England and Aquitaine in the century before the Norman Conquest

1990 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 81-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Beech
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
The South ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
Language And Culture

A commonplace among English historians today is the importance of English ties with Aquitaine during the later Middle Ages. For some three centuries, historical events came to link the destinies of these two countries and peoples who otherwise differed strikingly in economy, language and culture in general, with lasting consequences for both. It has long been taken for granted by both English and French historians that this association came about abruptly in the 1150s as a result of the ascent to the English throne of Henry of Anjou who, through his marriage to Eleanor, heiress of the duchy of Aquitaine, became the sovereign of that enormous territorial principality. Till the present no one has suspected that any significant ties existed between the Anglo-Saxons and Aquitanians prior to that time. To be sure, the Anglo-Saxons had been in contact with the late Carolingian kings in the tenth century and with the Normans in the eleventh, but those were purely northern French phenomena. So too were the important Anglo-Saxon relations with the monks of Fleury-sur-Loire in the later tenth and early eleventh centuries, but these were not known to have had any repercussions in Aquitaine far to the south.

Manuscripts containing English decoration 871–1066, catalogued and illustrated: a review

1978 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 239-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda L. Brownrigg
Keyword(s):  
High Standard ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
The South ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
Southern England ◽  
The North ◽  
Careful Preparation ◽  
Service Books

In the period from Alfred's reign to the Norman Conquest scribes and artists in southern England once more achieved a high standard in bookmaking, comparable to the brilliant tradition which had been established in both the north and the south in the eighth century. Some codices survive which are rough in execution, written on poorly prepared membrane by unskilled hands, but the majority – by no means chiefly service books produced for ecclesiastical and royal patrons – demonstrate that by the end of the tenth century a large number of scribes understood the techniques of careful preparation of membranes and inks, had mastered the letter-forms of two scripts, Caroline minuscule and Anglo-Saxon square minuscule, and were disciplined to follow consistently a hierarchy of scripts for the openings of texts and major divisions, chapter titles, incipits and explicits. What remains must be only a fragment of the production of Benedictine monks and nuns, secular clerks and lay scribes. But however incomplete and unbalanced the evidence, the over-all level of accomplishment cannot be doubted.

The Cult of St Edmund, King and Martyr in Medieval Ireland

2018 ◽  
Vol 136 (4) ◽  
pp. 223-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis Young
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
14Th Century ◽  
Patron Saint ◽  
12Th Century ◽  
Anglo Norman ◽  
Christ Church ◽  
Medieval Ireland ◽  
The Middle Ages

St Edmund, king and martyr (an Anglo-Saxon king martyred by the Vikings in 869) was one of the most venerated English saints in Ireland from the 12th century. In Dublin, St Edmund had his own chapel in Christ Church Cathedral and a guild, while Athassel Priory in County Tipperary claimed to possess a miraculous image of the saint. In the late 14th century the coat of arms ascribed to St Edmund became the emblem of the king of England’s lordship of Ireland, and the name Edmund (or its Irish equivalent Éamon) was widespread in the country by the end of the Middle Ages. This article argues that the cult of St Edmund, the traditional patron saint of the English people, served to reassure the English of Ireland of their Englishness, and challenges the idea that St Edmund was introduced to Ireland as a heavenly patron of the Anglo-Norman conquest.

Conservation Policies in the Royal Forests of Medieval England

1978 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 95-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles R. Young
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
Robin Hood ◽  
Conservation Policies ◽  
Complete Destruction ◽  
The Face ◽  
Forested Areas ◽  
Forest Law ◽  
Royal Forest

The whole subject of forests, especially forests in the Middle Ages, is overlaid with a great deal of romanticism. The picture of a heavily-wooded England with primeval forests dotted here and there with villages connected by meandering tracks to relieve their isolation is fixed. Only a handful of Robin Hood bands lived within the depths of the forest itself. The present concern for man's destruction of his environment has caused this idyllic picture to be contrasted with the denuded landscape of large areas today, and the pathetic remnants of Sherwood Forest can be used as a cautionary lesson on industrialization since the eighteenth century. In fact, that lesson needs to be extended backward in time and the picture of the untouched medieval forest abandoned, for the reality was that men in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries made heavy use of the forests and encroached upon them just as man had done since he first came to the island or, more emphatically, since the Anglo-Saxon invaders began to make drastic changes in forested areas by their farming practices. However, after the Norman Conquest, the policies adopted for the royal forests did serve as some protection for the trees, even though the Norman kings no more had this as their purpose than had their predecessors. The thesis of this article is that the medieval English kings from the Normans on were conservationists in spite of themselves, even in the face of continuous demands from their own barons for disafforestment. Royal forest regulations enforced within the extensive areas under forest law protected the trees from complete destruction and slowed the inevitable encroachment of field upon forest.

