More academic folly

The recent decision by the University of Nottingham to re-name some Masters courses to exclude the phrase ‘Anglo-Saxon’ was reported by the Daily Telegraph at University cancels Anglo-Saxon ‘to decolonise’ the curriculum

This appears to be another instance of the actions of a certain type of modern academic who, either influenced, or indeed inflamed, by their own ‘political correctness’ or, maybe worse, those who are too frightened to resist the current zeitgeist in such matters, changing things for the sake of conciliating tiny but regrettably vocal groups who go around seeing matters to offend them everywhere.

A previous discussion of this topic of contention had produced in May an excellent response in the same newspaper by Prof. David Abulafia which can be seen at ‘Anglo-Saxon’ isn’t racist. It’s a source of English pride. There is more about the matter at Cambridge journal ‘pandering to mad Americans’ by ditching Anglo-Saxon from title arising from CUP changing a journal title.

This nonsense about not calling the Anglo-Saxons ‘Anglo-Saxons’ comes indeed from the US. I first encountered it a few years ago at a meeting in Oxford when a loquacious but strangely inarticulate female US student mystified the rest of us by going on at length about the term. Amongst the most bewildered by this was a specialist in Anglo-Saxon from one of the leading colleges, who valiantly tried to point out that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ referred to the history, literature, indeed art, created by Anglo-Saxons in the period between the end of Roman Britain and the Norman Conquest. Nothing less, but also nothing more. 

I have no intellectual or historical problem about using terms such as Early Medieval or Early England/English or even Early Medieval Britain  - which does comprehend the Romano-British, the Vikings, and, as they emerge and engage one with another, the Welsh, the Scots, and the Picts - as a time reverence or categorisation. That can be useful and indeed neutral phraseology, and broaden historical as well as geographical horizons. 

That said there is no good reason whatsoever to abandon such a very long-established term as ‘Anglo-Saxon’. If  certain Generation Z US students do not understand it that it is their problem, not mine. They need to get over it. I not going to be told I cannot refer to Anglo-Saxon things as ‘Anglo-Saxon’ because someone who is following a silly fad in the US might be offended. Are we expected to change the titles of the works of Clapham, Stenton, Campbell and innumerable others to satisfy such nonsense? Perhaps we should censor Bede when he refers to Angles, Saxons and Jutes? Was he being ‘racist’ when he so denominated them?

It really tempts one to respond in choice Anglo-Saxon……

St Guthlac

Today, were it not Holy Week, is the feast day of St Guthlac, the seventh/eighth century patron of Crowland (Croyland) Abbey in Lincolnshire, and indeed a monastic community with which in his time Bishop Richard Fleming clearly enjoyed good relations

There is an online life of the saint at St Guthlac of Crowland

Medieval Histories last October had the following piece about him and his cult, which I have very slightly amended. At the end are links to a whole serie sof article son the medieval Fens and on Anglo-Saxon England:

Crowland Abbey in the Fens

 Image: Rex Slye/ Medieval Histories

St. Guthlac and Crowland Abbey

The Anglo-Saxon hermit, St. Guthlac, had a career reaching from aristocratic warrior over monastic visionary to patron saint of Crowland Abbey

They were ferocious in appearance, terrible in shape with great heads, long necks, thin faces, yellow complexions, filthy beards, shaggy ears, wild foreheads, fierce eyes, foul mouths, horses’ teeth, throats vomiting flames, twisted jaws, thick lips, strident voices, singed hair, fat cheeks, pigeons breasts, scabby thighs, knotty knees, crooked legs, swollen ankles, splay feet, spreading mouths, raucous cries. For they grew so terrible to hear with their mighty shrieking that they filled almost the whole intervening space between earth and heaven with their discordant bellowing.

 From: Felix’s Life of Saint Guthlac ed. by Bertram Colgrave, Cambridge University Press (1985), p. 103

The historical Guthlac was born sometime around AD 670. In his earliest Vitae we are told that he belonged to a line of the Mercian royal stirps and this was the reason for his initial career as an Anglo-Saxon warrior. However, at some point in his youth he became a monk at Repton in Derbyshire. Two years later, he moved further east where he took up the life of a hermit at Crowland on the border of the fens finding shelter in an ancient British burial mound. Later, in the 10^th century, his hermitage became a very wealthy monastery.

