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"Heart shall be bolder, harder be purpose, / more proud the spirit as our power lessens!"

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Almighty and Eternal God, we give Thee thanks for the life and virtues of Edward, King and Confessor, whose sacred relics still adorn this city where once he ruled. Through his Intercession we ask that Thou wilt continue to pour out Thy blessings upon this earthly kingdom, this England, graciously defending us from all that threatens to harm the safety of Thy people. May the good government and faithful service of Saint Edward guide and direct those who govern us here below, so that all who dwell in this realm may be lead by the light of the Gospel. Grant us, we beseech Thee, an increase of Faith, Hope and Charity, that England the Dowry of Mary may become once again an island of Saints. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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How Pagan Was Medieval Britain?

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Byrthtnoth earl of Essex also knows as the defender of all Essex.

Born 931 ad and died at the age of 60 in theyear 991 leading a anglo Saxon army into the Battle of maldon against a Viking invasion.

Absolute warrior!

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Snowdrops at Holy Trinity, York, England.

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Albert Anker, La Reine Berthe et les Fileuses (Queen Bertha and the Spinners) (1888)

(via La reine Berthe et les fileuses (Queen Bertha and the Spinners) - Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts)

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Aethelred the Unready

Aethelred II, also known as Aethelred the Unready, was king of the English from 978-1013 and 1014-1016. His long reign was initially stable, but Viking attacks on England escalated from the 990s onward. Viking incursions eventually grew so serious that England struggled to mount effective resistance, and Aethelred was briefly overthrown by the Danish king Swein Forkbeard in 1013.

Aethelred reclaimed his kingdom following Swein’s death in early 1014, and the “second reign” of Aethelred saw more effective military campaigns against the Vikings but also high levels of disunity and suspicion at Aethelred’s court. The king died in 1016 and passed along the Viking struggle to his son Edmund II. Aethelred reigned for nearly 38 years – longer than any other king of England before the Norman Conquest.

Aethelred’s infamous nickname, the Unready, does not actually refer to him being unprepared. It is an Old English pun that mocks Aethelred’s given name, which meant “Noble Counsel.” The Old English word unraed meant “bad counsel” and was a way to note the irony that a king named “Noble Counsel” struggled to maintain the loyalty of the English nobility. As the English language evolved, unraed was corrupted into unready, even though Aethelred the Ill-Advised would be a more accurate translation.

Path to the Throne & Early Reign

Aethelred was born sometime between 966 and 968 in a recently united England. He was the son of King Edgar (r. 959-975) and Queen Aelfthryth. Edgar was arguably the first king to see England remain one stable, coherent kingdom for an extended length of time, as his three predecessors had seen England fragment back into smaller kingdoms at one time or another. However, when Edgar died in 975, England once more found itself bitterly divided and possibly on the brink of splintering again. Edgar had died with three surviving children, each from a different mother. The English nobles managed to preserve the unity of their kingdom by eventually agreeing that the eldest child, the teenage Edward, should be the next king. Evidently not everyone was pleased with this arrangement, and Edward was assassinated in 978, just three years into his reign.

After Edward’s murder, Aethelred was the only surviving son of Edgar, ascending to the throne at somewhere between ten and twelve years old. Aethelred’s mother Aelfthryth and his influential tutor, Bishop Aethelwold, were among the most prominent figures at the young king’s court. When Bishop Aethelwold died in 984, King Aethelred began to exert more influence. Aethelred expelled his mother from court and began surrounding himself with new appointees rather than relying on the old guard. He married Aelfgifu of York around this time as well, and they soon had several children, including the future King Edmund II.

A few small Viking raids were launched against England in the 980s, and The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that these fleets often amounted to no more than a handful of ships. Local English forces sometimes took care of them on their own, such as when a group of Vikings was defeated in Devon, according to The Life of St. Oswald. Sometimes the Vikings disappeared for years at a time, such as from 983 to 987, when no attacks were recorded at all. In spite of isolated raids, Aethelred ruled over a stable and wealthy kingdom in the 980s, free to focus on assembling his own core of advisors and asserting his newfound authority.

