Anglo-Norman history

The Mont Saint-Michel is a small, rocky tidal island in France located in a large bay at the mouth of the Couesnon.
The granite massif of Mont Saint-Michel is crowned with a medieval abbey. It's a table moutain; a remaining of a prehistoric petrified treetop.
Since 1898, the spire of the abbey church has a statue of Saint Michael that protrudes a hundred and seventy meters above the bay. The island is located about 1 kilometer from the coast near the town of Avranches in Normandy . It was originally a tidal island : it was accessible by land at low tidebut at high tide it was surrounded by water. Today a narrow bridge, with shuttle service, runs to the island. Mont Saint-Michel, with its pedestrian streets, is only accessible to pedestrians.

The first text about an abbey is the 9th-century Latin text Revelatio ecclesiae sancti Michaelis in monte Tumba written by a chanoine living at Mont Saint Michel or at the Cathédrale Saint-André d'Avranches. This text was written at a time of power struggle between Brittany and the County of Normandy against Francia as well as during canon law reforms by Roman emperors.

When Christianity expanded to the area, around the 4th century, Mont Tombe, the original name of Mont Saint Michel, was part of the Diocese of Avranches. By the middle of the 6th century, Christianity had a stronger presence in the bay. By this time, Mont Tombe was populated by religious devotees, hermits (probably some Celtic monks) supplied by the curé of Astériac, (Asterix) who took care of the site and led a contemplative life around some oratories. The hermits Saint Pair and Saint Seubilion dedicated one of the oratories to Saint Étienne, midway through the mont and one to Saint Symphorien, at the foot of the rock.

Saint Aubert
In 710, Mont Tombe was renamed Mont Saint Michel au péril de la Mer ("Mount Saint Michael at the peril of the sea) after erecting an oratory to Saint Michael by bishop Saint Aubert of Avranches in 708. According to the legend, Aubert received, during his sleep, three times the order from Saint Michael to erect an oratory on the Mont Tombe. The archangel was reputed to have left his finger mark on Aubert's skull. This skull is displayed at the Saint-Gervais d'Avranches basilica with such a scar on it.

This sanctuary should be, according to the archangel, a replica of the Gargano in Italy (from the 5th century). Aubert had a local religious artifact removed and instead a circular sanctuary built, made of dry stones. Around 708, Aubert sent two monks to get some artifacts from the Italian sanctuary Gargano (a rock with his foot print and a piece of tissue from the altar). During this mission, the March 709 tsunami is supposed to have destroyed the Scissy forest and turned the Mont into an island. On October 16 709, the bishop dedicated the church and put twelve chanoine there. The Mont-Saint-Michel was born.

The remains of the oratory were found in the chapel Notre-Dame-Sous-Terre. This sanctuary contained the tomb of Aubert and most likely the artifacts brought from Gargano. The chapel Notre-Dame-Sous-Terre is today under the nave of the abbey-church.

The first buildings became too small and under the Western Roman Empire multiple buildings were added. Charlemagne chose saint Michel as a protector of his empire during the 9th century and tried to have the place renamed Mont-Saint-Michel, but during the Middle Ages it was usually called Saint-Michel-aux-Deux-Tombes (Saint Michel with two tombs) (Mons Sancti Michaelis in periculo maris, in reference to Tombelaine).

History of the abbey
Church of Saint Michel during 9th and 10th centuries
The Mont-Saint-Michel monks, during the first century of their institution, venerated the archangel Michael. The Mont became a place of prayer and study, but the stability period, known as the Neustria, during the reign of Charlemagne ended when he died. As the rest of Gaule was fighting invasions, religion and science found some welcoming in the diocese of Avranches and at the Mont-Saint-Michel.

At first, pilgrims kept coming to the Mont. After the Vikings captured the Mont in 847, the monks departed. But, as an island, it offered some protection for the local population and thus never stayed empty.

After the signature of the treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte, Rollo (Gange-Hrólfr "Rollo" Ragnvaldsson de Normandie) started repairing the damages inflicted to the religious buildings. He generously financed the Mont and called back the monks displaced by the war, returning the Mont to its previous condition.

