What is the consensus regarding Early Mediaeval English kingship? The ideological murmurs of Roman ideology reverberated far beyond the 4th and 5th Centuries. Given the ongoing trade with the Byzantine/Eastern Roman Empires, the influence of a “Rome” would surely influence
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kingship and its portrayal?
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Replying to @stmarnock69 @OptimoPrincipi
Well yeah but I’m not really looking at Imperial influence. I don’t think there is consensus because kingship as a concept exists outside of Rome. I’m looking at sacral kingship specifically actually. There are Roman and Greek parallels but it’s not necessarily influence.
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More like it’s just all part of a milieu.
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Replying to @AdmiralHip @OptimoPrincipi
Do you think Early Mediaeval English kingships draw upon pre-Roman models or consciously reject or speak to the Roman model?
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Replying to @stmarnock69 @OptimoPrincipi
I think that they draw from both Roman models and their own older conceptions of kingship. I hesitate to say it is an aping of Imperial attitudes, because I do not believe it is derivative and I think it’s a fallacy to think that.
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The thing is, the ideas of sacral kingship are older than Rome. I don’t really want to get into this pan-Indo-European thing but the idea of a sacral king reaches far and wide.
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Replying to @AdmiralHip @OptimoPrincipi
So is sacral kingship a capstone of Monarchy, vid Charles I England or the ideological buttresses of Louis XIV? Does kingship rely upon a notion of, and acknowledgement of, the sacred?
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Replying to @stmarnock69 @OptimoPrincipi
I couldn’t speak to anything later. But kingship imo relies on being sacred. Otherwise they’re just warlords. They need to set themselves above and apart, to justify their power over everyone else. And so we have the rituals and trappings of monarchy that relate back to God(s).
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Replying to @AdmiralHip @OptimoPrincipi
I’m so intrigued by the post-Roman period in England. It was, AFAIK, a polytheistic polity with elites who were Christian in practice and faith. The evangelical missions of the Early Mediaeval period speak to a land polytheistic in nature.
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Ehhhh I would caution that description. Some kings were non-Christian, others would have balked at being considered anything but Christian. But there were survivals of a pre-Christian belief system, in the genealogies (Woden as the ancestor of all kings for instance).
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Plus the integration of British elites into English society complicates that as well. But we know very little about the non-Christian belief systems there.
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