfric s Lives of Saints 2 vols vol 1 Oxford 1881 1900 2 7 AElfric preface to his Old English homilies ed and tr Benjamin Thorpe The Homilies of the Anglo Saxon Church The First Part Containing the Sermones Catholici or Homilies of AElfric 2 vols vol 1 London 1844 1846 William of Malmesbury Gesta regum Anglorum ed and tr R A B Mynors R M Thomson and M Winterbottom William of Malmesbury Gesta Regum Anglorum The History of the English Kings OMT 2 vols Oxford 1998 John of Worcester Chronicon ex chronicis ed Benjamin Thorpe Florentii Wigorniensis monachi chronicon ex chronicis 2 vols London 1848 1849 Secondary sources EditCampbell James England c 991 In The Battle of Maldon Fiction and Fact ed Janet Cooper London and Rio Grande 1993 1 17 Houts Elisabeth van Women and the Writing of History in the Early Middle Ages The Case of Abbess Mathilda of Essen and AEthelweard Early Medieval Europe 1 1992 53 68 Howlett D R The Verse of AEthelweard s Chronicle Bulletin Du Cange 58 2000 219 24 Jezierski Wojtek AEthelweardus redivivus Early Medieval Europe 13 2 2005 159 78 Lapidge Michael 1993 Anglo Latin Literature 900 1066 The Hambledon Press ISBN 1 85285 012 4 Lutz Angelika AEthelweard s Chronicon and Old English poetry Anglo Saxon England 29 2000 177 214 Meaney Audrey L St Neots AEthelweard and the Compilation of the Anglo Saxon Chronicle a Survey Studies in Earlier Old English Prose ed Paul E Szarmach Albany 1986 193 243 Stenton Frank Merry AEthelweard s Account of the Last Years of King Alfred s Reign In Preparatory to Anglo Saxon England being the Collected Papers of Frank Merry Stenton ed D M Stenton Oxford 1970 8 13 Published previously in English Historical Review 24 79 84 Whitbread L AEthelweard and the Anglo Saxon chronicle English Historical Review 74 1959 577 89 Winterbottom Michael The Style of AEthelweard Medium Aevum 36 1967 109 18 Wormald Patrick 2004 AEthelweard Ethelwerd d 998 chronicler and magnate Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Oxford University Press doi 10 1093 ref odnb 8918 Retrieved 29 March 2017 subscription or UK public library membership required External links EditAEthelweard 23 at Prosopography of Anglo Saxon England AEthelweard s Chronicon Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title AEthelweard historian amp oldid 1134127744, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,
