Enright Michael J. Lady With a Mead Cup: Ritual, Prophecy and Lordship in the European Warband from La Tène to the Viking Age

Four Courts Press, 1996. — 340 p.Lady with a Mead Cup is a broad-ranging, innovative and strikingly original study of the early medieval barbarian cup-offering ritual and its social, institutional and religious significance. Medievalists are familiar with the image of a queen offering a drink to a king or chieftain and to his retainers, the Wealhtheow scene in "Beowulf" being perhaps the most famous instance. Drawing on archaeology, anthropology and philology, as well as medieval history, Professor Enright has produced the first work in English on the warband and on the significance of barbarian drinking rituals.A native of Ireland, Michael Enright was mostly educated in the United States and served in the U.S. Army from 1970-72. He received his Ph.D. in Medieval European History from Wayne State University with a specialty in northern Europe in the Early Middle Ages. After several years as an instructor, he taught as Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiter at the Westfalische Wilhelms Universitat in Munster, West Germany, from 1980-85. While there, he wrote his first book (Iona, Tara and Soissons: The Origin of the Royal Anointing Ritual) which was edited by Karl Hauck for the prestigious series Arbeiten Zur Fruhmittelalterforschung. Returning to the U.S. in 1985, he accepted a position at McNeese State University and, subsequently, at East Carolina University in 1988. In 1996, he published Lady With a Mead Cup: Ritual Prophecy and Lordship in the European Warband from La Tene to the Viking Age. From 1986 to 2000, Enright spent each summer in Germany and Ireland while continuing to attend conferences and to publish in a variety of German, British, and American journals. Most recently, he has written The Sutton Hoo Sceptre and the Roots of Celtic Kingship Theory. Enright has taught seminars on Bede, Gregory of Tours, Medieval Kingships, Paganism and Christianity in the Early Middle Ages, and The Investiture Conflict, among other topics. He regularly teaches courses on The Middle Ages, The History of Christianity to 1300, and the first half of the World Civilizations survey.