A Point of View: Can religion tell us more than science?

AT

16 SEPTEMBER 2011 LAST UPDATED 15:55

Too many atheists miss the point of religion, it's about how we live and not what we believe, writes John Gray. When he recounts the story of his conversion to Catholicism in his autobiography A Sort of Life, Graham Greene writes that he went for instruction to Father Trollope, a very tall and very fat man who had once been an actor in the West End. Trollope was a convert who became a priest and led a highly ascetic life, and Greene didn't warm to him very much, at least to begin with. Yet the writer came to feel that in dealing with his instructor he was faced with "the challenge of an inexplicable goodness". It was this impression - rather than any of the arguments the devout Father presented to the writer for the existence of God - that eventually led to Greene's conversion. The arguments that were patiently rehearsed by Father Trollope faded from his memory, and Greene had no interest in retrieving them. "I cannot be bothered to remember," he writes. "I accept." It's clear that what Greene accepted wasn't what he called "those unconvincing philosophical arguments". But what was it that he had accepted? We tend to assume that religion is a question of what we believe or don't believe. It's an assumption with a long history in western philosophy, which has been reinforced in recent years by the dull debate on atheism. In this view belonging to a religion involves accepting a set of beliefs, which are held before the mind and assessed in terms of the evidence that exists for and against them. Religion is then not fundamentally different from science, both seem like attempts to frame true beliefs about the world. That way of thinking tends to see science and religion as rivals, and it then becomes tempting to conclude that there's no longer any need for religion. This was the view presented by the Victorian anthropologist JG Frazer in his book The Golden Bough, a study of the myths of primitive peoples that is still in print. According to Frazer, human thought advances through a series of stages that culminate in science. Starting with magic and religion, which view the world simply as an extension of the human mind, we eventually reach the age of science in which we view the world as being ruled by universal laws. Frazer's account has been immensely influential. It lies behind the confident assertions of the new atheists, and for many people it's just commonsense. My own view is closer to that of the philosopher Wittgenstein, who commented that Frazer was much more savage than the savages he studied.

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A Point of View is on Fridays on Radio 4 at 20:50 BST and repeated Sundays, 08:50 BST John Gray is a political philosopher and author of False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism Or listen to A Point of View on the iPlayer BBC Podcasts - A Point of View Four Thought podcast

I don't belong to any religion, but the idea that religion is a relic of primitive thinking strikes me as itself incredibly primitive.

In most religions - polytheism, Hinduism and Buddhism, Daoism and Shinto, many strands of Judaism and some Christian and Muslim traditions - belief has never been particularly important. Practice - ritual, meditation, a way of life - is what counts. What practitioners believe is secondary, if it matters at all. The idea that religions are essentially creeds, lists of propositions that you have to accept, doesn't come from religion. It's an inheritance from Greek philosophy, which shaped much of western Christianity and led to practitioners trying to defend their way of life as an expression of what they believe. This is where Frazer and the new atheists today come in. When they attack religion they are assuming that religion is what this western tradition says it is - a body of beliefs that needs to be given a rational justification. Obviously, there are areas of life where having good reasons for what we believe is very important. Courts of law and medicine are evidence-based practices, which need rigorous procedures to establish the facts. The Science helps us understand how the world decisions of governments rest on claims about how their policies will work, works - but to what extent? and it would be useful if these claims were regularly scrutinised - though you'd be well advised not to hold your breath. But many areas of life aren't like this. Art and poetry aren't about establishing facts. Even science isn't the attempt to frame true beliefs that it's commonly supposed to be. Scientific inquiry is the best method we have for finding out how the world works, and we know a lot more today than we did in the past. That doesn't mean we have to believe the latest scientific consensus. If we know anything, it's that our current theories will turn out to be riddled with errors. Yet we go on using them until we can come up with something better. Science isn't actually about belief - any more than religion is about belief. If science produces theories that we can use without believing them, religion is a repository of myth. However rapidly our knowledge increases, we'll always be surrounded by the unknowable Myths aren't relics of childish thinking that humanity leaves behind as it marches towards a more grown-up view of things. They're stories that tell us something about ourselves that can't be captured in scientific theories. Just as you don't have to believe that a scientific theory is true in order to use it, you don't have to believe a story for it to give meaning to your life. Myths can't be verified or falsified in the way theories can be. But they can be more or less truthful to human experience, and I've no doubt that some of the ancient myths we inherit from religion are far more truthful than the stories the modern world tells about itself. The idea that science can enable us to live without myths is one of these silly modern stories. There's nothing in science that says the world can be finally understood by the human mind. If Darwin's theory of evolution is even roughly right, humans aren't built to understand how the universe works. The human brain evolved under the pressures of the struggle for life. Through science humans can lift themselves beyond the view of things that's forced on them by day-to-day existence. They can't overcome the fact that they remain animals, with minds that aren't equipped to see into the nature of things. Darwin's theory is unlikely to be the final truth. It may be just a rough account of how life has developed in our part of the cosmos. Even so, the clear implication of the theory of evolution is that human knowledge is by its nature limited. It's been said that the universe is a queerer place than we can possibly imagine, and I'm sure that's right. However rapidly our knowledge increases, we'll always be surrounded by the unknowable.

Science hasn't enabled us to dispense with myths. Instead it has become a vehicle for myths - chief among them, the myth of salvation through science. Many of the people who scoff at religion are sublimely confident that, by using science, humanity can march onwards to a better world. But "humanity" isn't marching anywhere. Humanity doesn't exist, there are only human beings, each of them ruled by passions and illusions that conflict with one another and within themselves. Science has given us many vital benefits, so many that they would be hard to sum up. But it can't save the human species from itself. Because it's a human invention, science - just like religion - will always be used for all kinds of purposes, good and bad. Unbelievers in religion who think science can save the world are possessed by a fantasy that's far more childish than any myth. The idea that humans will rise from the dead may be incredible, but no more so than the notion that "humanity" can use science to remake the world. No doubt there will be some who are deeply shocked by Graham Greene's to Catholicism nonchalance about the arguments that led him to convert to Catholicism. How could he go on practising a religion when he couldn't even remember his reasons for joining it? The answer is that he did remember - but his reasons had nothing to do with arguments. Human beings don't live by argumentation, and it's only religious fundamentalists and ignorant rationalists who think the myths we live by are literal truths. Evangelical atheists who want to convert the world to unbelief are copying religion at its dogmatic worst. They think human life would be vastly improved if only everyone believed as they do, when a little history shows that trying to get everyone to believe the same thing is a recipe for unending conflict. We'd all be better off if we stopped believing in belief. Not everyone needs a religion. But if you do, you shouldn't be bothered about finding arguments for joining or practising one. Just go into the church, synagogue, mosque or temple and take it from there. What we believe doesn't in the end matter very much. What matters is how we live.
Rational argument did not lead Graham Greene

The Joy of Dullness 1

POSTED BY BOOKRIDE AT 28 JUNE 2011 Of late I have been assembling a collection of dull, curious or odd book covers. I wasn't really getting anywhere until I hit the collection of fellow Anglian dealer Robin Summers , a man with a whim of iron and one of the major contributors to Brian Lake's magisterial Bizarre Books. So here they are, the scholarly ones are actually of some value and one even sold while I was putting this together, so does not appear -- a book on the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure entitled Not Saussure: A Critique of Post-Saussurean Literary Theory. With the paperback selling at 50 the joke became too costly to hold on to. The collection is devoted to dullness mixed with the curious and the odd which includes the oddly dull and the curiously odd. Here goes:

A bundle of laughs. The puff reads ' By contrasting Pound's political values with those of Stein and Zukofsky, this study argues that these three different writers share a complex set of attitudes that are grounded in a collective social fantasy corresponding to the rise of mass consumption and the emergence of corporate social forms.' Some jokers want 100 for this although the committed shopper can find it for 10.

A little light reading.

Part of a small but select number of works on the brassiere. Not dull, but curious (in the old biblio sense.) Good Housekeeping's family doctor has the answers.

Yes but do you have anything on extinct horse furniture in the Brussels area?

Useful book. Useful name.

Anything on consonants in the late Neo-Babylonian era?

I need this one badly. Actually an online search revels no copies so 899?

One man's quest.

Someone had to write it.

Slow down and learn the language.

[More to come!]

Comments:
Anonymous said... Just came across a copy of "Teaching The Persistent Non-Swimmer," impressive not only for the implied dullness of the subject matter, but also because the title is both vague and specific at the same time. Not easy to do.

anon said... Great post. Extant Horse Furniture is not prior interest of mine, but it appeals and with copies starting at 4 on the internet, I'll be buying it. Not interested in any of the other dull rubbish, mind you! Edwin Moore said... Really enjoyed these many thanks. I like the way the designers seem to have joined in the spirit of things - that 'LIMITED" really comes with a dull thud at the end of the Canterbury Meat one! Anonymous said... Gawd! Your latest blog is dull! christian soldier said... wonder if the 'Horse Furniture' book is available in the US... C-CS nyarlathotep said... Was just about to buy the "There Must Be a Reason" title... until I realized it was sheet music! GAH!!! haineux said... My dad had me obtain a copy of ACOUSTIC PROPERTIES OF MUD BOTTOMS. Turns out it's an important reference for SONAR engineering, of course. (Probably there are newer titles used these days, but one loves the prosody.) bookwench said... Some of those look kind of interesting. Understand your tortoise sounds pretty neat, and the treatment of vowels in early neoBabylonian sounds really sort of interesting. GeckoStorm said... I came across a book with the title, "Draw in Your Stool." On further examination, what they meant was, "Pull up a chair." Daen said... "Understand your tortoise" - price, 15p. I'm not sure you can buy anything for 15p these days, let alone a guide to becoming Dr Doolittle. Anonymous said... You can buy your very own copy of the Canterbury book on the NZ-equivalent of eBay: http://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing.aspx?id=394662286 Anonymous said... Actually there are 3 copies for sale right now. Charlie said... Well, there must be a reason that there are no copies of There Must Be A Reason. Major fail! Ben said... Final vowels were pretty important in Neo-Babylonian (and other Semitic languages) because they indicated the case, i.e. nominative, genitive, accusative. By the time they're gone, as with Classical Hebrew, it's sometimes difficult to tell how the different parts of the sentence/clause/phrase should fit together.

Anonymous said... See The Great Ape on Dulness in "The Dunciad". I don't have it nearby to retype. Mark Scroggins said... I have an inscribed copy of the Luke Carson Pound/Stein/Zukofsky book; it's pretty good, but I must admit my own jacketless plain hardcover is more exciting than what the "designer" came up with for the dust jacket. Anonymous said... at the school I work at we ordered a boring text book online and they accidentally sent us "War and Gender", it was shipped from the UK to New Zealand.. they didn't want it shipped back. http://www.warandgender.com/ Tim J said... Are you aware of the Diagram Prize? It's awarded for "the book carrying the oddest title of the year". There were some pretty good titles in last year's shortlist (I haven't seen this year's). I included them in this blog post at the time. (Apologies for linking to my own blog; it's the easiest way to point you to the titles.) Bookride said... Many thanks Tim. I see that the Diagram prize idea was invented during dull moments at the Frankfurt Book Fair. I liked the 2008 winner 'The 20092014 World Outlook for 60 mg Containers of Fromage Frais' by Prof. Philip M Parker. One of the runners up 'Collectible Spoons of the 3rd Reich', by James A Yannes sounds like one of those $800 Amazon books but can actually be bought for $10 Phillip said... Ha - my father worked for the Canterbury Frozen Meat Company Limited! FYI "Limited" is the standard suffix for companies in New Zealand. It's like "Inc" or "LLC" in the USA. R.M.Healey said... Actually, I have it on good authority that the second Christian name of Mrs King, the Compost Woman, was Ursula, but she wisely decided not to include its initial letter on the book cover.

Some of the worlds best ( and most expensive ) printing errors

POSTED BY BOOKRIDE AT 08 AUGUST 2011

Ludicrous Sir Robert Peel and a party of fiends were engaged in shooting peasants at Drayton manor . This shurely cant be a

genuine newspaper report. Bray Colliery Disaster The remains of the late John Payne, collier, were interred yesterday afternoon in the Bray Churchyard, in the presence of a large number of friends and spectators. Hmmm. Must remember to visit this colliery near Maidenhead. The provincial reporter, who had taken this report from a national newspaper, had evidently never heard of Mr Collier, the notorious Shakespeare forger. In Charlotte Yonges Dynevor Terrace (1857 ) a lady is described as being without stretched arms . On page 389 of the Index to Edmund Blundens, Leigh Hunt (1930 ) Thornton Hunt becomes Thornton Heath. Perhaps the indexer lived in south London. In the error- strewn Early Victorian Illustrated Books (2005) by John Buchanan-Brown, Puss in Boots, becomes Puss in Books, which could be a good name for a bookshop. Incidentally, this book was published by the British Library ! Presumptuous In William Derhams, Life of Ray ( 1760 ) a list of books read by the botanist in 1667 is printed from a letter to a certain Dr Lister. One of the books was about great Rakes which was interpreted by Derhams editor, George Scott, as having something to do with agricultural implements. Scott then extrapolated that these were now come into general use among farmers and are called drag rakes . In reality the work referred to by Ray was concerned with the exploits of Mr Valentine Greatrakes, the infamous quack doctor. Astonishingly, this blunder remained uncorrected in Lankesters Memorials of John Ray (1846) and was only noticed by Rev Rich Hooper in N & Q seventh ser. iv 225. Id like to do a whole blog on literary show-offs (often third-rate academics) who GET IT ALL WRONG. But on second thoughts, it would take a whole book Illogical book titles Old Lights for New Chancels ( from By the same author note in 2nd edition of Betjemans New Bats in Old Belfries (1945 ). It was the other way around, of course. The error was corrected later. Dangerous and expensive The French lawyer and brilliant amateur mathematician Franciscus Vieta was wealthy enough to finance the publication of his own pioneering treatises, but so meticulous was he that, being discontented with the misprints that had escaped his notice in his Canon Mathematicus (1579) he purchased all the copies he could meet with. Today, the book, like all his other works, has become extremely rare and sought after by modern mathematicians. Pope Sixtus the Fifths Vulgate Bible of 1590 so swarmed with errors that paper had to be pasted over some of the erroneous passages, and no-one took seriously the bull prefixed to the first volume which excommunicated any printer who altered the text. A few months later, the Pope died and the College of Cardinals stopped any further sales, and also bought and destroyed as many copies as possible. Back in the mid nineteenth century a copy was sold in France for 1210 Francs. God knows how much one would fetch today. In the Wicked Bible of 1631 Thou shalt not commit adultery is rendered as Thou shall commit adultery. This was thought to be unique, but at least six, and possibly a few more, copies are now thought to have survived. One was bought for 25 in 1855, an imperfect copy was sold to the BM not long afterwards, a third was sold to the Bodleian by a Dr Badinel, a fourth is in the Euing Library, Glasgow, a fifth was discovered by Henry J Atkinson of Gunnersbury in 1883 and a sixth was snaffled up in Ireland in 1884. The Great (Bible) Site boasts of having the only copy for sale in the world at a wicked $89,500. In a Bible of 1634 the first verse of Psalm 14 appears as The fool hath said in his heart there is God . The authorities perhaps did not view this error as particularly dangerous, for there is no evidence that the printer was ever prosecuted. Copies still go for 1,000 or more, however. You would think that the lessons regarding dangerous misprints would have been learnt by 1716, but no. In this year James Blow of Belfast published the first edition of the Bible to appear in Ireland . Unfortunately, in Isaiah Sin no

more appeared as Sin on more. No error was discovered until a number of copies had been issued and bound. The 8,000 or so sheets containing the mistake had to be cancelled and new ones printed. Few copies could have escaped capture, because I cant find a single one for sale online. Perhaps Dr Ian Paisley has a copy. Intentional errors John Field, the famous Puritan printer, is said to have received 1500 from the Independents as a bribe to corrupt a text which might sanction their practise of lay ordination. Thus in Acts vi 3 ye is changed to we in several editions of his Bible. The verse reads: Wherefore, brethren, look ye among the ye seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, whom ye may appoint over this business. It is likely, however, that the great French satirist Rabelais intentionally swapped ame (soul) for asne ( the archaic spelling of donkey). For this he was investigated by the papal police for heresy, and only narrowly escaped conviction and death. He pleaded a printing error and got off. [R. M. Healey] Many thanks Robin. I've been careful to eradicate printer's mishtakes! ((Except 'shurely' and 'mishtake' --witticisms courtesy of Hislop etc.,) Possibly not carefully enough for the Trussophiles who patrol the net looking for missing Oxford commas and split infinitives. We may well have failed and will fail better next time... That misprinted Rabelais sounds like the kind of book that Boris Balkan would have commissioned Dean Corso to hunt down in Prez-Reverte's 'The Club Dumas' (1993) memorably filmed by Polanski as 'The Ninth Gate' with J. Depp. Book scouts don't come any better looking than that...

Across the digital divide.

SEANAN MCGUIRE (
SEANAN_MCGUIRE) @

2011-09-16 20:44:00

Let's talk about poverty. I'll start with the clinical: according to the dictionary (and Wikipedia), poverty is "the state of one who lacks a usual or socially acceptable amount of money or material possessions." So if you don't have as much as everyone around you, you're poor. I'll move on to the personal. Poverty is the state of waking up freezing in the middle of the night because it's a waste of money to run the heat when everyone is sleeping anyway, and you need that money to buy lunch meat from the "eat it tomorrow or it will kill you" clearance bin. Poverty is the state of making that lunch meat last a week and a half, even after the edges have started turning green. Poverty is sending your little sisters to beg staples off the people in the crap-ass apartments surrounding yours, because everyone is poor, and everyone is hungry, and cute little girls stand a better chance of success than anybody else. That's poverty. The U.S. Census Bureau said that 43.6 million (14.3%) Americans were living in absolute poverty in 2009. According to the report they released this past Tuesday, the national poverty rate rose to 15.1% in 2010...and we still don't know what 2011 is going to look like. This is the "official" poverty level, by the way; there are a lot of sociologists who think that the actual poverty level is much higher, since we calculate using a "socially acceptable minimum standard of living" that was last updated in 1955. To quote Wikipedia again: "The current poverty line only takes goods into account that were common more than 50 years ago, updating their cost using the Consumer Price Index. Mollie Orshansky, who devised the original goods basket and methodology to measure poverty, used by the U.S. government, in 1963-65, updated the goods basket in 2000, finding that the actual poverty threshold, i.e. the point where a person is excluded from the nation's prevailing consumption patterns, is at roughly 170% of the official poverty threshold." Things that did not exist in 1955: home computers. The internet. EBook readers. It is sometimes difficult for me to truly articulate my reaction to people saying that print is dead. I don't want to be labelled a luddite, or anti-eBook; I love my computer, I love my Smartphone, and I love the fact that I have the internet in my pocket. The existence of eBooks means that people who can't store physical books can have more to read. It means that hard-to-find and out of print material is becoming accessible again. I means that people who have arthritis, or weak wrists, or other physical disabilities that make reading physical books difficult, can read again, without worrying about physical pain. I love that eBooks exist. This doesn't change the part where, every time a discussion of eBooks turns, seemingly inevitably, to "Print is dead, traditional publishing is dead, all smart authors should be bailing to the brave new electronic frontier," what I hear, however unintentionally, is "Poor people don't deserve to read."

I don't think this is malicious, and I don't think it's something we're doing on purpose. I just think it's difficult for us, on this side of the digital divide, to remember that there are people standing on the other side of what can seem like an impassable gorge, wondering if they're going to be left behind. Right now, more than 20% of Americans do not have access to the internet. In case that seems like a low number, consider this: That's one person in five. One person in five doesn't have access to the internet. Of those who do have access, many have it via shared computers, or via public places like libraries, which allow public use of their machines. Not all of these people are living below the poverty line; some have voluntarily simplified their lives, and don't see the need to add internet into the mix. But those people are not likely to be the majority. Now. How many of these people do you think have access to an eBook reader? I grew up so far below the poverty line that you couldn't see it from my window, no matter how clear the day was. My bedroom was an ocean of books. Almost all of them were acquired second-hand, through used bookstores, garage sales, flea markets, and library booksales, which I viewed as being just this side of Heaven itself. There are still used book dealers in the Bay Area who remember me patiently paying off a tattered paperback a nickel at a time, because that was what I could afford. If books had required having access to a piece of technologyeven a "cheap" piece of technologyI would never have been able to get them. That up-front cost would have put them out of my reach forever. Some people have proposed a free reader program aimed at low-income families, to try to get the technology out there. Unfortunately, this doesn't account for the secondary costs. Can you guarantee reliable internet? Can you find a way to let people afford what will always be, essentially, brand new books, rather that second- or even third-hand books, reduced in price after being worn to the point of nearly falling apart? And can you find a way to completely destroyI mean, destroythe resale market for those devices? Do I sound pessimistic? That's because I am. When I was a kid with nothing, any nice thing I had the audacity to have would be quickly stolen, either by people just as poor as I was, or by richer kids who wanted me to know that I wasn't allowed to put on airs like that. If my books had been virtual, then those people would have been stealing my entire world. They would have been stealing my exit. And I don't think I would have survived. We need paper books to endure. Every one of us, if we can log onto this site and look at this entry, is a "have" from the perspective of a kid living in an apartment with cockroaches in the walls and junkies in the unit beneath them. A lot of the time, the arguments about the coming eBook revolution forget that the "have nots" also exist, and that we need to take care of them, even if it means we can't force our technological advancement as fast as we might want to. I need to take care of them, because I was a little girl who only grew up to be me through the narrowest of circumstances...and most of those circumstances were words on paper. Libraries are losing funding by the day. Schools are having their budgets slashed. Poor kids are getting poorer, and if we don't make those books available to them now, they won't know to want them tomorrow. We cannot forget the digital divide. And we can'twe just can'tbe so excited over something new and shiny that we walk away and knowingly leave people on the other side. We can't.

The Death and Burial of Frances, Duchess of Suffolk

In 1559, the chronicler Henry Machyn, a merchant and a parish clerk who faithfully recorded details of heraldic funerals, wrote, "The v day (of) Dessember was bered in Westmynster abbay my lade Frances the wyff of Harec duke of Suffolke, with a gret baner of armes and viij banar-rolles, and a hersse and a viij dosen penselles, and a viij dosen skockyons, and ij haroldes of armes, master Garter and master Clarenshux, and mony morners." Frances, Duchess of Suffolk, mother to the late Lady Jane Grey as well as to Katherine and Mary Grey, had been ailing since at least November, when she made her will: In the name of God, Amen. I ladye Fraunces Duches of Suffolke, wife to Adryane Stockes esquyer, considering howe uncerteyn the howre of deathe is, and how certeyne ytt ys that every creature shall dye when ytt shall please God, being sicke in bodie but hole in mynde, thankes be to Almightie God; and considering with my self that the said Adrian Stockes my husbande is indebted to dyvers and sundrye persones in greate somes of money, and also that the chardge of my funeralles, if God call me to his mercye, shalbe greate chardges to hym, mynding he shall have, possesse, and enjoye all goodes,

catalles, as well reall as personall, as all debtes, legacies, and all other thinges whatsoever I may give, dispose, lymytt, or appoynt by my last will and testament for the dischardge of the saide debtes and funeralles, do ordeyne and make this my present last will and testament, and do by the same constitute and make the saide Adryane Stockes my husbande my sole executor to all respectes, ententes, and purposes. In wytnes whereof I have hereunto putt my hande and seale the ix th daye of November, in the furst yere of the reigne of our soveraigne ladye Elizabeth, by the grace of God quene of Englande, Fraunce, and Irelande, defendour of the faythe, &c. Fraunces Suffolke. Sealed and delyvered in the presence of. these under wrytten: Roberte Wyngfelde, Edmund Hall, Frauncis Bacon, and Robert Cholmeley. Proved before the keeper of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, 28th of November, 1559, by the oath of Justinian Kidd, proctor of Adrian Stockes. One of these witnesses is of particular interest: Robert Wingfield. Could this be Robert Wingfield of Brantham, who wrote the Vita Mariae Angliae Reginae, a highly sympathetic account of Mary's recovery of her throne? Wingfield did take pains in his chronicle to note that Frances was "vigorously opposed" to her daughter Jane's match with Guildford Dudley, "but her womanly scruples were of little avail." He also had ties with Lady Jane's famous Photo by lisby1. Used via Creative Commons license. visitor, Roger Ascham, whom he described in the Vita as "my very good friend." A post-mortem inquisition on May 7, 1560, gives the date of Frances's death as November 21, 1559, making her 42 at the time of her decease. (John Strype, however, gives her date of death as November 20.) On December 3, 1559, Elizabeth directed Sir Gilbert Dethicke, Garter King at Arms, and William Harvey, Clarencieux King at Arms, to augment Frances's arms by quartering the royal arms with them. Archibald Barrington reproduced the queen's letter to Garter: Trusty and well-beloved, we greet you well, letting you to understand that for the good zeal and affection which we of long have borne to our dearly-beloved cousin, the Lady Frances, late Duchess of Suffolk, and especially for that she is lineally descended from our grandfather, King Henry VII., as also for other causes and considerations as thereunto moving, in perpetual memory of, thought fit, requisite, and expedient, to grant and give unto her and to her posterity, an augmentation of our arms, to be borne with the difference to the same by us assigned, and the same to bear in the first quarter, and so to be placed with the arms of her ancestorsviz., "our arms within a border, gobony, or and az.," which shall be an apparent declaration of her consanguinity unto us. Whereupon we will and require you to see the same entered into your registers and records, and at this funeral to place the same augmentation with her ancestor's arms, in banners bannerols, lozenges, and escutcheons, and otherwise when it shall be thought meet and convenient. The details of Frances's funeral, which took place two days later, can be found in a manuscript in the College of Arms. John Strype summarized the account as follows: December the 5th, the duchess of Suffolk, Frances, sometime wife of Henry, late duke of Suffolk, was buried in Westminster-abbey. Mr. Jewel (who was afterwards bishop of Sarum) was called to the honourable office to preach at her funerals, being a very great and illustrious princess of the blood; whose father was Brandon, duke of Suffolk, and her mother Mary, sometime wife of the French king, and sister to king Henry VIII. She, the said Frances, departed this life November the 20th, in the second year of the reign of queen Elizabeth; not in the sixth of her reign, as Mr. Camden hath put it; led into that mistake, I suppose, by the date on her monument; which indeed shewed not the year of her death, but of the erection of that monument to her memory, by her last husband Mr. Stokes. She was buried in a chapel on the south side of the choir, where Valens, one of the earls of Pembroke, was buried. The corpse being brought and set under the hearse, and the mourners placed, the chief at the head, and the rest on each side, Clarenceux king of arms with a loud voice said these words; "Laud and praise be given to Almighty God, that it hath pleased him to call out of this transitory life unto his eternal glory the most noble and excellent princess the lady Frances, late duchess of Suffolk, daughter to the right high and mighty prince Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk, and of the most noble and excellent princess Mary, the French queen, daughter to the most illustrious prince king Henry VII." This said, the dean began the service in English for the communion, reciting the ten commandments, and answered by the choir in pricksong. After that and other prayers said, the epistle and gospel was read by the two assistants of the dean. After the gospel, the offering began after this manner: first, the mourners that

were kneeling stood up: then a cushion was laid and a carpet for the chief mourners to kneel on before the altar: then the two assistants came to the hearse, and took the chief mourner, and led her by the arm, her train being borne and assisted by other mourners following. And after the offering finished, Mr. Jewel began his sermon; which was very much commended by them that heard it. After sermon, the dean proceeded to the communion; at which were participant, with the said dean, the lady Catharine and the lady Mary, her daughters, among others. When all was over, they came to the Charter-house [Frances's residence of Sheen] in their chariot. Leanda de Lisle writes that Katherine Grey, Frances's oldest surviving daughter, was her chief mourner, a role Frances herself had played at her own mother's funeral. (A chief mourner had to be the same sex as the deceased, so a spouse could not play the role.) Adrian Stokes erected a fine monument to Frances, which still exists today, in 1563. The Westminster Abbey website identifies it as possibly being by Cornelius Cure. It contains inscriptions in English and Latin, the first of which reads: "Here lieth the ladie Francis, Duches of Southfolke, daughter to Charles Brandon, Duke of Southfolke, and Marie the Frenche Quene: first wife to Henrie Duke of Southfolke and after to Adrian Stock Esquier." The Westminster Abbey website translates the Latin inscription as follows: Dirge for the most noble Lady Frances, onetime Duchess of Suffolk: naught avails glory or splendour, naught avail titles of kings; naught profits a magnificent abode, resplendent with wealth. All, all are passed away: the glory of virtue alone remained, impervious to the funeral pyres of Tartarus [part of Hades or the Underworld]. She was married first to the Duke, and after was wife to Mr Stock, Esq. Now, in death, may you fare well, united to God. The fact that the inscription does not mention Frances's daughters has been taken by some of a final proof of the duchess's supposed failings as a mother, but it should be remembered that when Stokes erected this monument, Katherine Grey was a prisoner of the Crown for her presumption in having married Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, without royal permission. Stokes had been one of those questioned about the events leading up to the clandestine marriage. Katherine's place in the royal succession was also a very delicate subject in the 1560s. Thus, assuming that Stokes made a conscious decision not to mention Frances's daughters on her tomb, he was most likely not being disrespectful but prudent. Sources Archibald Barrington, Lectures on Heraldry. Leanda de Lisle, The Sisters Who Would Be Queen John Gough Nichols, The Diary of Henry Machyn. John Gough Nichols, Wills from Doctor's Commons. John Strype, Annals of the Reformation and Establishment of Religion.

