The White Horse King: The Life of Alfred the Great (24 page)

Between the prestige of the royal abbess and the wealth of the abbey’s generous endowments, the Shaftesbury abbey’s renown spread quickly. Soon Æthelgifu was joined by a number of other women who chose to devote their virginity to God at Shaftesbury. Strangely, Alfred had a much more difficult time establishing the monastery at Athelney since the Anglo-Saxon men seemed far less eager to take monastic vows that would dedicate them to a life of celibacy, prayer, and meditation on the Scriptures. To man the Athelney monastery, Alfred eventually had to resort to recruiting men from abroad, drawing from Wales, Old Saxony, Flanders, and even some of the young Danes.

Alfred’s youngest daughter, Ælfthryth, was given as wife to Baldwin II, the Count of Flanders. Even before this marriage into the house of Wessex, Baldwin already had several close connections to Alfred’s family. First, his mother was Judith, the daughter of Charles the Bald, who had become the unfortunate young second wife of Alfred’s father, shortly before his death. As the widowed queen of Wessex, she had then been shamefully taken as wife by Alfred’s older brother Æthelbald in a desperate attempt to demonstrate his own right to the throne. His subsequent reign was brief and tragic. After Æthelbald’s death in 860, Judith, now having reigned twice as the queen of Wessex despite being only sixteen years old, sold all her English property and returned home to West Francia. Her dismayed father placed her in the care of a monastery until he could once more arrange a suitable marriage for her. However, Judith outraged her family when the monks who served as her guardians reported that she had eloped with a mysterious count named Baldwin. Initially enraged and set on having the marriage annulled, her father eventually accepted his new son-in-law and entrusted him with the task of ruling the Viking-ravaged coast of Flanders.

Sitting opposite the channel from Alfred’s Kent, the region of Flanders had been equally despoiled by the intensifying Viking raids throughout the 860s to the 880s. As Count Baldwin and his son after him sought to defend their shores from the Danish scourge, it was only natural that the Counts of Flanders work in close cooperation with the Wessex king, who was essentially fighting the same battle as the Flemish. As a result of this partnership, the two kingdoms began to exchange defensive strategies and military intelligence. This partnership eventually led to increased trade between the two regions as well as a deeper bond of friendship and cooperation between their clergies.

Finally, this alliance was sealed when Alfred’s daughter, Ælfthryth, was given as bride to Count Baldwin II. Of Countess Ælfthryth little is known, except that her husband granted her request that at his death, rather than be buried at Saint Bertin in Saint Omer where only the male line of his family was permitted to be buried, he would instead be buried at the Abbey of Saint Peter in Ghent, where Ælfthryth could eventually be buried next to him. Whatever romance lies behind the story of this shared tomb can only be filled in by imagination.

Alfred’s youngest son, Æthelweard, had a very different childhood from his older brother Edward’s. Born in the year 880, Æthelweard’s boyhood coincided with the peace and prosperity of Alfred’s golden age. And while Æthelflæd and Edward had lived their youths as permanent fixtures of Alfred’s court, learning how to rule, Æthelweard devoted his life from an early age to learning the liberal arts. If Alfred’s will can be taken as evidence of his fatherly affections, then Æthelweard was clearly a well-loved son, receiving dozens of royal estates throughout Wessex at his father’s death. At his death, the prince was buried at the New Minster in Winchester, suggesting an enduring favor in the royal court throughout his brother’s reign as well.

CHAPTER 7
Alfred the Wise

Alfred found learning dead and he restored it, education neglected and he revived it, the laws powerless and he gave them force, the church debased and he raised it, the land ravaged by a fearful enemy from which he delivered it. Alfred’s name shall live as long as mankind shall respect the past.

—FROM THE INSCRIPTION ON THE STATUE OF KING ALFRED IN WANTAGE

A
lfred’s innovations in his radical restructuring of the military of Wessex, according to the program described in the
Burghal
Hideage
, have long been acknowledged as one of the king’s most significant and lasting achievements. The transformation of an archaic, clumsy, and unpredictable system of shire fyrds into a swiftly moving, standing army of professional soldiers supported by a network of well-defended burhs, not only resulted in the complete resuscitation of an almost dead nation and a nearly extinct people but also created the sort of national military efficiency that would eventually drive the Danes entirely from English soil. To Alfred, however, the fortification of the burhs of Wessex, the organization of the standing army, and all the great battles won by these newly organized warriors of Wessex were only one portion of a much larger defense policy, which the king had sketched out in his own mind during the frantic years of the 870s.

When the king had searched the tumultuous history of early medieval Britain, he had happened upon descriptions of a golden age, a time when the kings ruled in peace. These were times when the people were moral, with little crime and great respect for their rulers. These were times when not only were their shores free from the raids of pagan plunderers, but the people actually advanced their own territories and extended their borders. And these were times when the Anglo-Saxon tribes were Christian tribes, and not just in name only but faithfully worshiping the God of the Bible with a vibrant and fruitful faith. And the clearest testimony that Alfred saw for their eagerness to worship the Christian God was their dogged perseverance in the discipline of Christian learning.

As Alfred learned from the history recorded by the venerable Bede, there had been a time when the many Anglo-Saxon monasteries were filled with men who were eager to learn to read and write not only in their native tongue but also in Latin, the
lingua franca
of western Europe. These men esteemed the knowledge of God as more precious than any treasure and had therefore abandoned all their worldly pursuits for the chance to study the Scriptures and the heritage of Christian learning. God had blessed these men in their studies such that, during this golden age of British Christianity, the various Anglo-Saxon monasteries and abbeys became veritable storehouses of pious wisdom. Their renown had spread throughout Europe, and the intoxicating aroma of their godly learning had attracted knowledge-hungry men from the farthest reaches of the Christian west.

