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Matheliende is published quarterly by the students and faculty of Anglo-Saxon at The University of Georgia.
Matheliende welcomes any and all correspondence and articles. Such material should be addressed to Mr. Alex Bruce, Park Hall, The University of Georgia. Copyright 1995 Alexander M. Bruce
RECONSIDERING HISTORY: THE SAXON PRESENCE IN BRITAIN BEFORE 449
By Jonathan Foggin
Part One
The relationship between Saxon and Briton in the waning years of the Roman Empire has long been characterized as hostile, and why should it not be? In his account of the tumultuous fifth century, Gildas tells of "towns laid low . . . church leaders, priests, and people" put to the sword, and "fragments of corpses, covered with a purple crust of congealed blood," all because of the ruthless Saxons (xxiv.3). Understandably, such writings, as well as the conspicuous absence of native Celtic loan words in the English language, have led scholars to conclude that there could have been little peaceful contact between the two peoples: the natives either fled to Wales, Cornwall, and Armorica, or were decimated by the violent Germanic invaders. Although never completely satisfactory, this view does provide us with a historical framework for the ending of Roman Britain, but it has held sway primarily through the absence of any evidence to the contrary. However, new developments in archaeology are beginning to shed light on this poorly understood era in British history, and a somewhat different picture of the Saxon presence in Britain in the fifth century, and even before, is coming into focus.
Sources tell us that by the mid-fourth century A.D., a century before the arrival of Horsa and Hengest, Roman "Britannia" had fallen on hard times; barbarian tribes were pressing on the frontiers, while a series of British pretenders rose to claim the imperial title. Ammianus Marcellinus records one of the darkest hours of the province:
Apparently this "barbarica conspiratio" of A.D. 367 was so dangerous that Emperor Valentinian I sent Count Theodosius and four auxiliary battalions to rectify the situation. By the following year the barbarians were defeated, a usurper was put down, and the situation was brought under control.
Our sources, however, do not give a complete picture of the events surrounding the barbarian action of 367. Decidedly little evidence exists for the sort of destruction one might expect with the major barbarian incursions described by Ammianus. Since such gaps in the archaeological record present problems in confirming that hostile relations existed between Roman and barbarian in fourth century Britain, our attention is drawn to the role of Roman frontier installations. Of the two most famous border fortifications in Britain, Hadrian's Wall and the Saxon Shore, the Saxon Shore is of particular interest because there, rather than in the north, the barbarians who eventually dominated Britain apparently entered the province.
According to Stephen Johnson, we find the term "Saxon Shore" first attested in the Notitia Dignitatum, a fourth-century Roman document listing both military and civil offices in the Empire, including references to an officer known as the "Comes Litoris Saxonici" and to the nine forts under his supervision (64-74). The meaning of the phrase "Saxon Shore" has puzzled scholars from the sixteenth century to today; it raises the crucial question of whether the Saxons came to Britain primarily as settlers or as attackers. In truth, the role of the Saxon Shore is important to our understanding of the Anglo-Saxon migration to Britain, and the history of late antiquity as a whole.
The earliest interpretation of the phrase "litus Saxonicum" portrays the Saxons as settlers. As Donald A. White outlines in his Litus Saxonicum, Guido Pancrioli suggested in 1593 that the area around the British coastal defense system was called "Saxon Shore" only after the Saxons had settled there. Shortly thereafter, William Camden stated that the Romans named the Saxon Shore after the barbarians who raided there (White 3-12). This second theory was embraced particularly by nineteenth-century English antiquarians and has remained the predominant one even into the present. The belief that Saxons came to Britain as attackers was so popular that it overshadowed several insightful works which questioned the validity of large scale Saxon invasions, including J. M. Lappenberg's England Under the Anglo-Saxon Kings, published in 1894. Lappenberg was the first of the Anglo-Saxon scholars to find fault with the literary sources, concluding that they were fraught with mythological elements and were of dubious historical value (96-101).
