The English David

Saint Ælfrǽd of Wessex

Today in the Holy Orthodox Church we commemorate the Holy and Right-believing Ælfrǽd the Great, King of Wessex, better known by his modernised name Alfred. Saint Ælfrǽd was truly a pivotal figure, not only in English but in Christian and indeed world history. Of course there were other sainted princes and potentates before him – indeed, plenty of them and perhaps a few too many – and of course there were copious other princes and potentates who truly desired and endeavoured to rule justly. But Ælfrǽd was the first of the ‘barbarian kings’ to truly succeed in uniting the Christian radicalism born of the Benedictine witness to the demands of sacral statecraft. Before Queen Tamara, before Prince Vladimir, and even before Duke Václav – there stood Ælfrǽd. ‘Elf-counsel’, to wit his name, and indeed from his life we can see that his decision-making and his policies were truly fortunate – blessed not by elves but by God.

Ælfrǽd’s quality was not merely shown in war, though his spirited defence of England which stopped the marauding heathen Danes dead in their tracks is certainly worthy of mention, as is his establishment of a reserve force and coast guard to assist in this defence. It was also shown in his passionate love for the education of his people both in the classical mode and in their own vernacular. For him it was not enough merely to have a small, privileged and clerical literate caste as the servitors and interpreters of the nobility both sæcular and ecclesiastical – no. He wanted to inculcate learning among the laity, and not only to high-born sons, through his ‘court school’. And he promoted the bejeezus out of it, not least by wading into the field of scholarly work and popular education himself. He translated Pope Saint Gregory Dialogos’s Pastoral Care, Boëthius’s Consolations of Philosophy and Saint Bede’s History of the English Church and People into, well, English, and also authored his own works on theology, history and gæography in Latin. He commissioned the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. He even sent shipmen as far afield as Estonia and the White Sea in order to map the coastlines.

Ælfrǽd also personally promoted a codified system of law which was in itself a remarkably ambitious attempt to harmonise the legal customs of the English handed down from Teutonic heathen antiquity, with the Laws of Moses. Legally speaking, he was not only a progressive but downright radical. He forbade private feuds: no small step in an honour culture such the one as he lived in. He took the power of high justice out of the uneven hands of the landlords and placed it in judges who were to deliver impartial judgements in the King’s name and in God’s. He expressly forbade his judges from issuing harsh judgements to the poor while delivering slaps on the wrists of the rich.

Speaking of which, Ælfrǽd also drastically expanded the money supply and instituted a progressive tax code similar to (and possibly inspired by) that of Emperor Constantine. It was based on the productivity and extent of ‘hides’ or landholdings: rich landowners paid proportionally more and contributed more men to the common defence; while poor landowners and smallholders owed proportionally less. And of the revenues he collected from it, one eighth would be directly earmarked what we would consider to be ‘social welfare’: directly given to beggars, hospitals, wayhouses and other sick and needy people. He also made it illegal to make anyone work on Sundays and holidays. Ælfrǽd was committed to a strongly social vision of the common good, not only educationally but œconomically.

In addition to this, he poured massive amounts of energy, time and resources into the building of public works: fortifications of towns or burgs; repairs to cities and roads ruined by Danish pillage; renovations of old and foundations of new churches and monasteries. This energetic promotion of learning and law, welfare and works; this relentless pursuit of a common good – this did not proceed solely from the mind and heart of a man, but it sprang from one enlightened by a sincere and single-minded desire to serve Christ Jesus. Ælfrǽd spent much of his day in prayer and in the reading of the Psalms. He desired to attend – and often did, behind the backs of his þegnas – all the hours that the Benedictines kept, and even fretted that he was oft prevented from doing so by the seasonal and meteorological variability of England’s sunlight!

It is also worth remembering that Ælfrǽd was the youngest son of his father Æþelwulf and mother Ósburg, the youngest indeed of five brothers – a slightly-built boy, and at that one who was often ill with a fearsome and then-unknown ailment (nowadays thought to be Crohn’s disease). It is said his parents brought him to Ireland, seeking healing for him from that nation’s many holy wells and saintly shrines. His mind, though, was active and hungry – according to Bishop Asser, he won from his mother a book of English poems that she offered to the first of her children who could commit it to memory.

