Anglo-Saxon
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Anglo-Saxon is a collective term usually used to describe the culturally and linguistically similar peoples living in the south and east of the island of Great Britain (modern England) from around the mid-5th century AD to the Norman conquest of 1066. They spoke Germanic dialects (that eventually coalesced as Old English) and are identified by Bede as the descendants of three powerful tribes, Angles, Saxons, and Jutes.
It is a matter of some debate as to whether the Anglo-Saxons represent a mass migration and complete displacement of the existing population of southern and eastern Great Britain, or merely an integration with it. Linguistic evidence (there is very little Celtic influence on the Old English language) is often suggested to imply a significant migration,[1] although other explanations for this have recently been postulated, for example that Germanic languages are in fact ancient in certain parts of England, and so no Celtic influence would be expected.[2] Genetic studies have given contradictory results.[3] [4] Archaeological and other genetic evidence points to an alternative interpretation of events for a far more limited 'elite takover' into the east of Great Britain with levels of Angles being around 5% of the population rising to a maximum of 15% in parts of East Anglia.[5] Stephen Oppenheimer states that 30% genes in England derive from Northern Europe mainly due to ancient cultural links between England and Scandinavia in the Neolithic or before.[6]
Yet a new study by University College of London has shown that the Y Chromosome of most people in the UK has been very much affected by the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons. UCL Study This is probably due to the nature of the Anglo-Saxon invasion - the Saxons being 'ferocious' as Charlemagne (a renowned Warrior King,) noted. But also due to subsequent mixing. Whatever the DNA argument - what is clear is that the Anglo-Saxon invasion of what was Romano-Britain led to the formation of England by the 10th Century with its unrivalled language and global impact. The legacy of the Anglo-Saxons is truly global.
It is known, however, that Germanic auxiliary troops had been used for centuries by Rome. If Germanic garrison soldiers had retained their language and culture, this may have facilitated any migration. Over time the different peoples coalesced into a more unified cultural and political group. Perhaps under Offa of Mercia (reigned 757-796), and certainly under Alfred the Great (reigned 871-899) and his successors, a kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons existed, which developed into the kingdom of England in the 10th century, one of the main developments of Anglo-Saxon history.
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Etymology
Origins of the word
The term "Anglo-Saxon" is from Latin writings going back to the time of King Alfred the Great, who seems to have frequently used the title rex Anglorum Saxonum or rex Angul-Saxonum.
Bede, writing in the early 8th century in his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, (I.15) suggests that:
- the people of the more northern kingdoms (East Anglia, Mercia, Northumbria) belonged to the Angles, who derive their name from the peninsula of Angeln in Schleswig-Holstein (Germany).
- those of Essex, Sussex and Wessex were sprung from the Saxons, who came from the region of Old Saxony.
- those of Kent and southern Hampshire were from the tribe of the Jutes.
Other early writers do not bear out consistent distinctions, though in custom the Kingdom of Kent presents the most remarkable contrasts with the other kingdoms. West Saxon writers regularly speak of their own nation as a part of the Angelcyn and of their language as Englisc, while the West Saxon royal family claimed to be of the same stock as that of Bernicia in the north. On the other hand, it is by no means impossible that the distinction drawn by Bede was based solely on names such as Essex (East Saxons) and East Anglia (East Angles). That Bede could envisage one English people (gentis Anglorum) at least demonstrates that the Anglo-Saxons could be thought of in such terms in the 8th century.
The term Angli Saxones seems to have first been used in continental writing nearly a century before Alfred's time by Paul the Deacon, historian of the Lombards. There can be little doubt, however, that in this case it was used to distinguish the English Saxons from the continental Saxons.
Contemporary meanings
By 1800 "Anglo-Saxon" was the term used for the Old English language. It was the language spoken in England before the arrival of the French-speaking Normans who conquered England in 1066. In the 19th century the term was widely used in philology. English scholars in the mid-19th century, such as Edward Freeman, argued that the roots of certain English political ideas and values could be found in pre-Norman, that is, Anglo-Saxon, England. Numerous researchers explored possible long-term survivals, but by the 1890s most scholars gave up that quest and decided that English legal rights emerged from later developments like Magna Carta of the 13th century.
