殺人, sex and even a menage-a-trois: Today's 王室のs have nothing on the 偉業／利用するs of their Dark Ages 相当するものs

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The Bone Chests?

by Cat Jarman (William Collins £25, 272pp)?

During the English Civil War, in December 1642, 議会の 軍隊／機動隊s 嵐／襲撃する Winchester Cathedral. An orgy of vandalism 続いて起こるs. The altar and the 組織／臓器 are 粉砕するd.

The 兵士s then turn their attention to ten 木造の chests filled with ‘the sacred remains’ of kings, queens, bishops and saints from the Anglo-Saxon 時代.?

The chests are ripped open and the bones inside 投げつけるd at the stained-glass windows. After the 兵士s grow bored and leave, cathedral clergy gather what they can of the remains of the former kings of Wessex and rehouse them.

Six 霊安室 chests still sit on 最高の，を越す of the cathedral choir 審査するs in Winchester, four of them 初めのs which escaped the 破壊 of 1642, two 交替／補充s from 1661.?

Archaeologist Cat Jarman uses these chests as a 枠組み on which to build her fascinating new history of Anglo-Saxon England.

In a 戦う／戦い against Vikings in 851, a West Saxon army led by Alfred’s father, Aethelwulf, ‘made the greatest 虐殺（する） of a heathen （警察の）手入れ，急襲ing-army that we have heard tell of up to this 現在の day’. Pictured, a scene from the TV show?Vikings

The earliest king in the bone chests is Cynegils who （機の）カム to the Wessex 王位 in 611. It was during his 統治する that the kingdom 変えるd to Christianity, although Jarman’s narrative 明らかにする／漏らすs how kings often 設立する it difficult to behave in ways we would recognise as 特に Christian.

Sex 証明するd a problem. Aethelbald was an 早期に king of Mercia, a 競争相手 kingdom to Wessex. He was, によれば his 乱暴／暴力を加えるd 大司教, St Boniface, for ever fornicating in 修道院s and defiling 修道女s and virgins. (Boniface was not the only one to dislike Aethelbald. He was 殺人d by his own retainers.)

Eadwig, who was king of a mostly 部隊d England in the 950s, could hardly wait for his 載冠（式）／即位（式） to be over before jumping into bed with a mother and daughter. He was 設立する ‘wallowing between the two of them in evil fashion, as if in a vile sty’.

Alfred the 広大な／多数の／重要な was 報告（する）／憶測d by his 伝記作家, the Welsh 修道士 Asser, to have prayed to God for a minor 病気 to take his mind off sex. The Almighty sent him a bad 事例／患者 of piles. Alfred later decided he’d had enough of haemorrhoids and prayed to have them 取って代わるd by another 病気. によれば As ser, the piles disappeared.

暴力／激しさ permeated the Anglo-Saxon world and many of its kings met 血まみれの ends. In 946, Alfred’s grandson, Edmund I, was 殺人d in a brawl in the Gloucestershire village of Pucklechurch. Thirty years later, the teenage king, Edward, later known as ‘the 殉教者’, was killed at Corfe 城, かもしれない on the orders of his stepmother Aelfthryth.

More than a century earlier, another 殉教者d king, Edmund, 支配者 of East Anglia, had been 逮捕（する）d by Viking raiders. In one 見解／翻訳／版 of his death, he was first used as 的 practice by archers. He was later decapitated and his 長，率いる thrown into a forest.

The Bone Chests by Cat Jarman (William Collins £25, 272pp)

A search party was sent to look for it but was having no success until they heard a 発言する／表明する の中で the trees calling out, ‘Here, here!’ に引き続いて it, they 設立する Edmund’s 長，率いる, miraculously 保存するd and guarded by a 巨大（な） wolf.

Edmund the 殉教者’s story, with all its 伝説の embellishments, is part of a larger narrative which 知らせるs much of Jarman’s 調書をとる／予約する. That is the 関係 ― occasionally 平和的な, more often violent ― between the A nglo-Saxons and the Scandinavians who （機の）カム to this country.

The first 記録，記録的な／記録するd （警察の）手入れ，急襲s took place on the southern shores of Wessex in 789. Four years later （機の）カム the Viking attack on the 宗教上の island of Lindisfarne. ‘A pagan people is becoming accustomed to laying waste our shores with piratical 強盗,’ 報告（する）／憶測d the scholar Alcuin. He decided the attacks on Northumbria were God’s 罰 of the people for 存在 bad Christians.

For the next two centuries and more, war 定期的に ゆらめくd. In a 戦う／戦い against Vikings in 851, a West Saxon army led by Alfred’s father, Aethelwulf, ‘made the greatest 虐殺（する） of a heathen （警察の）手入れ，急襲ing-army that we have heard tell of up to this 現在の day’.

Alfred himself is remembered as the king who ‘敗北・負かすd’ the Vikings. He is known as ‘the 広大な／多数の／重要な’ but the irony is that the only other king of England who has ever been 認めるd that 肩書を与える was Scandinavian. Canute ― more 正確に Cnut ― was one of several Danish kings who were also kings of England in the first half of the 11th century.

Jarman 支払う／賃金s 予定 attention to the 役割 of women in Anglo-Saxon society. Emma, who ‘had kings as sons and kings as husbands’, as one 中世 poet put it, was married to both Aethelred, an Anglo-Saxon 支配者, and Cnut. She exemplifies the 関係 that developed between the two peoples. (She was 初めは from Normandy and was the 広大な／多数の／重要な-aunt of William the 征服者／勝利者.)

最近の 科学の 実験（する）s 示唆する that hers is one of the 団体／死体s in the Winchester chests.

The 霊安室 boxes still 保存するd in Winchester Cathedral 含む／封じ込める a jumble of bones. They 借りがある their fame to the fact that the remains belong to the 広大な／多数の／重要な and good of the 時代 in which England 現れるd as a nation. Jarman has done a 罰金 職業 of making those 乾燥した，日照りの bones speak.