Abstract
This article examines the ways in which early medieval genealogical texts might be augmented over time in order to reflect changing political situations. Two early ninth‐century tracts from the kingdoms of Powys and Dyfed in Wales are taken as case studies. Textual and chronological problems with the tracts are discussed, and contexts are proposed for the circumstances of their composition. It is suggested that each of these tracts stands at the head of a process of ‘pedigree growth’, whereby, during the course of textual transmission, the genealogical content of each tract was extended both backwards and forwards in time.
Highlights
This article examines the ways in which early medieval genealogical texts might be augmented over time in order to reflect changing political situations
It is suggested that each of these tracts stands at the head of a process of ‘pedigree growth’, whereby, during the course of textual transmission, the genealogical content of each tract was extended both backwards and forwards in time
As early as the second half of the ninth century, when the collection underlying the Harleian genealogies was probably first created,[4] the form favoured by Welsh scholars, like their Irish and English counterparts, was that of the pedigree, conceived, for the most part, as a ‘retrograde patriline’, a list of the male direct ancestors of a given subject, traced back to some important founding figure.[5]
Summary
This article examines the ways in which early medieval genealogical texts might be augmented over time in order to reflect changing political situations. When the pedigrees were later recopied, often in contexts that differed from the contexts in which they were first composed, they tended to be both brought forward in time, to the -present day, and extended backwards into the ever remoter past, as part of the process termed here ‘pedigree growth’.6. Additions of both types were intended to account for contemporary political developments, the first factually, the second aetiologically.[7] For this reason, pedigrees that had been in writing for a long time tended to become very lengthy . Dumville, ‘The Anglian Collection of Royal Genealogies and Regnal Lists’, ASE 5 (1976), pp. 23–50, at pp. 30–7
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