1 - Edgar, rex admirabilis

Summary

IN the frontispiece to his grant of privileges for the New Minster, Winchester, drawn up in 966, King Edgar is shown prostrate before Christ (see frontis. to this book); and in an eleventh-century manuscript of the Regularis Concordia, perhaps reproducing an earlier image, he is shown flanked by two bishops, presumed to be Dunstan and Æthelwold, lending their combined authority to the text. Both images depict Edgar in close association with the monastic reform movement, and symbolize the particular aspect of his reign which has come to dominate all others.

As always, it is instructive to see how the received tradition took shape. In Bishop Æthelwold's treatise on the Old English Rule of St Benedict, written probably in the 970s if not before, Edgar is praised as one who maintained his dominion (anweald) in such great peace and tranquility. For Ealdorman Æthelweard, writing from his position of authority probably in the 980s, Edgar was rex admirabilis, Anglorum insignis rex, and monarchus Brittannum nobilis. As the viking raids of Æthelred's reign intensified, from the 990s into the opening years of the eleventh century, Edgar came to be remembered, in the monastic houses which had been reformed or founded during his reign, as bringer of the stability, peace and good order that had been lost and was now craved; and indeed, it was in this context that he first achieved a form of apotheosis.