Æthelstan, Wulfstan and a revised history of tithes in England
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.
Citation
Ivarsen , I 2021 , ' Æthelstan, Wulfstan and a revised history of tithes in England ' , Early Medieval Europe , vol. 29 , no. 2 , pp. 225-252 . https://doi.org/10.1111/emed.12473
Publication
Early Medieval Europe
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0963-9462Type
Journal article
Rights
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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