II Aethelstan; or, the Grately Code

Questions for Further Study

• 1.: Compare this document with the Magna Carta of 1215. Aethelstan's law code predated the Norman Invasion of England by roughly a century and a half, and the other followed that invasion by roughly an equal period of time. Do the two documents, looked at side by side, help modern historians form differing pictures of pre-Norman and post-Norman England? How?
• 2.: Compare this document with Nizam al-Mulk's Book of Government; or, Rules for Kings, written about a century and a half later. How do the two documents reflect different or similar visions of government in a medieval Christian nation and in the medieval Islamic world?
• 3.: How is the medieval English wergild similar to modern-day fines for offenses? How is it different? In medieval England, the amount of wergild was in part a function of a person's social class. Do you think that social class continues to play a part in modern-day “wergild”? If so, how?
• 4.: A document such as the Aethelstan law code continues to be of interest because it gives modern readers a snapshot of life in a different place and at a different time. What snapshot of medieval English life do you get from reading this law code? What are the society's values and concerns? How was social order maintained?
• 5.: In modern life, it is easy for government officials to promulgate laws and for judges, lawyers, law-enforcement officers, and others to know precisely what the law is, at least as it is written. In medieval England, though, such was not the case. How does Aethelstan's law code illustrate the problem of communicating information during the medieval period? What impact would this problem have had on the effectiveness of the law code?