Winchester

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Roffey
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Central Place ◽  
British History ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
The South ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
The North ◽  
South Central ◽  
Charles Ii ◽  
Power Center

Winchester lays claim to being one of the most important cities in British history. The city has a central place in British myth and legend and was once ancient capital and residence of the Anglo-Saxon and early Norman kings. Winchester is also one of the most extensively excavated medieval towns in England and was the training ground for modern British archeology. Situated in south-central England, Winchester was close to key communication routes via the south coast and the important medieval port at Southampton. Founded in the Roman period as Venta Belgarum, close to the site of the Iron Age market settlement, Winchester quickly grew into a prosperous Roman civitas. After the decline of Roman power in Britain, Winchester remained as an important power center in the south and by the mid-7th century was the pre-eminent town in the newly established Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex. With the consolidation of Wessex’s power in the 9th and 10th centuries and the eventual re-establishment of control over the former Viking-influenced areas of the midlands and the north, Winchester became the seat of English royal power. With the Norman Conquest in 1066, the early Norman kings sought to keep Winchester as the royal seat. However, with the rising pre-eminence of London in the mid-12th century, Winchester’s power declined as royal and secular power shifted to London. Nevertheless, Winchester was still to remain of some importance throughout the medieval period and its bishop one of the most powerful, influential, and richest lords in medieval England; a status still attested to by the city’s medieval cathedral. As a city of many religious foundations, Winchester’s fortunes waned after the Reformation to be briefly reborn in the later 17th century with the planned construction of Charles II palace on the site of the former medieval castle. Charles’ plans to reinvent Winchester as a revitalized English royal city were aborted with his untimely death in 1688, with the palace, designed by Christopher Wren, barely finished.

Wynflæd's wardrobe

1979 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 195-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gale R. Owen
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Old English ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
British Library ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
General Terms ◽  
Relative Value

An Old English document, composed probably in the middle of the tenth century and extant in a not very careful, mutilated, eleventh-century copy, London, British Library, Cotton Charter, VIII, 38, lists the bequests of a woman named Wynflæd. The bequests of clothing in this will are particularly interesting. Anglo-Saxon testaments do not itemize elaborate garments as do some English wills of the later Middle Ages; they refer to clothing only rarely, and then sometimes in general terms. Wynflæd's will is unusual in mentioning several different items of clothing and in specifying them more precisely. Descriptive references to non-military clothing are uncommon in Old English texts generally. Although many garment-names are documented, some which occur only in glossaries or translations from Latin may never have been in common use in England and some words are of uncertain meaning. In most cases the sex of the wearer of a named garment and the relative value of the garment are unknown. The garment-names in Wynflæd's will, by contrast, refer to items of clothing which were certainly worn by women at a known date and were valuable enough to be bequeathed.

Sons and Mothers: Family Politics in the Early Middle Ages

1978 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 79-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pauline Stafford
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Social Maturity ◽  
First Marriage ◽  
Family Politics ◽  
Second Year

In this year (975) Edgar, king of the English, reached the end of earthly joys, chose for him the other light, beautiful and happy and left this wretched and fleeting life’ (ASC MS A). Edgar died in his thirty-second year. He had ruled the whole of England for sixteen years, since the age of sixteen, and the northern parts of it at least since the age of fourteen. He left three known surviving children, each by a different mother. Eadgyth, his daughter, was abbess of the nunnery at Wilton, appropriately enough since she was the daughter of the nun Wulfthryth. He left two sons. The eldest Edward the martyr was the son of his first marriage to a lady named Aethelflaed. Edward’s mother was dead or otherwise disposed of by 975. She had disappeared early in the reign, before Edgar took as his wife and queen the lady Aelfthryth in 964. Aelfthryth was the mother of two sons: Edmund, who pre-deceased his father in 972, and Aethelred, better known to history as Aethelred Unraed. The reputation which has attached to the mild Aethelred would hardly apply to his mother, who involved herself with great purpose in the advancement of her two sons. Aethelred was at most nine years old in 975, making all possible allowance for the speedy consummation of his mother’s marriage and the birth of his elder brother. We do not know the age of Edward, but he is called a ‘child ungrown’ in MS C of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which should make him no more than twelve, the age of social maturity in tenth century England. These two children, or more accurately their supporters, immediately flung themselves into a battle for the throne.