Liminal World

 

Guthlac sailing to Crowland with Tatwin. 

© British Library, Harley Roll, Y 6, roundel 4

Politically, Crowland, was originally located at the border between the old Mercian kingdom and that of the Gyrwe, situated on the western border of the Fenland, by Bede called the “regione Girviorum”.
In the Tribal Hidage, this region was divided into a northern and a southern part, each assessed at 600 hides. The border was formed by the River Nene, which ran from Peterborough just south of Crowland to the Wash. Later in 749 Mercia established a hegemony over East Anglia, but Guthlac did not live to experience this. Nevertheless, he may have felt the encroachment of his former life into his new world.

Geographically, the landscape offered a fluid liminality constantly recreated through the shifting courses of rivers and streams through the fenland and into the Wash. In spring, when the rivers would flood, heavy sediments from the erosions of winter would end up clotting the waterways and channel the streams along new and constantly shifting routes.

Socially this landscape was barely livable and although spiritual friendship was established between Guthlac and some followers, this was initially not a site intended for a religious community.
Here at the crossroad of water and land, Guthlac would try to bridge the abyss between his semi-pagan past (the burial mound), his warrior ancestry (mirrored in his spiritual fights with Britons) and the new Christian thinking about people and places, which was in the Mercian crucible (from warrior-economy based on people to lordship based on land). This would later be unpacked in detail by his early chronicler, St. Felix, who wrote his first Vita soon after the death of the saint in 714.

 

Quatrefoil with stories from the life of St. Guthlac, Crowland Abbey.

 

Source: Wikpedia

According to the close reading of the vita, recently carried out by Lisa M. C. Weston, Guthlac was – in the words of Felix – constantly negotiating models of these past and present communities and lifestyles – the old warrior-world and the new monastic (Christian) thinking of lordship as based on the exploitation of landed resources and the accompanying new behavioural and cultural models and mind-sets.

Central to this conflict was the movement between two different literary cultures – that of the old oral warrior poetry and the new world of literacy and liturgy.

Above all, this became framed in his Vita through a series of nightly spiritual battles between British-speaking demons and the newly converted hermit, throwing verses from psalms and other scripture in their faces.

In the first night he is called to battle the temptation to return to his former life as a warrior and potential hero. In the second he is tempted by the demons to adopt an extreme asceticism and immoderate fasting. Finally, the third night he is demonised by multiple shrieking and frightening monsters trying to drag him into the fens or devouring by setting his hermitage on fire while raising him up on spears. However, it is at this point he identifies the monsters as a delusion because they speak the British tongue of his youth; and he is able to expel them in favour of a solitary austere existence.

On the basis of this he is able to transcend the old world and wholeheartedly enter the new, playing out his role as miles Christi and divine councillor for the future king of Mercia, Æthelbald, who gained sanctuary with Guthlac while exiled to the east. It is Æthelbald who according to the Vita, founded a monastery at Crowland immediately after the death of the saint in  716. During the next 200 years, the cult continued to grow and in   the monastery was turned into a Benedictine Abbey. The popularity of the cult is witnessed by a series of the survived manuscripts containing the Vita of Felix as well as later poetic rewritings of his life and deeds. It was during these rewritings Guthlac changed his shape from solitary spiritual warrior and into a more ordinary post-conquest saint.

Crowland Abbey

 

An artist’s Impression of Crowland Abbey in the late middle ages 

© Crowland Abbey

As it stands today, the Abbey at Crowland is partly a ruin. Nevertheless it is a fascinating witness to the local history of the Fens in the 13^th century.

The remains of the present building are the remains of a concerted effort of Henry de Longchamp, the abbot of Crowland from 1191-1236 and his successors to rebuild the church after a fire in 1179. They worked hard to recreate Crowland as an important pilgrimage centre publishing new variations of his legend and making the life of the saint a central feature of the decorative scheme of the new Abbey Church. This turned it into one of the most opulent and flamboyant of the East Anglian abbeys.
The Abbey Church had a nave with three aisles covered by nine bays and an apsidal choir of five bays. It measured 83 m x 27 m. As it stands today, only the northern aisle is roofed; this is used for the modern parish church.

However, an inkling of the decorative scheme, which used to embellish the church can be found on the facade of the still-standing west front. This was once brightly coloured. Right on top of the doorway arches is a quatrefoil illustrating the high-medieval and more placid version of Guthlac. Now the focus was on the traditional accoutrements of a typical medieval saint: miraculous healings, books, buildings etc.

