Technically speaking the words kingdom and realm are interchangeable. As I work on these posts on lost kingdoms it occurred to me that I have a few planned posts on entities that really fall in a gray zone, either because we have little proof they existed or because their location is unfixed. So what is the right term for them? Proto-kingdom? Pseudo-kingdom? Principality is no better. District really isn’t either since district implies a regularized grid or plan. Petty kingdom is just weird and one of the entities I’ll be writing about wasn’t petty, if it existed. So realm is the term I’ve decided on.
A realm refers to an area ruled by a king, perhaps passed on to his successor, or not. There were certainly many transient realms. Indeed, one of the differences between realms and kingdoms are that kingdoms tend to remain together even when the whole dynasty changes.
A kingdom may be absorbed into a larger kingdom, but even then it tends to retain its organizational structure and identity. Lindsey remained a distinct unit even when completely assumed by either Northumbria or Mercia. Its still a district or county today.
Some realms had a core kingdom in addition to a swollen tribute area. “Northumbria” is a realm until 679 when Ecgfrith assumed direct rule over Deira for the final time and the southern border was set by arbitration. Bernicia is the core kingdom of the realm of Northumbria. Even then the term Northumbria probably didn’t consistently exist. It king would have simply been called King of the Angles/English in the north.
Well, May 5th is Heavenfield’s first birthday. It has been a great year with 17,206 actual visitors to the site and quite a few more I know reading along with syndicated readers.
I think I’ll celebrate the anniversary with a run down of the top 5 posts of the last year with their hit count. I should point out that WordPress does not count visits by the site owner.
None of these got more than 50 posts within their first 2-3 days so these are posts that have turned up almost daily in search engine hits. There are another about 5-7 that also turn up nearly daily in search hits. Its been fun the last couple months watching them jockey for position to finish. At least only one (#3) was found by off topic search words like ‘green beer’!
Excluding the ‘about me’ page, Early Medieval Kings has been by far the most popular web page with 509 hits. Going along with this, early medieval kings is by far the most common search term to find Heavenfield.
Now that the semester is winding down to a close over the next week I hope to get back to blogging on a more regular basis. Brendan is getting impatient to move on…
From Bede’s History III.12 (McClure and Collins, p. 129)
“It is related, for example, that every often he [King Oswald] would continue in prayer from matins to daybreak; and because of his frequent habit of prayer and thanksgiving, he was always accustomed, whenever he sat, to place his hands on his knees with the palms turned upwards. It is also a tradition which has become proverbial, that he died with a prayer on his lips. When he was beset by the weapons of his enemies and saw that he was about to perish he prayed for the souls of his army. So the proverb runs, ‘May God have mercy on their souls, as Oswald said when he fell to the earth’”
This passage has attracted the most attention for his palms up posture. I’ve read here and there some odd talk about it reflecting pre-Christain postures. Nonsense… look around your local church and then look at ancient murals and art and you will see palms up postures throughout.
What has attracted my attention is the claim that he prayed continually from matins to daybreak. This is one sleep deprived king! Did he have insomnia? Matins is supposed to be the midnight office and daybreak is lauds. Obviously, matins can’t be really midnight. In reality various monasteries and churches set matins at various times of the night. It is likely that each monastic system had a schedule set for daily prayer, and it was practiced by members of the house(s) where ever they were. It seems likely that Oswald followed the schedule from Lindisfarne, led by a personal priest. This also suggests that the hours of the office were done somewhere within Bamburgh’s enclosure so that it was easily accessible to Oswald.
It is one of the mysteries of Oswald’s reign that his personal priest is not mentioned. We know that his brother Oswiu had personal priests — Utta, later Abbot of Gateshead, and Eadhead, later Bishop of Lindsey– and his son Oethelwald had Caelin, brother of bishops Cedd and Chad, as his personal priest. All of these priests were from the Lindisfarne family, and as the founder of Lindisfarne it is almost certain that Oswald would have had an Irish priest by his side. There wouldn’t have been any English priests trained until at the very earliest late in Oswald’s reign. Given that Bede is promoting the close relationship between Oswald and Bishop Aidan I suppose its not surprising that his personal priest, who really couldn’t be Aidan, isn’t mentioned.