Lapidary traditions in Anglo-Saxon England: part II, Bede's Explanatio Apocalypsis and related works

1983 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 73-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Kitson
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Old English ◽  
Critical Edition ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Medical Traditions

Part I of this article1 treated the three main streams of lapidary knowledge current in the early Middle Ages (the classical encyclopaedists, the patristic2 and the medical traditions, with particular attention, in the last-named, to the lapidary of Damigeron and its recensions);3 gloss traditions, terminology and popular beliefs about jewels in Anglo-Saxon England; and the origin and content of the Old English Lapidary, with a new edition of it. This part II treats the lapidary passage in Bede's Explanatio Apocalypsis; a Hiberno-Latin tract De Duodecim Lapidibus (henceforth DDL) used by Bede; and (with a critical edition) a tenth-century Latin hymn Cives celestis patrie, quite likely composed in Anglo-Saxon England, and closely based on Bede's work.4

Anglo-Saxon Towers of Lordship

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael G. Shapland
Keyword(s):  
Tenth Century ◽  
Dual Function ◽  
High Status ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Free Standing ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
Monastic Reform ◽  
European Tradition ◽  
The Social ◽  
Secular Power

It has long been assumed that England lay outside the Western European tradition of castle-building until after the Norman Conquest of 1066. It is now becoming apparent that Anglo-Saxon lords were constructing free-standing towers at their residences all across England during the tenth and eleventh centuries. Initially these towers were exclusively of timber, and quite modest in scale. There followed the ‘tower-nave’ churches, towers with only a tiny chapel located inside, which appear to have had a dual function as buildings of elite worship and symbols of secular power and authority. This book gathers together the evidence for these remarkable buildings, many of which still stand incorporated into the fabric of Norman and later parish churches and castles. It traces their origin in monasteries, where kings and bishops drew upon Continental European practice to construct centrally planned, tower-like chapels for private worship and burial, and to mark gates and important entrances, particularly within the context of the tenth-century Monastic Reform. Adopted by the secular aristocracy to adorn their own manorial sites, many of the known examples would have provided strategic advantage as watchtowers over roads, rivers, and beacon systems, and acted as focal points for the mustering of troops. The tower-nave form persisted into early Norman England, where it may have influenced a variety of high-status building types. The aim of this book is to establish the tower-nave as an important Anglo-Saxon building type, and to explore the social, architectural, and landscape contexts in which they operated.

Traditionalism and Continuity during the Last Century of Anglo-Saxon Monasticism

1989 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonia Gransden
Keyword(s):  
Religious Life ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Strict Enforcement ◽  
Rule Of Benedict ◽  
The Ideal

Those writing at the time, and subsequent historians, have tended to exaggerate the importance of the tenth-century monastic revival and of the reform movement which followed the Norman Conquest. During each period contemporary writers glorified the achievements of the reformation, of which they themselves were products, and belittled or even denigrated the religious life of the preceding era. This was partly because the hallmark of both reformations was the strict enforcement of the Rule of Benedict; the ideal of strict Benedictinism appealed to those writing during the reformations, since they themselves were strict Benedictines, and it has appealed to some historians in our own day. One result has been a tendency to emphasise the influence of continental models so much that it overshadows the importance of the Anglo-Saxon tradition. David Knowles makes continental influence on the tenth-century revival the theme of chapter 1 of hisThe Monastic Order in England.

Aspects of Muḥammadanism in the Eastern Sudan

1937 ◽  
Vol 69 (4) ◽  
pp. 657-677
Author(s):  
S. Hillelson
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
The South ◽  
The North ◽  
Two Kingdoms ◽  
Eastern Sudan

The country with which we are concerned—Nubia, Sennār, and Kordofān—is a comparatively recent conquest of Islam, and it does not properly emerge into the light of history before the sixteenth century. Of its state during the Middle Ages we are very imperfectly informed. Nubia had adopted Coptic Christianity in the sixth century, and there were two kingdoms, Maqarra in the north, with its capital at Dongola, and Aiwa in the south, with its capital at Soba near the modern Khartoum. The Arabs twice overran northern Nubia within a decade or two of the Muslim conquest of Egypt, and in their second expedition they sacked Dongola and destroyed its church; but there was no attempt at annexation, and for some five or six centuries the relations between Muslims and Nubians were based on a treaty concluded in 651–2, which precluded either party from settling in the territory of the other; it also imposed on the Nubians an annual payment of 300 or 360 slaves in exchange for gifts of cloth and grain. The treaty was but indifferently observed, and from time to time there were raids and counter-raids, but Nubia preserved its independence and its isolation from the worlds both of Islam and Christendom. Intercourse with the Muslim lands was not entirely lacking, and in the tenth century two Arabic authors composed accounts of the state of Nubia: I refer to the famous al-Mas'ūdī and to a certain Ibn Salīm or Ibn Sulaym of Aswān, extracts from whose work are preserved in Maqrīzī's Topography of Egypt.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document