The importance of tradition ;)
Penda the Pagan
Royal sacrifice and a Mercian king
Alby Stone
Penda, a seventh-century king of Mercia, was a noted regicide. Indeed, his other achievements - his military campaigns and a crafty and unlikely alliance with the British king Cadwallon were instrumental in carving out Mercia as an independent kingdom and establishing it as a power to be reckoned with - were almost completely overshadowed by his reputation as a slayer of kings. As Penda was a pagan, and his alleged victims all Christian, it comes as no surprise to find that medieval chroniclers, mostly monks or Christian nobles, viewed his reign and deeds with horror and denigrated him at every opportunity.
Read the rest, and find loads more like it.
crossposted from my LJ to: livejournal_uk, mercians, midlanders & uk_pagans.
Royal sacrifice and a Mercian king
Alby Stone
Penda, a seventh-century king of Mercia, was a noted regicide. Indeed, his other achievements - his military campaigns and a crafty and unlikely alliance with the British king Cadwallon were instrumental in carving out Mercia as an independent kingdom and establishing it as a power to be reckoned with - were almost completely overshadowed by his reputation as a slayer of kings. As Penda was a pagan, and his alleged victims all Christian, it comes as no surprise to find that medieval chroniclers, mostly monks or Christian nobles, viewed his reign and deeds with horror and denigrated him at every opportunity.
Read the rest, and find loads more like it.
crossposted from my LJ to: livejournal_uk, mercians, midlanders & uk_pagans. 