Alea iacta est

Rex Anglorum, the First 1200 Years - Part the Second

Previously....

Part the First: Offa of Mercia - Mercian King makes coins and dykes. Make up your own joke here.

Up next....

Part the Second: Egbert of Wessex (802-839)

After Offa was offed, Mercia went into a long decline. It was gradually eclipsed by the Kingdom of Wessex, ruled over some bloke named Egbert.

The guy we know as "Egbert of Wessex" was more properly "Ecgberht" (there's that wacky Old English spelling again), King of Kent, Sussex, Essex and Wessex. Not many people these days get to enjoy the copious amounts of -sex that Egbert did, and those that do, certainly aren't named "Egbert". (or if they are, they keep it very quiet).

Despite the dorky name, Egbert was quite a successful monarch of the Kingdom of Wessex, and succeeded in not only securing Wessex's independence from Mercia in a smashing victory at Ellendun, but also took over the place as well, soon adding Northumberland to his dominions.

He also started to beat up the Welsh, a diversionary pastime enjoyed by many, including the Welsh themselves.

Also, if this later depiction is to be believed, Egbert bore a striking resemblance to contemporary actor Tom Selleck.

Above: Ok, maybe not.

There's not much else exciting about Egbert, and to prove this to you, check out his page on the Royal Family's website. Even his descendants can't think of anything longer than a paragraph to say about him.

Sucks for Egbert, I guess.

Rex Anglorum, the First 1200 Years - Part the First

As a supplement to my ongoing series about the history of monotheism (aka "In the Beginning, Man Created God" - which you can access with the links to the side), I thought I'd start a new series, on a part of history I've tended to geek over in the past.

The English Monarchy is an institution which has existed for over 1700 years, and over the time its been in existence, the throne of England has been occupied with a whole varied host of characters - heroes, villains, nice guys, bad guys, pacifists, murderers, the religious, the atheistic, straights, queers, Danes, Frenchmen, Welsh, Scots, Germans and yes, even the occasional woman.

So let's start right from the beginning, with the first person to claim the title "King of the English", or, as it was in those days where Latin was trendy, "Rex Anglorum". It superseded the previous Anglo-Saxon title "Bretwalda", which was a sort of Saxon term for "overlord".

Part the First: Offa of Mercia (774-796)

We're going back into the past, back over one and a half millenia, to Dark Ages England, a land that for the past few centuries has been inhabited by a variety of Germanic peoples, who have spent the best part of the era wresting control of Britain from the native "Brythons".

These Germans, variously Angles, Saxons and Jutes, have formed lots of little kingdoms in Britain and, like most people of German ancestry, are spending most of the time drunk and beating each other up. (Ah! Now we see where English people get it from!)

One of these petty kingdoms is Mercia, situation in the centre of what is now modern England, and ruled by a guy named Offa.

Above: According to some anonymous mint, this is Offa. Check out the nose hair!

I know what you're thinking. That's a ridiculous name. Well, that's thank to later invaders, who seem to have eliminated most Anglo-Saxon names from the English language, true "English" names are nearly non-existant, meaning only obsessives like J.R.R. Tolkien can remember more than a dozen or so.

So, despite having a name dangerously close to the word for animal entrails, Offa was a pretty important guy, even beyond the British Isles. Though it remains in doubt whether he ever truly called himself "King of the English" (some believe it to be a result of tenth century forgeries), he was certainly pre-eminent amongst the English kings, and presided over a cultured and intellectual court, and was even called "brother" by Charlemagne, a Frankish ruler who was at that time ruling over most of Western Europe. He contended with the Pope in Rome, and successfully maintained the independence of the Mercian dioceses.

He is also known for "Offa's Dyke" which sounds pretty naughty and scandalous until you discover it was just a bit of earthwork separating his kingdom from the Welsh. Lame.

Above: Scarcely even a spot for a little boy to stick his finger in.

The best remnants of Offa's reign are the coins his kingdom produced - which were of a higher standard than even those from the Frankish kingdom of Charlemagne. Copying Byzantine designs, Offa even included his wife on one of the coins. His wife, named Cynethryth (try saying that twelve times fast), thus remains one of the few Anglo-Saxon women we have any sort of artistic depiction of.

In a particular bizarre incident, Offa copied some gold dinars from the Abbasid Caliphate and inadvertently copied the design, including the Arabic profession of faith in Allah (those horribly misspelled). Fundamentalist Muslims claim this means Offa was a secret Muslim and hence England an Islamic state ripe to be "reconquered", but Muslims claim this sort of thing all the time so they can be safely ignored.

Unfortunately for the Mercians, Offa was mainly in the overlord thing for himself, and, after the end of his reign, Mercia was swiftly overtaken as other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms came to the fore. The next person to claim the title "Rex Anglorum" would be from the Kingdom of Wessex.

Coming Soon: Part the Second: Egbert of Wessex

In the Beginning, Man Created God, Part XI

Previously on "YHWH's Excellent Adventure"

Part 1: Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In which we learn that YHWH wasn't the first god to want to be alone.

