ИСТИНА

The so called “Aethelredian fragment” of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, that is the set of entries for 993-1016, which are contained with minor variations in the manuscripts C, D, E has been studied from different perspectives many eminent scholars, amongst them S. Keynes, N. Brooks, C. Clark and the others. Nevertheless some matters regarding the text are still far from being completely clarified. In the paper I am going to address the features of the text neglecting by recent scholarship, which can provide arguments for the discussion of the personality and the intentions of the author of the “Aethelredian fragment”. At first I demonstrate that the author of the “Aethelredian fragment” was acquainted with the previous text of the Chronicle; moreover he knew it well enough to manipulate ironically quotations from the “common stock” to achieve comic effect. Then I focus on the persons mentioned by annalist positively or negatively and discuss their family background and socio-political networks. After that I turn to more subtle question of the presumable closeness in style and views between the author of the “Aethelredian fragment” the archbishop Wulfstan’s circle. I suppose that the annalist doesn’t share at all Wulfstan’s eschatological mood; his judgments on the events are influenced more by traditional heroic values of the Anglo-Saxons past then by Christian ideas of God’s punishment and penance. The results of my study prompt me to suggest that the author of the “Aethelredian fragment” was affiliated with the nobility grouped around atheling Aethelstan and Edmund Ironside; he probably began to compose his part of the Chronicle just after King Edmund succession, but the recension was made after King’s death.