Tijuana Bibles
A BIT O'MUSLIN | DELILAH MARVELLE My dearest Readers,

Every month, I delight in the possibility that you might walk away from this blog tickled and astounded by the underbelly of the past. And you had best believe I intend to tickle and astound. Tijuana Bibles. Have you heard of them? If you have, YOU are one bad ass underbelly historian and I'd like to shake your dirty little hand because this is one history that is as muddled and fascinating as it gets. I was fortunate enough to get an up close look at these suckers at none other than the Museum of Sex itself. I've heard of them prior to visiting the museum, but never actually got to see them in person, so it really was a treat and one I'm sharing with you. So...Tijuana Bibles. They weren't REALLY bibles. As you might have guessed given that it is getting its own post on my blog. The origin of the name itself is actually unknown. Some say it was a jab on the vices of Border Mexican towns and others say it was used merely to throw off the authorities. Either way, these Tijuana Bibles have quite the naughty history. Tijuana bibles were also called jo-jo books, fuck books (which best describes them), blusies, gray-backs, and eight pagers, to name a few. I should probably note that these were American in origin. So what were they? It was a creative form of incredibly artistic pornography. They were explicit, hand drawn CARTOON booklets stapled together in a convenient "pocket" size. They made their debut in the 1920's but really exploded in the Depression Era of the 1930's when cartoonists were looking to make a living just like everyone else. Though they altogether petered off in popularity by the 50's, these dirty little booklets consisted of cartoons that created "a story" involving sex. They were sold in school yards (they are cartoons, after all!!), tobacco shops (under the counter), back alleys (with the booze) and out of the trunks of cars (with the booze). They were collected like baseball cards and traded and shared (and shared and shared). What made these popular? They were without any doubt funny as freakin hell (humour during the depression went a looooong way) and more importantly, featured popular comic strip cartoons, celebrities of the era, and politicians in every dang sexual position known to man and woman (and animal). You get to page through Minnie and Mickey Mouse's adventures of having rowdy rodent sex. Or Clark Gable using his ears to make a woman scream. Or my favourite (below), Donald Duck in all his cocky glory. Puts his character in a whole new light, doesn't it? I bet you always dreamed about seeing Popeye....well...pop an eye. And believe me, he does. Right along with us!

Ever wonder where Dick Tracy got his name? Oh, yeah, he EARNS his name in these suckers. As for good old Dagwood? Well...he's just got wood. And Snow White? She DOES all seven dwarfs in style. Setting aside the dirty details, the drawings in and of themselves were actually done with a quality that made these even more popular.

Now despite its popularity, all of the booklets themselves were drawn and printed anonymously due to all the indecency laws in the united states (which weren't lifted until the 1960's). Shipments were occasionally seized by authorities but with no source and no names, it was very difficult for them to press charges against anyone. Fascinatingly enough, the cartoonists behind the Tijuana Bibles have never stepped forth with their names, even long after bans were lifted and to this day, identification of the creators are done based off of the styling of the cartoon itself. Wesley Morse, the creator of Bazooka Joe (yes, the bubble gum cartoons!), was believed to have been one of many cartoonists who drew anonymously during a time when there was no work. Not much more is known. In the end, what is utterly fascinating about the depression era itself was the people's desperate need for escapism given the hardships. That need is what created the booming film industry. And that need is what created this titillating form of pornography that took tongue and cheek to a whole new level known as Tijuana Bibles. So now that you know all about Tijuana Bibles, I suggest you keep your eyes open. Because who knows? Maybe your grandma or your grandpa have some of these puppies stashed up in the attic somewhere. Or better yet, maybe your grandma and your grandpa are STILL paging through these suckers, chuckling and tickling each other under the covers as they make use of it. All I do know is that the good old days were exactly that...good. Gotta love history. Until next time, Much love to you,

Delilah Marvelle

Seminar XCV: control of assembly spaces in Anglo-Saxon England

A CORNER OF TENTH-CENTURY EUROPE | JONATHAN JARRETT Because Easter was so late this year, everyones term more or less started at the same time with a crunch, school and all the universities together. This also meant that I had only a fortnight of university term before being able, just about, to light out for Kalamazoo, and in that fortnight both the Oxford Medieval Seminar and the Earlier Middle Ages seminar at the Institute of Historical Research had a skip week for various reasons. Two days before I flew the Atlantic, however, Andrew Reynolds of UCLs Institute of Archaeology came to address the Oxford one on the subject of Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Anglo-Saxon Assembly Sites, which was coming out of the big Landscapes of Governance project he and various others are currently engaged in.

On this occasion, the subject was mainly hundreds. For those not deeply embedded in English history, the hundred was until the nineteenth century or so a subdivision of the county or shire into which England is apportioned. It used to have a court and so on and various civic responsibilities devolved to it until quite late, which means that we have decent maps of where the final ones were and so on. There are two things generally accepted about hundreds: the first is that the laws of the English kings dont really start to talk about them until the early- to mid-tenth century, which fits well into a narrative we have about the increasing organisation of government by the kings in that period leading to James Campbells maximum state and so on, and the second is that the sites on which these hundreds are centred often appear to be very old, in terms of their names, position on boundaries and very occasionally their archaeology (though that last is known mainly where the sites are at older burial mounds).1 The hundred meeting sites are mainly in the countryside, not in towns, and those that are urban may well predate the towns in question, which they generally stand outside anyway. So, it will not take a genius brain to spot that these two things conflict: are hundreds ancient and popular or are they late and organised by the state? This was roughly what Andrews team, using archaeology, place-names, mapping, topography, local history and really anything they can get up to and including sonography, had been working towards here, looking at both the sites and their districts and trying to get everything in play at once.2

Burial grounds of the Bronze Age to Anglo-Saxon periods at Saltwood, Kent

Now, of course when you map lots of different things together you get correlations, whether you like them or not, and the problem is knowing whats real and whats just coincidence.3 Sometimes the associations are really dense and probably genuine: the classic case that Andrew gave, and which Ive seen him use before, is a place called Saltwood which was in the way of the recently-built Channel Tunnel Rail Link and about which we therefore have some idea. Here, there were four early cemeteries, of which three were centred on mounds, and each of which spanned a full social range in terms of gender and wealth, suggesting that they served distinct communities. The wood between them all however became the centre of a hundred here, and between the cemetery evidence and the governance evidence we can show, from cooking pits dug into the cemetery areas, that people were meeting here occasionally throughout the period of the seventh to the twelfth centuries, that is, from shortly after the cemeteries cease in use till well out of the Anglo-Saxon period. Its difficult to avoid the idea that a hundred coalesced here around an ancient assembly site that arose at a point of confluence between four neighbouring communities.

The Elloe Stone, supposed an ancient marker of a hundred meeting site Copyright Richard Croft and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

It would be nice if this could be generalised out from, but predictably there is huge variation. Patterns do emerge but they are of low-end significance and there is obviously no one-site-fits-all solution. About 10% of hundred sites (which had never before been mapped for all England! but were here being counted from four target territories only) are at mounds, but very few of these mounds appear to have been ancient burial sites11 of the 12 dug as of 1986 were been empty. 9% seem to have been at famously ancient trees, 75% at river crossings, but its not much. Andrew noted that very few of their place-names speak of kings or reeves or courts but many speak of the people, of ceorls or folc.

Troston Mount, near Honington, Suffolk, which is supposed to be a Bronze Age burial mound and came to be the meeting site for Bradmere hundred, or so says Megalithic.co.uk whence I borrowed the image

In discussion the questions that came up trying to refine this were, well, mine were about burial, which as you know I keep seeing associated with power in my area, and there there is a correlation of sorts, though again far from universal. Chris Wickham and Mark Whittow both also asked questions about durability, and whether any of these

sites might be only attempts or short-lived, to which Andrew wisely observed that we cant tell in most cases, but it seems to me that the ones we can find, we can find because they existed long enough (as something) to become well-known. I also thought that the way the two historiographies can be reconciled is to see the kings trying to take over control of and impose new rles on an older system of gathering and local arbitration or celebration, but that doesnt explain where the sites and the practices came from in the first place. Avoiding Volk aus der Maschine answers like Germanic tradition, we still have a picture of non-urban social complexity, of chieftains versus states, and of what Andrew called dispersed complexity here, and although its very far from uniform as I say, it does seem to me as if top-down system creation might explain nearly as much as spontaneous coagulation in some of these cases.

1. I believe it to be be true that the first datable mention of hundreds in an Anglo-Saxon law-code is in whats cited as III Edmund, of 939, but theres an undated thing called the Hundred Ordinance which appears to share text with that law, though which way round the borrowing was is another question. Both are translated in Agnes Jane Robertson (trans.), The Laws of the Kings of England from Edmund to Henry I (Cambridge 1925; repr. 2009). For the `maximum state argument see James Campbell, The Late Anglo-Saxon State: a maximum view in Proceedings of the British Academy Vol. 87 (London 1994), pp. 39-65, repr. in his The Anglo-Saxon State (London 2000), pp. 1-30. Literature actually on the hundred system is harder to find, largely because talking about means coping with an incredible amount of local history publication in out-of-the-way places; I still find Helen Cam, Manerium cum Hundredo: the hundred and the hundred manor in English Historical Review Vol. 47 (London 1932), pp. 35376, repr. in eadem, Liberties & Communities in Medieval England (Cambridge 1944; repr. London 1963), pp. 64-90, a good thing to start with but there must, surely, be something newer, and in an ideal world itd be by Chris Lewis. Regesta Imperii shows nothing obviously synthetic, however, though I note with pleasure that the article on Hundreds in Michael Lapidge, John Blair, Simon Keynes and David Scragg (edd.), The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford 1999), pp. 243244, is by Sean Miller. 2. And by sonography we mean, basically, one of the team standing on the relevant sites and shouting to see how well he could be heard, something for which Andrew told us this person had nearly been arrested several times by now. 3. My cite of reference for this is, as ever, Mary Chester-Kadwell, Early Anglo-Saxon Communities in the Landscape of Norfolk: Cemeteries and Metal-Detector Finds in Context, British Archaeological Reports (British Series) 481 (Oxford 2009).

Responses:
highlyeccentric Says:

*frowns* huh
Interesting. Vewwy interesting. Levi Says: Thanks for the most interesting post that sounds similar to a (very good) paper I heard from Andrew recently. Just a couple of quick points to add. The standard starting point on hundreds is now H. R. Loyn, The Hundred in England in the Tenth and Early Eleventh Centuries, in his Society and Peoples: Studies in the History of England and Wales, c. 6001200 (London, 1992), pp. 11134 [first published 1974]. Some very interesting ideas are also floated in George Molyneauxs DPhil dissertation, which I gather he is revising for publication. Jonathan Jarrett Says:

Ive recently been picking up references to that Loyn article, which I had somehow missed, and must follow it up. I guess I probably thought he covered the ground in Governance but I dont seem to have soaked it up if so! Georges book is his current project so I hope we wont have to wait too long.
Carl Edlund Anderson Says: I am typically immediately trying to think of comparative things with assembly sites, central places, and all that jazz in Scandinavia. I could swear I saw an article title or two zoom past me recently. Maybe in that ASSAH 10 issue? Oh well! Jonathan Jarrett Says: This kind of thing in Sweden is kind of Alex Sanmarks project, so if you saw anything on this it would very likely have her name on it. Her RI-Opac entry has some possibilities in it Carl Edlund Anderson Says: Ah, yes, and I follow her in Academia.edu, so that probably _is_ where I might have seen something recently. I have a feeling Ive seen something on the Danish side (not that the last couple of decades have seen a shortage of Danish central place articles) recently too.

Jonathan Jarrett Says: We got a few references from JPG in comments to this post about Jelling not so long ago, but otherwise I have little to add there Im afraid! Theres various bits by Klaus Randsborg seu alii on Gudme? Carl Edlund Anderson Says: Yes, lots of central place stuff on Gudme. Also not Danish, but Scandinavian in any case I just ran across this: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00293652.2011.572685 Its available through Academia.edu as well. Kath Says: Did Andrew happen to mention any likelihood of extending such landscape projects to high medieval governance?! Now thats a project from which I really want to see the results Not that this one isnt also fascinating! Jonathan Jarrett Says: Not that I know of, Im afraid, though presumably if any of these sites are surveyed or dug the high medieval evidence, if any, will come up first! Nice Work if you can get it Says:

It would be good to know quite how large a grant is supporting this hunt for holes made by tent pegs. The idea that this project is remotely fascinating reveals a vivid imagination. But if non-urban social complexity is what turns you on (nostalgia for Glastonbury??) that is clearly where grant money now lies. Jonathan Jarrett Says:

I cant help you with the sarcasm, although Id appreciate it if, as long as you want to comment here, you refrained from insulting other commentators. If you dont, I shall reluctantly block you from doing so. As to the funding, though, the page that the project masthead links through shows the Leverhulme Trust banner there, and a Google search of their site targeted on the project name finds this document, in which the amount is specified as 280,674. Does that inform you? Nice Work if you can get it Says:

Thank you for the answer. Im very sorry if your commentators are so thin-skinned that they take my envy of their imagination as insulting. But I am afraid that for you and they to rave about this, without supplying any valid reason why archaeological surveys of supposed assembly sites should be at the top of research funding, confirms my view that the current Anglo-Saxonist establishment should not be mentioned alongside James Campbell (a scholar devoid of pride, and aware of European history) Jonathan Jarrett Says:

Well, as that same link makes clear that grant was only one of the large number that the Leverhulme Trust make each year; also, it was two years ago and the Leverhulme Trust are far from being the only source of funding even in the humanities (and this is a tiny tiny grant compared to the sciences anyway, of course). Doing the maths, it would seem to me to pay for one principal investigator and a research assistant for three years, and less if one wants to do any serious digging. Of course Id be quite chuffed to have won it myself, but its hardly the top of research funding; there is vastly more, some perhaps on subjects that you feel are more important. As for justifications, obviously I cant speak for Professor Reynolds (though an extensive summary of the project is here that would seem to supply several `valid reasons for doing it), but my interest in this project comes from a long (long) concern with the sub-units of government: recent work like Stuart Brookes current project on Kent and, I suppose, older stuff (including European comparative studies like the 47th Sachsensymposium) seem to be increasingly deciding that this sort of level is the most productive when talking about the building blocks of kingdoms. Southern Britains alleged near-total breakdown of political organisation in the fifth century (discussed in this previous post which also links to Professor Brookes work) makes it an unusually good laboratory for this kind of low-level study of, as a much older book put it, how chiefs come to power. Since the literature on these units is, as Levi has kindly confirmed, ageing now and rather disparate, examining them to see what the relation of their foci to their territories and whether any of the older assumptions about their nature and origins can be justified seems like an important part of discovering what power coagulated around in this zone, an enquiry that might help answer a much wider set of questions. If that doesnt satisfy you, well, you may be in the wrong place to start with since my interests are in local power, but otherwise, where would you rather see this money directed and how would you justify that?

From the sources VII: to demilitarise and populate

A CORNER OF TENTH-CENTURY EUROPE | JONATHAN JARRETT I cant quite believe I havent yet posted this charter, as its important for a whole bunch of things, but as I noticed a few posts ago I havent, so here it is. This is a document from 973 that is unusually informative about the processes of settling a frontier, defending a frontier principality, about the rle of the Church and counts in those things, and it also joins up with a couple of previous posts because as well as the inevitable Borrell II, it also features his mysterious kinsman Guifr whom Ive mentioned here before and additionally a person who may or may not have been selfidentifying as a Goth, in the late tenth century, which has also been a recent discussion here. So, here it is in translation; Ill stick the Latin in first footnote again.1 Its long, but its so full of stuff that its worthwhile, honest. In the name of God. I Borrell, Count and Marquis and also Guifr, my kinsman, we together as one, under an inviolable faith in God and his sacred confidence, have chosen to make this donation to the Lord God and his holy martyr Saturninus, whose house is sited in the county of Urgell, not far distant from its selfsame see of Holy Mary next to the river, and so we do. For we give, willing of heart, to the aforementioned monastery, and to Abbot Ameli and the brothers dwelling with you or those who shall be hereafter, churches that were founded in ancient time and endowed with holy altars in the furthest outermost limits of the marches, in the place called Castell de Llord or in the city of Isona, which was destroyed by the Saracens, and the churches which were built in their confines or which shall have had to be built in the future. Of which, the first church is called Sant Sadurn, in its castle of Llord. Another is called Santa Maria in the selfsame city of Isona, which was destroyed. Another Sant Vicen which was a monastery in the centre of the already-said town, next to the spring which they call Clar. These aforesaid churches we do concede and give to the aforementioned monastery with their praises and possessions and the sum of their acquisitions with their tithes and first-fruits or offerings of the faithful living and dead in integrity; and we do concede the tithes of our dominical workings, present and future, to Holy Mary in whole. We have arranged similarly for the plots of the selfsame scouts and guards who have guarded the selfsame castle, and we bestow upon the selfsame already-said churches that which we have [the bounds follow]. Whatever these same bounds include, thus we do concede to the monastery of Sant Sadurn aforementioned or to the abbots, to the monks present and future, so that they may make perprisiones wheresoever they may wish or may be able to far and wide through all places, build churches in the waste solitudes, make endowments in all the places; and let them spread labourers everywhere who shall reduce the selfsame wastes to cultivation and let them live in the selfsame endowments and there let them acquire and let them buy from the selfsame possessors whatever God shall have given to those people and shall have been possible for them. And the selfsame tithes which shall go forth from those selfsame perprisiones which they may have made there or will make in future, or from their acquisitions, we do concede Sant Sadurn del Castell de Llord seems to have been a fairly and give all of them to the precious martyr accomplished building, though as you can tell by the sunlight around the Saturninus and from our right into his we do edges of this Viquipdia view of the doorway between the belltower and the nave, not so much of the latter now stands hand over possession, with the entrances and exits of the properties too. Again, we accord to the already-said monks that they may make aprisiones on the selfsame riverbank of the Noguera, in the place which they call Calzina, in the selfsame plain before the rock of Pugentoso, in the place which they call Calzina and before the rock of Petra and the selfsame water which descends from the selfsame mountains, ten plots in one year and ten in the next; and let them build a church in honour of Holy Mary and let the selfsame church have the tithes and first-fruits and offerings of Perafita itself and as far as the river Noguera and as far as the river Covet and over the selfsame mountains of Calzina. Let this however be under our hand and fidelity and those

of our sons and let the assembled things which pertain or ought to pertain to the monastery serve under our defence and governance for all time. The charter of this donation made in the city of Barcelona on the 3rd Kalends of August, in the 19th year of the rule of King Lothar. If anyone against this donation should have wished to disrupt it, let him not avail in so doing but let him compound twofold and accept a portion with Datan and Abiron. Signed Borrell, Count [and] Marquis. Guisad, Bishop, subscribed. Guifr subscribed. Frui, chief-priest, subscribed. Sig+ned Marcoald. Sig+ned Guadall, chief of the Goths. Sig+ned Arnau. Sig+ned Senter.
The monks may or not have put in a church of Holy Mary as requested; either way, there's a twelfth-century one there now... (Image from Wikimedia Commons))

Bonfill, priest, who wrote this as requested. So, OK, my temporary pupils, some talking points here:

1. This area had obviously been in the warsone wonders how long ago Isona (the old Iberian city of so) had been destroyed by the Saracensbut equally there were people out there, which we can tell not just because there was no problem at all giving the boundaries, even if, unusually, they name no other landholders at all. That would probably be because Borrell actually claimed to own all the land in the area and the people there are his direct subject peasants, which is something that we very rarely actually see but which, some would argue, and by some I mean Gaspar Feliu, we should be expecting much more widely.2 Here, at least, the count helpfully informs us that he has dominicaturas, presumably demesne farms, out in this extremis ultimas finium marchas. So, had he moved the farmers all in as some would believe, or were they there already?3 Whatever their situation wasand remained, since the count only conceded the tithe off those dominicaturas, which you might think he hardly had a right to anywayhe was also getting shot of a castle and the scouts and guards who guarded it, who seem to have been supporting themselves by agriculture, but it looks as if Borrell provided the starting capital and as if they may not yet have been paying their way, an expenditure that was now passed onto the monastery. 2. The monastery also got a to-do list a mile long: take in land and clear it, put churches on it, establish estates and find labourers for them, set up markets where those labourers can get their wherewithal (because not many merchants were likely to be coming this way, I supposeon the other hand it may have been because of the obvious advantages to the monks of running the Company Store) in exchange for produce. 3. For this the monastery got the workers tithes, and presumably whatever profit they made from the markets, but its not clear that they were the landlords, at least not to me. If not, the monastery was basically acting as a contracted developer here, which was presumably The current state of the Castell de Llord (much later as it something they thought would be worthwhile somehow. stands; image from Viquipdia) 4. The monks did get to make their own clearances too, in fact they were required to, putting at least ten fields into cultivation each year for the next two years (if Ive properly understood that), and also to put a church up for them, which the count remained the landlord for, because as this document makes implicitly evident and others of his state, he claimed fiscal rights over all wasteland and despite the population that seems to have been in this area, this area is being counted as waste for these `accounting purposes.4 So theres that, and this is all very informative about exactly how the whole process of rolling out organised settlement might work, but theres also some points that arent about process and play more to my particular and peculiar interests. You may by now know the word aprisio, which is used here to describe the clearances the monks may make in their own right, but note that it contrasts with the word Borrell or his scribe used for the ones the monks might make in order to settle labourers, perprisio. This appears to be an actual Latin recognition of the difference that Gaspar Feliu (again) has seen between private and lordly clearance; the monastery will be clearing for others, as agent, and that means they dont get the full alodial rights that supposedly accrued to those who cleared land unless other arrangements were made. As keen readers of my stuff will know, I think that these rules were essentially only being finalised at this late stage, in other words that Borrell was here floating new terms that his fathers generation would not have understood, but this is where he was doing it, in the palace at Barcelona with two bishops who also owned

frontier properties and his mysterious kinsman, whose concern with frontier matters seems to have meant that he must be involved.5 There's only a certain amount of land use going on here even now But lastly, what about the other notable witness, Guallus princeps cotorum, here rendered as `Chief of the Goths? Well, if Jesus Lalinde had been right about `Goth by now essentially meaning someone living on land that made them liable to military service in the city garrison of Barcelona, this would fit pretty nicely wouldnt it?6 Guallus would be the head of the garrison. Unfortunately, this charter is only a copy, not an original. The original, if thats what it is, comes as youd expect from Sant Sadurn de Tavrnoles, who were getting all this stuff to make and do.7 And that version refers to Guallus not as princeps cotorum, which our editor here, Federico Udina i Martorell, ever the neo-Gothicist, read as a variant spelling of gotorum, but princeps coquorum, `Prince of the Cooks.8 Udinas text, indeed, has also been read as `princeps cocorum, a variant spelling of the same thing. `C and `t look a lot alike in this script, and Udinas modification wasnt stupid, but all the same, if its wrong, that might give Guallus rather a different place in the palace hierarchy, though apparently still one grand enough to flaunt in a charter signature. He doesnt turn up again, so theres no way to be sure.9 Obviously the original would be nice to have just to settle this, but Id also love to know whether he could write. And also, how he cooked, of course

1. Barcelona, Arxiu de la Corona dArag, Cancilleria, Borrell II, no. 7, ed. Federico Udina i Martorell in his El Archivo Condal de Barcelona en los siglos IX-X: estudio crtico de sus fondos, Textos 18 (Madrid 1951), no. 174*: In nomine Domini. Ego Borrellus, comes et marchio seu Guifredus, consanguineus meus, nos simul in unum, sub inviolabile Dei fide eiusque sacra confidencia, hanc donacionem Domino Deo eligimus facere santoque suo martiri Saturnino, qui est situs in comitatu Orgellitense, non longe distante ab eiusdem sedem Sancte Marie iusta amne, sicuti et facimus. Donamus namque, pronto animo, ad coenobium prelibata et ad Amelio abbate et fratribus tibi comorantibus vel qui post ea futuri erant ecclesias, qui ab antico tempore erant fundatas et sacris altaribus titulatis in extremis ultimas finium marchas in locum vocitato caustrum Lordano vel in civitate Isauna, que est destructa a sarracenis et ecclesias que ibi sunt, scilicet, in castro Lordano vel in civitate iamdicta quam in earum confinia vel in eorum omnia pertinencia qui infra sunt constructas vel ad future erant construendas. Quarum prima in eius castro Lordano sancti Saturnini est nuncupata Ecclesia. Alia sancte Marie est nuncupata in ipsa civitate de Isona, que est destructa. Alia sancti Vincencii qui fuit Monasterium in caput iamdicte ville, iustam fontem que dicunt Clara. His prefatas ecclesias concedimus et donamus ad prelibatum cenobium cum eorum laudibus et possessionibus ac universis adquisicionibus cum illorum decimis et primiciis seu oblaciones fidelium vivorum et defunctorum ab integre; et de nostras dominicas laboraciones presentes et futuras ipsas decimas concedimus ad ipsam ecclesiam sancte Marie integriter. Similiter facimus et de laboraciones de ipsos spiculatores ac custos qui custodiunt ipsum castrum ponimus ad ipsas ecclesias iamdictas que incoamus a parte orientis in sumitate de ipsa rocha que vocant Dronb et sic vadit per sumitatem de ipsa serra usque in collo de Tolo et sic descendit per istam aquam qui discurrit ante Tolo et pervadit usque in Procerafita et ascendit per ipsum rivum de Abilio usque in collum de Abilia et usque in collum de Spina. Quantum iste affinitates includunt, sic concedimus ad monasterium sancti Saturnini prelibato vel ad abbates, ad monachos presentes et futuri, ut faciant per presiones ubicumque voluerint nec potuerint longe lateque per universorum loca, hermis solitudinis edificent ecclesias, faciant munificenciis in congruis locis et obducant laboratores qui ipsas heremitates reducant ad culturam et in ipsis munificenciis habitent et adquirant ibi et emant de ipsis possessoribus quantum illis Deus dederit et possibile eis fuerit. Et de ipsis per prisionibus qui tam ibidem factas habent vel future facture sunt, seu de acquisicionibus eorum ipsas decimas que inde exierint, concedimus et donamus ea omnia ad preciosum martirem Saturninum et de nostro iure in eius contrahimus possessionem, simul cum exiis et regresiis eorum. Iterum damus monachi iamdicti ut faciant aprisiones ad ipsam ripam de Noguera, in locum que vocant Calzina, in ipso plano ante podium de Pugentoso, in locum que vocant Calzina et ante podium de Petra et ipsam aquam qui descendit de ipsis montibus decem pariatas ad uno anno in decem ad alio et construant ecclesiam in honore sante Marie et ipsam ecclesia abeat decimas et primicias et oblaciones de ipsa Perafita et usque ad flumen Nogaria et usque in flumine Gaveto et super ipsos montes de Calcina. Hoc tamen sit sub manu et fidelitate nostra filiorumque nostrorum et cuncta que ad Monasterium pertinent vel pertinere debent sub defensione et gubernacione nostra servetur per cuncta tempora. Facta huius [carta] donacionis in Barchinona civitate die iii. kalendas augusti, anno xviiii. regnante Leutario rege. Si quis contra hanc karta donacionis voluerit disrumpere non hoc valeat facere sed componant in duplo et cum Data et Abiron porcionem accipiat. Signum Borrellus, comes marchio. Wisadus, episcopus, SS. Wifredus, SS. Frugifer, presul, SS. Sig+num Marchoaldus. Sig+num Guadallus, princeps cotorum. Sign+num Arnaldus. Sig+num Senterius. Bonifilius, presbiter, qui hoc rogateus scripsit. J. Jarrett, Rulers and Ruled in Frontier Catalonia, 880-1010: pathways of power, Studies in History (London 2010), pp. 117-118 for comital claims to wasteland and pp. 154-155 for direct lordship over peasants; cf. G. Feliu, La pagesia catalana abans de la feudalitzaci in Anuario de Estudios Medievales Vol. 26 (Barcelona 1994), pp. 19-41, repr. in idem, La llarga nit feudal: Mil anys de pugna entre senyors i pagesos (Valncia 2010), pp. 93-110. Jarrett, Rulers and Ruled, pp. 15-17, gives some account of the differing models that have been suggested for frontier settlement; J. Jarrett, Settling the Kings Lands: aprisio in Catalonia in perspective in Early Medieval Europe Vol. 18 (Oxford 2010), pp. 320-342, has some worked-out examples and engages more critically with the historiography on the issue.. 2. A more obvious example of this happening can be found in J. Rius Serra (ed.), Cartulario de Sant Cugat del Valls (Barcelona 1946), II no. 464, which I discussed in an earlier post here. 3. Referring to Feliu, Pagesia, and also his Societat i econmia in Federico Udina i Martorell (ed.), Symposium internacional sobre els orgens de Catalunya (segles VIII-XI) (Barcelona 1991-1992), also published as Memorias de la Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona Vols 23 & 24 (Barcelona 1991 & 1992), I pp. 81-115. On the peculiar rle of Guifr on the frontier, see my earlier post here and references there. One question I havent reopened here is why, if what is happening here is something that was so common in later eras, the

count used a charter of donation rather than an actual contract to do it with. One may argue that those documents have yet to be developed, and that the change is only in the documents, and here I might be more inclined to buy that than I was last time I raised that argument, because firstly this must have been going on in many forms for many centuries, and secondly because such contracts are almost unknown this early; there are pacts of complantation and so on (explained here) but not actual deeds of obligation or whatever. I suspect that in this case at least, the answer is that the count liked the idea of couching this in a way that means the monks would have to pray for him for getting all this work to do. 4. J. Lalinde Abadia, Godos, hispanos y hostolenses en la rbita del rey de los Francos in Udina, Symposium Internacional II, pp. 35-74. Printed in Cebri Baraut (ed.), Diplomatari del monestir de Tavrnoles (segles IX-XIII) in Urgellia: anuari destudis histrics dels antics comtats de Cerdanya, Urgell i Pallars, dAndorra i la Vall dAran Vol. 12 (Montserrat 1995), pp. 7-414, doc. no. 23. The doubt over it being an original isnt serious, but it seems to have been used, along with Manuel Riu i Riu, Diplomatari del monestir de Sant Lloren de Morunys (971-1613) in Urgellia Vol. 4 (1981), pp. 187-259, no. 1, to create at least Baraut, Tavrnoles, doc. no. 21 and Petrus de Marca, Marca Hispanica sive Limes Hispanicus, hoc est geographica & historica descriptio cataloni, ruscinonis, & circumiacentium populorum, ed. . Baluze (Paris 1688; repr. Barcelona 1972 & 1989), ap. CXV, ostensibly a copy of a copy of this document found in Urgell, which might even be the Tavrnoles original but if so got `improved somewhere along the transmission. That forgers have had their hands on it doesnt, however, seem to me to prejudice the original itself. Its also from the Tavrnoles version that I get the form of Gualluss name, since as you can see Udinas text renders him as Guadall. That would be a much more common name, which is partly why I reject it; I want this guy to be odd in as many ways as possible I discussed this in Rulers and Ruled, pp. 158-159, where I pointed out and will do again here, that a princeps coquorum, one Gunzo, is (unambiguously) recorded by the poet Ermold the Black in his praise poem on Emperor Louis the Pious, In honorem Hludowici, ed. Ernst Dmmler in idem (ed.), Poetae latini vi carolini II, Monumenta Germaniae Historica (Poetae) IV, p. 71. I cant show that the two can be connected, but if there was a copy of Dhuodas Manual for William in Barcelona perhaps there was also a copy of In honorem Hludowici somewhere that someone had read and mentioned one day to Guallus

