Myosha Hardnett
History 241 Sec. 4
TA: Jonathan
The Kings in Bede and Joinville
Kings were always seen as the ruler of their own kingdom. The kings we read about ran their societies differently but each was respected. They incorporate religion into life and leadership positions in opposite ways, which still reflect on each other slightly. The two writings on their king show two different ways of politics and Christianity together. The kings Bede wrote about were more of your Christians that lived by the bible and used it to set the foundations of life. On the other hand Joinville wrote about King Louis, which lived life the way he basically wanted to, and used god as his excuse or backup plan. It’s not that he wasn’t a Christian or a liar, but he would use god as his answer when things went bad or good for him.
There are two kings that Bede mentioned in his writings and they were Oswald and Edwin. Kings were very religious and consulted with their bishops about almost everything. With bishops on their side, “learned to hope for those heavenly realms.”(Bede 118)They had power and influence over the kings. There were times were kings would give their land so that the churches could use it for whatever the church needed it for. These kings were not all for themselves and enriching their greatness, but they really believed that religion was the way of life. There are some to say that the kings tended to get carried away with religion. The men would wear their hair in a tonsure just to show their devotion to god. There were many arguments on which way are the right way to wear it. Religion was not only important to the kings, but to the queens it was a big deal also. An example would be when the kings daughter was born he gave thanks to the Gods, but the bishop gave thanks to Christ. The king then said “..and promised that if God would grant him life….he would renounce his idols and serve Christ.”(Bede 86) It was so...