Piety, Power, and Politics: Reading Æthelstan in Twelfth-Century Chronicles

This paper is a historiographical examination of King Æthelstan’s legacy as represented in the influential Anglo-Latin historiography that evolved in early twelfth-century England. It focuses on the three most prominent and ambitious ‘national’ histories of the period: William of Malmesbury’s Gesta Regum Anglorum, Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum, and the Chronicon Chronicarum attributed to John of Worcester.