Responses:
highlyeccentric Says: Much as Im sure an Actual Goth would be handy for you, I kind of like the idea of a Prince of Cooks. Especially one held in high enough esteem to sign charters. highlyeccentric Says: *crinkles nose* Although Princeps Coquorum isnt the best title I could think of If I wanted to go around naming a head chef in Latin id call him Dux Coquinarum, I think. highlyeccentric Says: That is, provided cookery makes sense as a plural noun in Latin. Acts of cookery? OH HAI, I ARE PROCRASTINATRIX Jonathan Jarrett Says: But such a Latinate one (LOL) highlyeccentric Says: *misses Latin* I start French class tomorrow though? Actually, ugh, I have three hours of French tomorrow! Jonathan Jarrett Says: Its very difficult to get at the loadings of these words.Princeps is very grand and is what the legislator in the Visigothic Law is called, so the counts get fonder and fonder of that title as the new millennium opens up. On the other hand its not an actual official title and has a faint ring of barbaricum about it leftover from Roman usage. Dux, on the other hand, properly means only warleader (so Gualluss cooks would have had to be quite belligerent) but it had been and in some cases was still in current use for a ruler who stands between a king and counts. The Catalan counts never use it, though others from outside sometimes use it of them in flattery (dux citerioris Hispaniae for example, something of an overstatement of Borrells importance); I have a feeling that it was politically difficult, because of the number of rival counts in the area, and that consequently it would have been avoided. But it also, by this period, bespeaks a hierarchy that princeps escapes, which may make the latter just semantically easier to use. highlyeccentric Says: Dux, on the other hand, properly means only warleader (so Gualluss cooks would have had to be quite belligerent)

 Thus speaks a man who has never worked in food service. Cooks are, by definition, belligerent. Thus my preference for the term Dux, you see. Jonathan Jarrett Says: Oh, I have done my share of waiting, but the idea that you could put one cook in charge of a large group of others and it still work seems unlikely. How many sous-chefs make a regiment? Damn, I totally should have called Guallus `chef. highlyeccentric Says: the idea that you could put one cook in charge of a large group of others and it still work seems unlikely. Fair point. More likely to lead to internal strife than anything else. The sous-chef at the place I used to work at once made *all* of the wait-staff, except me, cry in the space of one evening. It was rather impressive. [c] Says: The established term these days actually appears to be DUX COQUORUM ;-) Jonathan Jarrett Says: Oh Google, what hast thou wrought! highlyeccentric Says: Oh FABULOUS Jonathan Jarrett Says: Only once so highly esteemed, though, thats the weird thing. An actual Goth would be rather hard to fit in just for that reason; if no-one else so identifies, of whom on earth can he be prince? But even if hes a cook, which I just find that much easier to imagine myself, why on earth did they get him to witness? Theres two bishops and a triplet of laymen there, its not as if there werent enough people. So the reason the Goth thing might make sense, if there were one, is that hes actually from the area concerned, and that its not the Barcelona garrison that hes chief of, but the old city of Isona. That would fit with other weird frontier identities we know about and also explain why he disappears, as this document is about that area being normalised. If the manuscripts were more unanimous about the Gothic identity (i. e. said it at all) that is how I think I would have to explain it. Otherwise, Im forced back on `something weird happened that day, which is probably true much more often than we allow but still not the analytically most rigorous answer. highlyeccentric Says: Im forced back on `something weird happened that day, which is probably true much more often than we allow Its a terrible pity thats not more acceptable as an argument [c] Says: Personally, Id prefer a cook over a Goth anytime ;-) But seriously, even if we ignore the original from Sant Sadurn, and even if we accept that in Udinas text the letter in question is t rather than C, we still dont get gotorum, but merely cotorum so it really takes a lot of, shall we say, good will to turn Guallus into a Chief of the Goths Then again, why indeed would anyone call in a cook to co-sign a charter? Hm, perhaps a princeps coquorum wasnt necessarily a cook himself but rather the 10th century equivalent to something like a General Director of the Food and Supplies Department? Jonathan Jarrett Says: I would say, then he should appear more, but actually he would not be the only such official to turn up only once. Borrell also had a custos monetae in Barcelona whom we only know from one hearing, and Borrells son Ramon appears once with a custos comitis and twice with a guy called Queru who one of those times is called procurator. Ramon Borrells documentary footprint is considerably larger than his fathers and thats still all we get, as far as I so far know. So I think we can admit that household officials can witness but that its terribly unusual; this does not, however, settle the question of why it ever happened if it was so unusual. This may be a way into the wider problem of who gets to witness more generally

Oh gawd Ive just come up with next years Leeds paper havent I. <sigh> [c] Says: Er, would that be a sigh of relief (as in Ive finally come up with a topic) or a sigh of exasperation (as in not another thing to add to my workload)? Jonathan Jarrett Says: I was fondly imagining I was done with charter papers at Leeds. At least Im not organising the sessions any more, they cant make me do that this time. Joan Vilaseca Says: There were catalonian princeps (two sons of Wilfred the Hairy, if my memory serves me well). As for the goths i can only repeat that restrictive senses doesnt seems to match the terms usage. Maybe Guadall could be read as princep of cocks? A gaulois one then? :) Joan Vilaseca Says: damm polysemy I mean Gallus gallus of course :) Jonathan Jarrett Says: Oh, very good :-) Jonathan Jarrett Says: Id be interested in those usages; I know that Ramon Borrell used the title occasionally, but I dont know of anything in the actual rulers voice, as opposed to being said of them by others, prior to that. I also dont know of any other uses of the word `Goth in the charters of the tenth century except to refer to the lawcode; do you? I dont think theres any way we can make this man usual Joan Vilaseca Says: Why not? There are a lot of references to Gothia, his marquis, princeps, and even kings in the VIII-X timeframe. I dont know how such a restrictive interpretation (goth=urban militar garrison) could make sense even in an small part of those references. Jonathan Jarrett Says: But these references are almost all, if not actually all, from the Carolingian court! And they are largely references to a geographical area. I have no problem at all with the idea that Gothia remains a current term; that area is still problematic to designate and any name that worked would probably have done. But to say that Gothia still meant something is not to say that there were Goths living in it, and references to Goths the people are by the late tenth century vanishingly rare. I dont think there is any hard evidence after, say, 878, of people in this area identifying themselves as Goths or even being so identified by other people, unless it be this charter. Joan Vilaseca Says: Well, a Gothia without goths is too much for my taste. There is evidence, scanty, yes, but evidence after all : Raimon (Toulouse) , Bernard & Willhem (Auvergne) were princeps gothorum in the IX-Xth century, like Borrelll (Barcelona), and I think there were even more, ie: Guifr-Borrell, Sunifred and Miro appears as princeps at the start of the Xth century. Western Gothia posses difficult questions, yes, but really interesting ones! :) Jonathan Jarrett Says: Borrell, I know about. The only person who calls him princeps gothorum is Richer of Rheims, who also calls him dux citerioris Hispaniae, as I say; these are not titles Borrell ever used. There are four preserved documents that call him princeps, usually princeps marchio, but one of them is a copy of one of the others, only one, where the Law is being referenced, is original, and in none of them isGothia mentioned. Out of 150+ documents I dont find this convincing. Is the evidence for the previous generation any better?

As for a Gothia without Goths, well, obviously it was known for Goths being there once. How long would you say there were Lombards in Lombardy, Bulgars in Bulgaria, Britons in Britain, Romans in Romania ? highlyeccentricSays: *coughs*stillBritonsinBrtain*coughs* Jonathan Jarrett Says: Even the Tory party doesnt use that term for us, though. Its a usage I personally file with St George flags when theres not a sporting even on, or with the elderly ladies in Scotland who tell one theyre descended from Pictish stock and are therefore the aboriginal inhabitants of the British Isles. The current usage of `Briton is as connected to the ancient one as, well, the usages of `druid. Highlyeccentric Says: Even the Tory party doesnt use that term for us, though. I wast talking about you. Last I checked the Welsh are still speaking brythonic, and are in fact, still britons, britons being the pre-Saxon, pre-Norman inhabitants of said island. It was in fact a Welshman who *cointed* the term Briton in the 19th century. Highlyeccentric Says: Wait, no, my bad, a Welshman coined the term Brythonic in the 19th century. The term Briton is far older than that, we all know that. *facepalms* Comes from Latin and Greek, I think, and my point stands, the people to whom it referred are still hangin about in Wales. Jonathan Jarrett Says: Argh, caught in Anglocentricism. You are quite right in fact. But they no longer call themselves that, which still makes it a reasonable example to cite against the place called Gothia must contain Goths argument; they arecymrinotbrythoniaid and the fact that they occupy only a part of Britain (and not the part once inhabited by thePriteni/Cruithni) also presents problems. highlyeccentric Says: Cant reply to thread, cant locate button. Argh, caught in Anglocentricism. You are quite right in fact. *This is my best imitation of a Helen Fulton Disappointed Face* But they no longer call themselves that, which still makes it a reasonable example to cite against the place called Gothia must contain Goths argument; they are cymri not brythoniaid Did they ever call themselves Britons? Its a Greco-Roman descriptor No, wait, I guess the Romano-Britons wouldve used Roman terminology, which then dies out with Latin (when a Welshman writes in Latin today, does he still call himself a Briton? ENQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW). I concede your point about Goths, though, having made my point on behalf of celticists everywhere (this is what comes of living with a celticist!). Jonathan Jarrett Says: Well, some people called themselves Britons, that was my point in introducing the Cruithni, who for those not reading in Gaelic, are the Picts, or at least some of them are, and who do at some point in the period appear to have been known (to the Irish) as `Britons.

Revenge served stone cold? The Santa Maria de Roses inscription

A CORNER OF TENTH-CENTURY EUROPE | JONATHAN JARRETT For a brief flickering moment, back to the research. Trying to make things play with the altar slab from Sant Pere de Casserres and all its names has meant following up a lot of similar lumps of marble (and in one case wood) in the hope that they will tell me more about what people were scribbling on altars where and when. In this, advice from Mark Handley has been invaluable and Id like to thank him for that. An answer of sorts has emerged, and will be in

the p paper some day when, b for the me but eantime one of these exa amples prese ents a probably insoluble query. But e thes days, that just means it presents a blog-post, ri se ight? So here it is. e

The church of Sant Maria de Ciut e ta tadella, previously the abbey church of Santa Maria de Roses (from Rosesp s dia)

There is not so m much left the days of th monaster of Santa Maria de Roses (although Rosespdia the excelle ese he ry M h a, ent com mmunity Wiki from which I borrow the above image demonstrates that the c e church will st hold a con till ncert). It was s prob bably never t that huge, alt though it last a long tim till 1592. We first find it mentioned for sure in 944, when it ted me, d d t was being hande into the m ed middle of a cla anging dispu over the monastery of Sant Pere d Rodes (not Roses).1 ute m f de Roses was allott to Rodes (stay with m but that d ted s me) didnt help much as Rode was itself being claime by Sant m es ed Este de Banyo eve oles. It was a another four years before all the relev e vant counts c could be brou ught to agree ement and Rodes was allow to be ind wed dependent.2 B by 960 S But Santa Maria de Roses wa a monaste in its own right (the 94 d as ery n 44 docu ument calls it a cella) and so it therea d after stayed, Sant Pere de Rodes notw withstanding g. But this isnt yet complicated enough. Its complicated because of where d s d f all th hese places are. Sant Pe de Rodes ere swhich is o of the mo one ost gorg geous ruins in Catalonia was then in the county of Empries ruled y s, by o Count Ga one auzfred along with Rosse (now Roussillon, in modern ell m Fran nce). But San Esteve de Banyoles is in Girona, w nt s which was ruled in 944 by Count-Marquis Sunye of Barcelo er ona, Girona a Osona. By the and B e settlement S Sunyer had re etired to the monastery of Notre o time of the final s Dam de la Gras me sse, far to the north in Ca arcassonne, and his rle had been taken over by the proba n r ably-teenage Borrell II ( ed (natch) and his h brother Mir, tho ough Mir, ev younger, appears to have played no ven d part in this affair and Sunyer, monk or no still appea as one of the ot, ars f nego otiators in the 948 docum ment. So the dispute betw ween the mon nasteries is a also one abou whether th counts of Girona get a ut he depe endent churc deep in G ch Gauzfreds ter rritory or not. Where is Santa Maria de Roses in all this, yo may ask, and you may then under ou y rstand Gau uzfreds conc cern better if you know that Roses is j just along the seae shor from Empries, Gauzf re freds capital, which the c church overlo ooks. This was presum s mably not pro operty that he wanted going to someo e one who the counts next door c om s could boss around.
Map M of the Catal counties c.9 lan 950, by Philip Ju udge and myself, from th book he

All t this makes th thing, which his was recovered from the site in s f 193 and is now in the Muse 37 w eu Nac cional dArt de Catalunya d as prem mises in San Pere nt Galligants in Gir rona, rather hard to e explain.3 The inscription tran nsliterates, ex xpands and tran nslates more or less as follo ows (Latin in the footnote e): The famous Cou e unt Sun nyer, choosin celibacy ng and spurning lif for the d fe love of Christ, tr e rading perishable thing for an gs eter rnal body, fo his or bur ordered the church rial t to b repaired from the be fr foun ndations by his wife and sons. They, d stud diously follow wing the precepts, managed to fulf them, insti fil ituting a Reassem mbled fragments of the dedicato inscription from Santa Maria de Roses s ory suit table worthy man for y the minist of Christ, Argibadus, namely, a p try , priest and pe erfector of these works. B order ther By refore of the spirit of Prince Sunyer, I who am called Ar rgibadus finished this wo 4 ork. Righ so, what? When this w put up, a ht, was apparently th church nee he eded repairs there is no sign that it was monastic or s; w c that it belonged t someone else. These ought all to be good reas to sons to make this an ear early reco from befo e rly ord, ore its a acquisition by Sant Pere d Rodes, an you might think that it naming Cou Sunyer m y de nd t unt makes that a problem. In f fact, how wever, though Sunyer of B h Barcelona se eems to have made the name unpopu e n ular, it had pr reviously bee a common en one among the c counts of Em mpries: Gauzfred had a s short-lived brother of the name, his g e grandfather of the name h o had ruled fifty years i Empries (something t d in this family se eem to have been good a was living for ages, little Sunyer as at side) and supposedly forced Guifr the Hairy into acknowle edging King Odo by putting up rival e episcopal can ndidates with h Odo consent, a his fathe also Suny had wage naval war on al-Andalus and been killed by Be os and er, yer, ed r n ernard of Septimanias son William, wh had by then ceased lis n ho stening to his mother.5 Its a proud lin neage. The only wrinkle is o the o obvious impl lication of the inscription that the relev e vant Sunyer became a m monk, which is not record of any of ded thes Sunyers, o se only the one of Barcelona 6 But if he h been, as he had, Co a. had s ount of Barce elona, why wa he not buried as in his own territo ories, or more relevantly, at la Grasse where he presumably d e e, p died? If yo zoom in on the centre, the monaste site is fla ou n , ery agged, but no Castell d ote d'Empries just down the coast (and e igno the mode marina de ore ern evelopment b between the two) Well, the easiest solution see t ems to be that one of the counts of Empries had a late and o e E d otherwise un nattested conv version, reall doesnt it? Not only is, in my fairly untutored op ly, ? pinion, this s stones script earlier than Sunyer of t Barc celona (comp pare his elde brothers s er stone from 91 which might be neare the mark), but there is the problem of 11, er the i intermittent a intermitte and ently subject monastic ce to explain otherwise and I simply c t ell cannot imagin Gauzfred ne allow wing his principal rival to be buried ov ver-looking h and his city.7 And it is very clear that Gauzfred controlled t him c s d the who site by 976, if not well before, and was claiming to have rep ole g populated it f from scratch after it was desolated by the y paga ans, which is chronologic s cally very unlikely and wh hich this ston more or le proves fa ne ess alse, but whic indicates a ch fair d degree of co ontrol.8 But m might it also in ndicate an al lternative sto that needed to be squ ory uashed? The was after all a ere disp pute over this house that involved all o parties. C s our Could our on known mo ne onastic Sunye actually ha managed to er ave be b buried in his r rivals back y yard, by way of having th last word after being fo he a orced to back down? I ca k ant, quite, cre edit it, bu the sheer petty commitment to sup ut periority it imp plies is quite impressive t imagine e to even if it cant be true. t

1. T That document printed in Ra amon dAbada i de Vinyals (ed.), Catalun Carolngia II: els diplomes carolingis a Catalunya, al nya a Memries de la Secci Hist M a rico-Arqueol gica II & III (B Barcelona 192 26-1952), 2 vo Sant Pere de Rodes I. ols, 2. Ib bid., Sant Pere de Rodes II. 3. I learnt about t this from P. de Palol Salellas, Una lpida medieval de Santa Maria d Rosas in A e a de Analecta Sacr Tarraconen ra nsia Vol. V 19 (Barcelona 1946), pp 273-278, bu in the web-s p. ut searching for this post also came across the more rece Hug Palou i t ent Miquel, El tem M mple de Santa Maria de Ros ses. Noves ap portacions als primers docum ments in Annals de lInstitut dEstudis Empordanesos Vol. 24 (Emp E s pries 1991), pp. 32-53; bot of these inc th clude a facsim and a trans mile scription of the slab, and its the e s la atters image I Ive borrowed here. The latt paper is on ter nline through Revistes dAC R Ccs Obert, he In attempting to find this ere. s

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7.

8.

paper just now, moreover, I also found J.M. Nolla, Roses a lantiguitat tardana. El cementiri de Santa Maria, ibid. Vol. 30 (1997), pp. 107-146, which reveals that here as in so many places there was a late antique burial ground here before there was a church, but I havent yet had time to soak this one up. Palou, Temple de Santa Maria, p. 58, expansions in round brackets, editorial insertions in square ones: CELEB(RI)S COM(ES) SVNIARIVS CELIBE(M) / ELIGENS VITA(M) SP(ER)N[EN]Sq(VE) XP(IST)I P(RO) AMORE CADVCA P(RO)PRIO / MERCATVS E(ST) CO[R]PORE EETERNA NA(M) SVO TV(MVLA)TV IVSSIT RE / PARARI A FVNDAMENTIS ECCL(ESI)A CONIVSq(VE) EI(VS) CV(M) / FILIIS EI(VS) SEqVENTES P(RE)CEPTA STVDIOSE HOC ADIMPLE / RE CVRAVERV(NT) STATVENTES QVE(N)DA(M) P(RO)bV(M) DIGNVMq(VE) XP(IST)I / MINISTRV(M) ARGIBADV(M) VIDELICET SACER(DOS) ET / [OPER]IIS HVIVS P(ER)FECTOR IVSSV IGITVR / SVNIARII PRINCIPIS ALMI QVI VOCOR / HOC OPVS EXPLEVIT ARGIBADVS. The ecclesiastical controversies covered to a good extent in J. Morera Sabater, Un conato de secesin eclesistica en la marca hispnica en el siglo IX in Anales del Instituto de Estudios Gerundenses Vol. 15 (Girona 1962), pp. 293-315 and now J. Jarrett, Archbishop At of Osona: false metropolitans on the Marca Hispanica in Archiv fr Diplomatik Vol. 56 (Mnchen 2010), pp. 1-41 at pp. 9-12; for Sunyer IIs naval career you would probably need to go back to Ramon dAbadal i de Vinyals, Els primers comtes catalans, Biografies Catalanes: srie histrica 1 (Barcelona 1958; 1980). The genealogies of all this lot are more or less sorted out by Martin Aurell, Jalons pour une enqute sur les stratgies matrimoniales des comtes catalans (IXeXIe s.) in Federico Udina i Martorell (ed.), Symposium Internacional sobre els Orgens de Catalunya (segles VIII-XI) (Barcelona 1991-1992), also published as Memorias de le Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona Vols. 23 & 24 (Barcelona 1991 & 1992), I pp. 281-364. In Federico Udina Martorell, El Archivo Condal de Barcelona en los Siglos IX-X: estudio crtico de sus fondos, Textos 18 (Madrid 1951), doc. no. 148, about which you have heard before, as well as in a welter of forged la Grasse documents that are much too tricky to go into here. It should however be noted that it is only those documents which tell us where Sunyer became a monk. Im pleased to see that the same has also apparently occurred to our quasi-resident sage of the databases, Joan Vilaseca, whose Cathalaunia.org page for this inscription tentatively suggests a redating after 913, after Antoni Cobos Fajardo, Joaquim Tremoleda Trilla and Salvador Vega Ferrer, LEpigrafia medieval dels comtats gironins (Girona 2009-2010) (non vidi) who suggest 909; as Joan says, Count Sunyer II was active till at least 913 so this cannot easily be right. In Santiago Sobrequs i Vidal, Sebasti Riera i Viader & Manuel Rovira i Sol (edd.), Catalunya Carolngia V: els comtats de Girona, Besal, Empries i Peralada, ed. Ramon Ordeig i Mata, Memries de la Secci Histrico-Arqueolgica LXI (Barcelona 2003), 2 vols, doc. no. 434, on which see J. Jarrett, Caliph, King or Grandfather: strategies of legitimisation on the Spanish March in the reign of Lothar III in The Mediaeval Journal Vol. 1 (Turnhout: Brepols forthcoming).

Responses:
highlyeccentric Says: *boggles* There really are some fabulous names in this time and place. Jonathan Jarrett Says: I think Galligants is my favourite here, for all the might-be-cognate bells it sounds in my head. Im not actually sure what its etymology is but then to know would almost spoil it. Mark Handley Says: John this is about the fourth time youve teased on the Sant Pere de Casserres graffiti. Youre not playing nice. On your Sunyer inscription I take it that it is thought that the last 2 and half lines were added later, once Argibadus had actually finished the commission recorded in the rest of the text. Certainly quite different in layout and form than the rest. Also can we read so much into celibe(m)? The choice of word may have been more influenced by the alliteration with the initial celeb(ri)s? If so, perhaps he never really became a monk. Just a thought. In any event does celibacy necessarily imply taking a monastic vow, or is that how it is normally expressed in 9th-10th century Catalonia? Mark. Jonathan Jarrett Says: You know, I dont think I can have had my brain in when I wrote that. Youre quite right about the script, obviously different As for one thing, but I hadnt noticed. That may be what lies behind the Fajardo et al. dating. As for the monasticism, well, there isnt really a standard way of expressing it in the texts of this period but if I was to pick one I would expect conversus. All my examples of that are either pre- or post-Carolingian, however, so Toledo or Rome may be messing with it. I agree that its an unusual way of putting it and wonder now if something more like the female deo vota status is implied, which might explain how the later Sunyer at least was apparently still getting charters after retirement. As for Casserres, well, Im afraid people arent playing nice with me either, as will eventually here be recorded once Ive made all efforts I can to get round it. The problems only affect the charters, however, and if you would like a copy of the Museu

Episcopal de Vics documentation image of the slab and a copy of my transcriptions, just drop me a mail. Im afraid that, failing to think again, I hadnt twigged that they might be of use to you. Joan Vilaseca Says: The dificult thing imo, is to decide if the text is from the start or the middle of Xth century. If its from the start, I should be able to say something about-it, because is the time frame I am working on right now. Maybe some particular feature of the epigraphy could help to decide between those scenarios?