The wealth and support that the Mont suddenly obtained from Rollo started to fundamentally affect its inhabitants, taking them away from their solitary, religious life. After William I of Normandy took over his father's title as Duke of Normandy in 927, he expanded his support toward monasteries until his assassination in 932; but his wealth, from which they benefited, further exacerbated their mundane life style. Because of their generous contributions to the Mont, the Dukes of Brittany Conan 1st, who died in 992, and Geoffrey 1st, who died in 1008, were buried in the Mont as benefactors.

Although scholars tend to draw a line of confrontation between the conquerors Normans and the conquered Muslims and Greeks in the kingdom of Sicily, the actual relationship among these people was not so simple. In the kingdom there was a relatively developed bureaucracy staffed by officials with varied cultural backgrounds.  The kings and these bureaucrats took a stand against the aristocrats, who had solely Latin Christian backgrounds.  In fact, the keynote of the political history of the kingdom was a process in which the kings together with bureaucrats held down the aristocrats and cities of the peninsula.  The kings and bureaucrats, who had different cultural backgrounds but were highly educated and cultured, took a stand against aristocrats who were not well cultured but trained as warriors.  However, this line of confrontation was visible only during the peacetime.  During the wartime, a line of confrontation was drawn within aristocrats and cities that had military power.  Aristocrats and cities were divided into a pro-king group and an anti-king one, and fought amongst each other, while bureaucrats were usually on the side of the kings.  This suggests that even the mighty Norman kings supported by the bureaucrats were by no means absolute.  The strong Norman kingship of Sicily was in fact only made possible by a delicate balance of power among aristocrats, cities, and bureaucrats.

This MA Medieval History dissertation examines 11th century original sources to support the thesis that Godwin of Wessex was a sea-lord in command of ships, that he aligned with the Danish sea warriors of Cnut the Great before the conquest of England in 1016, and that his power as earl of Wessex was largely derived from his control of military and mercantile fleets and strategic maritime and trade landholdings.

This is not just a book about a battle; it is a book about the biggest battle before Hastings 1066.
This is a battle most people have probably never heard of, but it is a battle where five Scottish and Viking kings and seven earls died, somewhere in the kingdom of Northumbria in late 937. As well as royalty, the bones of tens of thousands of ordinary men from Northern England, Scotland and the Viking territories lie buried in a place which, according to the chroniclers, is no longer known.
This book is about that battle and the search to find the long-lost site. Thousands of pages have been written about the Battle of Brunnenburh, but this book is unique. It is written by descendants of a legendary Viking Egill Skallagrimsson. Thousands of pages have been written about Brunnenburh but all of them are written from the perspective of the victor, King Athelstan of Wessex and Mercia. This book is the closest anyone is likely to get to a Northern Viking account.
Even if you have no real interest in the site of the Battle of Brunnenburh this is worth the effort you will put into it this book to understand it. Take a deep dive into the world and beliefs and times of the competing factions in 10 th century England and beyond, and the battle that first unified the United Kingdom.

Презентация доклада на 24-й международной научной конференцим студентов, аспирантов и молодых учёных «Ломоносов-2017».
В докладе рассматриваются историографический поиск и выделение высшего слоя нетитулованной англо-саксонской светской элиты накануне Нормандского Завоевания (1066 г.) по материалам XII века. Последовательно разбираются и критикуются попытки в рамках конституционной истории (Р. Рид и Д. Рофф) и аграрной истории (У. Стаббс и П. Кларк). Докладчик приходит к выводу, что данные гипотезы не подтверждаются известными источниками (Книга Страшного Суда и нормандские переводы англо-саксонского права XII в.) при непредвзятом анализе и требуют насильного прочтения известных текстов. В заключении делается предположение, что подобные построения – это отражение современных представлений об устройстве общества (в том числе и английского), где относительно чётко выделяются имущественные классы.

