The significance to the early English kingdoms of the arrival and spread of Christianity
If English here means Anglo Saxon it's a period that I’m not sure that I believe in anymore.
At the End of Bede’s ‘The English People’ there is a list of events. Amongst those events are several eclipses. These days it is perfectly possible to go to the web and trace down where and when these eclipses were. In 538 according to Bede there is supposed to have been an eclipse from 6-8 in the morning of 16th February. I’ve assumed that this is the Julian calendar and if I go to February 538 I do find an eclipse on the 15th February which is close enough but the epicenter of this eclipse was near Cyprus not Britain. The one mentioned by Bede for June 20th 540, well there is none, other than one for July 20th 540 (have these months been switched?) where the epicenter is over the Caspian Sea. I haven’t the time to have a closer look at these eclipses (and sightings of comets) but they would not seem to ones that would have been observed in Britain.
“Neither Britain, a province fertile in tyrants, nor the Scottish nations nor the barbarous nations about to the very ocean, did ever acknowledge Moses and the prophets”
- St Jerome in his “Ctesiphon the Pelagian
In Gildas as edited by Michael Winterbottom it is stated that Gildas consciously used both the old and new testaments in his writing to show where the Britons had gone wrong1. I’m not sure that I noticed too many Britons or too much of the New Testament on the first read of it. There is though plenty of Old Testament and a somewhat archaic version of the Israelites’ history, if that’s what it can be called, but it’s a little difficult to decipher with our knowledge of todays Bible. Regardless of the version of the Bible Gildas was using the question that presents itself is whether this is a valid history of Britain or England or is it a lie stamped backwards on a people who would not have recognized their new identities? Who is Gildas? And is he really writing about the Britain we know today? Finally what about Bede and Nennius, is there anything different that we can pick up from these writers which maybe we can’t from Gildas? Can we get blood out of a stone? Can we distill truth from lies?
“But no-one should think that anything I say is said out of scorn for humanity or from a conviction that I am superior to all men”.2
Gildas is incredibly quick here, it’s almost as if he expects exactly that sort of criticism, a sure sign of where his opposition will lie? In this translation he then goes on to say as ‘god is his witness’ but, and allowing for my latin being almost non- existent, there is nevertheless no sign of the word ‘Deus’ or any of its derivatives in the original Latin at this point, leaving it open maybe as to what or who is ‘dominus’3. In verse twelve we do get a reference to a god or gods, but this time in the Latin the word is ‘dei’ which can be plural, and only seems to be singular when writing of the Christian god, a somewhat peculiar arrangement for a people of as many gods as the Romans. Further the original Latin of ‘The History of Britain’ at verse does not even mention Britain and verse three gets translated without the reference to ‘librata ab Africo’ which is in my translation ‘free(d) of/from Africa’. It then goes on to describe a territory with wide plains, great rivers with significant tributaries and mountains to pasture livestock on. Not meaning to be disrespectful, although why not go with the flow, but this all seems somewhat unlike the Britain that I know. The Thames for example is more a stream than a river in the Cotswalds.
In Nennius, these words are put into the mouth of Vortigen’s son (who according to Nennius is issue also of Vortigen’s daughter), "Thou art my father; shave and cut the hair of my head.”4 Odd is it not as this seems strangely similar to the Normans habit of cutting their hair so as they could differentiate themselves from the local Britons but of course it’s too soon in the historical record, or should be too soon at least.
Also strangely for someone who should be a Barbarian himself, the advice given to Vortigen is that the citadel founded at Heremus (a nice Germanic name once again) will be safe against the Barbarians5. But he fails to build the citadel because materials vanish strangely in the night. He then is told by his twelve wise men that he must find a child born not of a father. One can hardly fail to notice the parody, or even contempt, of the Christian Son of God here, although the son does then seem to rise above the fray. And in Chapter 46 we have a story that seems very similar to the one from Greek myth, where the Daanan wives murder their Aegyptus husbands. Here it might be worth considering Emily Albu6 and her view that the story of the Normans is very similar, in fact almost identical, to that of the Trojans in the Aeneid.
Bede of course leveraged himself off Gildas but there are some oddities. In both Bede and Gildas Britain in the English translation is described as 800 miles long and 200 miles wide. But in Gildas’ Latin its not centorum but gentorum that is of the eight, so it wasn’t a description of length, but best as I can work it out anyway, a description of the number of (maybe prominent) families or tribes. And although Bedes’ length of Britain is not in question his description of Ireland is. According to Bede it has a very mild climate without the need to indoor animals in the winter or to make hay in the summer for winter feed. But the biggest oddity is that he has Ireland as longer than Britain and stretching as far as Northern Spain. These writers are it seems, despite their renown, quite a lot less than 100% accurate.