Musealization in Vienna
POSTED BY JONATHAN JARRETT | 9 SEPTEMBER 2008 Dont look at me, I didnt make the word up, Im just sharing the pain. But yes, I was at a conference, as you may recall, one of a series called Electronic information: the Visual Arts and beyond, or EVA, and this one entitled Digital Cultural Heritage Essential for Tourism. And from this and the title of this post it may not shock you to learn that though the conference was in English, this was mainly for my benefit, as it seemed, because bar me and a couple of Italians everyone presenting could have stuck to German of some flavour and understood each other.1 And although this has little to do with the tenth century, as even I was presenting in my professional capacity, I know that there are museum-goers, heritage professionals and networking geeks reading this (at least one of each!), and besides it was interesting so Im gonna blog it. There will later be a picture-heavy tourist post, but Im in a different place from the images as I write so this will come first. This conference was dominated by the Pattern Recognition and Image Processing group in the Technische Universitt Wien, and consequently responded to rather different expectations than the humanities ones I usually attend. You can tell this because I have the proceedings in front of me; in theory, all papers were double-blind reviewed before acceptance and the proceedings were in the free bag they gave me on registration.2 (Im very glad someone else was paying for this; it was more expensive than Leeds, but this sort of spending is why.) Actually, the proceedings are a lie, especially when it comes to the Coin Recognition Workshop of which my paper was part, which came together too late. Only one of the papers that was given is in them, and another with it was not in fact given. In how many ways this is like a charter, that records a public reference version of something that may not really have come out that way because the charter was written apart from it, I shall try and avoid saying again. Anyway, the Coins Recognition stuff is of interest to few and discussed elsewhere, so here I shall only say that the software is impressive, arguably not only does what it was supposed to do but could be the root of even more, and that my paper had little of this about it but since it will not be published, I see no harm in sticking it up for download anyway for anyone that might be interested. Repeated themes of the technology and applications being developed or demonstrated here were, firstly, assembling recognition libraries of cultural content, either specialised as with coins or, in the most ambitious case, the whole of human archaeology maaan, so that you could find something in the ground and have a decent guess at what it is from the web. We seem to be a long way from that, but the technological pace towards it is on the runway, even if not yet taken off. There are two aspects to this, firstly the image recognition, in which we are having to do a lot of crunching still, and then the actually meaningfully saying what the image is of, which involves massive international multi-lingual thesauri. Weirdly, that bit is going faster, perhaps because words very rarely get turned round so that you have to recognise them at an angle.3 Another theme was digital technology for improving your tourist experience. Istanbul have a piece of kit under work which will set you up maps and routes on a PDA-alike to guide you through the rather confusing city streets and find you the monuments and period stuff that interests you particularly.4 Somewhere in the middle is similar tech for your PDA in Florence and Winchester, and at the smallest end is something very much like the e-Guide weve just replaced at my place of work. The one being described here had been trialled in a museum of energy in Recklinghausen in Germany and seems to be better than the old one we had and perhaps not as hot as the new one, but working on a much better model of locating the visitor.5

The appalling neologism of the title came from a paper by one Elena Bonini, who was applying a great deal of theory about knowledge uptake and learning processes to the question, basically, of how to interest people in museums. The theory predictably annoyed me, especially with words like that in it (edutainment should also be taken out and shot, which would be both educational and entertaining) but the paper, despite some weak points, was very interesting, and it won a prize for best student presentation out of the nine present quite deservedly. She was very much for interactive content and learning by doing, which seems fair enough. Her user surveys however suffered from a generation gap, in which those above forty or fifty dont expect to learn like that and just want to be told something by an expert, whereas among the under-20s virtual rooms, puzzle games, A tile of a new project to map the Byzantium of c. 800 conversational learning in text and so on scored much more highly. I C. E. thought that was what her figures showed, and that that was interesting and worth making something of, but she was more inclined to just brush the unpopularity of her methods among a big part of her userbase under the carpet. That was one of the weak points, but I was impressed with much else. All the same, the traditional panel with a label on it has some way to go before it need fear retirement.6 Another theme that had a session to itself was OCR work on manuscripts. Two of the three papers focussed on a single manuscript, a Slavonic missal which came from St Catherines on Mt Sinai, which has produced so many incredibly rare and ancient manuscripts and apparently keeps doing so.7 This battered book is the oldest manuscript known in Glagolitic script, the forerunner of Cyrillic that was actually invented by Cyril, or Constantine as he usually called himself, and Methodius, apostles of the Slavs. It was in use in Croatia until the nineteenth century but it isnt very well understood in as early a form as this. Breaking down that script to reproducible characters has therefore not only been challenging, but extraordinarily valuable for researchers working on fragments elsewhere.8 The script is incredibly detailed, I dont know how anyone thought it useful, but perhaps that was the point, it was sacred writing. The paper I was most impressed by however was the keynote, Dr Armin Grn talking about Image-based 3D Modeling of Cultural and Natural Heritage Objects.9 And when he says objects, he means everything from statues to entire cities. His group have flown a toy helicopter with a digital camera slung underneath it over deserted South American cities that predate the Incas, they have mapped and modelled huge pre-Aztec adobe complexes, and they have digitised the Nazca lines and Mount Everest, already! (The first two projects, along with some of the visuals that Dr Grn was using to illustrate their methods, are depicted and described online in this article of his.) But its not just recording theyre involved in, its reconstruction. You may have heard of the valley of Bamiyan in Afghanistan, which used to be a really important Buddhist holy site, with huge niches carved in the valley sides holding statues of Buddha. Then came the Taliban, and what age and decay hadnt already achieved, fundamentalist explosives did. Dr Grns group, using satellite imagery (they also use balloons, aeroplanes, robot cars and occasionally human-held cameras) plotted the disappearance of the two largest Buddha statues, but a few years later they also got hold of some 1970 photographs taken by a travelling photogrammetrist who took them carefully enough that scanning them and working the teams particular magic has allowed a digital reconstruction of the two Buddhas, from which actual replicas can be made. Some day when wars permit, therell be something at Bamiyan for pilgrims to see again. By then, he was forecasting, the group will not only taking their pictures with mobile phones, theyll be doing the processing on them too, in the field, and coming home with 3D visualisations ready to put on your website after a days work. (A full list of their projects is here.) That was a good note to open on, and I shall use it as a good one to close on; this is at last moving beyond mere curiosity and showiness to something that genuinely does good in the world. Odd to think of Buddhists and IT meeting so obviously in a hall in Vienna, but it happened and I was there to see it and tell you about it.

http://www.schaeken.nl/lu/research/online/publications/akslstud/album_akslhss/index.htm

1. Although one of the Austrians said he was used to Germans asking him to speak English instead of his native tongue so they could understand him 2. The proceedings are Robert Sablatnig, James Hemsley, Paul Kammerer, Ernestine Zolda & Johann Stockinger (eds), Digital Cultural Heritage Essential for Tourism. Proceedings of the 2nd EVA 2008 Vienna Conference, Vienna, August 25-28, 2008, books@ocg.at 238 (Vienna 2008). 3. Covered in Martin Kampel, Computer Aided Analysis of Ancient Coins, and Achille Felicetti & Hubert Mara, Semantic Webs and Digital Islands: Semantic Web Technologies for the Future of Cultural Heritage Digital Libraries, ibid. pp. 137-144 & 69-78 respectively. 4. Nadide Ebru Yazar & Can Binan, Use of Digital Media for Cultural Tourism: Byzantine Monuments on the Web, ibid. pp. 4350. 5. The Florence and Winchester projects in Maurizio Megliola & Luca Barbieri, Integrating Agent and Wireless Technologies for location-Based Services in Cultural Heritage, and the museum one in Sebastian Gansemer, Uwe Gromann, Oliver Suttorp & Hanswalter Dobbelman, Evaluating a location sensitive multimedia museum guide: Results from a field trial, ibid. pp. 51-59 & 103-110 respectively. 6. Elena Bonini, Building Virtual Cultural Heritage Environments: The Embodied Mind at the Core of the Learning Processes, ibid. pp. 119-128. 7. For example, see Elias Avery Lowe, An Unknown Latin Psalter on Mount Sinai in Scriptorium Vol. 9 (Bruxelles 1955), pp. 177199, Two New Latin Liturgical Fragments on Mount Sinai in Revue Bndictine Vol. 74 (Maredsous 1964), pp. 252-283 & Two Other Unknown Latin Liturgical Fragments on Mount Sinai in Scriptorium Vol. 19 (1965), pp. 3-29, all reprinted in idem, Palaeographical Papers, 1907-1965, ed. Ludwig Bieler (Oxford 1972), II pp. 417-440, 520-545 & 546-573 respectively.

8. Florian Kleber, Robert Sablatnig, Melanie Grau & Heinz Miklas, Ruling Estimation for Degraded Ancient Documents Based on Text Line Extraction & Maria C. Vill, Gau, Miklas & Sablatnig, Static Stroke Decomposition of Glagolitic Characters in Sablatniget al., Digital Cultural Heritage, pp. 79-86 & 95-102 respectively. 9. Ibid. pp. 11-35.

Responses:
Jonathan Jarrett Says: One project that it would have been nice to have represented that wasnt there seems to have hit the news at exactly the same time as this post went up, some software for modelling diving on digitized shipwrecks developed at the University of Hull. Two reports can be found at David Beards Archaeology in Europe. Larry Swain Says: Nice post, and thanks for the update and blog on the conference. Some really interesting material and projects. Jonathan Jarrett Says: I should now add to this that my paper is no longer at that link, because contrary to my initial expectations, it is in fact being published and should be out very early next year!

Stock Take VI: the work, the job, the life?

A CORNER OF TENTH-CENTURY EUROPE | JONATHAN JARRETT This is the sort of post that is more use to me than to you, most like, so tune out as soon as you feel ready. You might just remember that in May of 2010, I was professionally required to write a report on my academic year, which was actually quite encouraging. Some time before that, too, Id done a set of four posts here about the various pieces of work I had in process, mainly in an effort to shame me into doing something about their ridiculous number. When I came across that May stock-take whilst looking for a link a year later, it struck me this would be worth doing again, just to see how Ive done. This has actually taken some time, because it meant trying to squash the four posts into one, which is of course huge and which I have therefore mounted elsewhere, for any real stalkers or procrastinators, as a hidden page under a password (that being goonthen) here. Im not sure why you should really want to read it, but it will remain thus accessible till this post drops off the front page just in case. For the normal people, though, Ill do a summary here and then add some brief notes on the years employment and maybe something about life more widely. I reserve my options on that last though, because Ive been sleeping badly for a while and so everything is currently coloured grim, whether it is really or not. Anyway, here we go. Works, publishable or not The four posts of 2009 didnt cover books, so the obvious advance here is that now I have one; on the other hand, that had been finished in 2007 and I havent advanced any of my ideas for others at all yet. They are listed on that page, but I need to think about how Im going to achieve any of them at this rate. What the posts did list was article-length things, and at that time there were five in press. Now, one still is (page proofs arrived two days ago), one has had to be abandoned for now and the other three all came out. I have two more in press now, one completely new since 2009, but the other one of them (then under ready to go) is probably a false pregnancy, as it were, so more needs to be done here. I actually have two more under review, but theyre both on blogging, which is not really my best scholarship, and according to some might not look well on a CV. So, as I say, more needs to be done. The 2009 posts also listed five that were complete but unsubmitted. One of them is now in print, in fact; one of them is the dubious in-press item, and the other three are still stuck, one for reasons out of my control, one for reasons beyond my comprehension that I am about to sidestep, and one just out of my discouragement, which should be overcome. This category shouldnt really exist, these are things that are ready for press and arent for some reason being pressed, so its probably as well I dont have anything to add to it.

My own copy of my book, Rulers and Ruled in Frontier Catalonia, 880-1010: pathways of power

I do on the other hand have a rather worrying new category, conference trash. This is things that I did for a session somewhere or to publicise my work that will, unless I am missing something (feel free to have a look), not go anywhere further. Ive generated four of these since 2009, and one was on the previous needs actual research list, and I dont think any of them will become publications. These were probably part wasted effort, therefore, and I must stop agreeing to present stuff so readily. Then theres the two categories I had last time, nearly there and needs actual work. There were three in the first category in 2009, two of which are now stalled (one of these being the Casserres paper awaited eagerly by at least one person; more on that anon., but it is not just my fault its not ready, honest) and the last of which is my current top priority because Ive set myself a 1st December deadline for it, as some readers well know. In the second category there were four that needed serious research, and well, theyre all still there, though I have projects in conception which will pull two of them together at least. Unfortunately Ive also added two more new ones and two more have wound up here from other categories, so this is actually going backwards. So in 2009 I had fourteen unpublished papers in some kind of existence, of which four were in press, five ready to go out, three nearly there, and two (plus another two which only existed as reading lists) needing real work. Now I have three in press, two under review, three more-or-less complete of which two need others to move first or me to tread on toes, nine that need actual work to finish them (of which two, still, are just reading lists) and five that are basically carrion. Total, fifteen in process and five dead sticks. So things have actually got a lot worse since 2009! Crap. Against that, I also have four more published pieces and a book as well, you know, but Im generating more than Im getting into print and much more of it is now useless. I dont like how that bodes. So, OK, some resolves again perhaps? How am I going to tackle this? Well, first, Im not going to offer conference papers for a while unless they actually form part of a project that it will help me to advance and that I will be able to read for. This may mean only the Pictish stuff, at least until thats done. I will also focus on particular papers and try and get a next book started, and the order of priority should probably be as follows: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Edits to Popular History, the Academy and the Internet: Blogging History for New and Old Audiences ASAP. Uncertain Origins: comparing the earliest documentary culture in Carolingian Catalonia by December 1st. My share of the Introduction and Conclusion to its host volume by Christmas. Actually I have a review due about here that I havent mentioned above but it ought to be on the list. Legends in their Own Lifetime? The Late Carolingians and Catalonia, rebuild and submit somewhere nicer, as soon after that as I can. Actually theres another review to do that I didnt know about when I first drafted this post last week but which is due nearly at the same time as the first one Pictlands: rethinking the composition of the Pictish polity, reading for it already ongoing so final write-up for presentation, road-testing, feedback and so on by, say, Easter? How will On Stone and Skin: inscription of a community at Sant Pere de Casserres look by now? Will the problems have gone away? If so, read the relevant charters, edit and submit. If not, sigh and move on. Next, Bishop and Brother: kindred and Church in an early medieval noble family: get it out there again with its historiographical face all shiny and nice.

By now, I should have ordered and obtained the volumes I need most for the actual next book project, The Rise and Fall of Sant Joan de Ripoll: charters of an early medieval Catalan nunnery, which can proceed in dribs and drabs thereafter. 10. Can I do anything with Critical diplomatic: a tool for analysing early medieval societies at this point? If not, start focussing on it properly. 11. By now, also, its probably time to knock The Continuation of Carolingian Expansion into a new, shorter and final shape and kiss it goodbye. And actually that looks like enough! So what about other things? Work, paid Well, this really needs the Bonzo Dog Band to do it justice! The crucial line there is, as Im sure you realised, I used to be a four-stone apology; now, I am two separate gorillas! because, in May 2010 I was working in para-academia, in a job I liked very much but which had no prospects and was on endangered soft money, renewable annually. Such teaching as I was doing was coming to me from a different city and I was struggling to take any part in the academic world of my home university. Now, in September 2011, I am three separate lecturers (or something like that) in a very similar university but with a larger history faculty, several of whose members have interests exactly allied to things I work on, and I have all the

teaching I can handle, including some graduates, which, so far, is like teaching undergraduates who did the reading, but then, many of the undergraduates here do. In fact, seven of the twelve undergraduates I was directly concerned with last year (lecture audiences not included) did best of all in the subjects I taught them, so either I or the early Middle Ages are doing right by these kids and possibly both. I also get paid to read. Most of all, I have two more years of this if I need them and already have a book and four papers for the Research Excellence Framework when it comes, which will be in the first year into the next job, whatever it may be. The market is still looking likely to be rubbish but I could not be better positioned for it, so theres hope of a sort there. Also, yknow, I dont want to wax too idealistic, but, intellectual fulfilment? I believe this may be it. I am doing what I love, more or less all the time. Sure, it comes with a hefty attached admin. load (mostly not even related to the actual work of the job, but to claiming money or helping the university answer government demands for organisational information) and a screaming INBOX that never goes quiet but even that, even that I tell you, I had down to zero over the summer. I am not yet sure that I am doing this as well as I should beand at the moment I havent yet heard that Ive passed probation, though quite a few courses here are in trouble if I haventbut I believe I am doing it adequately, perhaps even well, and will get better.1 Also, para-academically, Ive presented in eight different places since May 2010, three of them in foreign countries, in all of which Ive met really cool people and had a good time; I also finally made it out to Catalonia again and got lots done despite being on my own and without wheels; I managed to stay sort of regular at the Institute of Historical Research seminars that have sustained me so long as well; and, not least, this blog has managed to continue, even if ever more behind. I could probably do more about the various backlogs of writing here and elsewhere if I was slightly less of the international jet-set showboat, and that will probably have to be cut back this year, but that is not to say that in such terms, this year now gone hasnt been excellent, because it has.
A heavily-graffitied bus shelter in Vallfogona

Work-life balance?

On the other hand On the other hand, I am a damn sight busier than I was and also, functionally, poorer, though that is because of having raised my living standard considerably; I no longer share a house, basically, so everything I gained by the move in pay-rise and more goes on rent and bills. Its worth it, by a long way, but I am seeing fewer people because of it, and I have not made many new friends in this new town, and even fewer with any free time. Even the friends I had here already have largely become mostly unavailable for socialising for one reason or another (not me, Im reasonably sure) and some have left. Most of all, Im away from my son and his family, who are my extended family, which we knew would happen but which is all a shame anyway and more of a source of expense and difficulty than it should be. So, though fulfilled in brain I am probably rather less happy, and as I say the sleep problem I currently have is not making this any better. But! I am often gloomy, I have been called a pessimist, and indeed, since a few years ago I havent really been expecting happiness to be possible at all in the short- to mid-term; Im not optimistic about the long-term either, to be honest.2. But this is nothing to do with the usual topics of the blog. So I will stick my chin up, stiffen my upper lip and tell you all that that was never the point, or at least not since before the blog was started. It is important that the fact that the academic lifes not all good is recorded, and that every progress comes with sacrifices, but all the rest of my version of it means that this would be a damn silly time to stop feeling good about the good stuff. I shall just hope that next years stock take will have a more broad-based range of things to feel good about. And that, friends and other readers, is most definitely enough.

1. It occurs to me that in fact I have a kind of official report like last years for the probation committee, too, but I probably shouldnt post that here as yet and Im not sure anyone really needs it now 2. Let me put it this way: I have guilt attacks, here and there, that I didnt throw in the career and dedicate myself to environmental campaigning, or found a new political party operating on principles of honesty and openness to try and restore worth to British democracy, because it means I didnt try as hard as I could to save the world for my son. Of course I would probably not have been any good at those things, I doubt I could have achieved anything, but its because almost everybody thought the same and left those things to someone else that the world is out of joint, innit? This song more or less covers my feelings on the matter.

Responses:
Sm Says: We may be quite different in our work habits, but if I were you I would put a bunch of those unfinished projects in the deep freeze and see if they demand to be let out. But surely a couple dozen people have already said this. Jonathan Jarrett Says: Thankyou for turning your mind to this! Not yet, would be my answer to the last bit, because there is so much whirling here that until I collect this kind of data, Im not sure anyone around me really knows what Im working on. I want to keep things moving into the print queue, though, because I cant really afford a long drought. The trick then would seem to be to balance the necessary apparent productivity with actually getting some big work done. Michelle Ziegler Says: Im not a traditional academic so maybe my thoughts are not very helpful but Ill throw them out there anyway. Focus on what you really want to work on and dont let the number of things that get thrown away worry you. Sometimes scrapping an idea or a line of research is the right or best thing to do. You can spin your wheels trying to make something work that isnt worth it. Knowing where to draw the line is the trick and I sure cant say that Ive learned it. I look at conference papers as experiments. They might work or they might not. No great loss or gain either way. Networking and hearing other peoples thoughts are the gain of the conference. I dont think people necessarily think every conference paper should turn into a publication. Its a place to try out a topic. Besides, a conference paper is a scholarly contribution that should count on your CV even if it doesnt convert into a paper or a book. (Not that your reviewers will know your topic well enough to know whether these conference papers are part of a book or paper anyway) Im not saying that you should lower your publication goals. Just focus and dont worry about the blind alleys. smuhlberger Says: What he said.

Medieval biological weapons

AUG21BY MICHELLE ZIEGLER I picked up a book the other day about ancient biological and chemical weapons. I was a little surprised that it has a chapter on insect weapons. It not that I dont think insects can be a weapon, as we saw in my recent post on the defense of Chester, its just that I didnt think of them as a biological weapon. In the case of Chester, its seems as though the bee hives are a last-ditch method to repel the Vikings. On the other hand, bee hives would have been common in medieval cities and monasteries. Bees are about the only insect that I can think of in northern Europe that could be used as intentional weapons. I doubt wasps could be found in high enough numbers to use as a weapon. Can anyone think of other examples of biological weapons used in early medieval Britain? More bees, wasps, venom, or intentional spread of disease? Poisoning wells is one of the oldest tricks in the book but I cant think of any examples of it off-hand, can you? Poisoning wells is, I think, usually considered an act of biowarfare because the most common way to poison a well (or spring) is to dump dead bodies or animal carcases in it.

Comments:
jlrowan says: Could you please post the title of the book? It sounds fascinating. Thanks! Michelle Ziegler says: Its not a very new book, I just havent gotten around to it before. Adrienne Mayors Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs: Biological and Chemical Weapons in the Ancient World

My edition is 2009 but I know there were earlier editions. jlrowan says: Thank you! I appreciate it! LisaK says: I forget which chronicle it is, but there is tell of a seige during the Black Death and the attackers started chucking corpses over the city walls. Ill have to look up the reference. I think it was periodically done when an army was struck by dysentery as well. If you cant breach the walls, make em sick Michelle Ziegler says: I think you are thinking of the siege of Caffa in 1346. Here is an article on it: http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol8no9/01-0536.htm Poisoning wells was a very common thing and dysentery would be a likely agent for well or water source contamination. LisaK says: Caffa, thats the one. Alexandra says: You asked if anyone knew examples from early medieval Britain, but all I can think of are classic Greek ones. (Aeneas Tacticus recommended making water supplies unfit to drink as a standard tactic. Pausanius said Solon poisoned the water supply of the town of Cirrha / Kirra with a plant called hellebore, leaving the entire town debilitated and easily defeated. Thucydides mentioned people wondered if their water supplies had been purposely infected with the plague that devastated Athens during the Peloponnesian War.) Bit off the mark, sorry, but at least theyre examples of precedent. Y Caws Mawr says: The Welsh Archers used to urinate on the floor in front of them and then dip their arrows in it. I know Owain Glyndwr`s men did this when they defeated Mortimer but I dont know how long this practice had been used for Michelle Ziegler says: It sounds more like an insult to me. I cant think of any chemical advantage and clean urine wouldnt be a biological risk. Adrienne Mayor says: injecting bacterial urine is dangerous (google), therefore an arrow tipped with urine might cause septicemia if it enters the bloodstream Michelle Ziegler says: An arrow head dipped in any source of bacteria could cause septicemia. Bacterial urine would only be there in a bladder infection. Dipping it in a dung slurry would be better. It still could have been their intent to cause extra harm by dipping the arrow head in urine. Adrienne Mayor says: Ancient Scythians created a very sophisticated arrow poison based on dung, human blood, and crystallized snake venom allowed to putrify underground for several weeks Michelle Ziegler says: Dung and crystallized snake venom sounds pretty deadly. I guess the blood would be a good binder to hold it together and help keep the venom active. I do need to find time to read your book. Im still trying to finish another one Im mid-way through.

badonicus says: I wish I could remember where I read (or heard) of the warriors of Gwynedd dipping their elm sharpened to a point javelins in adder poison. Anyone else heard of this? Ed Watson says: Mak, Try the The Vera Historia de Morte Arthuri Ed badonicus says: Thanks Ed. Thatll be it! I wonder what it was based on? Adrienne Mayor says: ancient Greek and Roman authors reported that many ancient cultures traditionally used plant poisons and snake venoms on their projectiles, including the Celts. (for descriptions and sources see Arrows of Doom chapter in Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs (Overlook, 2009) esmeraldamac says: Well, tradition says that Uther Pendragon of Pendragon Castle in Cumbria was killed with his household when the well was poisoned. Right period of time, but the historicity of that story is questionable, to say the least ! Cadfans Stone says: `tradition` of a 12th Century Castle and a very dubious historical personage written by an even more dubious writer of `historical fact`,thats the Cumbria Tourist board for you! I can recommend `Ancient siege warfare` by Paul Bentley Kern It has a lot about classical and ancient siege warfare including Biological weaponry,treatment of captured cities etc etc

Plague and the Origin of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms

AUG28BY MICHELLE ZIEGLER It has been observed before that the earliest English kingdoms seem to appear around 550 AD rather close to the date that the Plague of Justinian arrived in Ireland around c. 544. We dont yet have confirmation that the plague landed in Britain, but the Annals Cambriaedoes record the death of the great king Maelgwn Gwynedd in 547, according to legend, from the plague. Given that we know the Irish sea trade was active in the sixth century there is no reason to believe that plague didnt arrive in Britain as well. Yet conclusive proof eludes us because of the legendary quality of the Annals Cambriae for this period and the otherwise lack of sixth century records. It will be up to archaeologists to confirm plague in period remains. Lets do a thought experiment. Hypothesis: Plague contributed to the depopulation of Roman Britain and the rise of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. To test this hypothesis we need to know: How would plague reach Britain? Where would it be coming from? If plague did come to Britain on the 540s where would we expect to find it? What types of evidence would we expect to find? Why did the Anglo-Saxon centers remain out of the major Roman centers like York and London until the arrival of Roman missionaries?

How would the plague reach Britain? How the plague would arrive is relatively easy. As with everything else, it would come to Britain by sea and arrive in the major ports. Currently the most evidence for continental contact exists along the Irish sea side at Tintagel, Dinas Powys, and Whithorn. We really just dont know about the east. The bigger cities in the east may have dispersed good more widely so that we dont have easily recognizable concentrations of goods. Trade is also a very important factor in the sixth century maritime contacts. There is no doubt that the tin of Cornwall was a primary trade good that continued to be mined and traded in the fifth century. Given the late sixth century Frankish contacts with Kent, it is likely that there was some contact across the channel with southern and eastern Britain in the mid sixth century as well, but we dont have much proof. Where would the plague be coming from? Where the plague would be coming from is not as easy to parse. Given the Cornish tin drawing traders into the Irish sea and Mediterranean goods found at Irish sea sites, it is possible that traders were coming directly from the Mediterranean, with or without making significant stops in Gaul. The Irish annals record a direct trajectory from the Mediterranean without extensive records of plague in Gaul along the route. The only Mediterranean trade goods that I can recall hearing about in early Anglo-Saxon graves is some elephant ivory. Contact with the Mediterranean (or lack of it) may well explain a lot of plagues distribution in the Atlantic Archipelago rather than trade and communication with Gaul. If plague did come to Britain on the 540s where would we expect to find it? It follows that we would expect to find plague along the western coast. The late semi-legendary account of Mealgwn Gwynedds death of plague in c. 547 in his court at Rhos on Angelesy is certainly along the western coast. Detecting plague otherwise is difficult without mass graves and I dont necessarily think that most plague victims were buried in mass graves. The primary port areas in the east are not well-defined for the sixth century but it seems clear that the Thames estuary was a major trade corridor. Likewise the Humber River in the north was probably a major trade corridor. Its hard to predict where smaller ports would have been, just as its hard to predict what kinds of trade goods would have been going out of the east. We do know that there was Frankish contact with Kent by at least the third quarter of the sixth century, but how extensive it was is unclear. The looming question here is what happened to the Romano-Britons in the east. Some migrated to the continent but it wasnt a huge, coordinated, or destabilizing wave of immigration. Although, a slow small-group migration over a century might not be that noticeable in the historical or archaeological record. Most of those who went to Brittany seem to have come from western Britain rather than the east. We no longer believe that they were massacred as Bede and Gildas claim (or rather as Bede echos Gildas). Most of them surely assimilated into Anglo-Saxon culture. Some may have been sold as slaves by the Anglo-Saxons but again not enough for Britain to have a reputation as a source of slaves (and the slaves from Britain known in written sources were all Anglo-Saxon Imma, Balthild, and Gregory the Greats boys in Rome). I dont think slaves from Britain were ethnically chosen. Between small-scale migration, assimilation and the slave trade, Roman culture collapsed in eastern Britain in the sixth century. With the collapse of Roman culture, the demand for Mediterranean goods may just not have been there. There really isnt an obvious reason here why the east would be depopulated worse than the west. Indeed there seems every reason for the west to suffer worse than the east. However, the entire former Roman province east and west seems to be sparsely populated so we cant rule out that the plague did thin out the entire population. What types of evidence would we expect to find? Without documentary evidence we are really left with archaeological remains. Mass graves without traumatic injuries are the ideal remains to test for Yersinia pestis. However, not all plague victims are buried in mass graves. Most plague victims are probably buried in single graves or in small groups. The double grave of the woman and girl found in Bavaria may be more like the typical grave outside of the large population centers. This Bavarian grave was apparently a very carefully prepared grave with typical elite grave goods. It wasnt a hasty burial. There seems to be an assumption that plague did not come to eastern Britain before 664 so I havent seen evidence of screening for the plague in sixth century graves. Other than graves, plague could cause a depopulation without signs of violence. Settlements have been found throughout Britain that show signs of contraction which could be consistent with losses from plague. Im thinking here of wooden structures built within Roman ruins, or where only a fraction of a Roman site shows signs of continued habitation. Migration away from Britain could cause similar depopulation without signs of violence. In real terms

though pandemics (and other causes of depopulation) do leave the survivors vulnerable to violence as neighboring warlords try to take advantage of the situation and survivors begin to fight over remaining resources. This brings us really back to bioarchaeology. This is just no way to get around massive screening of sixth century graves to get a clear answer to this question. Detection ofYersinia pestis in 1400 year old remains has a very low efficiency coupled with the likelihood that plague intensity is unlikely to have been even over the island means that small scale screening of a few cemeteries will not be sufficient to answer the question. Why did the Anglo-Saxon centers remain out of the major Roman centers like York and London until the arrival of Roman missionaries? There have been various hypotheses put forward for why the Anglo-Saxons avoided the major Romano-British centers. Some have thought that they were initially settled outside of the Roman cities so their centers developed away from London, York, Lincoln, etc. This makes some sense for the fifth century but less for the sixth century. Only a few cities in Wessex (Bath, Gloucester) are recorded as falling to the English after a battle in the 570s, if I recall correctly. It could be that they just didnt like the Roman style of buildings or that they were too difficult to repair and maintain. It makes some sense that Anglo-Saxon warlords would rather make a fresh start with a new Germanic style hall and complex rather than try to repair and maintain the Roman ruins. On the other hand, the Roman centers were accepted sites of power that we would think that English warlords would want to co-opt. An alternative scenario that I dont really think has been explored is that these Roman cities were deemed unhealthy by the English. Plague will depopulate rural areas along with cities, but cities still tend to take the brunt of any infectious disease. There isnt enough information known to really evaluate the hypothesis. The way forward is fairly bleak. We are looking at extensive screening of sixth century graves (single as well multiple graves) and this will require convincing archaeologists to do the screening. Alternatively looking for contact with the Mediterranean may at least indicate which areas to look for plague more extensively. Correlating Mediterranean contact with the Atlantic archipelago as a unit with the Irish annals may allow us to make some predictions on what and where to look.

