History

Finding Iron

3 February 2025
Edoardo
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Categories: Archaeology, History

Swords need iron.

For finding iron, small boys are ideal.

On the beach, in the depths of winter, these small boys were finding and collecting rocks and bringing them back to the growing pile. The best rocks were small, about the size of a thumb, and deep rust-red. They dropped them at the feet of the waiting overseer. The overseer then ran a metal rod over the stone and added it to the pile or tossed it away before dispatching the boys to search for more.            

It’s a common fate for children born to archaeologists. They get put to work on archaeological projects – such as finding ironstone to smelt down into iron. The rod was a magnet; if the rock stuck, it had enough iron to make it worth the keeping.

Roman Officer, Anglo-Saxon Warlord

3 February 2025
Edoardo
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Categories: History

The Roman officer, splendidly caparisoned – wearing a full-face crested helmet and with his elegant sword sheathed at his waist, sitting astride his horse with 2,000 legionaries arrayed in front of him – was the very model of command.

The Anglo-Saxon warlord was no less splendidly equipped, his helmet just as magnificent. But he would be standing with his sword drawn, its pommel glinting with red garnets and yellow gold, at the centre of a line of fifty warriors, their shields overlapping and their spears outthrust.

The Individuality of Swords

26 January 2025
Edoardo
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Categories: History
Swordsmith Owen Bush holding one of the many swords he has forged.

Swords are individual. Each is unique, with its own set of characteristics. These characertistics impress a style upon the man wielding it who in turn exerts his own style upon the sword.

A sword is not a dumb brute of a weapon but rather one that works in partnership with its wielder. Depending on the sword and the swordsman, the partnership may be one of equals, the sword may be superior to its wielder, or the swordsman may have to impose his own style upon a crude and poorly made weapon.

From The Perfect Sword.

The Birth of a New Religion

7 January 2025
Edoardo
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Categories: History

As for the Christian church in Britain, shortly after the Synod of Whitby it took an unexpected but extremely important international turn. The Archbishop of Canterbury designate went to Rome to be confirmed – and died, before either confirmation or return.

With the See of Canterbury empty the pope decided to dispatch a truly wild card to Britain to take over as Archbishop of Canterbury. The man he chose was already in his 60s: Theodore of Tarsus was Greek and steeped in classical and patristic learning. Accompanying him was a North African, Hadrian, who was equally learned.

This pair of international scholars established a school in Canterbury that inaugurated a new age of learning among the Anglo-Saxons.

The insular world of the Anglo-Saxons was bursting open. A young boy by the name of Bede, growing up in Northumbria, took that knowledge and made it his own and that of his countrymen.

The End of the Old Religion

7 January 2025
Edoardo
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Categories: History
The Franks Casket in the British Museum portrays both the legend of Wayland the Smith and the Adoration of the Magi, suggesting that old and new religions coexisted for a while.

With the destruction of the kingdom of the Isle of Wight, the old religion was officially dead.

Of course, belief in the old gods and some of the old practices lingered on in places. But the chroniclers of this new age in Britain, the monks of the new god, had little interest in recording either the beliefs or the practices of the old religion.

What we know for sure of Anglo-Saxon paganism is minimal. Most of our purported knowledge either predates the Anglo-Saxon arrival in Britain, coming from Roman reports on the religion of Germania, or postdates it, derived from the work of Scandinavian and Icelandic scholars from the 12th century onwards recording the myths and legends of their forefathers. How closely either of these related to the lived pagan religion of early medieval Britain we simply don’t know.

The Last Pagan in England

17 December 2024
Edoardo
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Categories: History

By the end of the Synod of Whitby, Britain had become for the most part a Christian country.

The last pagan Anglo-Saxon kingdom was on the Isle of Wight. Its inhabitants clung to their beliefs. Shortly before the Whitby Synod, in one of the ironies of the pagan conversion, King Wulfhere of Mercia, who was Penda’s son, invaded the island and baptised the islanders by force.

To this point, the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons had been peaceable, at least within the context of the power plays of rival kings. But with all the country now Christian, the last pagan holdouts began to appear unconscionable, and even more so when the islanders on Wight reverted to paganism.

The islanders held to the old gods until 686, when the king of Wessex, Cædwalla, brought his army across the Solent. Cædwalla did not give the islanders the benefit of the doubt: he killed King Arwald, the last pagan, in battle, executed his heirs and either killed or deported the islanders, settling the Isle of Wight with people from his own kingdom.

Roman Triumph

16 December 2024
Edoardo
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Categories: History
Musée de Bretagne, Collection Arts graphiques

The Romans carried the day at the Synod of Whitby. Oswiu ordered that Roman practices should be adopted throughout his realm. Not all the monks of Lindisfarne were willing to abandon the customs of their father. Those that would not, withdrew from Lindisfarne, returning to Iona.

The church in Northumbria spent the next decades delicately balancing integrating the old Irish elements into the new church while trying to prevent the more zealous advocates of Rome denigrating the achievements of its founders. Much of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History is dedicated to achieving this balance.

The Key to Heaven

16 December 2024
Edoardo
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Categories: History

The Irish claim that their method of calculating Easter came to them via St Columba from the Apostle John himself carried great weight.

But the proponents of the Roman practice of dating Easter hit back. They first pointed out that the Irish method of calculation was confined to Ireland (and even there some of the southern churches had switched to the Roman method) and the Church of the Britons whereas the Roman method had become universal.

But the card that carried the argument for Rome was their assertion, that the Irish could not deny, that Peter had been given the keys to the kingdom of heaven and, as Rome’s chief apostle, his word carried the greatest weight.

 Given the sins that lay heavily upon Oswiu’s soul, this was a key consideration for him.