It is still a matter of debate as to whether the term "Anglo-Saxon" can be used as a synonym for ethnic or racial groups who lived and live in England. On one hand there is the argument that says that there were further influxes of people into England such as the Danes, Normans, and Celts who migrated to England from the other parts of the British Isles, so the term is no longer valid. The other side of this argument is to say these people were relatively small in number and, particularly in the case of Danes and the Normans, were of similar ethnic origins as the Anglo-Saxons themselves, and so became immersed into the Anglo-Saxon "tribe".
In popular usage in Canada and the United States, the term "Anglo-Saxon" (as in "White Anglo-Saxon Protestant" or "WASP") has evolved into a politicised term with little connection to its academic definition. Until about 1960 the term was mostly used and popularized by Irish Catholics and French-Canadians. Since 1960 it has had more general usage, but exactly who it designates has become a matter of individual opinions and context, ranging from people of English descent to any North American of European origin who fits a certain socio-economic and/or ethnic profile.
"Anglo-Saxon" is still used as a term for the original West Germanic component of the English language, which was later expanded and developed through the influence of Old Norse and Norman French, though linguists now more often refer to it as Old English.
For over a hundred years, the French have used "Anglo-Saxon" to refer to the Anglophone societies of Britain and the United States, and sometimes (rarely) including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. It supposedly describes their intellectual traditions and national character, as opposed to "Celtic", "Gallic", "Lusitanic" or "Hispanic". It is a wide-ranging term, taking in the English-speaking world's language, culture, technology, wealth, influence, markets and economy.
Language
Anglo-Saxon, also called Old English, was the language spoken under Alfred the Great and continued to be the common language of England (non-Danelaw) until after the Norman Conquest of 1066 when, under the influence of the Anglo-Norman language spoken by the Norman ruling class, it changed into Middle English roughly between 1150-1500.
Anglo-Saxon is far closer to early Germanic than Middle English. It is less latinized and retains many morphological features (nominal and verbal inflection) that were lost during the 12th to 14th centuries. The language today which is closest to Old English is Frisian, which is spoken by a few hundred thousand people in the northern part of the Netherlands and Germany.
Before literacy in the vernacular "Old English" or Latin became widespread, the Runic alphabet, called the futhorc (also known as futhark) was used for inscriptions. When literacy became more prevalent, a form of Latin script was used with a few letters derived from the futhork: 'Eth,' 'Wynn,' and 'Thorn.'
The letters regularly used in printed and edited texts of OE are the following:
- a æ b c d ð e f g h i l m n o p r s t þ u w x y
with only rare occurrences of j, k, q, v, and z.
History
The history of Anglo-Saxon England is the history of early medieval England from the end of Roman Britain and the establishment of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the 5th century until the Conquest by the Normans in 1066. The 5th and 6th centuries are known archaeologically as Sub-Roman Britain, or in popular history as the "Dark Ages"; from the 6th century larger distinctive kingdoms are developing, still known to some as the Heptarchy; the arrival of the Vikings at the end of the 8th century brought many changes to Britain, and relations with the continent were important right up to the 'end' of Anglo-Saxon England, traditionally held to be the Norman Conquest.
Adventus Saxonum (The Coming of the Saxons 450 AD onwards)
For 400 years Britain had been settled by a combination of old Roman soldiers, their myriad of mercenaries, and Celts. The Romans had gone, leaving this people collectively known as the Britons or Brythons. Not all was peaceful. The Brythons fought with the Picts from Scotland and the Irish. In 447 AD the Brythons inflicted a massacre on the Picts and Irish under their King Vortigern. But he was under pressure. He knew they would be back. We know this because St Germanus had arrived from the continent and recorded it.
Only a short sail away - across the North Sea - in and around what is now Denmark (Jutland,) lived three formidable Germanic tribes. They in turn may have had connections with the East. The first person to conduct serious research into Anglo-Saxon history was Sharon Turner, although his findings on their origin in Scythia before the Migration Period continue to be debated by historians today.Collectively they can be called the Saxons. The Northern most tribe were the Jutes in an area where people are still known by that name. Below them geographically were the Angles who lived by the Baltic in an area known as Angeln – which itself means, "hook", as in ‘angling’ for fish. To the South of them were the Seaxe, regarded by Charlemagne (himself a renowed warrior,) as ‘ferocious’. The word 'Saxon' is believed to be derived from the word ‘Seax,’ their formidable fighting knife. All three tribes were excellent sailors long before the Vikings. They used Keel Boats – similar to Long Boats. These tribes would be very familiar with the North Sea. These three tribes would have got to hear about Vortigerns troubles. The Saxons in particular were no strangers to raiding and acting as mercenaries for others. The Brythons called these mercenaries ‘foederati’.
