Aelfflaed

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Aelfflaed (also Ælfflæd, Ælfled ) was a daughter of Offa , the king of Mercia , and his wife Cynethryth in Anglo-Saxon England.

Aelfflaed may have co-signed a charter as a witness in addition to her father, mother, and brother Ecgfrith in the 770s , and a second in 787, with two of her sisters still on the witness list. In the latter document she is referred to as virgo , that is, unmarried.

Charlemagne proposed in 789 that a daughter of Offa (probably Aelfflaed) should marry his son Karl , which Offa replied by suggesting that his son Ecgfrith should marry Karl's daughter Bertha in return. This led to a conflict between Mercia and the Frankish Empire . Karl broke off all contact with the Anglo-Saxons and forbade Anglo-Saxon ships to call at Franconian ports. The diplomatic crisis was only resolved after several years - among other things through the mediation of Gervold, Abbot of the Saint-Wandrille Monastery .

Aelfflaed married King Æthelred I of Northumbria on September 29, 792 in Catterick . The Ealdormen Ealdred and Wada led a conspiracy that Æthelred fell victim to on April 18, 796 in Cobre ( Corbridge ). His widow Ælfflæd retired to a monastery.

swell

literature

  • Nicholas J. Higham: The Kingdom of Northumbria AD 350-1000 , Sutton, Stroud 1993, ISBN 0-8629-9730-5 .
  • DP Kirby: The Earliest English Kings , Unwin Hyman, London 1991, ISBN 0-0444-5691-3 .
  • Frank Merry Stenton : Anglo-Saxon England , 3rd ed., Oxford University Press, Oxford 1971, ISBN 0-1928-0139-2 .
  • Pauline Stafford: Political Women in Mercia, Eighth to Early Tenth Centuries . In: Michelle P. Brown, Carol A. Farr (Eds.): Mercia, an Anglo-Saxon kingdom in Europe . Leicester University Press, Leicester 2001, ISBN 0-8264-7765-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ P. Stafford, Political Women in Mercia, Eighth to Early Tenth Centuries , p. 41
  2. ↑ EHD , 20; FM Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England , p, 220
  3. ↑ Simon Keynes: Kings of the Northumbrians . In: Lapidge et al. (Ed.): The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England . Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford et al. a. 2001, ISBN 978-0-6312-2492-1 , pp. 502-505.
  4. ^ David W. Rollason: Northumbria, 500-1100: Creation and Destruction of a Kingdom . Cambridge University Press, 2003, ISBN 978-0521813358 , p. 194.
  5. ^ Symeon of Durham : De Gestis Regum Anglorum for the year 799
  6. ↑ Barbara Yorke : Nunneries and the Anglo-Saxon Royal Houses . Continuum, 2003, ISBN 978-0826460400 , p. 53.
personal data
SURNAME Aelfflaed
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ælfflæd; Ælfled
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Daughter of Offas , King of Mercia in Anglo-Saxon England
DATE OF BIRTH before 770
DATE OF DEATH after 792