Kings and kingship in 1st Millennium

Widukindi Rerum gestarum Saxonicarum libri tres 229 Liutprandi Operae 230 Ruotgeri Vita Brunonis 231 Adelberti Continuatio Reginonis 232 Rosvitae Gesta Ottonis 233 Vita Mathildis reginae antiquior 234 BIBLIOGRAFIA 235 Fonti 235 Studi 239 8 Tavola delle abbreviazioni ADALBERTI Continuatio ADALBERTI Continuatio Reginonis, in REGINONIS ABBATIS PRUMIENSIS Chronicon cum Continuatione Treverensi, ed. F. Kurze, MGH Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi 50, Hannover 1890, pp. 154-179. DBI Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani HROTSVITHAE Gesta Ottonis HROTSVITHAE Gesta Ottonis, in HROTSVITHAE Opera omnia, ed. W. Berschin, München-Leipzig 2001 (Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana), pp. 271-305. LIUTPRANDI Antapodosis LIUTPRANDI Antapodosis, in LIUTPRANDI Opera, ed. J. Becker, MGH Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi 41, Hannover-Leipzig 1915, pp. 1-158. LIUTPRANDI Historia LIUTPRANDI Liber de rebus gestis Ottonis Magni imperatoris (Historia Ottonis), in LIUTPRANDI Opera, ed. J. Becker, MGH Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi 41, Hannover-Leipzig 1915, pp. 159-175. LIUTPRANDI Relatio LIUTPRANDI Relatio de legatione Constantinopolitana, in LIUTPRANDI Opera, ed. J. Becker, MGH Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi 41, Hannover-Leipzig 1915, pp. 175-212. Pontifical romano-germanique C. VOGEL, R. ELZE, Le Pontifical romano-germanique du dixième siècle, vol. I, Le Texte: nn. 1-98, vol. II, Le Texte: nn. 99-258, Città del Vaticano 1963, vol. III, Introduction générale et tables, Città del Vaticano 1972. RUOTGERI Vita Brunonis RUOTGERI Vita Brunonis archiepiscopi Coloniensis, ed. I. Ott, MGH Scriptores rerum germanicarum nova series 10, Weimar 1958. Vita antiquior Vita Mathildis reginae antiquior, in Vita Mathildis reginae antiquior -Vita Mathildis reginae posterior, ed. B. Schütte, MGH Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi 66, Hannover 1994, pp. 107-142. WIDUKINDI Res Gestae Saxonicae WIDUKINDI MONACHI CORBEIENCIS Rerum Gestarum Saxonicarum libri tres, ed. P. Hirsch -H. E. Lohmann, MGH Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi 60, Hannover 1935.

Armenia from the late-ninth to the mid-eleventh century 1 Very few early medieval monarchs have left us evidence that gives us a personal impression of them. Four that have are near-contemporaries. They are Emperor Leo VI of Byzantium (reigned 886-912, his neighbour Tsar Symeon of Bulgaria (reigned 893-927, King Alfred (reigned 871-99) of Wessex (in southern England) and King Gagik Artsruni (reigned 908 -43) of Vaspurakan (in southern Armenia). Jonathan Shepard has compared the images of Leo and Symeon in detail, and in comparison to Alfred's. They have much in common with each other. Shepard concluded that there was mutual incitement, part consensual, part competitive, in the image of rulership. The impulses behind their particular image probably came, he believes, from the west European Carolingian royal courts, above all that of Charles the Bald, who reigned as emperor from 875 to 877, and who was Alfred's stepgrandfather. 2 Gagik of Vaspurakan was not included in Shepard's study. The evidence for Gagik is scantier than for the other three rulers, yet comparison of his and Alfred's images promises to be both useful and interesting. This is partly because the early medieval English and the Armenians were each precocious, and different from both west European groups, and from Byzantium, in having a strong sense of 1 A slightly shorter (8,000 words) version of this essay was published in January English to prevail against them. It is also clear that for Alfred, Aethelwold, and Aelfric, language and text were unifiers as well as expressive of desire for unity. Alfred reveals this in his preface to his translation of Pope Gregory's Pastoral Rule. Aethelwold's school in Winchester, capital of the West Saxon kings was, as Helmut Gneuss showed, where the propagation of a 'standard' Old English, a form of West Saxon, throughout England was begun. 6 Aelfric's homilies enjoyed a massive circulation, promoted by the archbishopric of Canterbury. This has been called the beginning of a form of mass communication that must have played a significant part in defining a sense of English identity around the year 1000. 7 The effort to conquer

