<i>The Political Thought of King Alfred the Great</i> (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Political Thought of King Alfred the Great Scott DeGregorio The Political Thought of King Alfred the Great. By David Pratt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. xvi + 413. $123. King Alfred the Great has never lacked those interested in his story. Right from the king’s own day, with Asser’s famous Latin biography, to which William of Malmesbury and other later successors were happy to add much (apocryphal?) detail, medieval writers remained captivated by this most famed of Anglo-Saxon England’s kings, who saved the land from full-scale Viking conquest while simultaneously initiating reforms that would revive Anglo-Saxon learning and help lead it to new heights in the generations that followed. In more recent times, the king’s activities as warrior and scholar continue to inspire the full menu of scholarly genres, from articles, essay collections, conference proceedings, and monographs—so much so that David Pratt begins his book with a pointed (and understandable) question, “Is there anything left to say about King Alfred?” (p. 1). Surely there [End Page 387] must be, for Pratt’s The Political Thought of King Alfred the Great exceeds 400 pages, making it one of the most lengthy studies on Alfred in English to date (outdone, to my knowledge, only by Alfred Smyth’s 1996 King Alfred the Great, which runs to over 800 pages). While acknowledging the achievements of past scholarship, Pratt’s introduction identifies three areas in need of continued study: the role of royal learning in the king’s own conception of rule, the Carolingian inheritance underlying that conception, and the political structures and ideas about royal power that informed Alfred’s kingship. In particular, what is missing from Alfredian studies, argues Pratt, is an attempt to integrate such foci into a unified picture. Such is Pratt’s task, which he tersely summarizes as aiming “to reintegrate Alfred’s learned kingship as part of royal practice” or, more broadly, “to recover the force and status of Alfred’s texts in relation to contemporary structures of kingship and political authority” (p. 7). The study is divided into two parts comprised of five and eight chapters respectively. The first section, entitled “The West-Saxon Political Order,” aims to establish a range of contexts for reading the primary Alfredian documents discussed in part 2. Beginning with the rise of Wessex in the early ninth century, Pratt examines the economic resource base of the kingdom as a major factor in its later hegemony (ch. 2), before moving on to discuss theories of lordship and secular office, especially as applied to the royal household, the locus for the circulation of power and authority (ch. 3). The West-Saxon royal household was distinguished by “the comprehensive range of privileges at the king’s effective disposal; in this respect the West-Saxon order more closely resembled the forms of patrimonial rule also familiar in the Carolingian world” (p. 42). The focus then turns to ecclesiastical activities, with discussion of the clerical and monastic structures and their Continental parallels (ch. 4) paving the way for an insightful discussion of royal devotional practices (ch. 5). Ecclesiastical structures provided key channels for the circulation of power, and Pratt well exposes the parallels with Frankish and Carolingian models as well as the pervasive influence of Gregory the Great on West Saxon thinking; he also broaches the question of literacy and its uses and explores the preexisting practices that paved the way for the explosion of textual culture under Alfred. The section concludes with a brief chapter (ch. 6) on the crystallization of West-Saxon power under the duress of Viking oppression, as seen in the network of burhs, the mobilization of manpower, commercial exchange, and the promulgation of an increasingly Christianized rhetoric of rulership, evidenced especially in Asser’s description of Alfred as “ruler of all the Christian of the island of Britain.” Part 2 moves the inquiry from the king’s West-Saxon environment to his writings and the forging of Alfredian political discourse with which they are deeply involved. At stake here for Pratt is the creation of a “new mental technology” (p. 339) driven especially by the medium of vernacular prose designed...