Although his Saxon Shore interpretation was initially rejected, Lappenberg's theories are presently finding new support, as the heirs to his skepticism subject literary sources to intense scrutiny. The maturation of archaeology, a source largely unavailable to nineteenth-century scholars, has contributed new information vital to the interpretation of the settlement theory. The lines which now are being drawn separate the more traditional school, which places heavy influence upon the literary record, from an odd amalgamation of archaeologists and textual critics who believe the Saxon shore was named after Germanic settlers.
The justification for the Saxon invasions lies primarily in an appearance of continuity between two very different literary traditions. On one hand we have the fourth-century classical sources which describe the ferocity of the Saxon barbarian, while on the other, we have Anglo-Saxon and British literature chronicling nothing less than a full-scale invasion. The resulting scenario is of intractable Germanic pirates raiding civilized "Britannia"; despite resistance offered by the garrisons of the Saxon Shore, Roman resources are eventually worn down by the endless onslaught of barbarians and the province falls.
The Saxons' reputation for savagery explains why this scenario has been so widely accepted. For years the Saxons have been regarded as barbarians "par excellence," surpassing all others in cunning and savagery, traits so pronounced that Roman authors such as Sidonius Apollinaris singled them out for total exclusion from the Empire. Yet aside from a few late references to the brutality of the Saxon character, our only real source on the Saxons is Ammianus Marcellinus. While relating an incident in which a band of Saxons was ambushed and slaughtered by Roman troops, the chronicler describes the Saxons as "ad mortem destinatae" (xxviii.5.2). The phrase, usually translated "resolved to fight to the death," has been taken as an indication of Saxon ferocity. Philip Bartholomew, however, has argued quite convincingly in his article "Fourth Century Saxons" for a different translation--"marked out for death," a statement foreshadowing their eventual doom (171). He also points out that the Romans, far from avoiding the Saxons altogether, incorporated them into the army in the same manner they would any other barbarian tribe (169). The Saxons may have enjoyed a "normal" relationship with Rome not expressed in the sources; we are encouraged, therefore, to turn a critical eye towards the actual accounts of the invasions.
After the barbarian conspiracy of 367, classical sources say almost nothing of the Saxons, and precious little about Roman Britain. We know that in 410, Honorius ordered the British to see to their own defenses, but other than that, the years until well after the supposed advent of the Saxons are empty, forcing us to turn to British and English historical accounts to find literary evidence for the fifth century. Gildas, a British monk writing in the sixth century, tells of how the "ferocious Saxons, hated by man and God . . . fixed their dreadful claws on the East side of the island" (xxiii.4), and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, recalling the events of 456, adds that when attacked by the Saxons, "the Britons forsook Kent and fled to London in great horror" (Anno 456). No chronicler, however, can match the tragic eloquence of Bede:
Though such compelling testimony tempts us to assume that these works take up where the classical historians left off, we should beware of doing so. First, there is a problem of chronology; our earliest source, Gildas, was recording an oral tradition about events which had occurred over a century earlier. Since Bede and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle are both rather late and too heavily based on Gildas' narrative to be totally acceptable as primary sources, we must accept Lappenberg's conclusion that we are left with no reliable literary source for the fifth century.
Another point must also be considered: Roman defensive installations such as the Saxon Shore were not usually named after the attackers (White 14). This alone should alert us to the tenuous connection drawn between the existence of late Roman forts along the British coast and the fearsome reputation of the Saxons found in Roman and British sources. The fact that Saxons ended up living in southeast England need not imply that they raided and eventually conquered the area, especially when evidence for such violent action is so notably absent from the archaeological record.
When examining this record, we are confronted with the question of whether or not the Saxons were even capable of conducting piratical raids along the British coast. As Bartholomew points out, late Roman authors probably lacked both the interest and the ability to distinguish between Franks and Saxons (176), and Donald White adds that apart from brief references in Eutropius and Ammianus Marcellinus, neither of these tribes were known as seafaring peoples (78). As well, Archibald Lewis notes that the German ships of the fourth and fifth centuries sat low in the water and were thus not capable of practicing piracy in the rough North Sea; if any barbarians were raiding the eastern coasts of Britain, it is likely to have been the Picts, a Caledonian tribe possessing considerable naval skills (47).
