Jump to content
Main menu
Main menu
move to sidebar
hide
Navigation
Main page
Recent changes
Random page
Help about MediaWiki
Special pages
Niidae Wiki
Search
Search
Appearance
Create account
Log in
Personal tools
Create account
Log in
Pages for logged out editors
learn more
Contributions
Talk
Editing
Edgar, King of England
(section)
Page
Discussion
English
Read
Edit
View history
Tools
Tools
move to sidebar
hide
Actions
Read
Edit
View history
General
What links here
Related changes
Page information
Appearance
move to sidebar
hide
Warning:
You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you
log in
or
create an account
, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.
Anti-spam check. Do
not
fill this in!
== Assessment == The historian [[Judith Green (historian)|Judith Green]] describes Edgar's reign as "in many respects the apogee of Old English kingship",{{sfn|Green|2017|p=1}} and [[Eric John]] comments that it "marks the high point in the history of the Anglo-Saxon state. One sign of this is, paradoxically, that we know little of secular events in Edgar's time. Violent incident was staple fare for annalists."{{sfn|John|1982|p=160}} Other historians also praise Edgar. Levi Roach sees his reign as "noteworthy for its stability, as both monastic reform and administrative developments served to provide a more secure basis for a unified kingdom.{{sfn|Roach|2013|p=10}} In the view of Martin Ryan: "By the end of the reign of King Edgar, Anglo-Saxon England possessed a sophisticated machinery of rule, capable of significant and, in medieval terms, precocious administrative feats."{{sfn|Ryan|2013|p=311}} In Molyneaux's view, the mid-to late-tenth century was a crucial period for administrative development. However, it is uncertain how far Edgar was personally responsible: "This period, far more than the reigns of either Alfred or Æthelstan, was probably the most pivotal phase in the development of the institutional structures that were fundamental to royal rule in the eleventh century English kingdom". The fact that such a major change as his reform of the currency was not recorded until after the Conquest suggests that other important changes in his reign may have been wrongly attributed to the later time when they were first recorded.{{sfn|Molyneaux|2015|pp=182, 193}} Stenton's praise is more moderate. He describes Edgar's reign as "singularly devoid of recorded incident", which he attributes to Edgar's competence as a ruler, but he also writes that: :when Edgar is compared with other outstanding members of his house – with Alfred or with Æthelstan – he falls at once into a lower class than theirs. He was never required to defend English civilization against barbarians from over sea, nor to deal with the problems raised by the existence of barbarian states within England itself. His part in history was to maintain the peace established in England by earlier kings.{{sfn|Stenton|1971|p=368}} Some historians are more critical. Keynes comments: "It is a sign of Edgar's 'strength' as a ruler that when he died, on 8 July 975, the "peace" of his kingdom was immediately disturbed ... In general terms, the disturbances of Edward's reign should be regarded as a manifestation of the kind of social and political disorder which might be expected to attend the unexpected removal of one who was seen as the personification of an overbearing regime."{{sfn|Keynes|1999|pp=482–483}} His rule appears to have depended to a great degree on his personal control, which makes it understandable that his death should have created so many problems.{{sfn|Keynes|2008a|p=53}} Williams takes a similar view,{{sfn|Williams|2014}} and Snook argues that the infighting after his death and the disintegration of the state under his son Æthelred shows that the factionalism of the 950s had only been temporarily suppressed by Edgar.{{sfn|Snook|2015|p=159}} Commenting on the flattering portrait of Edgar by monastic writers, Stafford comments: "Sparse sources make the construction of any alternative to this plaster saint of monastic hagiography difficult."{{sfn|Stafford|1989|p=50}} Almost all of the ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'' is in prose, but three tenth-century kings are the subjects of panegyric poems. Two are about specific events, Æthelstan's victory at the [[Battle of Brunanburh]] in 937 and Edmund's recovery of the [[Five Boroughs of the Danelaw]] in 942, whereas three are general, all of them commemorating Edgar's reign. They are placed in the years of his accession, coronation and death,{{efn|The historian [[Dorothy Whitelock]] comments on the poem commemorating Edgar's death that it is "of a quality to make one glad that the chroniclers mainly used prose".{{sfn|Whitelock|1979|p=228 n. 2}} }} and the historian Mercedes Salvador-Bello sees them as products of monastic reformers who celebrated him as a patron of their cause and compared him to Christ.{{sfnm|1a1=Salvador-Bello|1y=2008|1pp=252–254|2a1=Whitelock|2y=1979|2pp=225–228}} After the troubles of the reigns of Edgar's sons, his rule came to be seen as a golden age, but his byname, {{lang|la|Pacificus}}, is not recorded until the twelfth-century, in the chronicle of John of Worcester.{{sfnm|1a1=Williams|1y=2014|2a1=Darlington|2a2=McGurk|2y=1995|2p=417}} Its translation as "Peaceful" is common in popular sources,<ref name=catholic/><ref>{{cite web |first=Jessica |last=Brain |title=Edgar the Peaceful |website=Historic UK |url=https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/Edgar-the-Peaceful/ |date=2 September 2022 |access-date=20 January 2023 |archive-date=8 February 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230208144100/https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/Edgar-the-Peaceful/ |url-status=live}}</ref> but very rare in academic works on the period.{{efn|In a sample of around thirty academic works on the period, none of them gave him the byname "Peaceful" in the index, and only one "Peaceable".{{sfn|Abels|1988|p=308}} }} The historian Sean Miller argues that as Edgar was very ready to resort to violence, the term is better translated as "peacemaker", someone who preserved peace through "strict control backed up by military force rather than serenity of character".{{sfn|Miller|2014b|p=163}}
Summary:
Please note that all contributions to Niidae Wiki may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here.
You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see
Encyclopedia:Copyrights
for details).
Do not submit copyrighted work without permission!
Cancel
Editing help
(opens in new window)
Search
Search
Editing
Edgar, King of England
(section)
Add topic