Æthelstan, Wulfstan and a revised history of tithes in England

Ingrid Ivarsen

doi:10.1111/emed.12473

Æthelstan, Wulfstan and a revised history of tithes in England

Ingrid Ivarsen

School of History

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

The law‐text known as I Æthelstan is commonly accepted as the earliest evidence of a legal obligation to pay tithes in England. As it turns out, it might not be. The extant Old English version of I Æthelstan does indeed legislate for tithe payments. However, this version is an eleventh‐century revision of the original text, probably penned by Archbishop Wulfstan of York (d. 1023). As I will argue in this article, the original version, which survives only as contained in a twelfth‐century translation into Latin, appears to be a call for a one‐off charitable alms payment.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	225-252
Number of pages	28
Journal	Early Medieval Europe
Volume	29
Issue number	2
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1111/emed.12473
Publication status	Published - 28 Apr 2021

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Ivarsen_2021_EME_Æthelstan_CC
Copyright © 2021 The Authors. Early Medieval Europe published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/emed.12473Licence: CC BY

Cite this

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abstract = "The law‐text known as I {\AE}thelstan is commonly accepted as the earliest evidence of a legal obligation to pay tithes in England. As it turns out, it might not be. The extant Old English version of I {\AE}thelstan does indeed legislate for tithe payments. However, this version is an eleventh‐century revision of the original text, probably penned by Archbishop Wulfstan of York (d. 1023). As I will argue in this article, the original version, which survives only as contained in a twelfth‐century translation into Latin, appears to be a call for a one‐off charitable alms payment.",

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Æthelstan, Wulfstan and a revised history of tithes in England

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