Royal Piety and Davidic Imitation: Cultivating Political Capital in the Alfredian Psalms

Abstract

This article examines the first fifty Old English prose psalms in Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France, fonds lat. 8824 (ff. 1–63). Composed in an early West Saxon dialect, they are located amongst the uniquely early West Saxon works of the Alfredian canon. Within this Alfredian literary milieu (c. 871–899), the political model of Alfredian kingship appears informed by a consistent imitation of Davidic topoi and royal piety, generating political capital through appropriating the historical and religious authority of Davidic kingship. As the pre-eminent Davidic work, the Psalms represent the greatest potential for Alfredian kingship to posture itself as a new dispensation of Davidic rule. Translating the Psalms provided an ideal opportunity for “royal posturing,” which was “exploited with particular immediacy” (Pratt in Problems of authorship and audience in the writings of King Alfred the Great, p. 179, 2007). The Davidic posturing in the Alfredian Psalms functioned within a broader political agenda, encouraging national unity. Through identifying Alfredian kingship with David and disseminating a vernacular reconstruction of a Hebraic text, the Anglo-Saxons were postured as the new Israel: a divinely chosen and blessed nation with a mandate to uphold Judeo-Christian law and morality. In this translation, we see Alfred’s angelcynn presented as participating in the providential trajectory of biblical history, unifying the separate Anglo-Saxon principalities in the collective progression and expansion of Christendom.