King Alfred the Great, his Hagiographers and his Cult

An independent Latino scholar living in Vermont, Tomás Kalmar (Ed.D., Harvard) specializes in interdisciplinary Alfredian Studies. He has published on Alfred and Asser in EOLAS and Peritia. He is the author of Illegal Alphabets and Adult Biliteracy (Routledge 2015). Andrew Prescott (FSA, FRHS) is Professor of Digital Humanities at the University of Glasgow. Alicia Spencer-Hall is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at University College London. Their research interests include: medieval hagiography, disability, gender, digital culture, and film and media studies. Her first monograph, Medieval Saints and Modern Screens: Divine Visions as Cinematic Experience was published by Amsterdam University Press in 2018, and is now available Open Access. Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography, a collection co-edited with Blake Gutt, was published in 2021. Shortlisted for the Transgender Non-Fiction award at the 34th Lambda Literary Awards, the volume is now also available Open Access. Their second monograph, Medieval Twitter, was published by Arc Humanities Press in 2024.

"Stripped of Victorian reliquarianism, Alfred emerges from Kalmar's analysis as a more complex and more rounded person, one whose childhood experiences profoundly shaped his adult career. This is an engaging, entertaining, and highly perceptive study of a great early English king and of the fashioning of his cult, especially in the nineteenth century." - Sarah Foot, The Catholic Historical Review, 111, Winter 2025 "Kalmar's prose, packed with intellectual jests and provocations, serves as an invitation to rethink what we know about the past. The text critically maps the various trends of historiographical and hagiographical construction that have contributed to Alfred's legacy as both a real and mythologized monarch ...This book does more than recount the life of a king; it questions the very fabric of historiographical narrative construction, making it a significant contribution to the studies of historiography and medievalism." -Tarren Andrews, Speculum , 100/1, January, 2025. “Kalmar’s reading of Asser’s Life of King Alfred is original, personal, and engaging – as befits the nature of the work itself. He captures the chemistry between an extraordinary king and the Welsh priest who entered into his service. Enjoy the ride!” Professor Simon Keynes, University of Cambridge “A breathtaking endeavor, challenging, wide-ranging, and lovingly crafted, with conclusions good enough to be true. The author excels in drawing harmony from textual dissonance. Alfred and Asser will never be the same, nor will readers of this extraordinary book.” Roberta Frank, Yale University “Tomás Kalmar’s willingness to read and think about virtually everything ever written about King Alfred turns what might have been a well-informed useful work on the long afterlife of Alfred’s life and reign, and Asser’s Life of Alfred, into an excitingly dense microcosm of the genesis of British national identity over a thousand years. He traces a bedrock of historical fact morphing into national myth not only in schoolbook stories but championed by intellectuals and academics equally committed to their own ‘true Alfred,’ hero and exemplar of the nation. Kalmar uses his original trope of ‘Victorian reliquarianism’ to hold together medieval and modern emotional investments in the idea of Alfred, a true modern fetish for secular salvation, a religion of nation and empire. Built on exhaustive research, scrupulous close reading, and precise careful argumentation, Kalmar’s book makes scholarship enormously fun to read – it has narrative propulsion told in an appealingly direct authorial voice. Historical erudition, medievalist and modern, is rarely this compellingly interesting, rarely so frankly entertaining on subjects of continuing importance.” Nancy Partner, McGill University “An unusual take on England’s king who burnt the cakes but became the British Empire’s ‘saint’. Kalmar asks simple questions about King Alfred, offering thoughtful answers that will keep readers engrossed, chuckling, and even make them laugh out loud.” Professor Jane Roberts, Emeritus Professor of English Language and Medieval Literature, University of London “Tomas Kalmar’s quest is to find the real Alfred in Asser’s vita. This not, however, a work of historical criticism in a traditional vein, but a skillful, immensely erudite, and sparklingly written exploration of the meanings of a classic hagiographical text.” John W. Coakley, Feakes Professor of Church History, Emeritus, New Brunswick Theological Seminary

• Foreword by Andrew Prescott Acknowledgments Some Key Dates I Cult and Canon: The Chronicle 1 Kiss the Reliquary 2 Remember the Pope 3 Fix the Date II Too Good to be True: The Life 4 Write the Life 5 Win the Book III The Curve of Destiny: The Works 6 Cross the Border 7 Win the Crown