Philology 2

Week 1

Outline:
 What is Old English?
 Why study Old English?
 History of Britain until the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons

What is Old English?
 There are words which we recognize today in Modern English, but some have been
lost because English borrowed heavily from French and Latin.
 Some words have inflections like in German.
 It’s a Germanic language which came with the Anglo-Saxons (Angles, Saxons, and
Jutes).

Why study Old English?
 Many of the peculiarities of Modern English originate from Old English.
 Modern English spelling represents medieval pronunciation.
 English literature didn’t start with Shakespeare but with Old English literature, e.g.,
Beowulf. These masterpieces have had a lasting impact on modern culture, in the
form of writers like J.R.R. Tolkien and J.K. Rowling.
 It opens a window to a fascinating bit of history, with Anglo-Saxons, Vikings,
Normans, and Christian missionaries.

History of Britain until the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons:

Inhabitants of Britain:
 Cheddar man (ca. 8000 BC); a prehistoric caveman, a hunter-gatherer. Some of his
descendants still live in Britain today.
 First migration/invasion: Bronze Age farmers
o Beaker people (2500 BC); they came from France and brought disease with them
so 90% of the original population of Britain died out.
o They left some stone age monuments behind, namely Stonehenge.
 Second migration/invasion: Celtic tribes
o They came from mainland Europe and reached Ireland and Britain around 600-
500 BC.
o Spoke Celtic languages (a branch of Indo-European).
o Traces of Celtic tribes can still be found in placenames today.
 Third invasion: Romans
o Attempts by Julius Caesar in 55 and 54 BC – no success.
o Claudius succeeds in 43 AD.
o Britain is a Roman province, 43 – 410 AD.
o They introduced stone houses, villas.
o They also built a network of roads, some of which are still being used today.
o In the north of Britain, they built Hadrian’s wall to keep out the Celtic tribes like
the Picts.
o They also introduced Christianity to Britain.
o End of Roman Britain comes with the sack of Rome by the Visigoths, as a result
the Romans pull back their troops from Britain.
o The Picts and Scots start invading Britain.

,  Fourth migration/invasion: arrival of Anglo-Saxons, c. 449 AD


Week 3

Conquest, conversion, and conflict:

Outline:
 Conquest
 Conversion
 Conflict

Anglo-Saxon invasion:
 According to Bede (731):
o Three ships
o Three tribes:
 Jutes: Kent
 Saxons: Essex, Sussex, Wessex
 Angles: East Anglia, Mercia, Northumbria
 Oversimplification!
 How it really happened:
o The invasion is a very gradual process; it takes 250 years.
o The Anglo-Saxons are not a unified whole; they consist of different tribes who
found various kingdoms.
o In the last stages of this invasion, the little kingdoms fight amongst themselves
and form bigger kingdoms.

Heptarchy:
 7 kingdoms:
o Northumbria
o Mercia
o Wessex
o Sussex
o Essex
o East Anglia
o Kent

British resistance:
 Gildas, De excidio et conquest Britanniae (6th century): Britons, led by Ambrosius
Aurelianus, defeat Anglo-Saxons at Battle of Badon Hill (end of 5th century)
 Pseudo-Nennius, Historia Brittonum (c. 828)

What happened to the Britons?
 It has been said they were pushed to the fringes, like Wales.
 There is not a lot of linguistic evidence of the Britons, so some believe they were
wiped out by the Anglo-Saxons.
 There is more evidence being discovered though which could point to some co-
habitation between the Anglo-Saxons and Britons; Britons could have been forced to
adopt Old-English.

, Anglo-Saxon Paganism:
 Names for days of the week: Tiwesdaeg, Wodnesdaeg, Thunresdaeg, Frigedaeg
 Placenames: Tuesley, Woodnesborough, Thundersly
 Festivals: Yule, Easter
 Tacitus’s Germania
 Old English ‘magic’ charms
 Old English Martyrology (9th century)
 Evidence of people being buried with property they could take to the afterlife; this is a
strictly Pagan, not Christian, practice.
 Ancient Pagan amulets were also found.
 7th century ship burial at Sutton Hoo, Suffolk; there was a king buried there with
things to take to the afterlife. Among those were Christian artifacts  this points to a
transition in religion.

Conversion of the Anglo-Saxons:
 Conversion was a top-down process; missionaries try to convert the kings and nobility
and then let this trickle down further down the social ladder.
 It’s a story of not one mission, but two separate missions; the Irish and Roman
mission.

The Irish mission
 From 565 onwards: Irish missionaries, led by St. Columba, try to convert Britons in
the North (Scotland).
 Oswald, king of Northumbria (635 – 642), converted by Irish missionaries.
o Gives Lindisfarne to monks, build a monastery.

The Roman mission
 597: St. Augustine arrives in England.
 Augustine in England:
o Converts king Aethelbert, King of Kent.
o Builds church and abbey in Canterbury (Now St. Augustine’s, Canterbury).
o Establishes bishoprics in London.
o Libellus Responsionum: Augustine compiles all the questions the English
people have about Christianity in a book which Pope Gregory answers.
 “All these things the ignorant English people need to know”.

Conflict:
 Relapses into Paganism.
 Religious conflict: Irish vs. Roman Christianity.
 664: Synod of Whitby; meeting between high-ranking church officials deciding to go
the Irish or Roman way.
 In the end, Roman Christianity wins.
 Between 650 – 700, Christianity was established in all Anglo-Saxon kingdoms;
conversion is complete.
 Proliferation of monasteries issues in ‘Golden age of Anglo-Saxon learning’ with
leading figures Theodore of Tarsus and Hadrian of Cantebury.
 Then: Anglo-Saxon chronicle, 793: dark omens for dark times to come…


Week 4