We must therefore go to the archeological record. Sutton Hoo is the most famous find in Ancient Britain and it is from early in this period and it’s completely pagan. There are some attempts to extract Christianity out of the burial site with the use of the names “Saulus’ and “Paulus” in Greek found in several places but to be kind this is a stretch. In “An Archeology of the early Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms” on page 175, C.J. Arnold says this “..but whether we consider paganism or Christianity, it is harder to see the workings and activities of such religions” and then “..Christianity, in the form envisaged by contemporary written sources, may have taken many years to develop”. Elsewhere it is noted that the oldest churches seem to date to the 11th Century not to the 7th or 8th Centuries and that “Even the details of early Christian worship are obscure”. It seems that it is hard to find Christianity in the archeological record for that period Britain.
Many have questioned the seemingly Greek origins of Biblical myth over the last few years7. But is it just Greek myth at play there? There seems to be a lot of Herodotus in the Bible and Polycrates Tunnel and Wall on Samos seem to me to be a much better model for Hezekiah’s tunnel and wall than the ones we have in Jerusalem now. There are also many other parallels with Greek history in the Bible. So could it possibly be that Biblical history is just Greek history re-writ for political motives as set out in Plato? Is it a product of the Athenian and/or the Macedonian empire (via the almost unbelievable Alexander) rather than the Palestinian desert? I would suggest that one could be forgiven for thinking such. But now that the scene has been set, what really do we know of the British past and who the Anglo Saxons were? Is this period’s British History just someone else’s history updated for the people in question and given appropriate names within a relevant language? Are the Anglo Saxons, like the Ancient Israelites, more myth than real, a template for an attempt to contrast the present and to provide a moral fibre to allow elites to rule without the dissent of the poor? Was early middle ages England Christian in any way at all? When all is said and done it seems that maybe we need to ask what is the truth if it is not holy?
Or in this case Roman?
Note:
There seems to be a classical style pun in Gildas’ name. Firstly in Latin ‘das’ can mean ‘to give birth’ or ‘devote’ and ‘gil’ means ‘pale yellow’ or ‘dun coloured’. In Latin (and Ancient Greek), gold can be rendered as Chrysos or Chrysus. (and this name in itself, quite obviously cognate with Christ seems that it might be related to the Krosos of Egyptian myth).
Gildas: The Ruin of Britain and other works, ed. Michael Winterbottom, Phillimore & Co. Ltd, Chichester. P. 6.
Ibid p. 13. Another translation has ‘others’ instead of ‘humanity’ and ‘they’ for ‘all men’ that gives it a rather more interesting context.
I guess it’s always a danger assuming something on the basis of a lack of knowledge (in this case of the Latin text), so I am prepared to be wrong on this one but my Latin dictionary does seem to bear my explanation.
Ibid, Chapter 39 (refer footnote 1)
Ibid, Chapter 40
Emily Albu, The Normans in their Histories: Propaganda, Myth and Subversion, Woodbridge 2001, p 15-16.
Eg. Niels Lemche, Phillipe Wadjenbaum, Bruce Louden, Thomas Thompson.
Bibliography.
Arnold, C.J., An Archeology of the Early Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms, London, Routledge, 1997.
Myth, Rulership, Church and Charters: Essays in Honour of Nicholas Brookes, ed. Julia Barrow and Andrew Wareham, Aldershot, Ashgate Publishing, 2008.
Bede, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, ed. Bertram Colgrave and R.A.B. Mynors, London, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1969.
Evans, Angela Care, Sutton Hoo Ship Burial, Avon, British Museum Publications, 1986. Gildas, The Ruin of Britain and other works, ed. & trans. Michael Winterbottom, London, Phillimore, 1978.
Henderson, George, Vision and Image in Early Christian England, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Jones, Edwin, The English Nation: The Great Myth, Thrupp, Sutton Publishing, 1998.
This is very good, wish you had more history assignments to research.
I've noticed that new ideas are not what academia is about - just about quoting other academics.
Stegiel is friends with AI so he can ask AI what AI thinks of your study.
The people's common law is the very simple principles of - Do no Harm, injury or loss.
Also the jury system of 12 is from actual common law.
No judge in a common law court, only a convenor or administrator.
King Alfred learned it from the people, rather than the Roman law he was instructed in via the 'church' which was/is the Roman empire, now called the Vatican/Roman Catholic Church.
Common law as used in the 'court' system is the equity side of things, if you can get the lying bastards to acknowledge it, whereas the cases generally brought to 'court' operate under Admiralty law (Roman, Law Merchant) as purely commercial transactions, via statute, otherwise known as corporate policy.
Admiralty Act and the Naval Prize Act.