Dr Levi Roach

My research interests encompass various aspects of the political, religious and social history of Western Europe in the Early and High Middle Ages (broadly speaking c. 400–c. 1200), with a focus on English and German history between the ninth and the late eleventh centuries. My present work focuses on two main themes: rulership and the ‘state’ in the Early Middle Ages (particularly in England); and the influence of penitential and apocalyptic thought around the first millennium.

My PhD, which focused on the first of these themes, consists of a study of royal assemblies (or ‘meetings of the witan’) in England between the time of Alfred the Great and Edward the Martyr (871–978). In this, I sought to combine older constitutional approaches to kingship and the state with more recent, often anthropologically inspired work. These latter studies have underlined the centrality of consensus for successful kingship in the earlier Middle Ages and I traced the implications of this for later Anglo-Saxon rulership. The resulting picture was one of rather more diffuse, but no less effective royal power.

I also have a longstanding interest in penance, apocalypticism and their interplay around the year 1000, which has led to two articles about the penance of Æthelred ‘the Unready’. I hope to dedicate much further time to this subject during the course of the Fellowship, investigating how penitential and apocalyptic discourses influenced court politics in England and Germany. My contention is that apocalyptic and penitential thought came together in a unique manner in the decades around the first millennium, a fact which was to have important consequences for the rulers of the time. This is neatly illustrated by the experiences of Æthelred ‘the Unready’ of England (978–1016) and Otto III of Germany (983–1002): both of these kings performed penance in the later 990s and both of their regimes display characteristically apocalyptic traits. They were, at least in their own eyes, ‘rulers at the end of time’.

Publications

Books and Edited Volumes

Quaestio Insularis 11 (2010), ed. with M. Cavell et al. (the selected proceedings of the Cambridge Colloquium in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic)

Articles

with H. Foxhall Forbes, et al., ‘Anglo-Saxon and Related Entries in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004)’, Anglo-Saxon England 37 (2008), 183–232

‘Hosting the King: Hospitality and the Royal iter in Tenth-Century England’, Journal of Medieval History 37 (2011), 34–46

‘Public Rites and Public Wrongs: Ritual Aspects of Diplomas in Tenth- and Eleventh-Century England’, Early Medieval Europe 19 (2011), 182–203

‘Penitential Discourse in the Diplomas of King Æthelred “the Unready”’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History (forthcoming), c. 9,000 words

‘Penance, Submission and deditio: Religious Influences on Dispute Settlement in later Anglo-Saxon England, 871–1066’, submitted to Anglo-Saxon England, c. 14,500 words

Reviews and shorter notices

Review of K. Shoemaker, Sanctuary and Crime in the Middle Ages, 400–1500 (New York, 2011), History Today (September 2011), pp. 60–1 

Review of J. Schneider, Auf der Suche nach dem verlorenen Reich. Lotharingien im 9. und 10. Jahrhundert, Publications du Centre Luxembourgeois de Documentation et d'Études Médiévals 30 (Cologne, 2010), Bulletin of the German Historical Institute London 33.2 (forthcoming: November 2011), c. 2,500 words

In preparation (draft versions available upon request):

‘Submission and Homage: Feudo-Vassalic Relations and the Settlement of Disputes in Ottonian Germany’, c. 9,000-word article

‘Law-Codes and Legal Norms in Later Anglo-Saxon England’, c. 12,000-word article

Review of L. Tollerton, Wills and Will-Making in Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge, 2011), for History