Comments:
badonicus says: Very interesting blog Michelle, and very apt for me to read having just posted a blog on the 540 Cosmic/Volcanic Event. Michelle Ziegler says: Yes, I just got around to reading your post. Ive been saving it in my RSS reader until I had time to go through it carefully. Its an interesting post, though I dont think that a comet or volcano is the answer. As you say, it would effect everyone pretty much evenly. In fact the land in the west is generally worse farm land and so would be effected by a famine worse than the east? Jonathan Jarrett says: I dont think I have to buy this idea completely to see in it the roots of something quite important that I was tugging at in a post at mine a while ago as well. Chris Wickham, among others, argues for an almost total collapse of political order in Britain; I think that this is really only sustainable in eastern Britain, because of the kings like Malegwyn whom we see in the west. But I think the key thing is as you say that the collapse in the west and the beginnings of visible kingdoms in the east appear to go chronologically hand-in-hand. I think that makes perfect sense, really: the power in the land is in the west, it keeps the powers in the east from forming, once the west is in trouble, the east, with its better links to a rising economic zone at the same time as the prestige goods system that has been monopolised in the west is diminishing, is able to expand and is unstoppable. Whether you think that the cause of the collapse in the west is sheer economics or pandemics, I dont think its fanciful to argue that its the collapse of power in the west that enables the rise of power in the east. Then, a plague can hit both sides equally, and its not necessary that the west somehow suffer more; the east is just in a far better position to rally. Michelle Ziegler says: A collapse of power in the west? Its interesting that all of Gildas kings are in the west, even though we dont know of significant English kings in the east yet. There is the claim that Vortigern was an ancient king of Powys. I think Powys was probably the dominant 5th to 6th century kingdom/region. The kings of Powys would have held Chester, Wroxter and possibly extended his hegemony over Caerleon or into South Wales. Ive always thought that Powys probably extended much further into the midlands than it does even under Cynan Garwen. Powys would have been holding the region that later became western Mercia and/or even northern Wessex. Afterall that region of Mercia and Wessex becomes a major power center in later Anglo-Saxon England. Without Roman engineers to handle the watershed in the East, that land may not have been worth as much as the drier areas of the west midlands. Perhaps the River Severn and its estuary became the major trade corridor, replacing the Thames. A

short overland portage would move goods from the Severn estuary to the headlands of the Thames for distribution. The headlands of the Thames would be near where the Gewisse/Wessex began and Ceawlin became a bretwalda. A bretwalda rising so far west could indeed disrupt the western power structure or be a symptom of it having already fallen. We have to let go of the myth that the Gewisse developed from the coast inward rather than from Germanic federates settled near Gloucester. badonicus says: Of course, by that time, the eastern part of Powys (which must have sprang from the Cornovii) may have been Pengwern. Christopher Gidlow uses archaeological evidence to suggest that the Cornovii and Dobunni may have been in alliance and held quite a bit of power. I dont know how accurate his information is though. Michelle Ziegler says: I dont know how well the old tribal system carried over to the post-Roman period. How do we know that they were little more than administrative districts in late Roman Britain? Some of them may have become kingdoms but it seems to me that citystates perhaps with more or less regional hegemony were more common. If we accept that Vortigern was a high king and was based in Powys, he was able to settle mercenaries in Kent. That is a long stretch from Powys. Nicola Griffith says: This absolutely delighted me. The novel I had outlined (a fantasy, or maybe alternate history) before I turned to Hild had, as its basic concept, that The Fall of Rome coincided with the Fall of Something Nasty from the Skyspecifically, a rain of otherworld virus that took out centres of population. I cant tell you how pleasing it is to see a similar real-life hypothesis. I like the notion of power-shifting. East to west as the climate got wet and drainage fell apartleading, to, say, lowered agricultural productivity and diseases like malaria. West to east with the advent of plague. Im really enjoying this idea Jonathan Jarrett says: If I read Chris Wickham or Richard Hodges correctly, their version is less exciting: people who rely on being able to monopolise the flow of luxury goods for staying in power lose access to those goods, lose their ability to hold armies together and everything disaggregates. But you know, that could be in there too Nicola Griffith says: The lovely thing about fiction: you can torment your characters with rain and plague and failed crops and loneliness then close the file and enjoy a lovely glass of wine by the fire in good company But my plan with the alt history book was to posit the conditions, then fast forward four hundred years and see what had happened. Reaggregation, but different. A fun thought experiment. Michelle Ziegler says: It all falls apart because they cant pay off their warriors? Where are they supposed to go for better loot? Not to mention that warriors wouldnt stay to protect their own families land? Jonathan Jarrett says: Well, thats it, I presume, they supposedly go home because theres no living to be made from war as a professional. I would expect banditry, free companies and so on, but this is not my narrative.

Vampire Prevention in Eighth Century Ireland

SEP14BY MICHELLE ZIEGLER About a year ago, I wrote of the discovery of a vampire in a medieval plague cemetery in Venice. News came out Monday of a similar find of not one but two men with stones thrust into their mouths at a site at Kilteasheen, near Loch Key, Knockvicar in Co Roscommon, Ireland. As you can see from our friend to the right here, there is a baseball size rock stuffed in his mouth. These rocks are usually interpreted as a prevention method to keep the dead from feeding on other corpses or rising to attack the living. These men were not buried at the same time, but both were buried in the early eighth century. One was old, and the other was younger, laying side by side, making me wonder if we have a cursed family. No indication of DNA analysis to look for kinship between the men. These two 8th century men were among nearly 137 skeletons excavated by Chris Read of Applied Archaeology at IT Sligo and Dr Thomas Finan of Saint Louis University between 2005 and 2009. (It is coming to light now for a British documentary that will air in the US on the National Geographic channel in 2012.) They estimated that the site holds about 3000 skeletons dating from 700 to 1400.
Cropped photo from IT Sligo news. What really caught my attention is that they originally believed they had found a Black Death grave site. They ditched this hypothesis when the radiocarbon date came back as c. 700. Really? Why? Ireland had a terrible plague in 664 and again in about 683. There was also an infamous famine in c. 700. Any of these events could produce a mass grave. The site is near where the Boyle river connects with Lough Key making it a travel corridor, latter associated with the OConor kings of Connacht. The press releases doesnt mention the spread of radiocarbon dates but with a 700 year span of time, 3000 skeletons comes out to only about 4-5 per year. This is easily achievable for any medieval power center. This site sounds like an ideal place to study the bioarchaeology of a medieval Irish population.

UPDATE (9/18)
1. Sources: Documentary focus on unique deviant burial find IT Sligo News, 2011. 2. Paddy Clancy, Skeletons reveal our ancestors fear of the undead Irish Examiner, Sept. 12, 2011

Documentary focus on unique deviant burial find

Two skeletons discovered with large stones wedged into their mouths, were buried in this way around 1300 years ago to stop them rising from their graves to haunt the living , a new documentary featuring the work of archaeologists at IT Sligo will suggest. Such deviant burials are associated with vampires and also with revenants or ghosts who were believed to come back among the living, unless steps were taken to contain them in their graves. The skeletons, both male, were found side by side in a historic site overlooking Lough Key Co Roscommon, and according to Chris Read, lecturer of Applied Archaeology at IT Sligo, this is the only such discovery of this kind in Ireland . Similar discoveries have been made in Britain and other European countries. In 2006 the remains of a medieval vampire were discovered among the corpses of 16th century plague victims in Venice. The female skull had a rock thrust into the mouth , evidence that female vampires were often blamed for spreading the plague through Europe, according to experts. Read, along with his colleague Dr Thomas Finan from St Louis University in the US, excavated 137 skeletons from a site at Kilteasheen, Knockvicar Co Roscommon during a series of digs from 2005 to 2009, in a project funded by the Royal Irish Academy. The archaeologists believe that there were close to 3,000 skeletons on the site spanning the centuries from 700 to 1400.

The two skeletons with stones in their mouths were not buried at the same time but both were males one elderly and the other a young adult. Both are believed to have been buried in the 8th century. This puts them outside the time frame for vampires a phenomenon which emerged in European folklore around the 1500s. Read explained that this remarkable discovery, which is to be featured next Tuesday (September 13th) in a British Channel 5 documentary, could reflect the ancient fear of revenants who were believed to have had the power to come back from their graves to harass their loved ones or others against whom they had a grudge. The documentary is to be broadcast on the National Geographic channel early next year. One of them was lying with his head looking straight up and a large black stone had been deliberately thrust into his mouth while the other had his head turned to the side and had an even larger stone, wedged quite violently into his mouth so that his jaws were almost dislocated, explained the archaeologist. He and a colleague, osteo archaeologist, Dr. Catriona McKenzie carried out detailed tests on the skeletons at IT Sligo this summer. Read stressed that the revenant theory would be impossible to prove absolutely, but said there was no doubt that the skeletons had been subjected to deviant burials which are sometimes associated with demonic possession. Revenants or the walking dead often tended to be people who were outsiders in society when living, according to the IT Sligo lecturer . There is a known tradition of revenants in Irish folklore and indeed it has been suggested that Bram Stoker got the inspiration for Dracula, not from a Romanian folk tale, but from an Irish legend about an evil chieftain who had to be killed three times after he came back looking for a bowl of blood to sustain him. The IT Sligo/St Louis team became interested in the Kilteasheen site because of its links to the OConor kings of Connacht and also because of historical references to a Bishops Palace which had been constructed there in the 1200s. They were amazed to discover that a raised platform on the land owned by John and Tina Burke from Knockvicar, was in fact a burial ground which had been used over several centuries. Initially, considerable circumstantial evidence prompted speculation that they had found a Black Death-related burial ground, but radio carbon dating ruled that theory out. Read pointed out that Kilteasheen is adjacent to the Boyle river which was a medieval motorway linking Lough Key with the Shannon. But the layers of history there go back much further as a number of pre-historic artefacts including stone tools and arrow heads were also found on the site. The Kilreasheen Archaeological Project will feature in the Revealed series on Channel 5 at 8pm on Tuesday September 13th. The series is being produced by Bafta-nominated Mark Fielder, director of the independent production company QuickFireMedia. For more information on the documentary, click here.

Beating blog block: What do mutants do all day?

MAGISTRA ET MATER The recent hiatus on this blog is due to having a complete writers block re proper blogging of medieval papers/seminars. To try and get round this, the next few posts will be short and unimportant and trying to get me back into the groove of writing this. Dont feel obliged to read them if youve got more useful things to do. I went to see X-Men First Class on the recommendations of my friends (some more guarded than others, and some probably influenced mainly by it containing Michael Fassbender). There are bits of a decent film in there, but not much of one, and the reactionary treatment of female characters is fairly depressing. (I dont know how much of this is due to the constraints of the source material and how much was deliberately chosen). There are three female mutants, as against nine male ones, and their superpowers are shown as inferior to those of the male mutants. Raven/Mystique can change her appearance (very feminine, somehow) and Angel is basically an angry fairy. The most powerful of the women is, of course, a baddie: Emma Frost, a telepath who can turn her body into diamond. She is conveniently captured in time to be absent from the final great confrontation between good and bad mutants, in which she might otherwise even up the fight a bit. The section of the film I want to focus on is where the hero, Charles Xavier, who has collected together a gang to fight the baddies, takes them back to his mansion to train them. Most of the training sequence itself is quite enjoyable, but it was only afterwards that I realised that while we see Charles training all the male mutants, we dont see Raven (the one female left on the goodies team) training. Now you can argue theres a reason for this shes been raised with

Charles as his sister, so shes already trained, but she doesnt get to help doing the training either. What that means, in practice, is that all we see her do during this segment of the film is sitting around being angsty and/or romantic. And this got me thinking about a) the role of depictions of women working in films and b) whether having female characters as part of a gang does in itself help produce more interesting female characters. On the first point, one of the main ways in which women now define themselves is by their work (if you include study and being the primary carer of babies and small children as work, which I would). Any piece of art which doesnt make work look an important part of a womans life now seems odd to me. That doesnt necessarily mean that it either has to be a good job, or that she has to be good at it: I wouldnt have minded seeing a sequence in which Raven repeatedly tried and failed to take on a particular appearance. Or films/TV shows where the heroine is stuck in a crappy job and aware of it. But if theyre not shown doing any kind of work, then theyre basically ornamental. This is particularly the case because, judging by this film at least, good mutants dont do much all day, anyhow, but sit around, unless theres a mission on. (Bad mutants, in contrast, are constantly plotting and so much busier). And thats a more general problem with the gang style of TV/film, where the storys focus is on a gang who have adventures. From the viewers viewpoint, the gangs adventures must be more exciting than anything else they do, or why isnt that on display instead? So Raven cant be sneaking off having more exciting adventures, because she needs to be on hand to be part of the gang. In contrast, we dont know what Angel or Emma Frost are doing for most of the time, and that I would suggest, makes it easier to imagine that they are doing daring and independent things. Ive become very interested in the last year in fandom and fanfic and the way that women, in particular, can use it to transform works of art to their own purposes. Im starting to wonder whether, given the unimaginative way in which supposedly central female characters often get written, whether in many shows it isnt the more marginal female figures who actually offer the more interesting imaginative potential. Note: if anyone has read this AND wants to comment, please bear in mind that Ive spend the last decade mainly not watching either films or TV, so make the pop culture parallels sufficiently plain for an ignoramus.

Comments:
zcat_abroad (Visitor) | http://zcat-abroad.livejournal.com | 2011-09-09 @ 08:45:59 The lack of female heroes (as opposed to heroines, who lie around in floaty dresses, waiting for the knight in shining armour to do something impressive) in general tv series is something which concerns me. I first noticed this when I realised that the thing which made me love Buffy the Vampire Slayer was the existence and actions of the main character. Although she has a male mentor, she's definitely the star of show, and controls much of the action. This has proved to be something that makes me like, or dislike, series - whether the women are actually actors in their own lives, or whether they're just tokens. And, hey, it led to my focus on female saints, as medieval women who are in control of their lives, or afterlives... Katrin (Visitor) | http://togs-from-bogs.blogspot.com | 2011-09-09 @ 10:08:56 Joss Whedon (who also wrote Buffy that is praised so by zcat) is famous for his "strong female characters". If you enjoy watching shows with no real difference between women and men playing their part, I can totally recommend "Firefly" (damn you, Fox, for canceling it after first season!). There's several ladies in the main group, and none of them is ornamental. At all. Nor is Penny in Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, another Whedon thing. opsimathphd (Visitor) | 2011-09-09 @ 18:19:34 This is slightly to one side of your expressed topic, but you might be interested in http://bechdeltest.com/, if you don't already know it. The Bechdel test looks for scenes in movies which - have at least two women - who talk to each other about something other than a man. I do think that we have gone backwards in recent years (not just in fictionalized form, either!). Look at Star Trek: the original series was very forward-thinking for its time: the first interracial kiss, more than one woman who actually did things, and so on. The Next Generation took a few more steps forward both racially and in terms of gender, Deep Space Nine did as well, and it culminated in Voyager, which had an abundance of strong women. The next step, though, was Enterprise, which basically centered entirely on white men. Yes, there were token women and a token black man, but basically it was white guys who got to do stuff. I see people of color and strong women disappearing from television at a remarkable rate lately (can't really speak about movies, because I don't go to them enough). I'm glad to see you reappearing in the blogosphere; you do have readers everywhere, if that helps older, newly-minted Ph.D. in medieval history) (American woman,

parallel40 (Visitor) | 2011-09-10 @ 03:30:45 I'm a longtime tv fan who's also become very recently interested in fanfiction. That new interest for me is more about a playful sense of freedom in writing (as opposed to my day job which is rigidly structured nonfiction writing) than about exploring male and female roles. BUT . . . via fanfiction, I've come rather late in life to an interest in science fiction and fantasy, particularly because of the female characters. I've not seen XMFC yet, but plan to and so will come back and comment after I do. But what I've noticed in my recent leaps into scifi worlds (including Firefly as mentioned above and Stargate Universe and Buffy--oh yes, I'm so late to the Whedon party) is that the women in these worlds are endlessly fascinating, complex, and defined very much by their work and intellects. All my life, I've been a fairly devoted tv fan, and what I think I see in these sci fi shows, and a very few non-sci fi shows (Mad Men, for all its obnoxious, gorgeous chain-smoking 1960s men, is full of deliciously complex, irresistible female characters) is a rich population of female characters that's absent from film--at least the American films I tend to see. I heard one actress say recently that all the good writing for women is now on tv, and that seems true to me. More after I see X-Men. opsimathphd (Visitor) | 2011-09-15 @ 16:08:23 You might want to look at Battlestar Galactica (the recent series, not the original). In addition to being an amazingly wellthought-out, well-written drama with really interesting themes, it has any number of complex and fascinating female characters. Jonathan Jarrett (Visitor) | http://tenthmedieval.wordpress.com | 2011-09-11 @ 00:55:53 The Bechdel Test is a grand thing that works for so much more than movies. Historically, I think it would pretty much fail in superhero comics, which have always played to strong gender stereotypes (all men have six-packs, all women have unrealistic cleavages, etc.) and costumes that accentuate their display. (And nowadays there are webcomics that parody *that*, and so on.) I think I dimly remember a conversation between She-Hulk and The Invisible Girl about make-up when She-Hulk briefly joined the Fantastic Four, if that helps... So the source material probably does constrain the films, but only if the films are themselves based on it, which I believe this one is only by the thinnest of threads. I suppose that they probably can't invent characters in whole cloth, but the X-Men have had so many members that the selection could still be better-balanced than that. I suppose that retconning the sexism, or at least, hyper-sexualisation, out of the genre might make it unrecognisable, but it may also not be a priority, especially since there's a demographic that are coming for the sthetics of the actors and/or actresses. Kath (Visitor) | 2011-09-17 @ 11:52:57 As my learned colleague above observes, there are (at least) two factors in operation in this kind of pop culture product: 1) the sources material, its established characters, inherent rules, etc.; and 2) the choices of the makers about how to represent, stick to, subvert, expound on (etc.) those characters and rules. A really nice example, to my mind, of pop culture TV that managed both to draw reasonably faithfully on its source material (much of which was from Suetonius), *and* to do things slightly differently (and more richly), especially in terms of agency and gender, was the HBO series "Rome". Once you get past the shock of the 'after 10pm' language and copious nudity familiar to viewers of HBO productions over the years, Rome is a thoroughly fabulous program. After several episodes I realised one of the (many) things I loved about it was the complexity of the female characters. They can be 'political' and domestic; powerful and submissive; they manipulate their sexuality and are manipulated in turn. Their capacity to influence the outcomes both of great events and the mundane events of their own lives is circumscribed by forces beyond themselves, but some choose to challenge those boundaries and they sometimes win. The sphere in which the deploy the agency they're given is not the same as that in which the male characters move (obviously: they're not on the battlefield or in the senate much!) but they are shown conceiving of and executing real influences on 'great' events, as well as within their own lifes, loves and households. This show also achieves complexity between characters: there is a subliminal feminism in the kind of agency permitted to women generally by the show's creators, but not all the female characters respond to its possibilities in the same way. Some push right up to the limit of what they can achieve and beat in rage at the walls of resistance they eventually meet; others decide to withdraw from the attempt. Some exercise their power ostentatiously; others with a cold calm. Some chose to act strictly within the confines of 'perfect womanhood', as wife or mother, etc; while some clearly don't care a fig for what others might say. And all of them seem to have 'tipping points' that can force a behavioural or strategic shift. I really recommend it if you want some light relief with *real* characters both women and men. (Just be sure to put the kids to bed first!)

IMC 1: Early metal, dodgy horses and the meaning of gifts

MAGISTRA ET MATER I'm finally starting my first report on the 2011 International Medieval Congress in Leeds, talking mainly about things I heard on the first day (though the last paper of the day will be postponed till the next report). So first of all, I went to hear the keynote lectures: Scavenging and Its End in the Early Medieval Britain, Robin Fleming, Department of History, Boston College, Massachusetts

Rich and Poor in Late Medieval Europe: The Political Paradox of Post-Plague Economics, Samuel K. Cohn Jr., Centre for Medieval & Renaissance Studies, University of Glasgow I'm going to start with the second paper, which had as it basis one of the ideal moments for doing comparative history: the continent-wide demographic shock resulting from the plagues of the late fourteenth century (Cohn didn't discuss in this lecture one of his more controversial views, that this disease wasn't bubonic plague). But he started by pointing out that c 1375-c1475 was a rare period, in which the gap between the rich and poor narrowed in a number of different societies (at least those where we can see wage rates). Did this have wider social effects? Robert Brenner argued that even if the wealth of the poor increased, they didn't necessarily have increased liberty. There were diverging fates west and east of the Elbe, with compulsory labour declining in the west, but tighter bonds on peasants in the east. Demography wasn't key here: there were different trajectories. Brenner, however, didn't look at towns, and Cohn's main argument was that if you compared rural and urban settings you could see differences even within the same societies. Very basically, in both England and northern Italy, you could see peasants and the urban poor gaining financially, but the urban poor losing rights in cities. In England, early concessions to artisans were rolled back, in Italy, cities such as Florence were more and more dominated by the oligarchs. In contrast, the mountain peasants in the Tuscan highlands were actually winning rights in the late fourteenth century, during the struggle between Florence and Milan. Cohn asked the question of why the urban patricians were more successful than rural landlords and argued that we needed to connect together the study of political rights and poverty (rather than separating them out as constitutional/economic history). He saw the urban elites as better at divide and rule tactics, consciously splitting middling sorts away from the urban poor, and offering them selective patronage, while also using recurring bouts of plague to set up a pattern of policing both moral and physical cleanliness of those at the bottom of the heap. Cohn's argument, finally, was that the study of poverty is a political matter, and that political and economic impoverishment didn't necessarily go together. I really don't know the period well enough to be sure about the detail of Cohn's argument (this was one of the occasions when I'm particularly conscious that the IMC covers more than 1000 years of history and some very different societies), but as a general reminder of the complexity of poverty, it was a useful paper. But before that we'd had one of the most eye-opening papers I heard at the whole conference: Robin Fleming on metalworking in fifth and sixth century Britain. Robin's argument was simple, but impressively backed up by archaeological data: today, you don't just have poor individuals, but poor societies. In the same way, Britain in the fifth and sixth-century was desperately poor; as she put it, Roman British society fell hard, fast and early. And one of the key signs of this poverty was the recycling of metal. Roman Britain had been producing so many hundreds of tons iron, that you can see the pollution effects in Greenland ice from C1 to C4. A Roman fort excavated in Scotland (I didn't catch the name) had more than a million Roman nails found there. But from the late C4 the production of fresh metal faltered, and then ceased. Smelting metals produces copious amounts of slag, which survives well into the archaeological record, and the contrasts are immense. The C6 settlement of Mucking in Essex probably produced about 10 kilos of iron. Beauport Park in Sussex was producing hundreds of times more in the Roman period. Iron production declined elsewhere in Europe as well after the second and third centuries, probably to around 10% of its original level. But in Britain it effectively vanished, along with the industrial communities carrying out the work, and their skills-base. Instead, metal was scavenged: iron clamps from the Roman baths at Bath were hacked out about 400-450, and a late C4 cache of scavenged lead has been found in Northamptonshire. Robin was suggesting that votive offerings from shrines were probably also scavenged. Another sign of this scavenging is that the metallurgy of early Anglo-Saxon objects made of copper/bronze/brass is very variable, depending on what was in the mix they'd been able to recycle. One of the key points that Robin made is that while recycled iron is fine for most things, it's not good for sharp objects. As a result, while a lot of knives have been found in graves, they're poor quality. There are more swords surviving from the C6 and C7, especially in Kent and they're often made with quite complex iron alloys that English swordsmiths couldn't have produced. Robin suggested that it was these people with access to imports who became able to gain more surplus from others and thus increase their wealth, though she admitted it was also a chicken and egg situation. By C7 there were specialist smithing sites developing again in Britain, but there were some technologies that still took a long time to recover. Woodworking saws were a loss technology until the C12, with all surviving boards from before then axe-cut. Robin's talk provided yet more food for thought in the never-ending Fall of Rome debate. On the one hand, it rather scuppers the happy peasant idea of the post-Roman optimists, like Chris Wickham. Just because the elites are taking less from you doesn't necessarily mean you're better off, and in particular, I suspect crappily inadequate blades would

literally blunt your enthusiasm and your productive skills. On the other hand, it once again confirms that post-Roman Britain is an outlier, and the dangers of generalising from that to the fate of the whole of the Roman Empire. It's also interesting because it's precisely from Britain that we can see particularly clearly the signs of economic revival in the seventh century, as a later paper from the day would show. After this, I spent most of the rest of the day hearing about gifts, as part of a mammoth series of session organised by King's College London. The sessions were: Gift-Giving, I: Gift-Giving and the Early Middle Ages Paper 121-a Gifts: classical legacies/timeless pathologies: three preachable moments and a gift horse Danuta Shanzer, Institut fr Klassische Philologie, Mittel- und Neulatein, Universitt Wien / Dumbarton Oaks, Washington DC Paper 121-b The Gift of the Elephant: On the Meanings of Abulabaz Paul M. Cobb, Department of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations, University of Pennsylvania Paper 121-c Voluntary Enslavement: From Self-Sale to Self-GiftAlice Rio, Department of History, King's College London Gift-Giving, II: Gift-Giving and Objects Paper 221-a Offering Brooches to the Dead: The Changing Gendered Value of a Gift between Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages Irene Barbiera, Dipartimento di Storia, Universit degli Studi di Padova Paper 221-b Making the World Go Round?: Coinage and Gift in Early Medieval England and Francia (c. 675-900) Rory Naismith, Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge Paper 221-c The Star Cloak of the Emperor Henry II Stuart Airlie, School of Humanities, University of Glasgow I particularly enjoyed the first session, which commenced with a breathless dash through ideas of the gift by Danuta Shanzer. She started out by saying that good gifts were all alike in some ways, which was boring, and that what she was interested in was possible pathologies. She then sketched out the minimal set of data that we'd like to know for each gift occasion: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. The contemporary value of the gift Its nature Whether publicly given or not Whether it was an appropriate gift Whether it was solicited or not The relationship between the giver and receiver The giver's motivation The receiver's reaction Sequel