Exactly the same shift can be discerned through a careful exploration of the so-called Guthlac roll, which stresses the saint building a chapel – something which the early Vita does not mention at all. Instead the Vita tells us that Guthlac turned a ruined burial mound or tumulus into his rustic ascetic cell. Thus Guthlac became – in the words of John Black – “primarily the defender of a religious foundation in its battles to retain holdings and power”.
Inside the church is a small museum telling the story of Guthlac and Crowland Abbey.

SOURCES:

Tradition and Tranformation in the Cult of St. Guthlac in Early Medieval England
By John R. Black
In: The Heroic Age. A Journal of Early Medieval Northwestern Europe. (2007) Issue 10.
Guthlac Betwixt and Between: Literacy, Croos-Temporal Affiliation and an Anglo-Saxon Anchorite.
By Lisa M. C. Weston
In: The Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures (2016) Vol. 42, No 1, 2016

READ MORE:

From the same edition here are other links to articles on

Anglo Saxon and Medieval Fenlands...

Medieval Fenlands For a long time a number of research projects have explored the culturally fluid landscape of the Medieval Fenlands in Eastern England. New book tells the story   Read more.

Culture and Identity in the Early Medieval Fenlands New studies of the use of the fluid landscape in the Early Medieval Fenlands point to a continuity in the settlement-structure from pre-Roman times   Read more.

Hoch and his family in Oakington On the edge of the Fenlands at Oikington an Anglo-Saxon man named Hoch built a farm sometime in the 5th century. here, his family was buried   Read more.

Eels in the Medieval Fenlands The eel is a curious animal. Now listed on the international red list of threatened species, it used to be the ubiquitous food for smallholders and poor peasants in the early middle ages   Read more.

Recipes for Medieval Eels In the Early Middle Ages eels were abundant and served as comfort food for hungry peasants. Later it turned into a very expensive delicatessen.   Read more. There are other articles on contemporary events inn East Anglia and Mercia at:

Rendlesham – An Anglo-Saxon Royal Palace Near Sutton Hoo Rendelsham is known as an early Anglo-Saxon emporium. Recently a royal mead-hall was discovered there   Read more.   The Mercian Kingdom in Turmoil and the Staffordshire Hoard

Anglo-Saxon and other DNA

The BBC News website has a report on the most recent research into the DNA of human remains from late Roman and Anglo-Saxon Britain. This indicates that a third of the DNA of the English comes from the Anglo-Saxons. It also gives insight into matters such as intermarriage and the survival of the Romano-British population.

The report can be seen here.

Æthelwold ætheling

Each day Wikipedia features one of their onine articles, and yesterday they chose a very interesting one about the aetheling Aethelwold, the nephew of King Alfred, and the son of the King's elder brother and predecessor King Aethelred I. After his uncle's death he revolted against King Edward the Elder at the beginning of his reign, allied with forces in the Danelaw where he was acknowledged as King, and was killed in battle in 902 or 903.

The article is a detailed study and a fascinating insight into the dynastic and power politics of later-ninth and early to mid-tenth century England. It includes an excellent and up to date bibliography. The whole article can be read at Æthelwold ætheling

A coin issued by King Alwaldus - Æthelwold ætheling - in the Danelaw

Image: Wikimedia commons

Effective Anglo-Saxon remedies

The BBC News website has a story about modern research finding, to its not inconsiderable surprise, that a tenth century Anglo-Saxon cure for eye infections is 90% effective in combatting MRSA. The report can be seen at 1000-year-old onion and garlic eye remedy kills MRSA

Several newspapers also have reports of the same story - here, for example, is that in the Daily Mail - Medieval potion 'can kill hospital superbugs'

St Bede on the Ascension

This morning at the end of the Mass for the transferred Solemnity of the Ascension at the Oratory the recessional hymn was, as is usual on the feast there, Mgr Ronald Knox's translation of St Bede's hymn for the Ascension, and sung to the tune of Immortal, Invisible,God only wise. Like others of Knox's translations the text is sometimes awkward, and I realise that I am not alone in thinking that. That slightly unmusical style is perhaps surprising given Knox's felicity in producing the elegant pieces containedin Essays in Satire or Let Dons Delight :

New praises be given to Christ newly crowned,
who back to his heaven a new way hath found;
God’s blessedness sharing before us he goes,
what mansions preparing, what endless repose!


