Date/Time
Date(s) - 16 Sep 2016
7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Location
The CUNY Graduate Center
Category(ies) No Categories
Please join the Friends of the Saints on the third Friday of this month, Sept. 16, at 7 p.m. in the Pearl Kibre Medieval Study (Room 5105) of the CUNY Graduate Center (365 Fifth Ave.), for the following paper and our customary pot-luck refreshments.
Jay Paul Gates
Associate Professor, Department of English
John Jay College of Criminal Justice
“Bishop, King, and Legal Restriction: the Laws of Æthelred ‘the Unready’”
Despite recent efforts to reevaluate, if not fully rehabilitate, the reign of Æthelred II, the king commonly retains his unfortunate twelfth-century moniker, unræd, and many scholars seem to read the historical documents of his reign through the later conquest of England. In particular, Æthelred’s legislation has received harsh criticism: the early laws have been dismissed as “relatively unexciting except for their depiction of the king’s humiliation at the hands of the Vikings,” and the later laws, drafted by Wulfstan, Archbishop of York, as attempting to rewrite the failed social order expressed in the early laws.
In this talk, I challenge these readings, showing Æthelred’s development of recent kings’ expansion of their control through the elaboration of governmental structures and the delegation of authority. Then, through the continuities from early to later legislation, I suggest that Wulfstan was aware of the successes of Æthelred’s governance and that his legislative interventions should be seen as attempts to instruct the English in their responsibilities, bolster royal authority, and ensure public security, even while advancing the role of the church in secular law. Yet the laws that Wulfstan drafted for Æthelred do not reflect a remodelling of the social order expressed in earlier legislation. Rather, they reflect a shift in perspective and emphasis, responding to social disorder through a pastoral lens, refocusing the law on teaching the English their responsibilities in the social order and the importance of fulfilling them.
Please contact Leah Hanlon to indicate whether you will attent (affirmative RSVPs only) at [email protected].