After a brief reminder of the classic O. Henry story The Gift of the Magi in which a wife secretly sells her long hair to buy a watch chain for her husband, while he in turn sells his watch to buy her a comb, we then got a rapid tour of some of the bizarre vagaries of classical and late antique gift-giving, including: Ruricius of Limoges (Epistola 2-5) sending 'the best gift', which could be given and yet not lost, a gift which turns out to be the letter itself (the text of which he then reuses in another letter). Fronto, Ep. graec 5, who gets sent 2 slaves. He says this is too great a gift for him, and therefore the only possible countergift he can give is to return the slaves. Seneca and Martial complaining about tactless or aggressive gifts: sending wine to a drunkard, a shawl with the inscription: 'I dread busty women' (?) Venantius Fortunatus's poem (11.114) on the joy of receiving a milk-pudding with Agnes' fingerprint in it (sentiment here obviously outweighing hygiene) Jerome's tendency to send 'squelching exegesis' in letters replying to the gifts he received from women (Epistola 31 and Epistola 44), explaining how unsuitable the gifts were. (This confirmed once again all my prejudices about Jerome). Finally, we got back to Ruricius of Limoges and a letter of his (Epistola 2-35) recommending a paragon of horse he'd sent to Sedatus of Nimes, as big enough to carry him. In reply, we have a joking letter from Sedatus saying the horse is recalcitrant. As Danuta pointed out, how do we judge the tone of this exchange: what was the horse really like? And

what about when this description of a horse was reused in the C9 in a letter of Antonius of Brescia to Salomon II of Constance? (MGH Formulae p 421, Collectio Sangallensis 39). Is this an obscure literary joke about gift horses or what? How do we get at the realia behind the intertext? In contrast to these gifts dissolving into literary effect, we then got a very tangible gift, and one for which, unusually for the early Middle Ages, we may actually have almost Danuta's proposed minimal set of desired data. This was the gift of the elephant Abulabaz by Harun al-Rashid to Charlemagne in around 800. We know quite a lot about the gift from Frankish sources, but it's not mentioned in Arabic sources. Nevertheless, what Paul Cobb was doing was looking at the meaning of such a gift in the Islamic world. Muslim rulers didn't use elephants in war, unlike earlier Persian rulers. Instead, elephants were a gift for kings, with sources such as the "Book of Animals" building on Greek and Roman elephant lore to say that elephants signified kingship and relating the belief that elephants can sniff out kings in disguise. Cobb also brought up the significance of the elephant in the Koran: Sura 105 is called 'The Elephant', and refers to the story of the Year of the Elephant in which the Christian king of Yemen attempted to destroy the Kaaba in Mecca, but instead the elephant he was riding bowed before the walls of Mecca. The name of the elephant was Mahmood, one of its technonym was Abulabaz, probably the same name as Charlemagne's elephant (although there are queries with transcriptions of the name). Was there a hidden message in the name of the gift about Islamic theology? Was this a slightly passive-aggressive gift like some of those that Danuta described? Cobb concluded by saying how the gift, which Charlemagne specifically requested, showed the common roots of Western and Islamic culture in the post-Roman world: Harun was perhaps less civilised than we like to pretend and Charlemagne more so; both were fluent in the language of late antiquity kingship. The morning session concluded with an outstanding paper by Alice Rio, which started from a long discussion from the Edict of Pitres 864 on self-sale, in which Charles the Bald (or, as I suspect, Hincmar) discussed Roman and Biblical texts on the matter. As Alice pointed out, Charles had to scramble around for Roman legal texts which made the point he wanted, because most Roman law was extremely hostile to self-sale. Selling oneself into slavery was illegal in Roman law, but also a profoundly perverse act: the punishment for self-sale was, in fact, remaining a slave, because the act had revealed a character flaw that meant one was naturally servile. This view was changed by Christianity's increased moral valorization of slavery: indeed, a couple of late antique holy men even sold themselves (St Peter the Tax Collector and St Serapion). Late antique moralists, such as Salvian tended to see self-sellers as victims and their buyers as oppressors of the poor. In contrast, Charles the Bald sees buying a self-seller as a charitable act, and Alice then traced differing discourses of self-sale through to the Marmoutier book of serfs in C11. On the one hand, there was the charitable idea of the buyer as taking someone destitute into service. On the other, from the mid-eight century in Farfa, we can see charters in which self-giving (the emphasis on the financial side of the sale is dropped), is seen as a honourable Christian gift. Who was doing the favour for whom then became the question: by the time of the Marmoutier texts, both the gift aspect and the extreme poverty were stressed, making both seller and buyer of the new unfree person look good. Alice admitted that this change from the idea of self-sale to self-gift probably didn't make much difference in practice, but the results in symbolic capital were very different. After lunch, we had the second session, on gifts as objects, which I found less satisfying. For me it confirmed that archaeology, which is superb evidence for some aspects of early medieval life (as Robin Fleming showed) is less effective for a topic where so much resides in specific and contested meanings. We started with a paper by Irene Barbiera that I found slightly hard to follow, so apologies if my summary isn't clear. It was also a little uncomfortable as a fit into the session, but quite interesting in itself, as a discussion of gender and brooches in early north Italian graves (from the 1st century BC to the ninth century). Partly this confirmed a point made by Guy Halsall's work on gender and burials, that grave goods aren't a simple reflection of sex. For example, whereas in the first century BC, brooches of the same type were found in both male and female graves, there was a lack of brooches in male graves after the C5, even though both sexes still used brooches, Barbiera had also been looking at texts for the term 'fibula', often used for a brooch (though it could also mean beltbuckle). It could be used for either a male or female dress item and she suggested it was used more for male items in C2-C4 and C8-C10, but about equally for both in C5-C7. Male brooches had become a symbol of authority from late antiquity, and remained so into the early Middle Ages. If the fibula was still being conceptualised as a male dress ornament, why did it only appear in female graves, she wondered? She had also discovered that fibulae associated with women were more often referred to as either gold or as a gift in texts from C5-C10, and was arguing that fibulae were becoming a mark of femininity and of treasure in the period, placing owners within a social network. The

increasing value of brooches as gifts (I wasn't clear if she was talking about male, female or both here) meant, she argued that they were becoming too valuable to place in graves. The second paper was from my colleague, Rory Naismith on coins and gift-giving. The first part of this was countering Philip Grierson's influential argument (in 'Commerce in the Dark Ages: a critique of the evidence', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 5th series, 9 (1959), 123-140) that there was relatively little commerce in the early medieval period, and that much of what we thought was evidence of trade might actually be gift-giving. Rory was reminding us that the numismatic evidence from southern England made this implausible: we've now got over 3,500 single finds of coins from the late C7 onwards. (This was also a useful reminder that England may have crashed hard in the postRoman period, but it did clearly revive more quickly than we might realise from the textual evidence alone). In the second part of his paper, he looked briefly at textual evidence, mainly from hagiography, for the use of coins even by relatively low-status peasants. But this shouldn't be seen as evidence for a purely market economy. Church sites, for example, aren't necessarily noted for their coin finds, even though they're important drivers of local economies. Finally Rory looked at the symbolic role of coins, pointing out how when Anglo-Saxon charters refer to money, it's overwhelmingly gold that's mentioned, even though the Anglo-Saxon economy is largely dominated by silver coins. Coins were still something more than just money, something that could still be special enough for gift-giving, like Offa's imitation of a gold dinar, donated to the Pope. There was a move away from the gift-economy in the period, but it wasn't yet a total shift.

The session ended with Stuart Airlie on the star cloak of Henry II of Germany preserved at Bamberg Cathedral. As Stuart pointed out, there were obvious meanings to this cloak, but also some questions about it. With its images of Christ and the zodiac, it speaks of Henry as lord of the cosmos, and brings parallels to a similar cloak owned by Otto III. But though it's easy to see it as a 'symbol of state', was there really a state for it be a symbol of? Were the designs and the inscriptions meaningful, or the equivalent of Offa's imitation of Arabic writing on his dinar? We don't know whether Henry II ever wore the cloak. It was the gift of Duke Meles of Bari: was it intended mainly for Bamberg, where it ended up, a gift to be given through Henry, rather than to him? It was remembered there as the gift of Melis rather than of the emperor until the C12, when the gift's meaning retrospectively shifted. As Stuart commented at the end of his talk and it's a good summary for the whole two sessions: we're talking about 'a solid object from a very fluid world'.

If I were inclined to argue with Chris Wickham

POSTED BY JONATHAN JARRETT | 27 JULY 2011 Well, no, hang on, I am inclined to do that, no subjunctive necessary. I do it about the salt trade and about aristocrats and I do it more or less in sport, because ultimately Chris has read about two hundred times more than I have and just has a better basis for being right about what he says than I do except on a very few topics. But, if while chomping avidly through Framing The Early Middle Ages I had stumbled on such things where I know enough to wonder about alternatives, you understand, and had thought about it a bit and still not quite resolved them, they would be these. Supply and Demand This has been on my mind a bit lately because of arguing with both Guy Halsall and Chris about the effect of climate change on the medieval economy. I, seeing as has Fredric Cheyette (so I have good company) that the new climate data on the Medieval Climatic Anomaly makes the rise in temperature up to and beyond the year 1000 ever more evident, have assumed that this must have meant more surplus, thus more resource for those able to appropriate surplus, and thus simultaneously more options on how to spend for those people and also more competition for them, as suddenly extra people can get into the game. I actually think this still floats, but there is an important point which Chriss work should have warned me about, that being that this surplus only grows if someone wants it; otherwise, as Chris has legendarily put it, the peasants would just eat more and work less.1 I think we could find entrepreneurial peasants, here and there, but the point needs defending at least. I have been thinking purely in terms of supply; Chris, arguably, has considered demand far far more important. Now, Chris puts quite a lot of weight in Framing on the breakdown of economic systems based on the Roman market economy; with no supply, the demand for either basic substances (or, if youre instead Guy Halsall, for example, and consider luxury trade anything more than marginal, luxuries that you as local leader deploy to maintain your position) cant be met, and anyone with importance who wants to keep it has to reconfigure it hugely.2 The collapse, for both Chris and Guy, is supply-driven. On the other hand, when the economy recovers and complex polities are built again, its not because of a change in supply, for Chris, its because the polities themselves drive the economy. He can do this without being inconsistent because for him the Roman economy was also driven by the state, so the supply that collapses was created by a previous demand, and I see the point but nonetheless theres a chicken-and-egg Roman-period olive press at Capernaum, Israel (from problem at the recovery end of the process; do the aristocrats Wikimedia Commons) see that the land could grow more, and work out how to make peasants do that, or do they see rich peasants and think, how can I use that? Surely the latter, since Chris himself argues that agronomy was not the pursuit of more than a slightly odd subset of the Roman lite.3 So, surely thats supply-led not demand-led. I think there may be scope for argument here. Warleadership as a non-material resource More briefly, because it implicates less of my own thinking: in Chapter 6 of Framing, Chris discusses the resources available to rulers of a tribal polity, or rather, of tribal polities in the process of becoming what he terms states.4 (Magistra has covered all this terminology-chopping, which is necessary and substantive but which I dont want to repeat, better than I am therefore going to.) These include trade tolls, for some, tribute of course, a marginal amount of judicial income and revenue from landownership. He also mentions booty taken in war but thinks this too is marginal. Well, OK, yes, it probably is, but there was something important about being able to get hundreds of men to come on campaign with you anyway, especially if they fed themselves; one could even say that since they were then using their surplus to your greater cause, this is a material income, but Im more interested in the non-material side, the authority that ruler could claim and deploy. I think this is important because it distinguishes between polities that Chris classes as similar, Wales, Ireland, Norway or Frisia, Denmark and the non-Mercian English kingdoms. Its always hard to measure army sizes, we know this (again it is useful to put Chris and Guy together here, as they are once again mostly in agreement but interested in different things), but Norway seems to have had quite a lot of its population militarised at some points, and sometimes Wales could raise armies that can take on Northumbria, and

then ever after it could not.5 Frisia didnt really have any army at all that we know of; that seems to be something its kings didnt get to do, perhaps because wealth was so distributed there via trade. Denmark absolutely did, however. And I would also add in the Picts, and in fact any militarised group from outside the Empire; they didnt have much political complexity, they may not even have had any kind of stable rulership, but they could raise enough men in arms to take on the Roman Empires local manifestations. I dont think this was economically important, myself, but I think that a king who could lead an army of maybe a thousand or even five thousand men in times of real need, and even more so if not times of real need, was playing in a different league than one who could raise, well, 300 heroes after a years feasting, especially if those two then face off against each other. He could do more things. He could probably build dykes and so on, but he could also defend larger areas (because he presumably called troops from them). Its not negligible just because he didnt increase his personal resources from it. (And after all, the Carolingians found a way to turn that obligation into money.6) Thats an argument I could have, too. Breakdown and Build-up in Britain The sections of Framing on sub-Roman Britain are probably the most provocative bits, because it is certainly true that often the outsider sees most of the game; few people are better-placed than Chris to spot what looks odd and, well, insular, about a national scholarship.7 Using this perspective as leverage, he argues for a rapid and almost total breakdown of political organisation in Britain, down to tiny levels, 100-hide and 300-hide units, that then recombine. I am fine with this for the becoming-English lowlands, and Chris argues therefore that British polities there must have been equally tiny or the English could have never got established, and that by extension this must apply to the more outlying British polities. I dont like this quite so well. The outlying ones, profiting from the fact that they still had a Roman-facing seaboard in some sense, were for a while richer than the lowland zones, most would agree; Tintagel and Dinas Powys and Dumbarton may have been tiny-grade compared to a Continental aristocracy, but in their context they were major players (Dinas less so, but stay with me).8 Surely these should have started large (if not sophisticated) and broken down, not collapsed into fragments and been reassembled? They were far enough from the eastern seaboard that changes there and next-door to Neustria would be beyond their reach, but the same is also true in reverse, the tiny polities of the incipient North Sea zone are far from the Atlantic trade-routes and the polities that profit from them. Its only once the English kingdoms had built up a bit, at which point they had the North Sea working for them and could thus start to become rich themselves while the Mediterranean links were finally dying out for the British, that the once-big-kingdoms of the now-Welsh were directly opposed to the English.9 Once that began, too, its not clear in all cases that the English were superior; Urien of Rheged managed to pen the king of Bernicia up on an island off the coast, for example, that Anglian kingdom effectively reduced briefly to a few acres. Bernicia was no match for the hegemony Rheged briefly had. Was it a stable unit, no, but neither was Bernicia. Rheged there marched with several other kingdoms, so there was assemblage going on, but do the blocks here have to have been tiny? It retained a bishopric, after all.10 I see no need for the tiny-then-bigger pattern to be true for the whole island.

Map of the lathes and hundreds of Kent; note the big divisions west versus the small chopped-up ones east

I would go further, and say that one model wont do here anyway, even in the lowland zones. Every piece of local comparative work that gets done in England seems to stress variation. East Kent did not form like West Kent; one hundred in Suffolk is not like another it goes on and on.11 Some of these places do seem to see new settlement that becomes determinant of their identity, but we can think of other ways too. The written sources even nudge at them a little bit. Mostly the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says that such and such a royal line arrived in three ships and defeated the Britons who resisted their arrival at a place thats now named after them. This is self-evidently a trope but it at least tells us that the royal line later on had a tradition that theyd come from outside. The sources, such as they are, dont

do this for Bernicia, just saying that Ida took the kingdom, and Im not the first person to use this and the archology to suggest that Bernicia, which after all is an Anglian kingdom with a Celtic name, was more of a takeover by its own military (who presumably identified as Anglians, however many things that might actually have meant in terms of extraction or origin) than a settlement.12 Not exactly lowland, you may say, and fair enough but there are similar things that can be said about London and maybe Lincoln. With Lincoln its just an argument based on a series of kings of Lindsey with apparently-British names but with London, where there is confusing archology and no textual evidence of any kind between 457 and 600, the argument is based on a ring of early place-names, all at places that were never very large (Braughing, Bengeo, Mimms, Yeading, Tottenham, Twickenham, Ealing, Harrow and so on), more or less circling the town, which the person who was making this argument, Keith Bailey, suggested might show an orchestrated establishment of settlers as a kind of perimeter defence. That then implies some unit of a considerable size, presumably centred on the old Roman city, but then so does the term Middlesex, which was already not a kingdom or a recognisable people (at least not one that Bede thought worth mentioning) by 600, because by then London was in Essex and the King of Kent held property in it.13 But it obviously had been, or thered be no name.

Early settlements around London in the Anglo-Saxon period, from Keith Bailey's "The Middle Angles"

So, in this paradigm, small-scale settlement and large political units might go together, albeit, I will admit, not for very long. But thats what Im talking about: British breakdown and Anglo-Saxon build-up at the same time. I use those ethnicity terms as if they meant something, but with this kind of process going on I doubt any outsider would have been able to tell the difference between British and English in areas like this; it would be a political affiliation, based perhaps on what king you did military service for, something which you might be able to change a few times if you were clever. I suspect that concern with ethnicity and origins was more of an issue for the leaders, who would need it to justify their position, than the rank and file, until one such ethnicity became clearly dominant in an area and it was necessary to belong. Anyway: this is anything but socio-economic analysis, I realise, and perhaps to make such comment is only to recognise that Chris wasnt, despite the size of the book, trying to solve the entire problem of the Transformation of the Roman World (as you might call it) in one go. He also invites the reader to consider, before really getting going, whether any quarrels they might have would damage the argument of the book.14 I dont pretend that Ive raised any such issues (and if I thought I had such issues to raise, I wouldnt do it via blog-posts). Its just some extra possibilities that might add a few spots of seasoning to a thoroughly nourishing book. Some dessert will follow in another post.

1. In his Problems of Comparing Rural Societies in Early Medieval Western Europe in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th Series Vol. 2 (Cambridge 1992), pp. 221-246, rev. in idem, Land and Power: studies in Italian and European social history, 400-1200 (London 1994), pp. 201-226, at p. 224 of the reprint. 2. Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean, 400-800(Oxford 2005), pp. 72-80 but also passim; as with any comparative work this one is difficult to cite well because the same themes come up again and again. A clearer statement of this point could be found in Wickham, Marx, Sherlock Holmes, and Late Roman Commerce in Journal of Roman Studies Vol. 78 (London 1988), pp. 182-193, rev. in idem, Land and Power, pp. 77-98. Cf. Guy Halsall, Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West, 376-568, Cambridge Medieval Textbooks (Cambridge 2007), pp. 112-137 & esp. p. 124. 3. Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages, pp. 268-272. 4. Ibid., pp. 303-379, definitions addressed at pp. 303-306. 5. Here the Halsall comparison would better come from Guy Halsall, Warfare and Society in the Barnarian West 450-900 (London 2003), pp. 119-133. For Norway Im thinking of the First Viking Age (classically described in Peter Sawyer, The Age of the Vikings, 2nd edn. (London 1971)) and for Wales Im thinking of when King Cdwallon of Gwynedd killed King Edwin of Northumbria in 633. 6. Described very well, albeit with the ideological bent youd expect from sixties East Berlin scholarship (or rather, that the establishment demanded from it) in Eckhard Mller-Mertens, Karl der Grosse, Ludwig der Fromme, und die Freien. Wer waren die Liberi Homines der Karolingischen Kapitularien (742/743-832)? Ein Beitrag zur Sozialgeschichte und Sozialpolitik des Frankenreiches, Forschungen zur Mittelalterlichen Geschichte 10 (Berlin 1963). 7. Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages, pp. 306-333 & 339-364 (to which cf. Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, pp. 311-319 & 357-368); see also the sweeping but careful description of national historiographies in Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages, pp. 1-5. 8. Halsall as above and Leslie Alcock, Kings & Warriors, Craftsmen & Priests in Northern Britain AD 550-850, Society of Antiquaries of Scotland Monographs (Edinburgh 2003), pp. 83-93. 9. Richard Hodges, King Arthurs Britain and the End of the Western Roman Empire in idem, Goodbye to the Vikings? ReReading Early Medieval Archaeology (London 2006), pp. 28-38. 10. M. R. McCarthy, Thomas, Chadwick and post-Roman Carlisle in Susan M. Pearce (ed.), The Early Church in Western Britain and Ireland: studies presented to C. A. Ralegh Radford arising from a conference organised in his honour by the Devon Archaeological Society and Exeter City Museum, British Archaeological Reports (British Series) 102 (Oxford 1982), pp. 241256. 11. Kent: Nicholas Brooks, The Creation and Early Structure of the Kingdom of Kent in Stephen Bassett (ed.), The Origins of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms (Leicester 1989), pp. 56-74 esp. pp. 67-74, and now Stuart Brookes, The lathes of Kent: a review of the evidence in Brookes, S. Harrington and Andrew Reynolds (edd.), Studies in Early Anglo-Saxon Art and Archaeology: Papers in Honour of Martin G. Welch, British Archaeological Reports (British Series) 527 (Oxford 2011), pp. 156-170 (non vidi, but I saw a Leeds paper using some of what I assume is the same research that pointed this way). Suffolk: Peter Warner, PreConquest Territorial and Administrative Organization in East Suffolk in Della Hooke (ed.), Anglo-Saxon Settlements (Oxford 1988), pp. 9-34. 12. That person, as far as I know, would be Brian Hope-Taylor in his Yeavering: an Anglo-British Centre of early Northumbria (London 1977), pp. 276-324; cf. David N. Dumville, The origins of Northumbria: some aspects of the British background in Bassett, Origins of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms, pp. 213-222. 13. Londons archology is ever-changing but the best recent synthesis I know is Alan Vince, Saxon London: an archaeological investigation (London 1990). This argument, however, and the following graphic, are more or less lifted entire from Keith Bailey, The Middle Saxons, in Bassett, Origins of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms, pp. 108-122, the map being fig. 8.2. Im slightly disturbed to see that his cite for the idea of orchestrated settlement is John Morris, to wit Londonium: London in the Roman Empire (London 1982, rev. edn. 1998), p. 334 of the 1st edn., cit. Bailey. Middle Saxons, pp. 112-113 n. 52, but despite Morriss well-known oddity this seems to be a bit that makes sense, to me. On Lindsey, since you already have the volume out by now, see Bruce Eagles, Lindsey in Bassett, Origins of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms, pp. 202-212. 14. Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages, p. 9.

Responses:
Curt Emanuel Says: This is a really good post and Ive been trying to figure out how to reply without it turning into a post of my own. Im pretty much in the demand-generation camp myself not much good producing something nobody wants. But I dont think its universal. Im less convinced that polities were as complete economic drivers as Wickham suggests. At the elite level this seems to be largely true but Im less convinced of this for exchange lower on the food chain. Even for Rome there appears to have been a lot of movement of items in regional networks between, say, Germanic auxiliaries living West of the Rhine and those living on the East side without the Empire having much to do with it, excepting the fact of moving the auxiliary to join the military. Not that I could hope to hold my own with him in an argument. I should probably re-read _Framing_ and brush up on the details. Related to luxury items, Florin Curta had an interesting article, The Amber Trail in Early Medieval Europe, in Celia Chazelle and Felice Lifshitz, eds., New York: Palgrave MacMillan (2007). In it he argues that the amber trade substantially involved giftgiving rather than commercial exchange and suggests that the movement of other luxury items may often have been gifts and should be explored further. Curt Emanuel Says: Knew I was forgetting something. the title of Chazelle and Lifshitz is _Paradigms and Methods in Early Medieval Studies_.

Jonathan Jarrett Says: Ah yes, Ive not seen it but I remember thinking that it was odd how much basically empirical stuff there was in the volume given the waffly theoretical title. Professor Curta is of course there pursuing what I now think of as The Grierson Objection, and therefore I am sympathetic already, but Ill have to have a look. Its really difficult, I think, to get our twenty-first century heads round the economics of commercial exchange in the early Middle Ages, because the advent of advertising and mass media separates us from the early medieval buying public. Its all very well that Ipswich is producing these, hey, really nice tablewares, better than what the chap in the next village makes I mean those hardly stand up! and so on, but how do people find out? Presumably some merchant takes a punt on being able to sell them, but for something with a spread like Ipswich Ware, theres a massively parallel mechanism going on; can it really just be slow capillary take-up and fashion transfer or is there actually some marketing going on? How much can a producer in this epoch do to stimulate demand, in other words? I dont think weve actually theorised exchange and commerce enough yet that we can really rule on supply vs. demand except in really obvious cases like the annona and military supply (where we have evidence for that). Curt Emanuel Says: Ive often wondered if, from the supply-side, an elite might receive a gift, his or her social circle then sees it, and they start with the Where did you get that? line of inquiry which eventually results in a market and exchange network. Unfortunately, this kind of origin and evolution doesnt show up in the sources very well. Now if every Carolingian Count had ended up with an elephant in his backyard within a few years of Charlemagne receiving his wed have much clearer evidence of this sort of development! Jonathan Jarrett Says: That is the obvious answer, isnt it, but I wonder how well it scales up, how it works at non-lite levels (as with the pottery) and exactly what the agencies are. There is presumably some anthropological work on this that could be exploited, I must ask my Anthropologist of Resort. Kath Says: Nice juicy main course here: many thanks. (I knew I should have bought that book while it was 50% off, but it is such a brick and theres only so much room in a suitcase unless youre Mary Poppins.) A couple of thoughts occur, in not-nearly-as fleshedout form as yours, but nonetheless. First, re. climate and I think you may have made some of these points yourself elsewhere that climate change doesnt occur evenly and similarly everywhere, so we have to take care in making the grand argument from localized archaeological and other scientific data. However, in general I buy the argument that climate and environment are elements of the wholistic system affecting human society, including its agricultural and economic facets. (If I get the courage, I may even go over to The Edge and get between you and Guy as the nominated science person on this one Or not Anyway.) Putting the two together, should we not consider the possibilities that local effects of warming (or whatever) were decreased production potential coupling supply/demand and climate differently from the ways you and others have been assuming? Im not across the specific evidence, and I admit this is a purely hypothetical musing, but worth a moments pause? Second, re. sub-Roman Britain localised differences in economic collapse were part of the excellent plenary given at the IMC by Robin Fleming were you there? If not, Ill look out my notes for you in due course, and in any case much of it may have come from her _Britain After Rome_, but I hazard the statement that the material culture approach she put forward supports your suggestion that tiny-then-bigger will not do as a universal model. Looking forward to dessert. :) Jonathan Jarrett Says: Im not sure anyone should try and get between me and Guy when theres an actual argument going! But it is feasible that science might help; I am trying to stay up with it as a layman, at least a little bit, not least because I have some investment in what the next generation has to face and Im hoping it wont be too bad yet Local variation, yes, absolutely, I have indeed touched on this before and we are seeing it now in Catalonia with the Torres wineries moving off the plains of Peneds where they can no longer really grow vines and back into the mountains where the vines grew in the eleventh century. They of course have that option but for a peasant family or even a local lord seeing the land cease to yield would have been a rather nastier experience and Im sure some people are on the end of it there even now, and if not of course we could point at large dustbowl parts of Kenya etc. I didnt see Professor Flemings plenary, I had a meeting instead alas, but I guessed from the title that it probably bore close resemblance to the IHR paper I saw her give a little while ago. What you now say however makes me think differently and I will have to make that book an actual priority, at least before I give the relevant lecture again! Thank you as ever for the careful thinking in the feedback! Kath Says: Now you have me worried that the *localised* aspects of the metal recycling phenomenon really only came up in questions and not in the main address However, back to the book, and all will no doubt be revealed!

