Diis Non Detrahes : The Biblical ‘Gods’ and Alfredian Notions of Royal Government

‘Kings are called gods by the prophetical King David because they sit upon God his throne in the earth and have the count of their administration to give unto him.’ So wrote James I in his True Lawe of Free Monarchies (1598), here making use of a notion with deep roots in the medieval past that referring to a king as a ‘god’ (as is arguably done in Psalm 81) might under some circumstances be permissible. The present article considers responses to the rhetorical deification of kings and other powerful men in writings attributed to King Alfred the Great: principally those of his lawbook, but also unrecognized instances in his translations of Gregory the Great, Boëthius and Augustine. All show Alfred to resist such language, perhaps because he found it inherently distasteful, but more likely because it was in his own time applied more often to bishops than kings. Defending the privileges of the episcopate often involved quoting the apocryphal legend of Constantine’s address to his bishops: ‘You are gods, so established by the true God; go forth, and consider among yourselves your disputes, for it is not fitting that we judge gods ( Vos dii estis , a vero Deo constituti : ite , et inter vos causas vestras discutite , quia dignum non est ut nos judicemus deos ).’ This tradition competed with another that encouraged rulers to cultivate humility; both are manifest in Alfredian writings to an extent as yet unappreciated and afford a sense of his own struggles to devise an appropriate language for power and authority.