Asser

And then you come in and win the day.

God, God, are you there? So this comes from Asser's Life of Alfred.

Very interesting work.

When Alfred could no longer hold off the enemy battle line, it was written in the 9th century.

In the course of that century, fifteen kings of Northumbria swayed the scepter, and of these, five were deposed, five murdered, and two voluntarily abdicated the throne.

then too there were the persistent inroads of the danes followed by the destruction of the monasteries and of the manuscripts they contained a monk of peterborough pathetically relates that when ingwar and oba came to his abbey they burned and brake slew abbot and monks and so dealt with what they found there which was erewhile full rich that they brought it to nothing but worst of all there followed a great debasement of morals one serious sign of this was the founding by wealthy laymen of pseudo monasteries unholy convents in which freed from the restraints of law they lived their lives of licentious ease and under the pretence of a religious life evaded the duties of the public service such was the state of things when king alfred came to the throne in it is not surprising that in such a time of reaction the work of bible translation made no advance beyond the version of the psalter and of the lindisfarne gospels of the century before we have now to notice that the next step forward was taken by king alfred himself to his enlightened mind it was an unspeakable sorrow that the nation had so seriously sunk backward he says formerly men came from beyond our borders seeking wisdom in our own land now if we are to have it at all we must look for it abroad so great was the decay of learning among englishmen that there were very few on this side of umber and aye we not many north of it who could understand the ritual or translate a letter from latin into english no i cannot remember one such south of the thames when i came to the throne king alfred did not as some men do content himself with mourning the degeneracy of the days he resolutely set out to bring about a better time he aimed at the creation of a native literature and for this purpose sought the aid of learned ecclesiastics beyond his own borders From Wales he invited Asser, his future biographer.

From Mercia he imported Plegmund and Wurfurth.

From Omer came Grimbald, and from the lands near the mouth of the Elbe came John the Old Saxon, whose ancestors were heathen, but who was himself a learned ecclesiastic.

We can't be absolutely certain of the dates, but we do know quite a lot about his life.

In fact, we know an extraordinary amount about his life because he was in the unique position of having his own royal biographer.

a Welsh monk called Asser, later Bishop Asser, who knew King Alfred, and in fact Alfred had invited him to be part of his court, and wrote Alfred's story as it went along.

So after the murk of all these Anglo-Saxon kings, where we're having to make a lot of guesses and surmise a lot of things from the archaeological record and from people's images on coins and things like that, suddenly we have a bona fide first-hand account of a monarch's life.

And in 850, he defeated a Danish fleet of sandwich in the first recorded naval battle in English history.

So this was the world that Alfred was born into.

And according to his biographer, Asser, he was born at the royal estate of Wantage in Berkshire.

And as we saw in the last episode, three of Alfred's brothers, the Athels, Bald, Bert and Red, took it in turns to reign before him.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle notes the date and says he'd ruled for 28 and a half years as king of all the English who weren't under Danish control, and then moves on.

It doesn't say what he died of, but his Welsh biographer, Asser, who knew him personally, wrote years earlier that the king had been sick for most of his adult life.

He explained that Alfred had an illness no doctor could name, one that reportedly first struck him at his own wedding feast.

Modern writers have guessed that Crohn's disease or something similar, though that speculation stacked on a 9th century description.

In this story, I have tried to supply the deficiency.

Fortunately, in the Saxon chronicles and in the life of King Alfred, written by his friend and counselor, Asser, we have a trustworthy account of the events and battles which first laid Wessex prostrate beneath the foot of the Danes, and finally freed England for many years from the invaders.

These histories I have faithfully followed.

The account of the siege of Paris is taken from a very full and detailed history of that event by the Abbe d'Abbon, who was a witness of the scenes he described.

He aimed at the creation of a native literature, and for this purpose sought the aid of learned ecclesiastics beyond his own borders.

From Wales he invited Asser, his future biographer.

From Mercia he imported Plegmund and Worfirth.

From Omer came Grimbald, and from the lands near the mouth of the Elbe came John the Old Saxon, whose ancestors were heathen, but who was himself a learned ecclesiastic.

The Scandinavians remained protected behind their fortifications, The Anglo-Saxon forces proved unable or unwilling to force them out, and the Mercians eventually made peace.

Asser, writing his Life of Alfred in the year 893, describes the same situation.

The army occupied Nottingham, the West Saxon brothers came to aid Buchred, and when the heathens refused battle behind the fortress, and the attackers could not break the defences, a settlement was reached.

This episode reveals another important feature of the Great Army.

This move was as much political as it was cultural.

Asser's Life of Alfred gives us the first modern biography of the king, and it shows how his patronage extended beyond the battlefield.

Asser writes about Alfred's goodness in establishing schools for both nobles and commoners, emphasizing the king's role as an educator.

The text also hints that these initiatives were part of a broader strategy to consolidate power through language.

West Saxon, the dialect Alfred's court spoke, became the lingua franca for written works because he made it the medium of instruction.