Part 2: YHWH rules, Chemosh drools! In which we learn most of Biblical history was pulled out of King Josiah's backside.

Part 3: By the Rivers of Babylon. In which the Hebrews crib most of their afterlife from the Persians.

Part 4: Alex the Kid in Hellenic World. In which Alexander the Great conquers the known world and everyone learns to love, Greek-style.

Interlude: Danny Boy, the Lions, the Lions are calling. In which Daniel becomes a Prophet despite not knowing the first things about his own surroundings.

Part 5: I ♥ MACCABEES. In which the flame of cosmopolitan Hellenism is snuffed out by religious fundamentalists.

Part 6: Quacks, Kooks and Loons of the Roman Empire. In which we see that the early Roman Empire was a utopia for two bit religious frauds and crazy cults.

Part 7: Would the real Messiah Please Stand Up? - In which we began to example just how much we really know about Jesus.

Part 8: The Greatest Story Ever Made Up - In which we see as the four gospels progressively transform Jesus from Jewish messiah and adopted son of god into the ever-co-eternal Logos and saviour of mankind

Part 9: Speaking in Tongues - In which early Christianity is finally torn from its Jewish roots, and gentiles steer the religion to a far different future than its founders intended.

Up next...

Part 10: I, Constantine

Emperor Constantine the Great, or, to be more accurate, Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus, casts a long shadow over early Christianity, but his influence is often misjudged or exaggerated, especially by the ignorant, stupid, or those afflicted by both deficiencies.

Above: Exhibit A

People like Brown tend to assume that because Constantine wanted to promote orthodoxy in religious practice, this also meant he was pushing a particular form of theology. This is bollocks. Constantine really didn't care about the finer details of Christology - that was for the church to decide. Constantine just wanted unity. He certainly wasn't what we would consider a paragon of Christian morality - he had his son and wife both killed on a whim, but in truth he was no better or worse a person than most powerful men of that era.

In truth, Constantine had probably been exposed to Christianity early - his mother, Helena, was a convert, and the environment at Nicomedia, where Constantine spent his formative years, was cosmopolitan, with Christians and Pagans intermixing without incident.

According to Christian scholars of a later era, however, Constantine's "conversion" occurred during the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, where he allegedly received a vision where the Christian God gave him a sign that told him "in this sign, conquer". He did so, having his soldiers paint the "Chi-ro", or labarum, on their shields and call on Christ's favour to beat their enemies. Constantine won a smashing victory and is alleged to have given the credit to the Christian God.

There's one slight problem with this story - on none of the Constantine's memorials to the battle is the Christian God ever mentioned - nor is there any sign of a cross, labarum or solitary little icthys symbol.

It is a little suspicious, to say the least, pointing to embellishment by later Christian writers.

For eight years after his victory, the coins of the Empire still bore the symbols of pagan gods, particularly Sol Invictus, or "the Unconquerable Sun". It's arguable that much of the sun god's cult became subsumed into post-Constantine Christianity, and it is certainly tempting to draw parallels between the god's solar aura and the halos of Christian saints, but the truth is that sun imagery is fairly popular, and Christians were using it as far back as when they were lurking in Rome's catacombs.

Above: Is that you Jesus?

He did past the Edict of Toleration - legalizing Christianity, but not institutionalizing it. Pagans and Christians would now rise in the empire together, but power of the new religion was fast eclipsing the old. Constantinople, the new capital, would contain no pagan places of worship. The die was cast.

We now come to what's become one of the most "famous" things people know about Constantine, or at least, think they know. The Council of Nicaea, where, called to a convocation by Constantine, various Christian bigwigs came together in order to establish consensus. Like usual talk-fests, the compromise that resulted from this meeting was unwieldy, messy, and didn't please anyone, but it was a start. On the other hand, there was no "book burnings" or "making Jesus divine" nonsense that Dan Brown fans will try and tell you. Firstly, there were no bibles of any sort to burn, and secondly Jesus had been divine in most strands of Christianity since the Bar Kochba Revolt.

Despite what you also may have heard, Constantine played little role in the debates other than presiding. He attended, but did not vote on any of the proposals. And, despite the fact that the main finding of the council was to condemn Arianism, when Constantine chose to be baptized (as most Christians of the era did, he did so as an adult), it was Eusebius of Nicomedia, an Arian himself. The Emperor died shortly after.

In a final note, Constantine had one last influence on the Western world, through the so-called "Donation of Constantine" a document purporting to be from the Emperor that effectively ceded control of the Western Roman Empire to the Bishop of Rome, Sylvester, after curing him of a particularly nasty disease.

Above: No way would this guy cede half his empire to a priest named after a cartoon cat...

As can be expected, the Medieval Popes used the Donation to great advantage, but others fingered it as a medieval forgery early on, notably Otto III, Holy Roman Emperor, and effectively, Constantine's "true" successor in the West.

Up Next: Part 11: You say homoousios, I say Homoiousios.