One of the things this calls to mind is that first of all, Oswald was surely, remarkably pious. After an evening in the hall with his court, getting up before dawn for prayer is impressive. It may also be the only time during the day when a king could quietly think. Once the rest of the court awakes, the day’s business will begin and by evening his hall will be full of his retainers. It also occurs to me that this formal position, with palms turned up, indicates that Oswald was a rather impressive, kingly figure otherwise these odd details would not have been remembered.
This also brings up Oswald’s understanding of Latin. How many kings would go daily to hear the office if they couldn’t understand it. Granted, he may have just wanted to be present when what he considered to be sacred rites were preformed and to pray silently to himself. Still it all suggests quite a lot of formation on Oswald’s behalf done by Iona before he returned and afterwards fostered by the monks of Lindisfarne.
I was reading Eileen Joy’s post over at In the Middle yesterday morning and she got me thinking about Nicholas Howe (pictured). His book Migration and Mythmaking in Anglo-Saxon England was one of the most important and formative books I have ever read on early medieval studies, particularly on the concept of ethnogensis. In fact it was so formative for me that I have a hard time thinking of my concept maps before I read it. Perhaps it was so important for me because I am a self-taught independent scholar; I’ve never had the opportunity to sit at the knee of the wise ones. (So I will be in mourning next week at my inability to go to Kzoo this year…sigh) It also reminded me its long past time I picked up Howe’s latest two books, Across an Inland Sea and Writing the Map of Anglo-Saxon England. I can recall only seeing Howe speak at Kzoo once, the topic was ‘From Bede’s World to “Bede’s World”‘, a chapter in Writing the Map of Anglo-Saxon England and I remember how much he reminded me of Stephan Jay Gould (and that is quite a complement from a biologist!). I went to one of Gould’s traveling lectures when I was in graduate school; he was talking about the Burgess Shale and randomness in evolution in ways that were revolutionary at the time. Alas, they have both left us too soon, but good writers never really leave us; they echo through time even if their thoughts are frozen in time and place. It is up to us to make sure the next generation hears that echo…
This wasn’t supposed to be an elegy for either Nicholas Howe or Stephan Jay Gould. Eileen’s post and Howe’s work made me think a little more about ethnogensis this morning. It occurred to me that in the constructs I’ve discussed in the past (here and here) religious conversion is a pivot point in the development of the ethnogenic process. It occurred to me that if another religious conversion or sea change in religious life occurs, then ethanogensis must become active again. You can’t have one without the other.
Between us and the Anglo-Saxons, at least two such sea changes have occurred. The Reformation was such a change for most of Europe, whether their country remained Roman Catholic or not. There were new definitions of nationhood, first as a protestant country (or a loyal Catholic country), and then as say an Anglican country vs Presbyterian Scotland or Lutheran Germany. Part of this process is developing a caricature of what it was like under the old regime. Many of these caricatures are still with us: completely ignorant lay people in church who couldn’t understand anything said, leaders afraid of allowing laity to read the bible themselves, people guilty of idolatry of church statuary and relics etc. The most effective caricatures have an element of truth, as these do, but are also more wrong than right. First of all, Latin literacy was far greater than most laity today will allow. Access to religious books had more to do with the wealth necessary to obtain the books than control by the church. Recent reading on late medieval Books of Hours has been very interesting on both these points.
Are we living through a period of ethnogensis today? You bet we are. Let’s reexamine the usual parameters of ethnogensis:
Common ancestral past: most people in Western countries have a common history with their countrymen and for that matter a belief in the past ethnogenic construct.
Religious conversion (or a sea change): Yup… secularlism is on the rise, if not the majority; Catholicism and mainline denominations are declining, and independent churches are on the rise. So people are fleeing from Catholicism and mainline denominations in both directions, to no religion and independent churches. Most Western countries also are experiencing for the first time in the last generation significant immigration of non-Christian people (Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists etc). Some countries such as the United States are founded on a belief that no one religion can be given advantages over another (even if the founders didn’t anticipate the ‘others’ to be Muslims or Hindus).
Victory over a traditional enemy: Not there yet, but we have an enemy that is both new and traditional. Terrorism is a newish method of war for most Western countries but it is coming from a traditional enemy of Europe, Islam. Granted there has been a long hiatus, but it is an old rivalry between Christians and Muslims with new methods
So all three of these criteria are in process right now. From our vantage point, we could also observe significant changes in technology, economics and communications as being major factors in how our new ethnogenesis will turn out. No doubt, the Anglo-Saxons would have pointed to new (or newly learned) technologies (such as literacy), trade and communications with new peoples as being big factors in their development as well. Like the Anglo-Saxons of Bede’s time, we really aren’t very sure how to characterize our times or predict what our future will be. Like them we are fascinated with the past, the ruins of giants, and incorporate our constructs of the past into our future story. We think that our constructs make so much more sense than theirs (such as the Pictish origin story) but it remains to be seen how our efforts will be evaluated by future generations. I suppose it remains to be seen if a new round of ethnogenesis will help us understand their times better or just put up more barriers.