This is Chapter Four from my 1999 Yale dissertation. Several people have asked me to upload this and Chapter Three from the dissertation, as well. Together, they represent an effort to define "kingship" in a comparative manner. Intending to help digest these two chapters, a (relatively) concise definition of “kingship,” as I offer it, is as follows: “kingship” may be defined as an existential metafact in history in which  is fused in various manners a twinship between a first man/first priest-administrator and a dying god of fertility or “life,” in Hocart’s sense, and, existentially, as a static fusion of the for-itself with the in-itself; comparatively, through space and time, sacrifice by the former of the latter is usual or customary either literally or metaphorically (or double-metaphorically, as in royal auto-sacrifice). In at least one sense, the “king” as the origin of time and history and in whom is fused both Being and Becoming, “metafact” is justified because of the extraordinary nexus of different kinds and levels of categorial meanings – as he is the creator of Context – which, despite many sources (e.g., from Africa and Polynesia) in which the “king” is a stranger, even reflexively can involve every man or person as Self; hence, the “king” is equal to (one)Self or, better, is “more me than  me.”
In shorter form, one can declare one has found “kingship” when evidence is obtained that the researcher believes indicate that the people deliberately – “consciously” or reflexively – see or saw in their ruler/leader a twinship, containing an eternal conflict, but which produces Hocartian “life.” Equivalences to some of the words used in this definition, are, of course, likely very difficult to find in whatever the language of an ancient people. Accordingly – and because “there is a ‘king’ in every man [person]’ – the reflexivity of the researcher is called into play, as well: do you, the researcher, believe you have identified “kingship”?

From the dawn of the Neolithic through Byzantine sculpture, this free two-day workshop aims to investigate the materiality of identity and the deployment of the human image in Anatolia, using archaeological, art historical and anthropological approaches.

Relationships between kings and monasteries or convents were governed by three privileges: free election, immunity, and royal protection. While the first two privileges have been extensively investigated, royal protection has attracted little attention among medievalists, with the exception of German scholarship. The latter has usually emphasised a specific consequence of the use of this privilege, namely the transfer of ownership rights over the monastery or the convent from the founders’ family to the king. However, this was just one possible effect of royal protection, not necessarily the most common or most important. The distinguishing features of this privilege have been largely ignored, namely its nature as a right in personam, and not in rem, as well as its jurisdictional content, since royal protection allowed protected persons to be judged by the royal court. This article aims to explore the full political potential of royal protection, and to reconstruct the institutional dynamics that the use of this privilege could trigger in the Ottonian period. Two case studies are analysed comparatively: Central Italy and Eastern Saxony. Though different and distant from each other, these two political spaces can be fruitfully compared, as the Ottonians and the religious communities of these areas deliberately decided to make intensive use of royal protection to shape their mutual relationships. This comparative study reveals significant differences in the political application of the privilege in the two regions, which in part reflectis a dissimilar understanding of the idea of royal protection itself. This privilege established a bilateral and asymmetrical relationship of variable intensity, which could change in time and space depending on the variable degree of political autonomy enjoyed by the protected abbot (abbess) and his (her) community as well as the different attitude of the king, acting as a lenient judge or as a powerful lord of those under his protection.

In 1 Sam 8:10-18, the judge Samuel warns the people who demand a king to rule over them that, among other things, he will conscript their sons into his armies, compel them to work on his plantations and reap his harvests, take their daughters to be perfumers, cooks and bakers, and take the best of their grain and vineyards and redistribute them among his courtiers. This article will focus on the virtually invisible laborers who produced, processed, and prepared food for feasts on the king’s plantations and kitchens, rather than on their royal consumers. Special focus will be on female millers and bakers. This study relies on Jack Goody’s study of elite feasting, interlinking it with other societal structures of class and the distributions of power and authority. It will then examine the toll that this extraction of material resources and labor takes among agrarians in the lavish feasting that kings held to reinforce social and political ties with domestic and foreign elites (cf. 1 Kings 4:20-28; 18:19; Neh 5:16-18).

"The significance of Achaemenid imperial hegemony for the political thought and aspirations of subject and successor societies is evaluated in starkly different terms in the various disciplines studying the ancient Near East. While Assyriologists treat Cyrus’s heirs as legitimate successors of the Babylonian kings, Biblical scholars often speak of a “kingless era” in which the priesthood took over the function of the Davidic monarch. Egyptologists see their land as uniquely independently minded despite conquests, while Hellenistic scholarship tends to evaluate the interface between Hellenism and native traditions without reference to the previous two centuries of Persian rule.

The aim of this conference is to examine local responses to the loss of native kingship in the subject areas of the Persian Empire, both in terms of political reaction and literary reflection. How did recollection of past experiences of kingship inform positions vis-à-vis the reigning (and later the defunct) Persian monarchy? How does the experience of Persian kingship affect discourse on “native” kingship in the Hellenistic successor states? This goal relates not only to responses to kingship in terms of allegiance or rebellion, but also of memory and the conceptualization of “ideal” kingship as it was informed by cultural expectations. What roles do ethnicity, the distance to the royal throne, and the length of a dynasty play in this dynamic?

While the various disciplines and sub-disciplines have traditionally offered contrasting views this conference will explore how far the differing views are based in the sources and in discrete cultural contexts and how much they depend on disciplinary assumptions. New and established scholars from Assyriology, Biblical Studies, Classics, Egyptology and Iranian Studies are therefore invited to consider the intellectual and political implications of their fields for understanding the Persian legacy within ancient Near Eastern kingship in memory and practice.

Abstracts of no more than 400 words are invited until 15 January 2014 (send to either [email protected] or [email protected]). The conference will be held in Leiden on 18, 19 and 20 June 2014.

The conference is organized as part of the ERC project BABYLON at the Leiden Institute of Area Studies (http://www.hum.leiden.edu/lias/rivers-of-babylon), principle investigator Dr. Caroline Waerzeggers. There are plans to publish the proceedings
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