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The King's Body
Burial and Succession in Late Anglo-Saxon England
Nicole Marafioti (Author)
9781442647589
Hardback, published 4 April 2014
320 pages, 3 figures, 1 map
23.6 x 16.3 x 2.7 cm, 0.62 kg
‘Well-researched, written, cited, and indexed, this book provokes discussion and is a fine addition to scholarly libraries… Highly recommended.’ ‘Marafioti’s lucid and wide-ranging survey of the royal dead in tenth- and eleventh-century England offers numerous fresh insights into the politics of the period… It makes compelling reading.’ ‘Nicole Marafioti’s book is eloquent, incisive, and well-grounded in a wide range of primary sources…. She approaches each account from numerous different interrogative perspectives, thus extracting a huge amount of insight and information.’ ‘Marafioti persuasively shows just how important the management of Royal remains became in Anglo-Saxon world… Fine study.’
The King’s Body investigates the role of royal bodies, funerals, and graves in English succession debates from the death of Alfred the Great in 899 through the Norman Conquest in 1066. Using contemporary texts and archaeological evidence, Nicole Marafioti reconstructs the political activity that accompanied kings’ burials, to demonstrate that royal bodies were potent political objects which could be used to provide legitimacy to the next generation. In most cases, new rulers celebrated their predecessor’s memory and honored his corpse to emphasize continuity and strengthen their claims to the throne. Those who rose by conquest or regicide, in contrast, often desecrated the bodies of deposed royalty or relegated them to anonymous graves in attempts to brand their predecessors as tyrants unworthy of ruling a Christian nation. By delegitimizing the previous ruler, they justified their own accession. At a time when hereditary succession was not guaranteed and few accessions went unchallenged, the king’s body was a commodity that royal candidates fought to control.
List of Tables and Figures Acknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction. The Politics of Royal Burial in Late Anglo-Saxon England 1. Royal Tombs and Political Performance: New Minster and Westminster 2. Tenth-century Royal Mausolea and the Power of Place 3. Funeral, Coronation, and Continuity: Political Corpses in the Eleventh Century 4. Royal Body as Executed Body: Physical Propaganda in the Reigns of Harold Harefoot and Harthacnut 5. Body and Memory: The Missing Corpse of King Edward the Martyr 6. Bodies of Conquest: Kings, Saints, and Conquerors in the Reign of Cnut 7. Conclusions: William of Normandy and the Landscape of Anglo-Saxon Royal Burial Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index