King Alfred’s Candles and Anglo-Saxon Time-reckoning

Abstract

Bishop Asser’s biography of King Alfred describes him as creating a candle “clock” to know the time on cloudy days and at night. This candle “clock” has often been seen as an early example of uniform timekeeping and equinoctial hours, and consequently in conflict with the seasonally variable canonical hours. The approach taken here challenges this interpretation. It views King Alfred’s candles as complementary to rather than in conflict with sidereal timekeeping, clepsydrae, cockcrow, and canonical hours. This leads to an interpretation of the candles as a means of interweaving of liturgical and secular timekeeping. It is argued, moreover, that pluralism in ways of reckoning time is a feature of Anglo-Saxon time consciousness; Alfred should not be viewed as an horological innovator, but as a monarch whose interests in time reflect those of his society.