Whether or not the Saxon Shore forts would have been an effective means of combating such piracy on the coasts of southeast Britain depends primarily on the types of forces that would have operated from them. Envisioning barbarian attacks on the coast, Stephen Johnson postulates that the watchtowers and forts served as naval bases from which the Roman fleet would intercept and destroy raiders before they could make landfall (127-128). After recognizing, though, that the Roman navy could not have been effective enough, Johnson emended his hypothesis and suggested a system of defense which would allow the enemy to make landfall before they were intercepted in familiar territory (69). This system of "defense in depth," which corresponds with later Roman military tactics, presupposes a mobile force such as cavalry and an inland reserve to enact the interception. Although there is little evidence for such an inland reserve in southeast England, according to the Notitia Dignitatum, the Saxon Shore forts at Burgh Castle and Brancaster both housed contingents of cavalry (Johnson 65). Interestingly, as Derek Welsby notes, the forts along the Yorkshire coast, which may have served as signal stations to inland camps, were built rather close to the Pictish frontier (155).
What we are left with, then, is an increasingly complex picture. On the one hand we have an area of Britain named after a foreign Germanic tribe whose maritime skills may have been insufficient to raid the coast of Britain, and a system of forts which probably could not have prevented raiders from landing at will; on the other, we see the Picts, a tribe possessing considerable naval prowess and a reputation for piracy, and a system of inland defense with its strongest link near the Pictish coast. The scenario which can be formulated from these coincidences may be a compelling one, but to better understand the events of 367, we need to survey the archaeological record for eastern Britain.
There is little archaeological evidence for the barbarian conspiracy--so little, in fact, that one must wonder where the fighting and widespread destruction took place. Evidence for continued stability throughout the rural and urban centers of the province leads us to conclude that either Roman defenses were doing a superb job of keeping the barbarians out, or that there were few raids, if any.
Since raiding parties probably would have avoided fortified towns and military posts, Welsby argues that the best place to seek evidence of raiding would be in the unprotected villas (107). Certainly the scale of invasion implied by the literary sources would have resulted in widespread, archaeologically visible destruction. Yet at the vulnerable villas there is no evidence for such destruction (Welsby 108). In a reassessment of several villas thought to have been destroyed during the conspiracy, Graham Webster concludes that none can be attributed to enemy action (226). He does, however, contend that only when large groups of raiders roamed the countryside would the destruction be evident in the archaeological record; smaller parties could plunder the villa contents while leaving the buildings intact (222).
These hypotheses leave us with several lines of conjecture regarding the events surrounding the conspiracy of 367. If there were raids on the British coast, it is likely that they were being conducted by small bands, possibly Picts, operating out of small, stealthy boats (Lewis 47). Against such raiders the best defense the Romans could hope to have would be one like that on the Yorkshire coast: the watchtowers could spot pirates and alert the mobile defense force to their presence. As for the imposing fortresses of the Saxon Shore, there is a better explanation for their function.
One scholar, John Cotterill, has questioned the practicality of the Saxon Shore as a defensive system. He concluded that not only would the forts provide insufficient coverage of the Saxon Shore's three-hundred-mile coastline, but that a tremendous naval force would have to be maintained to patrol the seas effectively (233). Furthermore, by the late fourth century, precisely the time our sources speak of Saxon raids, the forts of Lympne, Burgh Castle, and Reculver had been abandoned, leaving huge gaps in the Johnson's proposed line of defense (Cotterill 235). Instead, Cotterill argues that the forts were fortified trans-shipment centers for state supplies (237). This seems a much more likely scenario than Johnson's, since the primary role of the imperial Roman navy was supply and support.
