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Cultural assimilation in the Anglo-Saxon royal genealogies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Craig R. Davis
Craig R. Davis
Affiliation:
Smith College, Massachusetts
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Extract

After the conversion of the various Anglo-Saxon royal houses to Christianity in the seventh century, the mythology of the late pagan cults which had supported their sovereignty was supplanted, but not utterly destroyed, by the sacred history of the Bible. Myths in which the old gods sired the founders of current dynasties proved uniquely adaptive. These foundation myths were preserved at a secondary stratum in the new ideological order, in that body of dynastic pseudo-history and heroic legend which was important but subordinate to the authoritative canon of Christian scripture. As J. M. Wallace-Hadrill suggested, the nascent Anglo-Saxon dynasties needed legitimizing ancestors as much after, as before, their conversion. And if they could no longer have gods, they would settle for men of the same name.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 21 , December 1992 , pp. 23 - 36
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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