A PowerPoint presentation at the 24th international academic student and young researcher's conference "Lomonosov-2017".
The presentation analyses the historiographical search for an upper layer of the titleless Anglo-Saxon lay elite on the eve of the Norman Conquest (1066). The presentation's consecutive study reveals the flaws in the constitutional (by R. Reid and D. Roffe) and agrarian (W. Stubbs and P. Clarke) approaches to the problem. The author finds that such hypotheses do not find support from the extant sources (the Domesday Book and Norman translation of the Anglo-Saxon law) when reading without any preconceived notions. The conclusion supposes that this kind of search might be a reflection of the modern-day view of the society (including the English one) as composed of more or less clearly defined classes.

This paper discusses the depiction of ambushes in chronicles of the High Middle Ages. Identifying ambushes in this period is particularly difficult, as the Latin term 'insidia' could also be used more generically to refer to stratagems, snares and cunning ploys. This paper combines evidence from contemporary chronicles, Patristic and medieval theological writing and Anglo-Norman epic verse to examine the variety of situations in which ambushes were used by medieval combatants and the different lessons that historians drew from tales of warriors ambushed (or ambushing) unawares.

Bremmer offers a much-needed reassessment of the career and biography of the famous outlaw. Asking “what national or ethnic sen- timents did the author [of the Gesta] entertain in his description of Hereward?” Bremmer concludes that he “consciously attempted to depict [Hereward] as a latter-day Anglo-Saxon but also that he eventually realized that in view of the new disposition such a characterization could not be maintained until the end of his narrative”. Bremmer situates the Gesta in relation to other later Anglo-Saxon texts concerned with cultural identity, including Ælfric’s Letter to Brother Edward and Wulfstan’s Sermo Lupi, yet he notes that that the author also engages in rhetorical flourishes more typical of Classical epic than early English historiography. Ultimately, Bremmer argues, the political realities of post-Conquest England overtake any nostalgia for the Anglo-Saxon past, so that the narrative’s somewhat deflating conclusion—Hereward’s reconciliation with William—s...

This article examines the possibility that the carved granite figure in the north aisle of St Saviour’s church, Jersey, Channel Islands, is a Sheela-na-gig, a Medieval female exhibitionist figure that originated in 11th century Normandy and is rooted in pagan symbolism. Sheelas are characterised as naked female figures who direct attention, usually with their hand positions, to their exaggerated genitalia. They have an apotropaic function in warding off evil and bringing good luck.

The great misconception of women within the Anglo-Saxon world begins with the failure of contemporary critics to perceive the world from the dark view of violence, alliances, politics, and the code by which the Anglo-Saxons lived by. The female roles within Beowulf are no exception to this misinterpretation. In modern view, women are often seen as voiceless, forced into peace-making marriages that were doomed from the beginning, and left to face the bloody consequences when the peace-pacts failed; this ideal has been grossly exaggerated, romanticized, and stretched to fit the modern critics own outlook. Therefore, the role of women must be looked at through the demanding Anglo-Saxon code of conduct, not a modern one. Females made integral contributions to the Anglo-Saxons and while their role differed from the ideal male's role, both the roles of men and women served to complement one another. Their role was not restricted to arranged marriages but was a vital political and social role that welded communities together. Most importantly, in their duty under the Anglo-Saxon code, its requirements for revenge for blood ties, both males and females were equal.

The idea of a Norman ethnic identity, of a Normannitas, has long been discussed by contemporary historiography. Nonetheless, this field of studies seems always to be caught up between two distinct types of discussion and theoretical basis: one more focused on Late Antiquity/Early Middle Ages and the other on the Late Middle Ages. Stressing connections between 10 th and 11 th century Normandy and the classical past, we propose applying the ethnogenesis concept and the extensive research it spawned on the construction of late antique ethnic identities to deepen our understanding on the forging of an early Norman identity. Acknowledging the extensive discussion over Scandinavian influence or Frankish continuity in the formation and development of the Norman duchy, we propose a different approach to Dudo of Saint-Quentin's Gesta Normannorum, viewing the text more in connection with a late-antique tradition of historical writing on 'barbaric' gentes. Seeing the work through that lens, this paper utilizes recent research by Lesley Abrams, Mark Hagger and Fraser McNair on 10 th century Normandy and attempts to understand how the construction of a gens normannorum identity could have been instrumental to the Norman dukes in their seeking to establish authority over a diverse group of elites, arguing that they did so through an idea of Normanness completely centered on and emanating from the ruling Rollonid lineage.