In the face of such evidence, the theory that the Saxons attacked the coasts of Britain in 367, or indeed any time in the fourth century, becomes harder to accept. What did happen in the "barbarica conspiratio" of 367 remains a mystery. There may have been some small raids from the northern frontier, or Theodosius may have been dispatched for some other purpose; Bartholomew, for one, argues that he was sent to handle a grain crisis (184). Whatever the case may be, we are still faced with the question of how the "Saxon Shore" came to be called such. However, we now can abandon the belief that the shore was named after Saxon raiders of the fourth century; whether or not we can prove that the shore was named after later Saxon settlers depends largely on the accumulation of new archaeological evidence, evidence that will be discussed in the next issue of Matheliende.
By C. Tidmarsh Major
Interspersed among medical and herbal lore and scrawled in the margins of various manuscripts lie a curious group of prose and poetry known collectively as the Anglo-Saxon charms, superstitious sayings with supposed magical properties. These charms provide a number of insights into the misty haze of Anglo-Saxon history and offer faint reflections of the pre-Christian Germanic inhabitants of Great Britain.
The charms, however, also provide a number of problems to the scholar of Old English, beginning with the very definition of an "Anglo-Saxon charm." Besides the twelve well-known metrical charms, there are over 100 prose charms, some of which contain varying amounts of Latin. Since the first publication of the Textus Roffensis by Thomas Hearne in 1720, various combinations of one or more charms have been published in at least 49 instances. No two editions of the charms have published the same ones, however, and none has published all of them. In his 1909 edition, Grendon prints 62 charms in Old English and lists a further 84, found mostly in the editions of Leonhardi and Cockayne. In The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems of 1942, E. V. K. Dobbie includes only the 12 that he considers metrically regular enough to be considered poetry, while Godfrid Storms in his 1948 Anglo-Saxon Magic includes 86 charms. In a 1983 dissertation, George Abernathy prints texts and translations of 10 of the 12 charms included in Dobbie's edition, leaving out "Aecer-Bot" and "Sithgaldor."
In addition to defining an Anglo-Saxon charm, one must also wrangle with the organization and classification of the charms. Each editor of the charms has followed a different system. Cockayne, in his Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of Early England, prints and translates the entire contents of the Herbarium of Apuleius found in British Museum ms. Harley 585 and the "Leechbook" of British Museum ms. Regius 12 D xvii (Storms 12-17). Cockayne makes no attempt to separate the charms from the other contents of the manuscripts, which are almost entirely medical (Storms 25). In his edition, Storms labels the charms by the manuscripts in which they are found. Grendon categorizes the charms according to five types: exorcisms of diseases or disease spirits, herbal charms, charms for transferring disease, amulet charms, and charm remedies. Grendon's classification has been questioned because the categories are not exclusive ("charm remedies" seems to subsume the entire classification), and because Grendon places two versions of the same charm (A8 and B6) in different classes (Storms 128). Dobbie's arrangement of the charms is perhaps the most satisfactory, but it is also the most incomplete. He makes no attempt to classify them according to Christian/pagan elements, form, content, or purpose, and instead presents them in the order in which they occur in the manuscripts (Dobbie cxxxii). Dobbie's edition, although limited to 12 charms, includes the most critically important ones and is the most reliable scholarly edition.
Storms makes no attempt to divide the charms into groups, and instead lists them according to native (pagan) or foreign (Christian) elements:
The problem with this organization is that it depends on being able to separate the supposed Christian and pagan elements of the charms. Such a division is difficult, if not impossible. All the charms have an undeniable Christian basis: they were written down by Christian monks some time during the tenth and eleventh centuries. Despite the undeniable Christian origin of all Anglo-Saxon literature, the development of Christianity over the past millennium has made the beliefs of the Anglo-Saxons seem crude and foreign to modern critics of Old English. Such a modern air of superiority over the "confused" Anglo-Saxons pervades much of the scholarship and criticism of the period and hinders a full understanding of the early English people. Storms' classification in particular suffers from this bias.