“The monks of Iona accepted the catholic way of life under the teaching of Egbert, while Dunchad was abbot [707-717], about eighty years after they had sent Bishop Aidan to preach to the English. The man of God, Egbert, remained for thirteen years on the island which he had consecrated to Christ, lighting once more, as it were with the gracious light of ecclesiastical fellowship and peace. In the year of our Lord 729, when Easter fell on 24 April, after he had celebrated a solemn mass in memory of the Lord’s resurrection, he departed to be with the Lord on the same day. … It was a wonderful dispensation of the divine providence that the venerable man not only passed from this world to the Father on Easter Day, but also when Easter was being celebrated on a date on which it had never been kept in those places.” (Bede, HE V. 22, McClure and Collins, p. 287)
It is interesting that Bede notes that Egbert had been on Iona 13 years, placing his arrival in 716 the very year that the monks had been driven out of Pictland and the same year that King Cenred, brother of Bede’s King Ceolwulf became King of Northumbria. Given that Bede credits Columba as the missionary (apostle?) to the Picts in his chronological summary (HE V.24), their expulsion from Pictland 52 years after their similiar expulsion from Northumbria is significant. Here Bede couldn’t help himself but to note that Egbert consecrated the island for Christ - meaning that St. Columba’s consecration of Iona had to be repeated.
I believe I have noted elsewhere that Bede is a bit loose on this date, manipulating it to suit his purposes. Here he wants to show Egbert’s coming to Iona with the explusion from Pictland. In HE III.4 he claims that the Columban calculations of Easter lasted until 715, 150 years after the coming of Columba to Iona. If he allows these dates to slide a little, then the 52 years since Whitby should be considered about 50 as well.
So Bede’s chronology in the summary of HE V.24 goes like this:
449: English arrive in Britain
565: St Columba founds Iona.
597: Augustine arrives in Britain, noting its roughly 150 years after the English arrive. [In III.4 he notes Columba dies about 32 years after arriving on Iona, ie. 597! - expressly not noted in the summary even though the summary notes he was the missionary to the Picts]
716: Egbert converts Iona to Roman Easter calculations (and reconsecrates the island!) about 80 years after Aidan arrives in Northumbria. [Therefore, Egbert converts Iona 150 years after Columba comes to Iona; Augustine converts the English 150 years after their arrival in Britain. Aidan's arrival about 80 years earlier nearly splits that time in half...]
Makes me wonder what kind of symbolism Bede saw in those 150 year intervals. It seems that it took both Iona and ‘the English’ 150 years to fully mature for Iona to come into the Roman fold and for the English church to produce missionaries, correcting the primary source of their own missionaries. The only symbolism I can think of that is 150 is the 150 psalms, but I may just have psalms on the brain. Given that the Irish divided their pslater into thirds of 50 pslams each; 50 years from Whibty to explusion from Pictland would also fit the symbolism.
Egbert is one of the few fellow Englishmen that Bede specifically called a saint in his History. The entry in the chronological summary actually calls him “St. Egbert”; he is the only one so designated in the summary. To me, the entry in the Greater Chronicle is the most remarkable considering how few Anglo-Saxons Bede records there. Bede is a little odd in which Englishmen (and women) who he includes in the Greater Chronicle: Kings Aethelfrith and Aelle, Aethelberht and Edwin, and saints Aethelthryth (with K. Ecgfrith), Egbert, Willibrord, Cuthbert, and his abbot Coelfrith. Many of these references are pretty slight, but Bishop Egbert’s entry is every bit as elaborate as Cuthbert or Willibrord. A further study of Egbert and his importance to Bede seems merited.
Skellig is the Irish monastery of Skellig Michael on island in the North Atlantic. Known for being one of the best preserved Irish monasteries but also one of the hardest to reach. It was built in 588 and not abandoned until the 12th century. You see it at one point in the video where there are a few buildings clinging to the side of an incredibly steep mountain face. The stone beehive cells you see in the video are either on Skellig Michael or of the type that were there.