This paper, delivered at the 950th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings Battle Conference, at Battle in 2016, argues that Edward the Confessor made a consistent policy of attempting to procure an heir of the blood. When he failed to produce a son by Edith, he turned to the next in line, Edward the Exile; and when the Exile died, he adopted the Exile's son, Edgar Aetheling, and named him as his heir. This paper overturns the traditional argument that Edward nominated William or Harold or both.

Often regarded as one of the very last works in Old English, the homily on Saint Neot has received little critical attention in the last fifty years, falling outside the bounds of Anglo-Saxon studies yet failing to attract the interest of students of early Middle English. Recent recognition of the homily’s accomplished style has culminated in its reattribution to the early eleventh century, where it stands as a virtually unparalleled example of vernacular hagiography from the period after the circulation of Ælfric’s Lives of Saints. This article revives the case for a post-Conquest dating of the Old English homily on Saint Neot, questioning scholars who interpret the text as the cry of an English underclass hostile to foreign occupation. Rather than viewing the homily’s unique features as evidence of its dependence on a lost version of the Latin Life of Saint Neot, I argue that these changes reflect the distinctive agenda of the translator, who uses the Anglo-Saxon past as a platform from which to comment on Anglo-Norman society.

The populating of the British islands took place in numerous successive waves hardly distinguishable today and being the object of research hypotheses. The question of contribution or not of additional Scandinavian genes by the last Norman invaders arises because the Normans myth appropriated Viking origins since the first chronicles of the Middle Ages. The study of the period of the History finishing with the settlement of male Norman lords on the British islands allows us to envisage several continental Y Haplogroups as being the greater part in this population and others a minority. In spite of the name of Normans/Northmans, the haplogroups of Scandinavian origin could have been a tiny minority.

In London, there was already an impressive physical presence, a large walled city, St Paul’s Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, and London Bridge in various stages of construction and repair, as well as domestic buildings and churches for 25,000 people. The White Tower had to compete with these elements if it was to impress.
Stone castles took time to build and the Royal household was a large group of people, who were constantly on the move. The castle represents a solid and permanent presence on the edge of the city, which towers over the city wall and commands the river. This tower is built on Roman foundations and adding a regal and religious multi-storey presence to a newly conquered nation.

Norman legal sources are scarce; we should examine these sources to see if they are reliable instead of taking them for granted and singling out only those topics we want to discuss. The Leges are our most wide-ranging source from the period, and far from being the least reliable of the Anglo-Norman sources, they might be our best reflection of legal realities. Examining the use of source material in the Leges reveals the author’s changes to Anglo-Saxon principles, which gives us reason to conclude that the treatise is a trustworthy reflection of twelfth-century English legal practice. Pursuing this line of inquiry can give us greater confidence in the reliability of the Leges Henrici Primi as a source, assuring us of its relevance to twelfth-century legal situations.

This paper will translate an excerpt from a little-known Latin text produced within living memory of 1066 for the details of the Battle of Hastings’ combat and geography.  Quedam Exceptiones de Historia Normannorum et Anglorum (QE) survives as a unique abbreviation of the C redaction of the Gesta Normannorum Ducum (GND).  The QE abbreviates the C redaction and adds interpolations, most concerning the FitzOsbern family, which has led to the suggestion that the anonymous scribe was either related to the family or associated with Bishop Osbern FitzOsbern of Exeter.  He certainly had an interest in geography, adding the names of rivers, places and topographic features.  The text was likely composed at Battle Abbey, being the earliest account of the Norman Conquest to be written there.

"In the year 1066, Anglo-Saxon forces surprised Harald Sigurdsson, King of Norway, while his army was lunching. The invading Norwegians were routed in the subsequent battle at Stamford Bridge and Harald the “Hard-ruler” met his unceremonious demise, signaling the end of the Viking Age and the beginning of medieval Scandinavia proper. Or so we are told.