Aside from the problems of definition and organization, however, five Anglo-Saxon charms are particularly important: "With Faerstice," "With Dweorh," "With Ymbe," "Aecer-Bot," and "Nigon Wyrta Galdor." All of these charms have been discussed in terms of the traditional pagan/Christian dichotomy.
"With Faerstice," "against a sudden stitch," refers dimly to Germanic pagan traditions of elf-shot magic, magical smiths, and possibly the valkyries. The charm provides a remedy to a sudden pain caused by a magical spear or dart, whether it be from elves, witches, or spirits. Glosecki's Shamanism and Old English Poetry provides a translation, lengthy discussion, and interpretation of this charm.
"With Dweorh," "against a dwarf," like many of the charms, is problematic and includes several nonce words. A primary difficulty with this charm is its purpose. Wulker concludes that it is meant to cure a tumor on the neck (Grendon 215), whereas Grendon argues for "some sort of paroxysmal disease" (215). Magoun, however, suggests that it is a cure for sleeplessness caused by fever (Dobbie cxxxiv). Grattan, in contrast, interprets this charm as a cure for nightmares (Dobbie cxxxv). Glosecki's work provides a translation, discussion, and interpretation of this charm also.
"With Ymbe," "for a swarm of bees," is described by Storms as "fully pagan, in fact the only pagan been charm in Germanic countries' (132). As a charm to keep swarming bees from escaping to the woods, this harm would have been of great importance to the Anglo-Saxons. Not only was honey their only form of sweetener, but it was also the source of mead, the drink of magical and poetic inspiration. "Aecer-Bot," "field remedy," contains a strange mixture of seemingly pagan and Christian elements, combining pagan fertility symbols such as sods of land and the Christian mass. Included is a prayer to Erce, Mother Earth (Storms 180). Storms views this charm as a Christianized pagan ritual that reveals not only pagan magic, but also pagan religion (Storms 178). This is the most elaborate of the metrical charms, and has been frequently commented upon.
Finally, "Nigon Wyrta Galdor," the "nine herbs charm" for an unknown disease, has been commented on at great length. Of the nine herbs listed, seven can be identified with some confidence (Dobbie cxxxiii). Unfortunately, there is no definitive work on Anglo-Saxon plant names, and the most reliable sources (Hoops and Cockayne) date to the nineteenth century (Dobbie cxxxiii). Storms' edition includes a glossary of the Old English plant names contained in the charms.
Despite the many inherent problems of diction, classification, and availability, the Old English charms provide a fascinating subject of study with their dim glimpse into pre-conversion superstition. Pope Gregory's method of gently bringing the English into the fold by allowing them to continue to worship in familiar places, albeit in a new form, helped speed the conversion of the heathen Anglo-Saxons. At the same time, however, this synthetic conversion also allowed for a number of survivals of the pagan past into Christian times. Alcuin's epistle admonishing monasteries for their heathen stories indicates that even Christian monks of the period held onto more of the pre-conversion past than Rome would have liked. The Old English charms reflect this tension, providing a faint picture of this old Germanic culture as it was becoming subsumed into the Roman Christian world view.
Norman Cantor, Inventing the Middle Ages (New York: Quill, 1991), 477 pages.
Norman Cantor provides a useful survey to medieval scholars, especially those just entering the field, in his Inventing the Middle Ages. In this book, subtitled "The Lives, Works and Ideas of the Great Medievalists of the Twentieth Century," Cantor discusses the twenty most important medievalists of our century. In doing so he provides biographical information (flavored by his own personal connection to many of the scholars), a summary of major works, including the theories espoused, and a discussion of the impact of those works.
Cantor's premise for creating this study is that "medieval studies [are] very largely a twentieth-century phenomenon" (p. 28). We should thank the nineteenth-century Victorians for "the founding of research institutes, [for] the building up of libraries and the organization of archives, and [for] the publication of records" (p. 28), yet we must also recognize that they perceived the Middle Ages according to their own designs and "simply didn't know much about the Middle Ages" (p. 37). Twentieth-century scholars studied all those medieval records and wrote extensively about them so that a "bright American college sophomore who today takes a good survey course on medieval history has a better understanding of the components of the medieval world than anyone who wrote before 1895" (p. 37).
