Anglo-Saxon Royal Genealogies - Documentary Tradition

Documentary Tradition

The Anglo-Saxons, uniquely among the early Germanic peoples, preserved royal genealogies. The earliest source for these genealogies is Bede, who in his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (completed in or before 731)) said of the founders of the Kingdom of Kent, wrote:

The two first commanders are said to have been Hengest and Horsa ... They were the sons of Victgilsus, whose father was Vecta, son of Woden; from whose stock the royal race of many provinces deduce their original.

He similarly provides ancestry for the kings of the East Angles. An Anglian collection of royal genealogies also survives, the earliest version (sometimes called Vespasian or simply V) containing a list of bishops that ends in the year 812. This collection provides pedigrees for Deira, Bernicia, Mercia, Lindsey, Kent and East Anglia, tracing all from Woden, made the son of an otherwise unknown Frealaf.

The same pedigrees, in both text and tablular form, are included in some copies of the Historia Brittonum, an older body of tradition compiled or significantly retouched by Nennius in the early 9th century. These apparently share a common late-8th century source with the Anglian collection. Two other manuscripts from the 10th century (called CCCC and Tiberius, or simply C and T) also preserve the Anglian collection but include an addition: a pedigree for King Ine of Wessex that traces his ancestry from Cerdic, the semi-legendary founder of the Wessex state, and hence from Woden. This addition probably reflects the growing influence of Wessex under Ecgbert, whose family claimed descent from a brother of Ine. Pedigrees are also preserved in several regnal lists dating from the reign of Æthelwulf and later but seemingly based on a late-8th or early 9th century source or sources. Finally, later interpolations (which were added by 892) to both Asser's Vita Ælfredi regis Angul Saxonum and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle preserve Wessex pedigrees extended beyond Cerdic and Woden to Adam.

John of Worcester would copy these pedigrees into his Chronicon ex chronicis, and the 9th-century Anglo-Saxon genealogical tradition was also used as a source by Snorri Sturluson, who in the 13th century wrote his Prologue to the Prose Edda.