Consequently in about 450 AD the great Jutish warrior leader Hengest arrived on the shores of Britain with "3 keels" of warriors, at the place called Ypwinesfleot and was welcomed by King Vortigern. In Latin this was termed the "adventus Saxonum" or ‘the coming of the Saxons.’ Two years later, Hengest invited his son Octha from Germany with "16 keels" of warriors, to occupy northern coastal areas and provide a defence against the Picts. It was a long time before the Picts troubled the country again. They had probably never encountered anything like a Saxon war band before.
Yet they were not just to act as mercenaries and by 453 AD they were getting restless. They knew their business as warriors, and were more homogenous than the remnants of Roman Briton. They would have looked different to the various tribes of Brythons, who would have looked like Basques from Southern France. Their incredible stamina and fighting ethos reflected this. They could move very fast, and to understand how they would defeat weak Romano-British tribes, one should appreciate that they would be in an area before the tribe knew it. Once there they had tactics and cohesion and yes, at times, a merciless nature.
Things moved fast. Like the Anglo-Saxon war bands themselves. And around 456 AD there was a massacre of 300 leading Britons by the Saxons. In the following year, Vortigern was burnt to death by the Saxons. This growing imbalance caused a panic migration, c.458-60 AD, Romano-British aristocrats and city-dwellers to North-western France. It became known as Brittany (Little Britain,) thereafter. It was a sign of the stampede that was to come. At one point it is recorded that the Briton appealed to a Roman commander Aetius for help, ‘’the barbarians (Saxons,) push us back to the sea, the sea pushes us back to the barbarians; between these two kinds of death, we are either drowned or slaughtered.’’ Rome could not help.
In 473 AD the same Saxon warrior leader Hengest, leading his Saxon warriors, now known as The Men of Kent, moved Westward, driving the Britons before them ‘’as one flees fire.’’
In 477 AD the Saxon chieftain Ælla landed on Sussex coast with his sons at Selsey Bill. The Britons attacked him, but his Shield Wall tactics drove them into the forest (now known as the Sussex Weald.) Over the following decade the Saxons expanded their coastal occupation in Sussex (land of the South Saxons.) Towns like Brighton (Bright Helm,) would have seen much sea traffic with ‘Old Saxony.’ In 486 AD Ælla and his sons met the Britons in battle at Mercredesburne. The battle was bloody, but indecisive, and ended with a truce. Hengest died around 493 AD, leaving his territory to be ruled by his son Aesc for the next 34 years. In 495 AD, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle states that Cerdic and his son Cynric, landed on the South Coast possibly at Calshot (Cerdic Shore,) near Southampton. Another great Saxon warrior, he was to form the land of the West Saxons - Wessex.
They were soon joined by more Jutes, and the Angles, whose land was becoming increasingly flooded by the sea. In fact Angeln is still poorly populated now. Many burial sites show that the Angles and Saxons lived side by side. Paul The Deacon called them the Angli Saxones. They called themselves the Anglecynn (‘cynn’ = folk,) From the word 'Angle' we get 'Englisc' then later England and English.
Several hundred years of fighting culminated in 937 AD at the battle of Brananburgh, or the 'Battle of the Five Armies' possibly near Burnley in Lancashire. Athelstan, King of Wessex and of all Anglo-Saxons, grandson of Alfred the Great, delivered a final and crushing defeat on a combined force of Picts, Irish, and Britons. The battle turned into a 30 mile wide retreat with the Anglo-Saxon army inflicting huge slaughter. England was born. The Jutes occupied Kent and the Isle of Wight. The Saxons formed Wessex (West Saxons,) Essex (East Saxons,) Sussex (South Saxons,) Middlesex (Middle Saxons.) The North Angles formed Northumbria (people North of the River Humber.) Middle Angles formed Mercia, and East Angles formed East Anglia.
Religion
The indigenous pre-Christian belief system of the Anglo-Saxons was a form of Germanic paganism and therefore closely related to the Old Norse religion, as well as other Germanic pre-Christian cultures.
Christianity (particularly the Roman) gradually replaced the indigenous religion of the Saxons in England around the 8th and 9th centuries AD. Celtic Christianity was introduced into Northumbria and Mercia by monks from Ireland, but the the Synod of Whitby settled the choice for Roman Christianity. As the new clerics became the chroniclers, the old religion was partially lost before it was recorded and today historians' knowledge of it is largely based on surviving customs and lore, texts, etymological links and archaeological finds.