A variety of fields are represented by the scholars Cantor presents. He starts with Frederic William Maitland, who completely re-analyzed medieval law. Others include Percy Schramm and Ernst Kantorowicz, who studied German kings of the eleventh and thirteenth centuries; David Knowles, a Catholic monk who wrote on the history of the medieval church, much to Rome's chagrin; and Richard Southern, who encouraged many students with his book The Making of the Middle Ages, an optimistic perspective on the twelfth century.
One weakness, though, from our perspective, is that the only Anglo-Saxon scholar discussed by Cantor is J. R. R. Tolkien. In the chapter "The Oxford Fantasists," Cantor introduces both Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. Cantor emphasizes the creative literature of the two more than their scholarly works; from his perspective, the two were of note because of their "mythopoetic vision of medieval heroism [which was] communicated to the masses through fantasy stories" (p. 213). While we must acknowledge that, to the general public, these two are known primarily for their fantasy literature, we should also note that they made significant contributions to the study of Medieval literature. Tolkien's role in the re-evaluation of Beowulf as a literary work is not mentioned, though he is briefly acknowledged for awakening interest in the Gawain-poet. From readingÔ began a century or so after the Norman conquest.
Still, as students of the Medieval period, we can learn much from Cantor's study. He presents important trends in scholarship and summarizes major works so that we can more readily decide what we should read to better our own understanding. As well, Cantor offers us an optimistic vision: "Affirmation of the heritage of the Middle Ages is going to be a prominent trend on the academic scene in the 1990s, broadening out into a larger intellectual and cultural movement as we reach the end of the second Christian millennium" (p. 412).
Reconsidering History: The Saxon Presence in Britain Before 449
Ammianus Marcellinus. Trans. John C. Rolfe. The Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1939.
Bartholomew, Philip. "Fourth-Century Saxons." Britannia 15 (1984): 169-185.
Bede. A History of the English Church and People Trans. Leo Sherley-Price. Revised, R.E. Latham. New York: Penguin Books, 1968.
Cotterill, John. "Saxon Raiding and the Role of the Late Roman Coastal Forts of Britain." Britannia 24 (1993): 227-239.
Garmonsway, G.N., ed. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. London: J. M. Dent and Sons Ltd., 1952.
Johnson, Stephen. The Roman Forts of the Saxon Shore. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1976.
Lappenberg, J.M. A History of England Under the Anglo-Saxon Kings. London: George Bell and Sons, 1894.
Lewis, Archibald R. The Northern Seas: Shipping and Commerce in Northern Europe A.D. 300-1100. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958.
Webster, Graham. "The Future of Villa Studies." In The Roman Villa in Britain. New York: Frederick A. Prager Inc., 1969.
Welsby, Derek A. The Roman Military Defense of the British Provinces in its Later Phases. Oxford: B.A.R., 1982.
White, Donald A. Litus Saxonicum: The British Saxon Shore in Scholarship and History. New York: Book Craftsman Associates Inc., 1961.
Winterbottom, Michael. Gildas: The Ruin of Britain and Other Works. London: Phillimore and Co. Ltd., 1978.
The Anglo-Saxon Charms: An Oblique View of Germanic Culture
Dobbie, Elliott Van Kirk. The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems. New York: Columbia UP, 1942.
Glosecki, Stephen O. Shamanism and Old English Poetry. New York: Garland, 1989.
Grendon, Felix. 'The Anglo-Saxon Charms." Journal of American Folklore. 22 (1909): 105-237.
Storms, Godfrid. Anglo-Saxon Magic. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1948. Rpt. Folcroft Library Editions, 1975.
Our thanks to Dr. Ruppersburg for his generous assistance in publishing Matheliende.