Saint Ælfrǽd accompanied his father on pilgrimage to Rome when he was but six years old, and may have met Pope Leo IV there. His father, however, died when he was only nine years old, leaving the kingdom of Wessex to his elder brothers. It was only when Ælfrǽd’s third brother, Æþelræd, ascended the throne, that he began to show his skill – and even then, he was hard-pressed. The West Saxons lost battle after battle to the Great Heathen Here, and in those dark days it looked as though the flickering candle of English independence and Christianity was to be snuffed out forever. But the tenacity of Ælfrǽd and his ability to somehow retain and direct the loyalty of his men under such circumstances changed the tide. He managed to win an engagement against an evenly-manned force of Danes in the Berkshire Downs despite having to fight uphill. However, the losses for the West Saxons kept mounting – including Æþelræd himself, who took a blow which may have killed him at the battle of Marton in April 871.

The kingdom of Wessex, and the fate of England, thus fell upon the slight, sickly shoulders of a twenty-one-year-old Ælfrǽd. After another string of defeats Ælfrǽd was essentially forced to buy the Danes off, in an attempt to buy time for Wessex to lick her own wounds and recover. The Danes did not keep their word and, under a new king named Guðrum, kept on attacking the West Saxons, killing and raping as they went. Ælfrǽd was kept alive through his repeated and seemingly-hopeless engagements through what appears to be the grace of God – and the intercessions of Saint Cuðberht, to whom Ælfrǽd was deeply devoted – combined with sheer cussed stubbornness. He wound up at the head of a hardscrabble, ragtag band that hid out in the scrubby marshlands at Athelney and all that spring mounted hit-and-run asymmetrical attacks and supply raids on the occupying Danes. They won enough help from the lowly folk of Somerset, Wiltshire and Hampshire through the levy at Ecgbryht’s Stone, that they were ultimately able to make a stand at Edington. Unaided by any outside help save that of Christ, they faced the Great Heathen Here which had terrorised and murdered its way across Great Britain for the past decade and more.

Here the English David proved his mettle against the Danish Goliath, for the battle of Edington was a rout for Guðrum and his Danes. The West Saxons formed ‘a dense shield-wall’ and refused to budge; the way that warfare was waged in those days, because the Northmen could not sustain their momentum by breaking through the shield-wall or forcing the West Saxons to give ground, they quickly tired and were beaten back. Ælfrǽd lay siege to the Danish fortress at Chippenham and forced their surrender by starving them out. The Danes promised to withdraw and leave Ælfrǽd’s territory, but significantly Ælfrǽd extracted another concession: the baptism of Guðrum, with Ælfrǽd himself standing as his sponsor.

Ælfrǽd did not merely trust in this baptism to keep the Danes at bay forever, though. He called up his reserve force on a permanent defensive footing, and began his project of constructing fortified towns. He also quickly made a series of politically-astute alliances. He found a high-born Mercian girl, Ealhswíþ (later a saint in her own right), and married her – the better to cement a much-needed alliance between Wessex and Mercia against the Danes. He also spoke frith with the Welsh to his west and the Frisians and Flemings on the Continent – these latter proved helpful to him in building ships which he used to maintain a coast guard against Danish raids from the sea.

Ælfrǽd’s political and educational reforms mentioned above sprang, it seems, both from pragmatic concerns about defence and from a sincere desire to serve God. However, they had the salutary effects of bolstering West Saxon resolve; strengthening and consolidating West Saxon political and military institutions; reinvigorating learning; and rebuilding trust among the common English folk, without whose help Edington and England would have been lost. It’s impossible to overstate how effective he was: at the beginning of Ælfrǽd’s reign Wessex was a beaten, occupied territory; but by the end, it was the undisputed nucleus of a great late flourishing of spiritual, cultural, intellectual and œconomic life in England. He is one of only two kings in England ever to receive the cognomen ‘the Great’, and that is fully deserved – not only on account of his successes in war but also on account of his ability to actively build the common good during peacetime. Holy and right-believing Ælfrǽd, learned prince and protector of the West Saxon lands, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!

Hearkening to the White Christ,
Thou camest forth from thy flood-girt fastness
To overcome the heathen and lead them forth to holy baptism.
Thou didst build churches, strongholds, shires and swift ships,
Restoring the law of God and making thyself beloved of all.
O wise King and glory of free England,
Who reignest in the Winchester of the heavenly England,
Thou who didst vanquish heathendom by Christendom,
Establish anew the Orthodox Faith in thy land
That we may glorify God, Who alone made thee great!