scholarly journals VIII.—The Distribution of the Anglo-Saxon Saucer Brooch in relation to the Battle of Bedford, A. D. 571

Archaeologia ◽  
1912 ◽  
Vol 63 ◽  
pp. 159-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Thurlow Leeds

The investigation of the early history of England is beset with many difficulties and has furnished material for the widest conjectures. Prior to the Roman invasion our knowledge is confined almost entirely to such deductions as can be made by the aid of archaeology. But the difficulties by no means decrease with the period when England makes its first appearance in the pages of written history. Indeed, they might be said rather to increase, and perhaps of no period is this truer than of the times between the decline of the Roman power in Britain and the ultimate establishment of the Anglo-Saxon power. The records are, to say the least of it, of the barest nature, and present many problems of absorbing interest, towards the elucidation of which archaeology has already contributed not a little. In some cases, however, the evidence of archaeology appears to find itself in conflict with the witness of history, and it is one of these incongruities which I have set myself the task of endeavouring to investigate in the course of this paper.

1987 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 197-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
James P. Carley

The earliest identified surviving manuscripts from Glastonbury Abbey date from the ninth and tenth centuries, but there are reliable post-Conquest traditions claiming that valuable books were found at the monastery as early as the reign of Ine, king of the West Saxons (688–726). By the tenth century at the latest there are reports of an ‘Irish school’ at Glastonbury, famous for its learning and books, and St Dunstan's earliest biographer, the anonymous. B., relates that Dunstan himself studied with the Irish at Glastonbury. During Dunstan's abbacy (940–56) – that is, at the period when most historians would place the beginnings of the English tenth-century reform movement – there was a general revival at Glastonbury which included a concerted policy of book acquisition and the establishment of a productive scriptorium. Not surprisingly, Dunstan's abbacy was viewed by the community ever afterwards as one of the most glorious periods in the early history of the monastery, especially since the later Anglo-Saxon abbots showed a marked falling off in devotion and loyalty to the intellectual inheritance of their monastery. Æthelweard and Æthelnoth, the last two Anglo-Saxon abbots, were especially reprehensible, and confiscated lands and ornaments for the benefit of their own kin. Nor did the situation improve immediately after the Conquest: the first Norman abbot, Thurstan, actually had to call in soldiers to quell his unruly monks. In spite of these disruptions, a fine collection of pre-Conquest books seems to have survived more or less intact into the twelfth century; when the seasoned traveller and connoisseur of books, William of Malmesbury, saw the collection in the late 1120s he was greatly impressed: ‘tanta librorum pulchritudo et antiquitas exuberat’.


1976 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 173-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stewart Lyon

This discussion of Anglo-Saxon coinage attempts to look beyond the detail of numismatic classification in order to consider the relationship between the underlying variations and the economic life of the times. Those parts of it which deal with the classification of the coinage and analyse the observed metrology are intended to be a critical summary of the numismatic research carried out in the past thirty years. Other parts, in which I seek to relate the metrology to such documentary evidence as is known to me – and thus trespass across the vague dividing line between numismatics, of which I have some knowledge, and economic history, of which I have little – are aimed at stimulating awareness and discussion of the problems involved. Finally, a section is devoted to numismatic methods because it is important that their use and limitations be generally understood.


1992 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 115-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Gameson

Oxford, Bodleian Library, Tanner 10 is the oldest extant copy of the Old English translation of Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum. The volume dates from the early tenth century. This in itself adds significantly to its interest, for manuscripts produced in England during the sixty or so years from s. ix2–x1 are scarce. It is ornamented with a remarkable set of decorated initials which are of considerable importance for understanding the characteristics and development of manuscript art during this period, and this is our primary concern here. The text of Tanner 10 was edited at the end of the last century, its codicology and palaeography have recently been reviewed, and a complete facsimile edition is currently being prepared: an examination of its extensive decoration is long overdue. To put this art-work in its context, before turning to the manuscript itself, it will be helpful first to review briefly the main classes of decorated initials which appear in late Anglo-Saxon books as a whole, and then to examine the early history of the particular type that was used in the Tanner Bede.


2011 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 271-287
Author(s):  
Lucas Poy ◽  
Daniel Gaido

AbstractArgentine historiography in general, and the history of the Argentine Left in particular, does not receive the attention it deserves in the Anglo-Saxon academic world, due to linguistic and cultural barriers. In this article, we attempt to review for the English-reading public three recent contributions to the history of Marxism in Argentina (Horacio Tarcus’s Marx en la Argentina: Sus primeros lectores obreros, intelectuales y científicos, Hernán Camarero’s A la conquista de la clase obrera: Los comunistas y el mundo del trabajo en la Argentina, 1920-1935 and Osvaldo Coggiola’s Historia del trotskismo en Argentina y América Latina) covering the entire historical spectrum from the early history of Argentine socialism to the history of the PCA and, finally, to the history of local Trotskyism. We attempt to place these works in the context of Argentine historiography and of the political context in which those books were written.


Archaeologia ◽  
1861 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 439-459

If any doubt could be entertained of the importance of collecting and embodying in our literature the scattered relics of the early history of geographical discovery, the doubt might find its answer in the eager curiosity with which the more cultivated Anglo-Saxon inhabitants of America look back to every minute particular respecting the early history of their adopted country.


Antiquity ◽  
1937 ◽  
Vol 11 (43) ◽  
pp. 261-277
Author(s):  
S. H. Hooke

On the 29th of June, 1910, at the consecration of Westminster Cathedral, a curious piece of ritual was performed called ‘The Ceremony of the Alphabet’, almost identical with a ceremony which had been witnessed by the London of a by-gone day at the dedication of Westminster Abbey in 1065. The Times of 29 June 1910 described the ceremony as follows:‘On the floor of the spacious nave, from the main entrance to the sanctuary, were painted in white two broad paths, which connected the corners diagonally opposite, and intersecting at the centre of the nave formed a huge figure x, or St. Andrew’s Cross. Where the lines converged was placed a faldstool ; and here the Archbishop, still in cope and mitre, knelt in prayer, while the choir continued to sing the ancient plainsong of the “ Sarum Antiphoner ” … Meanwhile attendants were engaged in strewing the nave with ashes. This meant the laying of small heaps of the ashes, about two yards apart, along the lines of the St. Andrew’s Cross. Beside each heap of ashes was placed a piece of cardboard containing a letter of the alphabet–the Greek on one line and the Latin on the other. The Archbishop then went towards the main entrance, attended by the deacon and sub-deacon, and preceded by the Crucifix carried between lighted candles. Starting first from the left-hand corner Dr Bourne advanced along one path of the St. Andrew’s Cross, tracing with the end of his pastoral staff the letters of the Greek alphabet on the heaps of ashes ; and returning again to the main entrance repeated the process on the other path, tracing this time on the heaps of ashes the letters of the Latin alphabet. This curious ceremony is variously interpreted as symbolizing the union of the Western and Eastern Churches, or the teaching of the rudiments of Christianity, and as a survival of the Roman augurs in laying their plans for the construction of a temple, or as the procedure of Roman surveyors in valuing land for fiscal purposes’.


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