A01=Ben Snook
Administrative State
Age Group_Uncategorized
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Anglo-Saxon Charters
Anglo-Saxon Kings
Author_Ben Snook
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Bureaucracy
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=DSBB
Category=HBJD1
Category=HBLC
Category=NHDJ
COP=United Kingdom
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
Early Medieval Insular World
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Land Ownership
Language_English
Latin Language
PA=Available
Political Power
Price_€50 to €100
PS=Active
Royal Court
softlaunch
Product details
- ISBN 9781783270064
- Weight: 467g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 19 Mar 2015
- Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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An exploration of Anglo-Saxon charters, bringing out their complexity and highlighting a range of broad implications.
More charters survive from Anglo-Saxon England than texts of any other type. In a society in which the ownership of land was fundamental to status, wealth and power, the charters which gifted and guaranteed landholdings were crucial not only as legal documents but also as instruments of political power. As responsibility for their production was increasingly centralised at the royal court in the ninth and tenth centuries, charters also became vehicles forroyal and religious propaganda, reflecting the dynamic and creative culture of tenth-century England.
Through an analysis of the extraordinarily sophisticated Latin in which these documents were written, this book demonstrates the literary ambitions of their draughtsmen (who may certainly be considered as Anglo-Latin literary authors in their own right), and also sheds light on the political ideologies of Anglo-Saxon England's most powerful and enigmatic kings and churchmen. Most tantalising of all, perhaps, is the fact that the language of royal charters, which may preserve some of the very words uttered by the king, provides an unparalleled view of the mechanisms by whichthe developing kingdom of England was governed. Not only does it indicate the increasingly sophisticated bureaucracy of an administratively advanced state, but it also reveals an atmosphere of literary and cultural attainment, emanating directly from the king's court, as rich as any in the early medieval Insular world.
Ben Snook teaches History at the Godolphin and Latymer School, London.
