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Alcuin And Vikings: A Theology Of Carolingian Election, Chastisement, And Exaltation, Taylor Ferda

Library Research Prize Student Works

Throughout the long history of the Church's struggle to take seriously the biblical precepts for peacemaking, the changing context has always brought with it a difficulty in being a witness to peace in a world gripped by violence. The Viking raids of the ninth and tenth centuries are no exception. In this paper, I will attempt to reveal how Alcuin of York, Charlemagne?s finest theologian and clergyman, grapples with this question of violence by looking specifically at the Viking raids of two English monasteries in the last decade of the eighth century. I will show that Alcuin employs an Old …