Learnings: Baptism and Victory
By having Guthrum baptized, Alfred forced his old foe to conform to the spiritual system that Alfred followed: Christianity. Alfred used that system to his advantage: he cunningly chose himself to be Guthrum's godfather. By making himself Guthrum's spiritual guide, Alfred created ties of symbolic kinship between them.
However, baptism had political benefits for Guthrum as well. Being Alfred's godson gave him the status of a respected Christian leader. Guthrum was made the King of East Anglia, a member of a small, select circle of Anglo-Saxon monarchs. Guthrum's transformation as a Christian ruler was a political win for both the Viking and his godfather, Alfred.
This illustration depicts an idealized baptism scene from an epic poem, the Chanson d'Aspremont, popular in later medieval England. It imagines the baptism of a character named Balan, an Iberian royal messenger at the court of Emperor Charlemagne.