His glory still praising on thrice-holy ground
the apostles stood gazing, his mother around;
with hearts that beat faster, with eyes full of love,
they watched while their Master ascended above.


‘No star can disclose him’ the bright angels said;
‘Eternity knows him, your conquering head;
those high habitations he leaves not again,
till, judging all nations, on earth he shall reign.’


Thus spoke they and straightway, where legions defend
heaven’s glittering gateway, their Lord did attend,
and cry, looking thither, ‘Your portals let down
for him who rides hither in peace and renown.’

They asked, who keep sentry in that blessed town,
‘Who thus claimeth entry, a king of renown?’
‘The Lord of all valiance,’ that herald replied,
‘Who Satan’s battalions laid low in their pride.’

 
Grant, Lord, that out longing may follow thee there,
on earth who are thronging thy temples with prayer;
and unto thee gather, Redeemer, thine own,
where thou with thy Father dost sit on the throne.

Source:minipilgrim.com

 I found another translation online, which is by Benjamin Webb (1820-1885), and sung to "Lasst uns erfreuen": 

A hymn of glory let us sing:
New songs throughout the world shall ring:
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Chirst, by a road before untrod,
Ascendeth to the throne of God.
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

The holy apostolic band
Upon the Mount of Olives stand;
Alleluia! Alleluia!
And with his followers they see
Jesus' resplendent majesty.
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

To whom the angels, drawing nigh,
"Why stand and gaze upon the sky?
Alleluia! Alleluia!
This is the Saviour!" thus they say;
"This is his noble triumph-day."
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

"Again shall ye behold him so
As ye today have seen him go
Alleluia! Alleluia!
In glorious pomp ascending high,
Up to the portals of the sky."
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

Oh, grant us thitherward to tend
And with unwearied hearts ascend
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Unto thy kingdom's throne, where thou,
As is our faith, art seated now.
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

Be thou our Joy and strong Defence
Who art our future Recompense:
Alleluia! Alleluia!
So shall the light that springs from thee
Be ours through all eternity.
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

O risen Christ, ascended Lord,
All praise to thee let earth accord,
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Who art, while endless ages run,
With Father and with Spirit One.
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! 

Source:fministry.com

Not having Bede's Omnia Opera to hand I do not know how long is the original text - both Knox and Webb appear to have made a selection of stanzas from a lengthy original.

Two thoughts arise. Firstly what might John Mason Neale have done with the text is he had translated it, given his immense skill as a translator, or what might Edward Caswell produced?

Secondly, and assuming that Kox was not taking undue liberties with the text - and his style might very well suggest that he was in this case being very literal in his translation - what were the sights that inspired St Bede with his images of fortifications and gateways? In addition to the Apocalypse did he have in mind the undoubtedly extensive remains in his lifetime of Roman town defences and buildings in his native Northumbria? Was he thinking of Hadrian's Wall or Eboracum (York) and peopling them with the Angelic host? What also might his imagery suggest, in a reflex way, about the outward state and display about Northumbrian kingship?

Dating Offa's Dyke

My attention was drawn to an article in the Daily Mail about recent work which suggests that at least part of Offa's Dyke near Chirk can be dated to the period 430-652 with 95% certainty on the basis of radio-carbon dating.  

This would suggest that the Dyke was an on-going policy by the Kings of Mercia, and that King Offa (757-796) himself may have consolidated the work of his predecessors into a complete system. The article, with some good illustrations of the earthwork can be read at Ancient Offa's Dyke between England and Wales may be renamed.

 Offa's Dyke on Spring Hill in Shropshire

Image:offasdyke.demon.co.uk

What this does demonstrate is both the ability of Anglo-Saxon rulers to engage in organised projects over along period and their ability to exact labour and military services and, secondly, the fact that we are still learning about the past in ways which open up our understanding.

Ford Lectures 2013 - Landscapes of power

In the second of his Ford Lectures Prof. Blair spoke about landscapes of power and the siting of royal centres on influence and administration. He began by saying that some reviewers of his book on the Anglo-Saxon church had expressed the view that he had over- emphasised the importance of monastic centres and their material wealth at the expense of royal and aristocratic centres. He was, however, on reflection, still inclined to see the grandeur of the Anglo-Saxon church as being different from the less splendid surroundings of royal authority.