Despite his apparent significance, scholarship devoted to Harald is relatively scant compared to other Viking Age kings. The historiography spares only a cursory glance at this dynamic figure before relegating him to the status of a convenient yet ultimately arbitrary historical bookend. In reality, Harald Sigurdsson was a complex character in the midst of a transformative process that had been occurring in Scandinavia since the 10th century and continued until well after he died. The circumstances of Harald’s lifetime were no less extraordinary than those of his death, truly demonstrating the breadth of the Viking experience. His is a story that deserves to be told on its own terms, as Harald himself would have had it.
"

A brief essay on the historical presence of the Knights Hospitaller, i.e. the knights of the Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, in the County of Kerry in Ireland, from the 12th to 17th century, to be published in the Journal of the Kerry Archaeological and Historical Society in Winter 2015.

The authorship of the Life of the twelfth-century English holy woman, Christina of Markyate (c. 1096–after 1155), has inspired considerable scholarly speculation. Though the writer never once positively identifies himself in extant versions of the text, oblique references locate his activity at the Benedictine monastery of St Albans in Hertfordshire during the 1130s under the patronage of the reigning abbot, Geoffrey de Gorron (1119–46), and intimate the close connections he enjoyed with his narrative’s subjects. Building off of these references, and incorporating clues from related sources from St Albans and Markyate, this article reconstructs the likeliest candidate for the writer—Robert de Gorron (d. 1166), Geoffrey’s nephew, appointed sacristan and later abbatial successor—and assesses his eligibility.

Showcased here is the introduction to the article. For the complete article, follow the link provided.

Though Eastern Christians generally regard the Western part of the Church to have split from Orthodoxy permanently in 1054, there have been calls by some to modify the date of this as regards the Anglo-Saxon Church. These Orthodox lay scholars and bishops argue that the Anglo-Saxon Church was more closely aligned with the Orthodox East rather than the Roman Catholic West, as evidenced by the canonisation of St Edward the Confessor and advocacy for the canonisation of King Harold II. This article questions these assertions by looking at the evidence provided by Anglo-Saxon connection to the Western Church, as well as the migration of Anglo-Saxons to Byzantium following the Battle of Hastings, as described in the Játvarðar Saga. It concludes by discussing what implications these findings have for the Orthodox Church in its canonisation of a technically non-Orthodox saint.

The conquest of England by the Normans in the year 1066 has been described by the renowned English historian, Frederic William Maitland, as being a catastrophe which determined the entire future of English law. This traditional view of legal history has regarded the primary source of modem English law as being of Anglo-Norman origin and has often overlooked the valuable contributions made to it by the antecedent Anglo-Saxon customary law. The purpose of this article is to rectify this deficiency and to examine, in some detail, the operation of the Anglo-Saxon legal system.

A boy and a girl, green in color, were found in the small Suffolk village of Woolpit; when they were able to communicate and answer questions about their origins, they later spoke of a strange land, green in color, that was untouched by the sun. The story of the two children and their homeland appears in two versions, both small passages in larger works: the Historia rerum Anglicarum, a history of England from the Norman Conquest to 1198 by the Yorkshire-based Augustinian secular canon William of Newburgh, and the Chronicon Anglicanum, another history starting with the Norman Conquest and ending in 1224 predominantly by the Essex-based Cistercian abbot Ralph of Coggeshall. The striking simi- larities between the two seemingly unconnected texts – and their notable differences – inspire in the modern reader questions similar to those that would have been asked by the locals who discovered the two children: what is the origin of the young strangers, the meaning behind their appearance, and how should they be treated, placed, and regarded?

Unlike the kings immediately before and after, who chose to be buried in the cathedral of Pamplona, the remains of Sancho VII of Navarre was deposited at the collegiate St. Mary of Roncesvalles, at the top of the Pyrenees. This study attempts to establish the causes of a singular choice and analyzes the possibility of a possible will of Sanche VII to be inspired by pantheon of the Plantagenet dynasty in Fontevraud, as part of the relations between the Navarre and Anglo-Norman monarchies around 1200.