Jonathan Jarrett Says: Thats got to be very difficult, though, because its resource-dependent. Only areas that had lots of Roman stone and metal bracing, and Roman ceramics, in the first place will show extensive reuse, presumably. Though it would be fascinating (and another way to argue with Chris) if it were otherwise badonicus Says: Very interesting post Jonathan. Must buy the book now. Jonathan Jarrett Says: Its a bit of a monster; I took a lot longer to start reading it than I did to buy it. Worth it, absolutely, but a task one must live with for a while. badonicus Says: My kind of book! Itll have to join the list though. Carl Anderson Says: I am absolutely on-board for simultaneous break-down and build-up, as well as stressing variation. It seems to me almost curious that people still kick around rather monolithic models Oh, well, perhaps Roman Britain became Anglo-Saxon Britain like _this_ when in practice it all seems to have been a bit of a mess, fashioned into something (by the later Welsh, or the later English, or any of us now, whoever we are) that looks more orderly in hindsight. And speaking of hindsight, I would also even wonder if concern with ethnicity and origins was more of an issue for the leaders, or at least if leaders had any concern for ethnicity and origins beyond the relatively immediately personal or familial. What you want as a warlord, after all, is a group of retainers who buy-in to your personal myth of leadership regardless of where they are or their parents were from. Sure, if I am an English-speaking (or British-speaking) warlord, I will find it convenient and practical that all my followers buy-in to my language in the hall or on the battlefield but that may be about the end of it. After all, such glimpses of the heroic age life that British or Germanic poetry reveal suggest that any given early Germanic or Celtic leader quite probably had a relatively pluri-tribal band of retainers and in post-Roman Britain, that is (IMO) likely to have often meant a band of people with perhaps quite different first languages (Archaic Neo-Brittonic, to use Kochs term, or some Late NWGmc dialect or Mischdialekt). The whole Celt v. Saxon ethnic thing with which we think we are familiar may not be entirely without foundation in the period, but one gets the sense that it became more of a trope for writers in later Wales once power blocks were larger, say in the 9th-10th centuries, and then way over-amplified by Romantically Nationally crazed 19th-century types. Thats, of course, all sort of off the cuff and probably lacking in the kind of memory jogs that additional coffee would provide, but, anyway .. :) Jonathan Jarrett Says: The whole Celt v. Saxon ethnic thing with which we think we are familiar may not be entirely without foundation in the period I am beginning to decide, privately you understand, that really the key difference is: mead or beer in the hall? Mead, youre British, beer, youre English. Wine, you would like to still be Roman; what are you even doing in a hall? Thats all there is to it. When mead starts to come up in Anglo-Saxon texts, like the Battle of Maldon, then you know the populations have assimilated. Problem solved! Im just waiting for the archology funding to roll in Carl Anderson Says: I could find it within myself to participate in that research. :) Hmmm, would such identity-proclaiming drink choices amongst actors in post-Roman Britain be reflected in identityproclaiming drink choices amongst modern researchers .? Or is there no correspondence in the strategies of studied and studiers? :) Jonathan Jarrett Says: I have observed before now though not under strict experimental conditions that there is some element of disciplinary preference as to alcohol. I find literature types and European-focussed medievalists more likely to be drinking wine, AngloSaxonists and high medieval English types, plus also archologists, more likely to be on the beer, and anthropologists likely to be drinking anything they can find that youve never heard of. Scientists will probably be on weird spirits cocktails. Now, here

again, this could just be my own weakness for generalisation, and I think the observational data needs checking with a deliberate program of investigation But the wine-beer thing does seem to correlate! Carl Anderson Says: Hmm, one limitation could be a skewing of results due to a general lack of mead in contemporary contexts. Wed need to look for a workaround of some sort! Jonathan Jarrett Says: Its true, mead is rare enough that there does tend to be a rush for it when its available whatever the context. We would have to have a series of fully-funded open bars arranged in a variety of academic contexts. And of course careful quality-testing would be needed to make sure that peoples natural preferences werent being interfered with by the produce itself Kath Says: Im all for a systematic program of research into this matter but then, I would be. ;p Dunno about the scientist-cocktail thing. Doesnt apply to physiologists of my acquaintance. And the high-medieval/beer thing is really only true of me in pubs, where the beer is likely to be decent, and the wine is likely to be more or less undrinkable (We need to control for regional and/or national background, since Melbournites are frequently [if not invariably] wine snobs) But then, these are merely anecdotal data! What we need is some kind of double blind arrangement of medievalists from all corners of the globe in a room full of tasty drinks in which choices are plotted against individuals _before_ their discipline is revealed, and complicated statistical overlays applied to allow for such confounding variables. Theres got to be a grant somewhere in the world that would fund us to set this up! Allons-y! Jonathan Jarrett Says: Id add only that I think science!, science I say, requires numerous repetitions of this exercise to amass a reasonable sample size. Lets not explain away the data before we have any! Kath Says: Aye aye. A gathering we must go! Carl Edlund Anderson Says: Indeed, as early medievalists, it would be more appropriate to wait until we have the data before explaining it away. And I can imagine a great deal of explaining might be required after the amassing of this data. :) badonicus Says: Im sure you could get some breweries behind you. Fabio Paolo Barbieri Says: War leadership WAS an economic resource. Can you read Italian? If so, get hold of a copy of AA Sattias Rapine, assedi, battaglie: la guerra nel Medio Evo, which shows that the main activity of mediaeval war was plunder, and that while the impact over the whole of Europe was probably negative victorious campaigns were also wholly positive events for those who took part in them, economically speaking. It is a masterpiece and a game-changer in terms of the whole way of thinking about war in mediaeval times, and I find it tragic that it has not been translated into English. It makes obsolete practically everything that is being written about mediaeval war even now. Jonathan Jarrett Says: Im not denying the economic importance of warfare at all, though I think for the period at issue here it is very hard to measure except in cattle. There is also work stressing this point in English, especially by Timothy Reuter and Guy Halsall, so its not a new point of view to me. The point I was trying to make here was, if youll forgive me going all Bordieu, that the symbolic capital of war-leadership also needs considering when were talking about ability to dominate. My Italians probably not good enough to tackle Settias book but I ought at least to have a look. Fabio Paolo Barbieri Says: ,,,it is very hard to measure except in cattle. And your point is? If cattle is the measure of wealth, then cattle raiding is significant in itself and I would remind you that a whole class of Irish storytelling, including the native great epic, was

dedicated to Tains or cattle-raids. The historical Taliesin repeatedly praises his lords, Urien in particular, because they can raid anyone and no-one can raid them (Gwallawgs cattle was never seen in anothers pound). Remember that to measure wealth in gold, let alone in US Dollars, is as arbitrary as to measure it in beef. Jonathan Jarrett Says: Im not attempting to do so, but there is a shift from one to the other over the period. There is also lots of evidence of treasure both in texts and from the ground, and yet it is not what is stolen and looted, at least not in those same texts. Youre OK with Taliesins stories about Urien and not those of Nennius I see. I would obviously have to read you more deeply before I could really understand your use of the sources. Fabio Paolo Barbieri Says: I am certain you are wholly wrong about ethnicity in Britain, and not only because the hatred between British and English is written in the very earliest documents, beginning with Gildas and Bede. I have a lot more reasons, but to see them you would have to read through my whole online work on History of Britain, 407-597 and thats half a million words. I am not saying that you would be too lazy to check quite the opposite but you dont know me from Adam and as far as you are concerned I am probably a crank. Still, if you want to give it a try, here is the link: http://www.facesofarthur.org.uk/fabio/contents.htm Jonathan Jarrett Says: If you can generate half a million words on a period with so little evidence in it, you are working at a different level from me, thats for certain! However, I think that we should avoid thinking that hatred, even if expressed in ethnic terms, necessarily implies an actual ethnic difference. We could find similar modes of expression (and extreme antipathy) between modern football teams or the Constantinople chariot factions, where in both cases only expressed loyalty (and chosen dress) would make any difference visible. To instance another of the earliest documents, Y Gododdin, the host of 300 heroes there assembled comes from at least five different kingdoms in at least two different islands, kingdoms that would at other times fight each other just as readily. The host then attacks Deira, not the closer Bernicia, whereas the kings assembled under Urien of Rheged would attack Bernicia not Deira. If this was gens vs. gentem the targeting is extremely hard to explain. Strategy and opportunism, with appropriate `team names applied, makes better sense to me of the jumble of affiliations and loyalties we otherwise have to squeeze into an ethnic scheme. Fabio Paolo Barbieri Says: Urien of Rhegeds supposed assault on Bernicia I argue to be a much later legend written by someone who had no idea of sixth-century reality and of the differing ranks of British kings; but, again, I dont have the space to give a reason. And the different relationship between British and English as compared to the various hostilities and alliances within the two areas is evident not only in such events as Cadwallons attempted extermination of all the English north of the Humber for which Bede is both a reliable witness and by no means the only one but also in the native rhetoric on both sides. To be unable to see any difference between levels and depths of conflict is a disastrous modern trend that, for instance, leaves contemporaries unable to understand the real nature of Muslim internal and external politics, even where they have clear and succinct guides such as the Arabic proverb: Me against my brother; me and my brother against my cousin; but me, my brother and my cousin against the rest. Jonathan Jarrett Says: Urien of Rhegeds supposed assault on Bernicia I argue to be a much later legend written by someone who had no idea of sixth-century reality It cant be that much later, its referred to in the Welsh Triads. Would you re-date those too? Its not that I dont see any differences between the various levels of conflict; I simply dont see any basis to create a theory of practice (Bordieu again, sorry) such as your Muslim rule by which those levels might be described consistently. Could we find any such rule that wasnt honoured more ithe breach than thobservance? and if so, what basis would we have for generalising it to other groups? I think, meanwhile, that point about the multi-ethnic army of the Gododdin still presents a problem for your way of thinking that mine avoids, as does their apparent avoidance of Bernicia. Perhaps you also cover these issues in your work. Fabio Paolo Barbieri Says: And the Welsh Triads are how late? IIRC, the manuscripts that refer to them belong to the fourteenth century. There is certain evidence in them of forgetting and misunderstanding, not just of Gildasian-age events, but of events much later; that is the view of Rachel Bromwich herself. And it strikes me that you lay far too much emphasis on theory. If we have manuscripts in which hatred between Saxons and Wealhas is set out as a given, you have no right to reduce that to a minor phenomenon thanks to some theory or other; it is the theory that fails, not the evidence.

Jonathan Jarrett Says: It was also the view of the late Dr Bromwich that the core material of the two manuscripts was seventh- and ninth-century respectively, though, largely due to the replacement of figures of the Gildasian age, including Urien, by Arthur between the two recensions. As for theory, I may have misled by accidentally quoting Bordieu. I dont think Ive a theory here, whereas I find that an assumption that what we understand by a race or an ethnicity is what the sixth century understood by one is itself a theory and one that much work over the last twenty years has damaged. I for my part perceive a lot of evidence that I cant easily reconcile with a continuous and clear opposition of two parties for hundreds of years, especially at the beginning of a period in which the identities involved were still in formation. I also think that our evidence of such antipathy is for the lites, who actually fought each other (rather than the people who owned the cattle), and that we see, as I keep saying, in Y Gododdin especially but also with the alliance of Cadwallon and Penda or Beowulf or whatever heroic literature you care to invoke that such bands of professionals were formed of anyone who cared to take service with their leader, of whatever extraction. Again, a modern football team seems like a good analogy: Inter Milan is an Italian team wherever its players, or indeed managers, come from. I dont think that reading the texts this way does them violence; in fact, as I say, I think it makes them easier to reconcile with each other. But Ive said this three times now, and I dont think I can find a way of saying it that will convince you. Yours, from the Moon, Jonathan Jonathan Jarrett Says: Cadwallons attempted extermination of all the English north of the Humber I struggle considerably with this as a symptom of implacable ethnic opposition, you know, given that Cadwallon had Anglian allies from Mercia in his attack! Surely this is the textbook case of racial, and indeed religious, difference being put aside for strategic reasons! Fabio Paolo Barbieri Says: And Adolf Hitler allied himself with Stalin to destroy the Poles. So what? If Cadwallon had survived his little experiment in racially correct governance, I have little doubt that the Mercians would have been next on his list. Or maybe it might have been the men of Lindsey and East Anglia, who knows? What is certain is that English settlements were targeted for racial reasons because they were English; and that Cadwallons war did not spare women or children, not even to enslave them. Anyone who claims that this was not motivated by racial hate is living on the Moon; and anyone who claims that this was the rule of war in even the most savage of Dark Age periods is arguing against the evidence. As for why Cadwallon targeted Northumbria first, I have argued that he was by descent a Gododdin, from the eastern side of the old border, and that the new-risen kingdom of Northumbria (remember it was barely twenty years old) had devastated and conquered his ancestral lands. That is also surely why he was successful in his first assault: without a doubt, he had plenty of support from conquered Britons inside the borders of Edwins little empire. A passage in the Life of Wilfrid tells us that not only were there empty lands in Northumbria (after Cadwallons fall) that were still claimed by British monasteries and church bodies, but that there were so many that Wilfrid was able to have them for his new episcopal see of Ripon just for the asking. Carl Anderson Says: Frankly, I struggle to see a great deal of Celt vs. Saxon conflict in the sources that actually seems predicated on ethnic distinctions. Sure, people like Gildas were aware that Saxons could be distinguished from Britons, and it was doubtless easy enough to observe that having lots of Saxons banging about the place was not necessarily raising property values (yet), but Gildas save perhaps even more venom for erstwhile (and at least nominally) British leaders than he does for Saxons. And even in this case, one might imagine that the particular perspective of a vituperative British churchman might not have been the perspective of a mead-and/or-beer-swilling warlords retainer. The multi-ethnic Gododdin host is perhaps realistically on target for the period regardless of when we think it might be written. There were doubtless places that remained Britishspeaking or became English-speaking faster than others but warlords retainers were perhaps a pluri-national professional class who had a close on on where their bread was buttered (or, in the event, mead-and/or-beer was poured). One might well imagine that the hazy and inclusive archaeological evidence for fixing nationality indeed reflects a hazy and inconclusive reality. In contrast, I _do_ see more interest by later writers perhaps more often Welsh ones in Wales (and not, for example, Asser!) in viewing the past through ethnically tinted goggles. But thats really more in the vein of grumbling after the fact, IMO. Jonathan Jarrett Says: One might well imagine that the hazy and inclusive archaeological evidence for fixing nationality indeed reflects a hazy and inconclusive reality. Cor, thats a bit positivist isnt it? :-)

Carl Anderson Says: :) badonicus Says: Unless the Saxons did indeed slaughter thousands of British warriors and their descendants, I would have thought they had to have used Britons (and whomever else they could get their hands on) in their warbands. It may have been partially the reason why they were successful. Judging by the lack of Saxon cemeteries in the south, they either used Britons, or we just havent found these sites yet. However, there must have been regional (and civitates) variations in how the Saxons both operated and were perceived. There may indeed have been those who slaughtered and were known, feared and hated for it, and those who were accepted. This also must have changed from year to year or generation to generation. You may even have had leaders who worked on ethnically or religiously pure grounds (latter day Hitlers), and those that didnt give a hoot possibly the majority. Gildass perspective may have been from his own region (and history as it had been passed to him) and via word of mouth. If that word of mouth was from fellow churchmen then we can expect it to be skewed. Hes also not likely to mention anything other than slaughter to make his point. He may have experienced almost a generation of peace with the easterners before he wrote (depending on which date he did write DEB) and he was more concerned about civil war. He had to make the point about the enemy and their ever present threat as divine retribution to shake those kings out of their wicked ways. It doesnt mean what he said wasnt true, but its hard to discern just how true. There is also no way he would know the ethnic make-up of those that had been causing the trouble one and two generation before. Or if he did, by his time they would be Saxons no matter what their actual ethnic descendants were. Carl Anderson Says: Former day Hitlers, surely ? Unless rather grave temporal anomalies are involved! :) badonicus Says: Obviously wasnt wit it when I wrote that!!! Indeed, FORMER! doh! badonicus Says: Or WITH it when I wrote that reply! Historian on the Edge Says: I have two things to say. One is that booty in a specifically early medieval context (i.e. 5th-9th century) has been hugely overplayed. There are spectacular examples of booty making a real difference (Charlemagne vs. the Avars is the obvious one) but in most cases the movable wealth of the early medieval west was probably too low for enormous riches to be acquired by raiding the only way really to make money was y the very risky expedient of defeating the enemy army in battle. War was in my view more profitable in intangibles: patronage, promotion, entry into particular political circles, maintenance of positions dependent upon warrior ideologies. I expect I am only repeating what you are arguing, Jon, but in different words. The other point I wanted to make is that I think the idea of a binary struggle between Britons on one side and Saxons on the other finds little or no support in the sources. Largely it is a creation of writers from later in the early middle ages and specifically those writing their works at specific points in time. Its also part and parcel the local manifestation of the invasions myth, that the main feature of the C5th was warfare between invading barbarians and defending Romans, something for which there is almost no actual evidence. If the C5th was like this in Britain itd be the only part of the western empire where the 5th century was characterised by such a bipolar struggle. And we have no evidence at all to suggest that it was such an exception (largely because we have pretty much no evidence at all for C5th/6th political history in Britain). Such evidence as we have can be read in quite different ways not least for what it actually says rather than what people from the 8th century onwards thought it ought to be saying and so can the archaeology, once one shakes yourself free of the tyranny of the old narrative. I expect Im not surprising you here either My Worlds of Arthur book will try and set out some of these new ideas at greater length. Carl Edlund Anderson Says: I should like to click Like, but then were not on FaceBook here! :) Jonathan Jarrett Says: I do have the option of `Like buttons on this site but Ive always thought I would rather have people say something than silently stick up an anonymous electronic thumb. Would persons other than this Viking reprobate here be pleased to have them?

Carl Anderson Says: Probably not worth the effort unless you can get the buttons to display in Latin or other suitably 10th-century linguistic forms. :) I was just making dodgy Web 2.0 metareferences anyway. :) Jonathan Jarrett Says: When even Chaucer has to settle for modern French, I think that may be beyond me alas Jonathan Jarrett Says: It does sound as if were on roughly the same page here but then that isnt surprising because some of the pages Im on I took from the work of this Halsall fellow I am finding Barbarian Migrations a very useful foil to Chriss book, because while I think the Halsall and Wickham takes are not so very incompatible, they do address different questions and the things that are reckoned important from a particular phenomenon or episode differ between the books. Both of them make the other one easier to think about. badonicus Says: Whilst there are many criticisms of Stuart Laycocks book Britannia The Failed State, he makes an interesting point about the complete breakdown to small units before building back up to kingdoms, and that is that when they did build back up they just happen to go back to almost the same civitates boundaries they once were. As he says, its like smashing up a jigsaw puzzle, throwing it up in the air and having it come back down as the original puzzle. Any thoughts? Jonathan Jarrett Says: Id have to read it, but do we really know enough about where the civitas boundaries were to be able to say such a thing? Surely they were frequently adjusted, as were the provincial ones! I would admit we can see that civitas centres often recovered importance, but I dont think thats as surprising or inexplicable; they would have been visible, even if mostly deserted, and I think that unless theres more known about the Roman states local organisation here than I thought, to assume those centres occupied the same areas to any great degree would involve some smoothing-out of lines and so on! But maybe Im wrong, Roman Britain is a darker area for me than the actual Dark Ages badonicus Says: Your thoughts are exactly what I would question: how do we know exactly where the civitates were and how much they kept their boundaries in Post Roman times. Im probably not doing Stuart Laycock justice with my explanation of his work, but I think he makes relevant point along the way. I probably should do some direct quotes, but I dont want to take up too much of your comment space! Jonathan Jarrett Says: Perhaps this is a topic for over at yours! badonicus Says: Its already there! Ill have to do a PPS to that blog! l badonicus Says: Book arrived. My, thats a tome! Historian on the Edge Says: The problem with Stuart Laycocks idea is that everything he says about civitates in Britannia could be said on the basis of much stronger evidence for Gaul, and the conclusion he draws from it would be seen to be completely wrong! I dont think, myself, that the evidence for fragmentation into tiny autonomous units in Britain is at all compelling, if (unlike practically everyone who writes about post-imperial Britain) you have any knowledge of the contemporary situation in the large land-mass on the other side of the Channel. But I said all that in Barbarian Migrations. Jonathan Jarrett Says: To that, I can only say (and its a Devils advocate kind of position) that Chris, who undoubtedly has that wider perspective, still winds up arguing for almost-complete fragmentation. I seem to have settled on a way to argue something from each of you, but why do you suppose theres this difference in how the two of you read the evidence?

(I have never succeeded in getting Chris to comment here and I doubt even this will start him, but it is worth bearing in mind he does read.) badonicus Says: Having now read some of his arguments (although I admit I had to jump sections) I think he puts a good case. However, even he acknowledges that this is only one model and possible explanation of the evidence for what happened in Britain and there could be (and are) others. He also does a great job, I think, at showing the _differences_ between what happened in the various regions of Gaul and what happened in Britain and shows a better comparison with what went on in Mauritania with the Berbers. Carl Edlund Anderson Says: Now I must remember to get Fail State and Barbarian Migrations and read them side by side or at least one after another. Ive never read Laycock, and I can easily imagine he goes rather too far in his interpretation, or perhaps down the wrong path, but even so his ideas seem interesting and worth reading if perhaps not worth signing up for as such. badonicus Says: I think Failed State is worth the read, even if he has gone too far with some theories (I believe many think that he really did go too far with his latest book!). Warlords isnt bad either. I havent read Barbarian Migrations yet. Another one for the long list! (20.39 at Amazon!). Carl Edlund Anderson Says: Ive spent the last month thinking, Huh, I oughta get a copy of this , but whilst shuffling things around just discovered I _do_. :) Now all I need is time enough to read it before it disappears back into the swirling vortex once more . ;) Kath Says: The vortex works in mysterious ways, Carl. At least you hadnt already forked out for a second copy! Jonathan Jarrett Says: This will take even you a fair amount of time to read, Carl. Ive got bogged down by other things in the section on cities: one of the other things that this book has me realising is that I really dont find cities an interesting topic of study Carl Edlund Anderson Says: I confess a general dislike of cities but that is by the by! No, the chances of me having the leisure to sit down to read this (or any) book in a relatively linear fashion are admittedly slight. But I may go rummaging for the provocative bits on sub-Roman Britain. (More a pleasant neighbouring place to visit than a main focus for me, but plenty of useful ideas as well as some good, but not necessarily useful ideas :) turn up in such ramblings.)

Who, what, why: How do you identify a mystery person?

19 SEPTEMBER 2011 LAST UPDATED AT 14:51 German police are trying to identify a teenager who appeared in Berlin saying he had been living in the woods for five years. So how do you go about identifying a mystery person? The story of an English-speaking boy who emerged after five years living in a German forest has captured the headlines. Referred to as "forest boy", he is thought to be about 17, and speaks some German, as well as his English. He has told police that he and his father went to live in the woods after his mother died, but cannot remember where he came from before then.

The boy said he had been living in the German forest for about five years

He told police his father had died in the woods and he had buried him in a shallow grave, before walking for two weeks to reach Berlin to seek help. He says his name is Ray and thinks he knows his date of birth, but that is all police have to go on. So how will they go about trying to find out who he is?

Police will use a combination of forensic analysis, interview techniques, official documents and publicity to try and identify who the teenager is, says criminologist and child protection expert Mark Williams-Thomas. The starting point is forensic analysis of his DNA, fingerprint and dental records to see if they can establish who he is. In this case forensics may not throw up any clues because the boy is so young. Next officers will need to interview him extensively to gain as much information from him as he is able or prepared to give, says Williams-Thomas. "If the information is credible this could lead them to some obvious points to start, like birth records, missing persons reports." They will want to trace the teenager's steps back to the place where he has spent the past five years. This could throw up vital clues, such as items of clothing or tools he has used to survive, even people who may have fed him at some point.

The answer
Checking DNA, dental and fingerprint records Trace where the teenager has been Identify his accent Publicity

This could also help ascertain whether the boy's father has been buried in the woods, and if they do find a body, they will be able to do DNA testing on it. There is far more chance the father will be on police databases because he is a lot older, says Williams-Thomas. He says it is crucial that a British police officer interview the boy as soon as possible. "They will have the knowledge to identify his accent. They may also be able to pinpoint where he is originally from in the UK. Details that might be meaningless to German police could be picked up by British officers. The boy might, for example, remember living in a place with a cathedral." But a spokesperson for the German police told the BBC that it was too early to tell whether the boy was British. She said he could be from any English-speaking country, or could have learnt English in Europe, such as in Spain or even Germany. Dr Anja Lowit, a linguistics expert at the speech and language therapy division at Strathclyde University, says specialists will need to get a language sample from the boy. "There are various papers available about different regional varieties of British and other types of English," says Lowit. A part of BBC News Magazine, Who, What, "Vowel differences are a Why? aims to answer questions behind the good indicator of accent, headlines and whether people produce glottal stops. In the longer sentences they can listen to his intonation patterns, which are quite distinctive for certain accents, and they would also notice any peculiar choices of words or grammatical forms." But, she says that there is a level of difficulty because people speak with varying degrees of accents, so his might not be very strong. For example, she says children can also be influenced by their parent's accents or psychosocial issues - for example wanting to fit in with other children who speak in a particular way - so it's not straightforward to determine where someone comes from. "If he's not English, his foreign accent can again give a hint, but there is a lot of overlap between different accents, and depending on how early and under what circumstances he learnt English, he might not present with the normal picture that one would expect."
'Piano Man'' from Prosdorf, Germany, was found on a beach in Kent in 2005

WHO, WHAT, WHY?

James Law, professor of speech and language science at Newcastle University, says English is likely to be the boy's first language.

"It is unlikely he would have lost one language and not the other - that he would have lost the German and retained the English." In 2003, Law worked with researchers on the case of Edik, a young boy in the Ukraine who was unable to speak because he spent more time with stray dogs than his often absent parents. Although the boy in Germany says he cannot remember anything from his life before he went into the woods, Law says tests can be carried out to see how he responds to certain cultural references. "They could put a lot of material in front of him, places, pictures, cultural references - such as children's TV characters from the period before he went into the woods. These things can be so potent to a child - they might get some spark of recognition." Piano Man Kent Police have dealt with two notable cases in recent years where unidentified people been found. Piano Man made the headlines in 2005 when he was found wandering on a beach. His identity baffled hospital carers for months because he did not speak, just apparently played the piano. He eventually claimed his memory had returned and that he was in fact German. A spokeswoman for Kent Police says it has no set process for dealing with such cases as they are very rare. "In this case, for example, German police will probably be investigating to see if there is any connection with the British armed forces, many of whom are stationed in the country." Another crucial element to such investigations are media appeals, say the experts. "It is ultimately the most likely way he will be identified," says Williams-Thomas. "Just as public appeals are a great way of catching offenders, it is no different when you are trying to establish who someone is." Ultimately, Williams-Thomas believes the boy will be identified. "The fact that he is speaking is a massive bonus. The police will already have a lot to go on, even if they are not telling us. It's a case of piecing it all together, like building a jigsaw puzzle."

Jewish US army translator who got close to the Nazis

BY MARIO CACCIOTTOLO || BBC NEWS | 19 SEPTEMBER 2011 LAST UPDATED AT 17:37 A German Jew who became a US military translator is the last surviving member of a team that carried out psychological tests on leading Nazis after the war. They learned very little, he says - but he gained unique insights into their characters. "If you took away the names of these Nazis, and just sat down to talk to them, they were like your friends and neighbours." Howard Triest, 88, spent many hours with some of the most notorious Hermann Goering considered himself to be the star prisoner at Nuremberg leaders of the Third Reich, acting as a translator for American psychiatrists at Nuremberg. It was September 1945, shortly after the end of World War II in Europe, and the highest-ranking Nazis still left alive were about to be tried for war crimes.

"I'd seen these people in the time of their glory, when the Nazis were the rulers of the world," he says. "These rulers had killed most of my family, but now I was in control." Among them were Luftwaffe chief Hermann Goering, Hitler's former deputy Rudolf Hess, Nazi propagandist Julius Streicher and former Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Hoess, among others. "It's a very strange feeling, sitting in a cell with a man who you know killed your parents," he says, referring to Hoess. "We treated them in a civil way, I kept my hate under control when I was working there. You couldn't betray how you really felt because you wouldn't get anything out of their questioning. "But I never shook hands with any of them." Escaping the Nazis Howard was born into a Jewish family in Munich in 1923, and was already a teenager when Nazi persecution intensified. His family left for Luxemburg on 31 August 1939, the day before Germany invaded Poland, intending to travel onward to the United States in due course. But a shortage of money prevented them making the journey together. So Howard went first, in April 1940, with his parents and younger sister due to follow a month later. For his parents, the delay proved fatal. His mother Ly, 43, and Berthold, 56, were later sent from France to Auschwitz, where they both died. His sister Margot was smuggled out to Switzerland and from there also left for the US, where she still lives, like her brother. Howard's attempts to enlist into the US army were initially rebuffed because he was not a citizen but eventually, in 1943, he succeeded. He was made a US citizen a few months later. After being posted to Europe and landing at Omaha Beach a day or two after D-Day, he found himself working for military intelligence, thanks to his ability to speak fluent German, a valuable skill as the Allies pushed across the continent towards Berlin. In summer 1945 he was discharged, but immediately began work for the American War Department as a civilian - and was sent to Nuremberg to assist Major Leon Goldensohn with his psychiatric evaluations of the defendants awaiting trial. That is how a Jewish man, who had fled the rule of the Nazis, came to spend hours in their company, sitting with them in their cells, translating the psychiatrist's questions, and their responses. Maj Goldensohn was conducting diagnoses such as the Rorschach tests, in an attempt to unravel the prisoners' personalities and motivations. Howard is now the last surviving member of the psychiatric team, and his account of his experiences in a new book, Inside Nuremberg Prison, by historian Helen Fry, provides some vivid character sketches. 'Zombie' Hess "Goering was still a very pompous man," he recalls. "He was the eternal actor, the man that was in charge. He considered himself the number one prisoner, because Hitler and Himmler were dead. He always wanted the number one seat in the courtroom. "He arrived at Nuremberg with eight suitcases, mostly packed with drugs, because he had a big habit, and was surprised that he was treated as a prisoner and not as a famous personality."
Howard Triest was still technically a German when he joined the US Army

We didn't find anything abnormal, nothing to indicate something that would make them the murderers they would become
Howard Triest

Howard also came into contact with Rudolf Hess, once Hitler's deputy until his flight to Scotland in May 1941, where he was captured. He recalls Hess as being "like a zombie". He added: "Hess thought he was being persecuted, even when he was being held in England. He made sample packages of food and gave some to me and the psychiatrists and asked for them to be analysed, as he thought he was being poisoned. "He was a quiet prisoner, who answered a few questions but didn't go into details. Nobody knew how much was play acting and what was real, how much he could actually remember." Hidden hate In the course of his duties, Howard also came face to face with Rudolf Hoess, a meeting all the more intense because of the death of Howard's parents at Auschwitz, once under Hoess's control. "Both Maj Goldensohn and I were with him many times. Sometimes I was with him alone in his cell," Howard says. "People used to say to me: 'You can take revenge, you can take a knife into his cell.' "But the revenge was that I knew he was in prison and that I knew he would be hanged. So I knew he was going to die anyway. Killing him myself wouldn't have done me any good." He describes Hoess as "very normal. He didn't look like someone who had killed two or three million people." One remarkable incident occurred with Julius Streicher, whose Der Stuermer newspaper had done much to whip up antiSemitic hysteria among Germans. "He was the biggest anti-Semite of all. I interviewed him with another psychiatrist, Maj Douglas Kelley.
Nuremberg saw trials of some the most notorious Nazis left alive after the war

"Streicher had some papers that he didn't want to give to Maj Kelley, or anyone else, because he said he didn't want them to fall into Jewish hands.

"Eventually he gave them to me - I was tall, blond and blue-eyed. He said 'I'll give them to your interpreter because I know he is a true Aryan. I can tell by the way he talks.' "Streicher talked to me for hours because of his idea I was a 'true Aryan'. I got a lot more out of him that way." In fact, none of the Nazis who Howard translated for were ever aware he was Jewish. Lessons learned? He says that, despite the psychiatrists' best attempts, no great insight was gained into psychological source of the Nazi mentality. "Did we learn anything from these psychiatric tests? No. We didn't find anything abnormal, nothing to indicate something that would make them the murderers they would become.

"In fact, they were all quite normal. Evil and extreme cruelty can go with normality. "None of them ever showed remorse. They said they knew there were camps but they didn't know about the annihilation of people. "It was a pity they didn't go through the same things that their victims went through, that Hoess didn't suffer in a camp the same way his prisoners did." Howard says he hopes the story of the Holocaust is never forgotten. "But look at the world today. Is it much quieter? Some of the victims have changed, but there are still victims around the world," he says. Before we finish our interview, Howard is keen to tell a further anecdote about Nuremberg's would-be number one inmate.
Howard Triest now hopes the story of the Holocaust will continue to be told

"Goering once said that if any bombs were dropped on Berlin, he would eat a herring. Well, I was in charge of censoring his post, and someone did actually send him a herring. Howard chuckles gently. "I threw it away. It smelled a little bit."

Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism by Natasha Walter - review

'This book really needs to be read by every teenage girl' RACHAEL || GUARDIAN.CO.UK, WEDNESDAY 29 JUNE 2011 10.17 BST This book really needs to be read by every teenage girl. Feminist. What do we imagine when we hear that word? Do we think of a woman chained to the gates demanding votes for women? Do we imagine ourselves as feminists? Or do we think feminism is overrated and there is no need in a society where women are technically equal? Natasha Walter points out that sexism is alive and well in our society, corrupting our generation with hyper-sexualisation and forcing us into certain stereotypes. This book isn't fiction. However it is as frightening as any horror story with the presentation of the cold truth. The first half of the book is about the sex industry and how it has been glamorised for us and exploiting us. I have a feeling that the for the majority of teenage girls reading this review won't be able to relate to the teenage girls Walter has interviewed, but it's important to recognise there are girls in our age group like that and how important it is that we and our friends shouldn't go down that path. Maybe some of you have already noticed the over-sexualisation of our generation, so that probably won't be the most horrifying part. What struck me was the other half that Walker explores, our lack of choice. Our society dictates girls are meant to be a certain way and boys are meant to be a certain way. Were you only given Barbie dolls as a child? Did you have a choice to play sport if you wished? Or were you only thrown princesses and ponies so that they became the only thing you demanded? This book will show how society has made sure girls can only be a certain way. The second half of the book is about the science of the difference to men and women and proves that women are equal to men despite some obvious biological differences. Testosterone and oestrogen doesn't make a difference in a woman's spatial awareness and ability to be a leader. However Walter shows how the press wants to use science to back up stereotypes and how science itself is falling into stereotypes. Walter writes how women in high political positions aren't free from society's stereotypes and judgment and how that even though women may be technically equal, we aren't equal in the eyes of many men and society. Women are just as good as men and this book provides proof which needs to be read. I've read other reviews of this book and most agree with Walter. But I think it needs more than to be agreed with. Walter is making a call for change. And we're the only ones that can do it. We can all start by reading her book.

Native America & Speculative Fiction: Interview with Amy H. Sturgis

POSTED BY RANDY HOYT AUG 15TH, 2009 Amy H. Sturgis is an author, speaker, and professor at Belmont University. She specializes in fantasy and science fiction and in Native American studies. In addition to her numerous book chapters, articles, and conference presentations, Amy has written four books on U.S. history and Native American studies (including Tecumseh: A Biography) and edited three works on science fiction and fantasy (including a collection of essays on C.S. Lewis titled Past Watchful Dragons). Her most recent book actually spans both categories: The Intersection of Native America and Fantasy. [Editor's Note: The first part of this interview appeared in a previous issue as A Science Fiction Primer. The conversation below is a continuation of that interview.]

Randy Hoyt: What first got you involved in Native American studies? Amy H. Sturgis: The Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma is part of my family heritage on both sides, and my parents made sure that I was educated with that cultural awareness. I grew up in Tulsa and Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, and so from my earliest memories onward, I felt the influence of Indian Country. When I was at Vanderbilt University working on my Ph. D. in history (with an emphasis in intellectual history), I was particularly interested in constitutional studies. Most of the work in Native American studies at the time was related to social and cultural topics, not intellectual and constitutional ones. I ended up writing an in-depth analysis of the evolution of Cherokee constitutional thought for my dissertation. I found that taking these two disciplines (constitutional studies and intellectual history) and applying their analytical tools to the subject matter of Native American studies yielded some fruitful and fascinating results. Of course, this put my work a bit outside of the mainstream work done by scholars in Native American studies and in constitutional studies: neither group seemed much interested in the work of the other, and I thought both had missed out on some valuable insights. That was the beginning step for me in bringing he Native American heritage that had always been a part of my personal life forward into my professional life in a conscious and intentional way. I ended up passing the foreign language competency exam for my Ph.D. not in French (which Id studied in high school) or Russian (which Id studied in college), but in Cherokee. I have since gone on to write investigative pieces and current policy work about Native America, as well, so my focus is no longer simply historical. RH: The two books you have published in Native American studies both related to events from the first half of the nineteenth century, a biography of Tecumseh (who died in 1813) and a book on the forced removal of the Cherokee Nation from Georgia (the Trail of Tears in 1838-1839). I noticed that these dates correspond roughly to the beginning of modern science fiction we discussed previously. Is there any relationship or connection between these events? AHS: Needless to say, this is an era that draws my attention and enthusiasm for many reasons. The connections between the two areas are interesting to consider. Tecumseh is a figure I find to be remarkable. He was the Shawnee leader responsible for the largest pan-tribal confederacy in the history of Native America, and he was one of the visionaries most responsible for challenging the peoples of the different Native nations to start thinking of themselves as American Indian instead of solely Osage or Potawatomi or Creek. Even before he was tragically killed in the War of 1812, he had become a figure of mythic proportions. He was described as a kind of King Arthur figure among his people, and their British allies drew on some very rich mythological language to describe him to their compatriots across the ocean. A number of Native American writers in the late twentieth century wrote alternate histories about what would have happened if Tecumseh had survived: it is interesting to see political scholars such as Vine Deloria writing essentially what is science fiction to talk about this great leader who was legendary even in his own age. In Mary Shelleys Frankenstein (1818), perhaps the leading contender for being the first modern work of science fiction, Frankensteins creature is out in the wild, living on his own and educating himself by eavesdropping on a family living out in the woods. When he hears about the plight of the American Indians, Shelley emphasizes that Frankensteins shunned, isolated, and mistreated creature surely miserable in his own right weeps for them. So even at the very beginning of the genre, science-fiction authors commented on the state of Native America. Throughout the nineteenth century, starting with the Indian Removal Act and the Trail of Trails, one Native American nation after another was displaced from their original lands. By the time of H.G. Wellss work and the beginning of what would become a golden era in science fiction early in the twentieth century, theres a period of tremendous upheaval as the Native American nations were managed or, more to the point, manhandled by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the United States Government. As science fiction was coming into its own, Native America was being dismantled in a systematic, military fashion. Ray Bradburys Martian Chronicles (1950) reflects on those events, using Mars as a metaphor for North America. Some of

the characters in the novel consciously identify what happened to the Martians with the de-population of Native America, and these characters begin to understand what is being lost only after it is too late for anything to be done. This has been an ongoing theme throughout science fiction, and a number of works engage it. One of my favourite contemporary science-fiction novels, Mary Doria Russells The Sparrow (1996), also discusses these events using the metaphor of interspecies contact with life on another planet. It is a remarkable consideration of who is to blame when everything goes wrong and tragedy unfolds as it did following the Columbian encounter with Native America. RH: Do we have any evidence of how Native American myths and legends adapted or changed during this time? AHS: It varies depending on the nation and the stories, but to a degree we can chart some differences and note how evolutions and adaptations unfolded in the act storytelling, especially across Native nations. There are surviving oral traditions that explain, for example, the genesis of the Great Law of Peace (which is essentially the Constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy), which pre-dated contact with Europeans by quite a good margin; we can see how the origin stories explaining this remarkable compact evolved over time. New stories were told as a result of these events: new legends, for example, arose in the Cherokee Nation during the Trail of Tears. We can date the beginning of these stories and then see how they now permeate Native American literature. It is also interesting to observe how the stories and legends of these two drastically different cultures, Native American and European, in a sense crossfertilized each other. Some of the Southwestern nations, for example, have Catholic symbolism informing their mythology after contact with the Spanish. Most of the stories were transmitted orally throughout this time period, but in the nations that adopted written languages, we even have a literary snapshot of stories, capturing them at the moment when they were first recorded, and we can track how they have changed and how they have stayed the same over the years. RH: The Mythopoeic Press announced The Intersection of Fantasy and Native America: From H.P. Lovecraft to Leslie Marmon Silko, a book you co-edited with David Oberhelman from Oklahoma State University. What kind of material will readers find in that book? AHS: I presented a paper in August 2006 as the scholar guest of honor at Mythcon 37 in Norman, Oklahoma. In that talk, I noted that taking the analytical tools from two disciplines (this time fantasy studies and Native American studies) could yield great results when each was applied to the others subject matter. Both sides I think are missing out on great opportunities to talk about and share the remarkable and remarkably similar literature in their respective fields. In my talk I recommended ways of bringing together those who love fantasy and those who love Native America. The Mythopoeic Press approached me about editing a volume on that topic, using my keynote speech as the first chapter, and the challenge I laid out in it as its guiding theme. We cast a wide net, finding an exciting international group of cross-disciplinary and multi-ethnic scholars to talk about three things: 1. Native American mythology in literature, 2. Native American authors writing works with fantasy elements, or 3. non-Native fantasy authors incorporating Native America into their own work. The final product includes some fascinating contributions from a wide range of able and accessible scholars on authors from H.P. Lovecraft, J.R.R. Tolkien, and J.K. Rowling to Leslie Marmon Silko, Louise Erdrich, and Gerald Vizenor, among others. I think it is a tremendous volume that shows how much scholars and readers in two different traditions can gain from expanding their horizons and bringing all of this rich material into one conversation. RH: Let me ask about these points, starting with the last one. Many readers will be familiar with the use of other mythological material in works of fantasy. (Jason explored in a previous article, for example, material from Norse, Old English, and Welsh mythological traditions in Alan Garners The Weirdstone of Brisingamen.) What fantasy authors have done this same thing with Native American material? AHS: Not enough have done this, but some have done it well. Theres Orson Scott Card; you have published a series of articles about his Alvin Maker series, in fact. His books take the reader on a journey through an alternate America and what a place it is to visit with his kind of introspection! I think Card had real insight about how Tecumseh and his movement represented a kind of American myth that had reached legendary proportions in Tecumsehs own lifetime. Perhaps my favourite novel along these lines is Neil Gaimans American Gods: I think Gaiman did an elegant job of drawing on Native American mythology. Others like Charles de Lint and Michael Bishop also come to mind. One of my favorite authors of speculative fiction, H.P. Lovecraft, actually draws quite a bit on Native American mythology and settings. His short story The Mound (published posthumously in 1940) takes place at a real burial mound in Binger, Oklahoma, and a handful of his other stories draw on the richness of the Native American legends. His works are surprisingly well-researched for the amount of information that was available in the early twentieth century.

Many non-Native authors who have drawn on this material have done a spectacular job. Some others, of course, have failed to do justice to their subject matter. But I think the number of authors who incorporate Native America into their fantasies is still too small. Many non-Native authors are simply not aware enough or comfortable enough with Native American mythology or contemporary Native American ideas to attempt it yet. Not only could these authors create great works in their own right using this material, but through them many more readers could be introduced to these great tales. RH: What do you think it takes for non-Native authors to become aware enough and comfortable enough with the legends to be able to incorporate them into their fiction? AHS: Tolkiens use of other mythological traditions provides a good example: when he found himself interested in the stories from The Kalevala, he went and taught himself Finnish so he could read it in the original language. He did his homework before he incorporated other peoples myths into his own stories. If authors want to use Native American stories, I think they ought to research these tales to gain an understanding of their history, of their particular origins and context. This does not necessarily mean learning a Native American language (although that is an excellent place to start); there are fantastic oral history collections available for listening, and there are fantastic anthologies and collections of these stories available. It is not asking much for people today do the research to find accounts as close to the original as possible. Moreover, Native America is alive and well today, and many of the contemporary settings and stories of modern American Indians provide rich sources for writers, regardless of their own ethnic backgrounds. There is a great debate about who has the right to draw on Native American traditional material, about who is authentic and what is credible. These questions for the most part disturb me. We do see mythology incorporated into fiction badly and disrespectfully, but I do not believe the solution is to prevent non-Native authors from accessing and being inspired by this material. The authors who use Native American traditions without doing even the most basic research, drawing instead on inaccurate stereotypes, have failed as artists, I would say. It seems to work out that the non-Native authors who are sensitive, inquisitive, and respectful of these stories and traditions also end up creating beautiful and lasting art. RH: You mentioned that the book also contains material on Native American authors incorporating their own mythological traditions into their fantasy stories. AHS: Yes. Some of these Native authors produce works that are clearly fantasy by anyones definition: Drew Hayden Taylor and Daniel Heath Justice are two excellent (and recommended) examples. Others write books often considered to be magical realism or simply Native American literature. This again raises the discussion about how to classify works, which I mentioned last time regarding what counts as science fiction: these are games with which the critics and scholars are more concerned than the fans and the practitioners. My concern is that many readers who love fantasy literature never discover some of the great Native authors, because these writers publications are labeled and pigeonholed due to the artists ethnicity. It is my hope that our book will help to introduce fantasy lovers to great Native writers. Leslie Marmon Silko, Louise Erdrich, and Gerald Vizenor, for example, write works that incorporate elements of fantasy. (Gerald Vizenor, incidentally, also has written what I would consider a great work of Native American science fiction.) Some of these authors, such as Louise Erdrich, are gaining national and international reputations as literary authors: Silkos works are taught in a number of universities and even high schools already, although usually in the context of Native American studies. RH: After readers finish your book, what anthologies or sources would you recommend next for information about Native American myths and legends? Is there one particular book that provides a good overview of all the material available? AHS: Theres not one perfect text out there as a good starting point. There are actually a lot of good collections, but none have put themselves head and shoulders above the others. I think anything by Joseph Bruchac would be a good first stop; he compiles and re-tells Native American myths in his books in a really compelling way. Another good source is the anthropologist James Mooney, who has a series of books written around the beginning of the twentieth century. He was compiling folklore from firsthand accounts, essentially writing down the oral history while it was still there. Mooneys collections provide a great ethnographic perspective; I would recommend his work from a historical point of view and Bruchacs work from a literary one. I like Lawana Trouts Native American Literature: An Anthology as an introduction to Native stories both traditional and contemporary. Recently I was pleased to be brought in as a scholarly consultant on Virginia Schomps 2008 book The Native Americans, which is part of the Marshall Cavendish Myths of the World series for younger readers. Schomp identifies the origin and context of each of the tales she relates and includes stories from the width and breadth of North America. Books such as this one give me hope that children of many backgrounds will be exposed to the delights and fascination of Native mythology; hopefully this first taste will lead to a lifelong appetite.

RH: What are your overall aspirations for the book? What do you hope the book will accomplish? AHS: I hope that the book will help fantasy lovers to discover Native authors. I hope that it will help Native writers who write fantasy literature to be welcomed to the table of fantasy artists and studied by scholars of the genre. I also hope it will help non-Native American writers to feel invited to mine the wealth of Native American mythology to create new stories. But I suppose my main hope is that readers who love any of this material whether it is Native American fiction or fantasy or mythology will come away from the book with titles they want to read; I think it is a tragedy that works get pigeonholed in a certain genre or category in such a way that they do not reach readers who will appreciate them and benefit from their messages.

I have included links to all the books Amy recommended during the interview below. You can learn more about Amys work by visiting her web site, amyhsturgis.com. She is currently working on what sounds like an exciting new book, The Gothic Imaginations of J.R.R. Tolkien, Madeleine LEngle, and J.K. Rowling, for publication with Zossima Press in 2010. [Editor's Note: The first part of this interview appeared in a previous issue as A Science Fiction Primer. The conversation above is a continuation of that interview.]

Recommendations
Oberhelman, David and Amy H. Sturgis, eds. The Intersection of Fantasy and Native America. Mythopoeic Press, 2009.

Search at Amazon: Joseph Bruchac o Between Earth & Sky: Legends of Native American Sacred Places. 1999. o Thirteen Moons on Turtles Back. 1997. o View All Author Page at Amazon: James Mooney o Myths of the Cherokee. 2009. o The Siouan Tribes of the East. 2008. o The Ghost Dance Religion And The Sioux Outbreak Of 1890. 2008. o View All Schomp, Virginia. The Native Americans. 2007.

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein, Or The Modern Prometheus. 1818. Bradbury, Ray. The Martian Chronicles. 1950. Russell, Mary Doria. The Sparrow. 1996. Card, Orson Scott. Red Prophet. 1988. Gaiman, Neil. American Gods. 2001. The Mound. 1940. The Horror in the Museum. Arkham House Publishers, 1989.

Book Cover: The Intersection of Fantasy and Native America Artist: Melissa Gay

Responses
Sharon E. Dreyer - 2009/08/15 - 1:51 pm: This is a great interview. Thank you so much for sharing all of this information with us. While I dont appear to have any Native Americans in my family tree, I still enjoy reading the legends and oral traditions. Check out my first and recently released novel, Long Journey to Rneadal. This exciting story is a romantic action adventure in space.

Maria Shine Stewart - 2009/11/25 - 10:13 pm: I am very grateful to have found this outstanding interview while researching something unrelated. There are so many quotable quotes, among them: My concern is that many readers who love fantasy literature never discover some of the great Native authors, because these writers publications are labeled and pigeonholed due to the artists ethnicity. And Native American history is not taught widely enough,

Oswine the Anti-Hero

AUG20 BY MICHELLE ZIEGLER
(A post from the archive on the anniversary of King Oswines death.)

King Oswine of Deira (Yorkshire) 20 August 651 Today is the anniversary of the execution of King Oswine of Deira, considered by some to be a saint. All we know of Oswine is included in Bedes History (Book III:14). Bede writes a curious tale for Oswine. King Oswine was tall and handsome, pleasant of speech, courteous in manner, and bountiful to nobles and common alike; so it came about that he was beloved by all because of his royal dignity which showed itself in his character, his appearance, and his actions; and noblemen from almost every kingdom flocked to serve him as retainers. Among all the other graces of virtue and modesty with which, if I may say so, he was blessed in a special manner, his humility said to have been the greatest (McClure and Collins, ed; 1994:132) This all seems well and good. Bede proceeds to narrate an example of Oswines great humility to St. Aidan, Bishop of Lindisfarne. However, at the end of the episode, Aidan turns to an Irish colleague and says I know that the king will not live long; for I never before saw a humble king. Therefore I think that he will very soon be snatched from this life; for this nation does not deserve to have such a ruler. (p. 133). Oswine death follows and Aidan himself dies only 12 days after the murder of the king he loved. The implication is that Aidan dies of a broken heart.

Modern Eastern Orthodox icon of King Oswine of Deira

Bede actually begins his tale with Oswines murder/execution. Oswine has gathered his army to meet King Oswiu (who would later rule at the Synod of Whitby) in battle near Catterick. When Oswine realized how outnumbered he was by Oswiu, he disbanded his army and went into hiding with a retainer he believes is his friend. This retainer betrayed him to Oswiu who had his rival executed. There is no doubt that this murder caused an outrage in the church. Oswius queen, Eanflaed, was the cousin of Oswine and demanded a weregeld (blood price) paid by the founding of the monastery of Gilling where prayer was to be offered daily for the soul of King Oswine and his murderer King Oswiu. The question is why does Bede include the story in his History. There is no evidence that he sees Oswine as anything other than a sad victim. Bede provides no evidence that Oswine was considered to be a saint by his day. Oswine was much later reported to be buried at Tynemouth, not the new monastery of Gilling. The usual explanation is that Bede includes the story because his beloved Abbot Coelfrith came from Gilling, Coelfriths family monastery (meaning that Coelfrith was also a kinsman of Oswine). This isnt really a very satisfying answer. Gilling had ceased to exist before Bede was born and Coelfrith is not mentioned in the story. An interesting side note is that Gilling seems to disband as a monastery after the plague of 664 when all the surviving monks joined Abbot Wilfrid at Ripon (victor of the synod of Whitby the same year). Thus within months of deciding for Rome, the monastery Oswiu had to found as weregeld/penance was allowed to disappear. Another explanation is that it was part of Aidans death story. This isnt very satisfying either because Aidans death is not elaborated on, as it is in a later chapter (which doesnt mention Oswine at all). These look like two reports of Aidans death. The chapter begins with an assessment of Oswius reign and the next chapter records a miracle of Aidans in assisting in the arrival of Eanflaed to her marriage to Oswiu. The context of the story places it within Oswius story as Oswalds successor. Miracles of St. Aidan and Aidans death are then inserted. After Aidan comes the life and death of pious

King Sigeberht of East Anglia who had entered a monastery, but his people pulled him out of the monastery to lead them into battle against Penda, the evil pagan of Bedes History. Sigeberht refused to carry a weapon in to battle and rode to his death carrying only his royal sceptre. Bede has set up a story of three example kings Oswald: Bedes ideal king: brave, victorious in battle, supporter of the church and evangelist, humble enough to translate Aidans sermons before his people, but not too humble to lose their respect, protector of his people up to his death. Oswine: too humble to be a king. A perfect picture of a king, but when it came down to it, not brave enough to ride in to battle and die. He is an anti-hero. Sigebert: a pious king, but nevertheless Bede did not favour kings who retired to monasteries. The fact that his people came to him to lead them in battle suggests that he once was victorious in battle and was still young and healthy enough to do so again. He did not protect his people. Penda destroys the army, Sigeberts co-king, and then ravages the monasteries and people of East Anglia. Bede believed that people should live up to the position in life they were given: king, bishop, monk, commoner. A king should be a good king: protector of the people, patron of the church, obedient to the bishop. He offers Oswine as an example to his readers of how a king should not behave. Perhaps he was also eager to ensure that King Oswiu would not be too glorified. He tallied plenty of pious attributes during his 28 year reign. He may have been the greatest patron of the church of his age, judge at the synod of Whitby, and slayer of Northumbrias worst enemy (Penda of Mercia), but he was also capable of murdering his rivals and having his own kinsmen, his nephew Oethelwald son of Oswald and his own son Alhfrith, rebel against him. His rebellious kinsmen are never heard from again. Bede does make sure to casually mention these rebellions in the beginning of the chapter before he narrates Oswines story. The execution of Oswine may be Bedes way of indicating the fates of Oethelwald and Alhfrith by implication in a way that would not offend the contemporary rulers of Northumbria.

Comments:
Curt Emanuel says: Oswines an interesting character. I can come up with three fairly common themes which the Oswine story fits into as reasons why it exists (beyond those you mention). In the order which I like them, these are: 1) Aidans foretelling Oswines death is prescient and another example of his holiness only God would give him the ability to predict the future. 2) Oswines kneeling before the Bishop indicates that Kings should be willing to demonstrate subservience to the Church, at least when appropriate (like after arguing about horse-gifts, apparently). 3) England and the English people are too violent and war-loving. Oswine will be taken from them because they dont deserve him. Michelle Ziegler says: I think these are all sub-currents in the story. It all depends on the context of the reader, doesnt it? Oswine is an unrealistic ideal. I cant imagine any of the royals would consider him to be a success, even if churchmen see him as an ideal. highlyeccentric says: Im intrigued by the part where Eanfled demands weregild from her own husband. That mustve been an interesting marital conversation Michelle Ziegler says: I like the fact that he has to pay for monks to pray for his soul as an admitted killer. Gilling is founded to pray for the souls of both Oswine and Oswiu. florentios says: saint Oswine pray for us!

He is Passion-Bearer as SS. Boris and Gleb http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_and_Gleb

Cutting a language core through the bedrock of English

POSTED BY NICOLA AT 9:11 AM MONDAY, AUGUST 8, 2011 I posted this yesterday on my other blog. Most of you, I'm sure, don't read that. So: ---One of the big mysteries to me as a novelist (as opposed to professional historian) is the lack of a convincing explanation for the apparent obliteration of Brythonic (the native Celtic language of Britain before the Romans came and muddled everything up) and substitution of Old English, a Germanic language. (My terminology is imprecise; I'm not an academic.) Over at Historian on the Edge, Guy Halsall discusses Steve Brohan's theory of Old English as a lingua franca between the "language of lowland Britain...a Romance low Latin" and "a late Brythonic/proto-Welsh" of the highlands in post-imperialist Britain (think roughly 400 - 600 CE): Pre-Anglo-Saxon British highlanders would know some Latin but not much - enough to be able to make transactions with lowland villa-owners etc, especially to pay taxes and so on. The villa owners, by contrast, would know no British. When an Anglo-Saxon military elite came to power, however, both would need to learn Old English to communicate with these warrior aristocrats, and knowing this language would enable them to communicate with each other in the new set up. This makes perfect sense to me. Apart from anything else, it's a survival tactic to learn the language of those who carry the weapons. Misunderstandings could be fatal. What also makes sense to me: the survival of the native syntax. You can hear this in periphrastic phrasing of local dialect. (I grew up in Yorkshire. My mother's family was from Ireland, my father's from London. When either of them got tired, I could hear entirely different syntactical bones shining through their vocabulary skin.) All making perfect sense. And yet, and yet... Food for thought. I just wish, growing up, that I'd known there was such a thing as philology. I might have done a better job of my 2004 memoir, And Now We Are Going to Have a Party: Liner notes to a writer's early life: Yorkshire's history is stamped on its landscape, literally and figuratively, and it moulded the language that I absorbed with my mother's milk (and grandmother's whisky). A quick survey of Yorkshire place names (from natural features, to street names, to towns, to pubs) is like cutting a language core: in the sturdy bedrock of Anglo-Saxon there is the occasional gleam of Brythonic Celt heaved up from an earlier age, the pale glint of Norse, even strangely evolved fossils of Latin and Norman French. This hybrid and textured language is largely responsible for who I am. To explain, let me give you a few broad strokes of West Yorkshire history. In the Iron Age, the place that was to be Leeds was an agriculturally various land enjoyed by the Brigantes, Brythonic Celts. In the first century the Romans arrived, and started building forts which became cities. Then they laid naturedefying roads across hill and dale between those cities, followed by armed camps to guard those roads. The Romans abandoned the region after about three hundred years and left the native Britons in charge again. Around this time, Angles, Saxons and other Germanic peoples started visiting Britain and staying, forming kingdoms and acquiring territory. A couple of hundred years later the Norse--Danes, mainly--arrived and the region lived under the Danelaw, with its own language and coinage and culture. Gradually, after battles and negotiations and marriages and so forth, the Danelaw melded with England. And then the Normans came. By the time I showed up, 894 years after the Battle of Hastings, layer after layer of language was stamped on the place names of Yorkshire. The first street I remember living on was hilly street called Balbec Avenue. Bal is from a Celtic word for hill. Our family would drive for day trips to Otley Chevin, a big rocky outcropping overlooking an ancient market town (Otley bears the distinction of having the most pubs per capita in the British Isles). "Chevin," it turns out, descends from a word very similar to the Welsh (also a Brythonic language) cefn which means "hill." On the way to the coast for a holiday, we'd drive through Wetherby, a name that comes from wedrebi, a combination of wether, that is, neutered sheep, and -by, a Norse word for settlement. The hills were called the fells, from fjell, a Norse word for hill. York (I could write two pages on the evolution of that name) was built on the river Ouse, a name that comes from a Celtic root word, -udso, meaning water (water, in Irish--a Goedelic Celtic language--is uisc, which is the root of "whiskey"). The name of the River Esk, which bisects Whitby (a town on the North Yorkshire coast), also comes from

that Celtic root word for water. The River Aire, which flows through Leeds, empties into the Ouse at Airmyn, "myn" being an Anglo-Saxon word for rivermouth. Esk, Ouse, Airmyn... I had a childish vision of waves of invaders, marching along with their Roman shields or Anglo-Saxon leaf-bladed spears or beautiful long Norse swords, coming to a river and saying arrogantly to a local fishing along the bank, "You there, what do you people call this?" and the local scratching her head and saying, "This, your honour? We call this 'water'." I imagined the officer nodding self-importantly and reporting to his commander, later, "...and so we forded the river, which locals hereabouts call the River Water..." And, just like that, history to me was no longer what you found in history books, but was thronged with real people. Words assumed hidden power; I began to understand them as keys to the puzzle of the universe. Words are like icebergs; nine tenths below the waterline. We don't see the entire meaning immediately but it has mass and momentum; it matters. To me there is all the difference in the world between "muscle" and "flesh," or "red" and "scarlet." Rhythm and grammar matter, too. Yorkshire syntax, more than many regions of England, shows its Celtic roots, its periphrastic, roundabout manner of speaking: "Dyuh fancy going down t'pub, then?" I'm the product of two thousand years of history. It shows in my work. Speaking of which, the second draft of Hild is cruising along. I'm a smidge over four-fifths of the way through. It is most definitely not a Romance...

Comments:
DianneorDi said... It's interesting how language tattle-tales on who we are, long after we've forgotten. I have a friend who's a High School English as a Second Language teacher and speaks perfect mid-Western American English; but when she gets a little tired, or has a couple drinks, that Chatanooga nasal twang comes out to play... nicola said... Dianne, yes, when I'm digging down into the core of who I am--when I'm exhausted, blazingly angry, or even just playing either of those in, say, a reading--my accent broadens and hardens into Yorkshire gritstone.