Imagining the Anglo-Saxon Past - The Search for Anglo-Saxon Paganism and Anglo-Saxon Trial

Published together here are two studies, one already a classic and the other based on recent scholarship, by a scholar who has done so much to rectify myths of the Anglo-Saxon religious and literary past. A reprint of his 1975 text on the nature of Anglo-Saxon paganism and later `stock views' of it is neatly juxtaposed with Eric Stanley's recent study on the origins of trial by jury.

Using a wealth of primary and secondary sources, the author warns against too easy an identification of the beginnings of this legal procedure in Germanic or Alfredian institutions. The latter study will be particularly valued for its comprehensive, synthetic assessment of the jury's importance in the historical perception of English law as well as for its contribution to our understanding of Anglo-Saxonism.