These centres were more ephemeral and adaptable. He cited first the site of Oakley in Dorset, where various sites near the Roman road and clustered around the landmark of Wor Barrow were given as sites of charter attestations and a record of the Provost of Chester-le-Street staying (copying out the Mass of St Cuthbert ) in a bishop's tent nearby in the tenth century. This was also a site with evidence of Anglo-Saxon executions.

Such spread out sites should, he believes, be understood as zones rather than places - a recognised meeting place where the King could camp, meet with local leaders, give grants and administer justice before moving on, returning as and when necessary, and with no permanent building, just a continuing tradition of visits.

That there were permanent royal residences where the King based himself while hunting was clear - notably the site at Cheddar. Rather grandly christened a palace by its excavator the complex had been less grand than such a title might suggest to modern ears. Such a centre could allow the itinerant ruler to combine the pleasures of the chase with administration. Cheddar is of course famous for the story of King Edmund I narrowly avoiding death in an accident whilst hunting above the gorge at Cheddar and restoring Glastonbury to St Dunstan.

 

Plan of Cheddar Palace

Image:earlybritishkingdoms.com

Reconstruction of Cheddar Palace circa 1000

Image: Wikipedia

The early seventh century site at Yeavering in Northumberland was similarly less of a permanent site than has perhaps been understood. Bede records its dismantling and the erection of a new royal centre at Milford nearby, and this may well have been the pattern with such sites.

 

A reconstruction of Yeavering in the early seventh century

Image:pastperfect.org.uk

Sites similar to Yeavering in their layout have been identified from Northumberland to southern England - one indeed identified from aerial photography had been hitherto mistakenly identified as a Roman villa.

Like his first example there were ones with as eries of chater attestations, chronicle references and archaeological evidence as well as indicators in place names which suggested recognised centres of royal governance that were flexible and physically impermanent.

Some of these sites had yielded valuable coins, suggesting the presence of wealth and trade. Such evidence was not always in the trading area. Thus Prof. Blair was inclined to see the evidence  of wealthy grave goods from burials in the Peak District as an indicator of the trade in lead from the area - citing such examples as St Wilfrid encasing the cathedral at York in lead in the seventh century - an d pointing to an ever increasing number of church buildings.

There were sites which clearly indicated a relationship of trade and commerce with administration, and of settlements being planned as organised settlements for commerce. This was a society where material wealth was not just the preserve of the elites.

His examples ranged across much of lowland England, suggesting a general pattern of such social and economic interaction.

Ford Lectures 2013

Hilary term in Oxford means - or should mean - for Oxford Historians the Ford Lectures on British History. This year, on the trienniel cycle, we are are back to a medieval topic with Professor John Blair of The Queen's College giving his lectures on People and Places in Anglo-Saxon England 600-1100.  They began last evening in the Examination Schools in the High.

Last night was an opportunity for Prof. Blair to indicate his subject matter for the coming five weeks. His aim is to provide an overview and interpretation of the archaeological evidence from excavations over recent decades into Anglo-Saxon social and economic life. To do this he has used a Leverhulme grant to study the great outpouring of archaeological reports generated by excavations since the 1970s, many of them little known by the wider body of historians. These include many sites resulting on modern development which would otherwise have never been explored but for the principle of the developer paying in advance for an archaeological survey. This follows on from earlier work on specific sites, but now enabling regional patterns to be determined as had not been possible initially.

We are promised new insights into patterns of distribution and we were given some initial examples last night, and also introduced to less tangible matters such as fashion, as well as distribution, in pottery in East Anglia in the period.

An important point  he restated was that evidence of wooden buildings in the form of p[ost holes, and even more in building arrangements where the houses rested on flat surface stones, can give little idea of the actual buildings they supported. There was also the point that from an era with so many objects made of wood or leather that leave no trace in archaeological sites, and even more so perhaps in the case of textiles, probably brightly coloured, we can only too easily have an impoverished impression of the life-style of the period under review.

This series of lectures promises to be a major overhaul of our view and understanding of life between the seventh and eleventh centuries and one I hope to attend throughout. I also hope to post reports as the lectures go on, and we are promised a book by Prof. Blair with far more in it than he can cram into his lectures.