One of the few recorded references is that a Kentish King would only meet the missionary St. Augustine in the open air, where he would be under the protection of the sky god, Woden. Written Christian prohibitions on acts of paganism are one of historians' main sources of information on pre-Christian beliefs.
Despite these prohibitions, numerous elements of the pre-Christian culture of the Anglo-Saxon people survived the Christianisation process. Examples include the English language names for days of the week:
- Woden, the Anglo-Saxon equivalent of Odin, the one-eyed wise god of storms and the dead: Wednesday
- Þunor, the Anglo-Saxon equivalent of Thor, the thunder god: Thursday
Art
Anglo-Saxon art covers the period from the time of King Alfred (871-899), with the revival of English culture after the end of the Viking raids, to the early 12th century, when Romanesque art became the new movement. Prior to King Alfred there had been the Hiberno-Saxon culture (the fusion of Anglo-Saxon and Celtic techniques and motifs) which had ceased with the Vikings.
Anglo-Saxon art is mainly known today through illuminated manuscripts. It includes the Benedictional of St. Æthelwold manuscript, which drew on Hiberno-Saxon art, Carolingian art and Byzantine art for style and iconography. A "Winchester style" developed that combined both northern ornamental traditions with Mediterranean figural traditions, and can be seen in the Leofric Missal (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodl, 579). The Harley Psalter was a knockoff of the Carolingian Utrecht Psalter —all of which underscore the larger trend of an Anglo-Saxon culture coming into increasing contact with, and under the influence of, a wider Latin Mediæval Europe.
Manuscripts were not the only Anglo-Saxon art form, although they are the most well known to have survived. Perhaps the best known piece of Anglo-Saxon art is the Bayeux Tapestry which was commissioned by a Norman patron from English artists working in the traditional Anglo-Saxon style. The most common example of Anglo-Saxon art is coins, with thousands of examples extant and more being found every year. Anglo-Saxon artists also worked in fresco, ivory, stone carving, metalwork (see Fuller brooch for example) and enamel, but few of these pieces have survived.
Architecture
Anglo-Saxon architecture describes a period in the history of architecture in England, and parts of Wales, from the mid-5th century until the Norman Conquest of 1066.
Early Anglo-Saxon buildings in Britain were generally simple, constructed mainly using timber with thatch for roofing. Generally preferring not to settle in the old Roman cities, the Anglo-Saxons built small towns near their centres of agriculture. In each town, a main hall was in the centre, and other forms of building of the townspeople.
There are few remains of Anglo-Saxon architecture, with no secular work remaining above ground. At least fifty churches are of Anglo-Saxon origin, with many more claiming to be, although in some cases the Anglo-Saxon part is small and much-altered. All surviving churches, except one timber church, are built of stone or brick, and in some cases show evidence of re-used Roman work.
The architectural character of Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastical buildings range from Coptic influenced architecture in the early period; basilica influenced Romanesque architecture; and in the later Anglo-Saxon period, an architecture characterised by pilaster-strips, blank arcading, baluster shafts and triangular headed openings.
Notes
1. Invisible Britons: the view from linguistics by Richard Coates
2. Stephen Oppenheimer suggests that Germanic languages may be as old as the neolithic in the east of Britain, and Celtic languages equally as old in western Britain. Oppenheimer, Stephen, The Origins of the British, Avalon, 2006, ISBN 0-7867-1890-0 p260.
3. Evidence for an Apartheid Like Social Structure in Early Anglo-Saxon England by Mark G. Thomas, Michael P. H. Stumpf and Heinrich Härke: Proceedings of the Royal Society, July 2006. doi:10.1098/rspb.2006.3627. Retrieved 06 August 2006.
4. Y Chromosome Evidence for Anglo-Saxon Mass Migration (2002), Michael E. Weale, Deborah A. Weiss, Rolf F. Jager, Neil Bradman and Mark G. Thomas: Molecular Biology and Evolution 19:1008-1021. Retrieved 4 May 2006
5. Oppenheimer (2006) p. 379.
6. Oppenheimer (2006) p. 375.
References
- Oppenheimer, Stephen. The Origins of the British (2006). Constable and Robinson, London. ISBN 1-84529-158-1
External Links
[1] On the Origins of Britons according to Brian Sykes
[2] Fides Angliarum Regum: the faith of the English kings
[3] Anglo-Saxon Origins: The Reality of the Myth by Malcolm Todd