"The Cambridge Songs (Carmina Cantabrigiensia) are a collection of Goliardic medieval Latin poems found on ten leaves (ff. 432–41) of the Codex Cantabrigiensis (C, MS Gg. 5.35), now at the Cambridge University Library. The songs as they survive are copies made shortly before or after the Norman Conquest (1066). They may have been collected by an English scholar while travelling on the continent sometime after the last datable song (1039), and brought back with him to the church of Saint Augustine at Canterbury, where they were copied and where the Codex was long kept. The original manuscript was possibly lost in a fire that struck Saint Augustine's in 1168. The dialect of the few vernacular portions found in some of the songs is in the North Rheno-Franconian dialect of Old High German, suggesting that the Goliard(s) who composed them came from the north or middle Rhineland, probably the area between Trier, Cologne, and Xanten. It has been suggested that some of the songs originated in France or Italy. While most of the Cambridge Songs survive only in the Cambridge manuscript, a few are duplicated in a manuscript, W, from Wolfenbüttel.

The Cambridge Songs were long thought to be forty-nine in number, but a missing folio that contained twenty-seven more was discovered in Frankfurt and returned to the University Library in 1982. All these songs were copied in the same hand. Seven songs in a different hand, but occurring in the same Codex (after the first forty-nine) have since been identified as probably part of the collection. The total number of Cambridge Songs is now considered to be eighty-three. Some of the verses are neumed and it is assumed that the entire collection was to be sung. Four of the original forty-nine are called modi (melodies, namely sequences). The purpose of the collection has also eluded scholars. It was probably either a book of instruction on Latin verse, a songbook for wandering minstrels (or the clerici vagabundi, vagabond clerics), or an anthology for private enjoyment.
--Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Songs"

The Bayeux Tapestry (or rather, embroidery) is one of the most famous medieval artworks, which narrates in images the conquest of England by the Normans led by Duke William the Conqueror. Images taken from the embroidery are reproduced on thousands of objects evoking the Middle Ages, and at the same time the work has been the subject of hundreds of studies in many European countries, by historians, art historians and narrative scholars. In all of this, some questions and some answers are lacking, in particular with regard to the political culture expressed in the work: there is no doubt that the embroidery is a narrative of the exploits of William the Conqueror, an attempt to reconcile the English and Normans and in part an exaltation of the role of Odo, bishop of Bayeux; but it is also the expression of a series of political ideals and models of order, a reading and an evaluation of the system of contemporary power, organized around the kingdom and based on the primacy of the aristocracy and the value of personal ties. The volume aims to follow this line of research, showing how the embroidery, from many points of view (the political ceremonial, the role of the king, the aristocratic bonds of fidelity), reflects a social imaginary and a series of clearly recognizable political ideals.

The Varangian Guard (Greek: Τάγμα των Βαράγγων, Tágma tōn Varángōn) was an elite unit of the Byzantine Army, from the 10th to the 14th centuries. Their members were the personal bodyguards to the Byzantine Emperors. The guard was primarily composed of Scandinavians and Anglo-Saxons.

This study provides the first evidence for the extraction of lead in the later early medieval period in Lancashire, in the North West of England. Archaeological evidence for human activity in the region during the later medieval period is modest, although the material culture that is known supports the historic accounts of settlement by people of Scandinavian origin, which is reinforced by studies of place names and local dialect. Investigation of two upland sites in the western Pennines, on Anglezarke and Rivington moors, indicates that lead was being extracted in the period c.680-1000 cal.AD, most likely from known veins at Lead Mines Clough. The emergence of extractive activity coincides with contact with the Norse who are known from both historic and archaeological evidence to have been present in Lancashire during the later early medieval period.

KEYWORDS
EARLY MEDIEVAL, LEAD, MINING, MINERAL EXTRACTION, MAGNETIC MEASUREMENT, SATURATION ISOTHERMAL REMANENT MAGNETISATION ASSAY, HEAVY METAL (LEAD) ASSAY, METALLURGY, UPLAND, PEAT, LANCASHIRE, ARCHAEOLOGY, ARCHAEOLOGICAL METHOD, NORSE ARCHAEOLOGY