But things had radically changed during the two centuries that had intervened between the golden age of the Anglo-Saxon church, described by the venerable Bede, and the time of Alfred. The English church had grown complacent, indolent, and lethargic. Numbed by their prosperity, their love of learning grew cold, and their interest in Christian studies died off altogether. Tragically, by the time Alfred came to the throne, he was hard-pressed to think of more than a handful of men who lived south of the Humber river and could read the divine services in their own language. Of the few whom he could name, none lived south of the Thames, meaning Wessex had fallen further into an unchristian ignorance than any other Anglo-Saxon nation. It was virtually impossible to find a churchman in his kingdom who could understand the Latin language.

Now the nation that had been sought out for its treasury of Christian wisdom must travel abroad to seek assistance in understanding the simplest Christian texts. By neglecting the study of the great works of Christendom, the Bible in particular, the Anglo-Saxon people had lost not only the ability to read but more important, the ability to understand the wisdom of God. England, through her intellectual lethargy, was slowly devolving into a pagan nation, a people who neither knew nor served the Christian God.

If this was the case, if the Anglo-Saxons had abandoned the service of the Christian God, then it seemed to Alfred that it was no surprise that God had abandoned them. The king could find in the Scriptures close parallels to the predicament of the kingdom of Wessex. The king of Assyria once conquered the northern kingdom of Israel and emptied the land, leading the Israelite people away captive. The Assyrians then resettled the land by bringing in a large host of settlers, drawn from the surrounding pagan nations. However, when these pagan men and women continued to serve the gods of their homeland, God responded by bringing lions into the land to devour the idolatrous men and women who dared to practice their idolatries on the sacred soil of Israel. It was not until an Israelite priest was brought back to his homeland to teach the pagans how to properly serve the Lord that the lions finally relented and the people could live in peace.

Now Alfred saw his kingdom in a similar light. The nominally Christian Anglo-Saxon people whom Alfred ruled inhabited a landscape marked throughout by empty and decaying churches; it was a land formerly given over to the worship of the Christian God. The Anglo-Saxons had become an unfaithful people dwelling on formerly sacred Christian soil. Was it any wonder then that God had raised up the Viking scourge, the “lions of Israel,” to strike them and remind them of their duties to God? Alfred concluded that the Vikings were not the cause of England’s overthrow. They were the result. The Anglo-Saxons’ own lethargic apostasy had been the cause of the fall of the various Anglo-Saxon nations. If Alfred was to have a victorious defense policy, clearly armies and burhs were not enough. If Wessex wanted to be successful in her ongoing struggle with the plundering Danes, then the nation must devote itself to a revival of Christian learning and Christian worship.

It had been nearly a full century since the Viking plague had begun with the first tragic raid on the holy island of Lindisfarne. After that disaster, Alcuin had written to the British church urging them to consider this raid as a scourge from God, sent to awaken the Anglo-Saxons from spiritual lethargy. Now, nearly one hundred years later, the king of Wessex finally took this warning to heart and set about reviving Christian learning and worship throughout his land.

As a youth, Alfred had been naturally inclined toward book learning. In particular, the poetry of the Anglo-Saxon tongue, with its haunting cadences and kennings, had cast a spell on his mind that would hold him under its power until his last day. The little volume of poetry his mother had given him had long been a prized possession. The young prince had also had a particular fondness for the book of Psalms and gave special attention to memorizing them, a task made easier by the regular recitation of Psalms in the daily church services. After the death of his mother, however, little attention was paid in the court of Alfred’s father to continuing the young boy’s studies. Thus Alfred’s education largely consisted of a patchwork of memorized poems, psalms, and stock phrases from the church service.

By the time Alfred had inherited the throne of Wessex, he had managed to learn on his own the rudiments of Anglo-Saxon literacy and could, at best, muddle his way through a text in his native tongue, despite having committed countless poems to memory. The Latin language, which he wanted desperately to understand, had remained beyond his grasp throughout his youth and early reign.

Seeing the deplorable state of his own inadequate education and the general level of ignorance found throughout his kingdom, Alfred set himself to righting this grievous wrong. It was clear that Wessex would need to humble herself and look for help from without. Just as Alfred had looked to the expert sailors of Frisia to train his navy, now the king began searching near and far for the best Christian scholars who could be enticed to Wessex to help that nation rekindle the flame of learning. Beginning in the 880s, the king gathered the few scholars he knew of who lived north of the Thames, Mercian men—Werferth, Plegmund (later to be made archbishop of Canterbury), Æthelstan, and Werwulf.

After enticing these four men to Wessex with promises of countless gifts and places of honor, Alfred secured their services as his personal readers. In exchange for his generous ring-giving, these scholars stayed at the king’s side and read to him from whatever books the king could procure. All through the day, and occasionally during the king’s sleepless nights, they stood ready to help Alfred make good use of any idle moment in the court, stepping in to read and discuss with the king as many of the great works of Christendom as the king could obtain. These men also worked to buy, borrow, copy or acquire in any way possible whatever books could be found to expand the virtually nonexistent library of Wessex. Since nearly all of these works were composed in Latin, the king’s readers had the difficult task of translating each passage for Alfred into Anglo-Saxon, discussing the meaning and implications of the text until the king’s curiosity was satisfied and he urged them to continue.