Viking Age Trade Routes in North-West Europe

Brianann MacAmhlaidh (CC BY-SA)

Continue reading…

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John Collier (English, 1850-1934)

Lady Godiva

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Traditional customs for June centre on the summer solstice – midsummer, as it has been known in English since the Anglo-Saxon period. The precise date of the solstice falls between June 20 and 22, but in Christian tradition it became fixed at an early date to the feast of the Nativity of John the Baptist, June 24. Today we might associate solstice celebrations with dawn crowds at Stonehenge, but that custom is a fairly recent revival; though people have marked the summer solstice for thousands of years, throughout the Middle Ages and long afterwards it was fully merged with the celebration of St John’s feast. Midsummer festivities have largely died out in Britain, but it’s still a popular festival in many parts of Europe.

John the Baptist is the only saint in Christian tradition, other than the Virgin Mary, to have a feast commemorating his birth as well as his death. The Church has traditionally seen the dating of the June feast as meaningful because John, “the forerunner”, was born six months before Christ, and their births are celebrated at the four key points of the solar year. Just as Christ was conceived at the spring equinox and born at the winter solstice, so John was conceived at the autumn equinox and born at the summer solstice.

The Venerable Bede explained the theological significance of this: “It was fitting that the Creator of eternal light should be conceived and born along with the increase of temporal light, and that the herald of penance, who must decrease (John 3:30), should be conceived and born at a time when the light is diminishing.”

So if you want to mark Midsummer Eve, do it with light and fire. In the medieval period midsummer was a popular communal celebration: houses were decorated with lamps and greenery, there were parades with pageantry and music, people feasted with their neighbours, and bonfires were lit in the streets. It was believed that these bonfires had protective powers, able to purify the air and drive away evil spirits. According to the 14th-century writer John Mirk, bonfires were appropriate for John the Baptist because the saint himself was a “lantern burning”, seen from afar like a beacon of fire.

After the Reformation, midsummer bonfires were suppressed as Catholic superstition, though in some regions they survived as late as the 19th century. But numerous customs lingered in later folklore that preserve the idea of Midsummer Eve as a magical time: a night when you might encounter ghosts, when unmarried girls could try love-divination to find out about their future husbands, and when anyone who kept watch in the church porch at midnight would see the spirits of those fated to die in the coming year. It was said that a rose picked on Midsummer Eve would last until Christmas, while St John’s wort – which gets its name because it flowers at this time of year – was used to decorate houses at midsummer, and shared the healing and protective powers attributed to St John’s bonfires.

(via If you want to celebrate Midsummer, do it with light and fire - Catholic Herald)

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John Howe, ‘Beowulf’s Funeral’

(via John Howe :: Illustrator - Portfolio :: Home / Books with Pictures / Beowulf / Beowulf's Funeral)

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St Cuthbert’s pectoral cross

(via Durham Cathedral. St Cuthbert | Patricia Lovett MBE)

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No one can quite agree which English coronation was the first. The ninth-century hero Alfred the Great is traditionally considered the first King of England but there is no record of any coronation ceremony for him. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle relates the five-year-old princeling’s visit to Rome where young Alfred was apparently anointed by Pope Leo IV. This was interpreted by Victorians as an anticipation of his eventual kingship, unlikely though that intent was, given Alfred’s distance from the West Saxon throne at that point. But Alfred would certainly have submitted to election as king by the Witenagemot, the Saxon gathering of wise men who acclaimed the new king and often likely chose him as well. Aspects of this acclamation survived well into the modern era of coronation services.

Edgar I was certainly crowned king in 973, ten years into his reign, in a ceremony that had lasting influence. The West Country origins of England’s—Australia’s—monarchy are made obvious by Edgar’s coronation taking place in the Benedictine abbey of Bath in Somerset, and it was the former abbot of nearby Glastonbury Abbey, Saint Dunstan, who Edgar had persuaded back from his cross-Channel exile to take up the role of Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of All England. Being crowned and—importantly—anointed in an abbey by the Archbishop of Canterbury set a precedent that every English and British monarch ever after sought to emulate.

(via The Eternal Business of Coronations - Quadrant Online)

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50 posts!

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Middle-earth is ... not my own invention. It is a modernization or alteration ... of an old word for the inhabited world of Men, the oikoumene: middle because thought of vaguely as set amidst the encircling Seas and (in the northern-imagination) between ice of the North and the fire of the South. O. English middan-geard, mediaeval E. midden-erd, middle-erd. Many reviewers seem to assume that Middle-earth is another planet!

Quote by J.R.R. Tolkien: “Middle-earth is ... not my own invention. It is...”