Questions:

1. What do you know about the Celtic Church:

• the conversion of the Celts

• peculiarities of the Celtic Church

• missionaries and monasteries

• relations with the Roman Church

2. What was the history of the Picts?

3. Describe the political and social life in the British Celtic kingdoms in the 5-7 c.

Unit 4. ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD (c. AD 449-1066)

1). ANGLO-SAXON INVASION

Pre-Reading Task

1. What do you know about the Germanic tribes that invaded Britain?

2. Read the following text and relate the pricipal events of the Invasion

3. Describe the main political and social results of the Invasion

The Venerable Bede was taken into a monastery in Jarrow in the late seventh century, probably just before his tenth birthday, and it was in this monastery in the north-east of Britain that he wrote that book on which much of our knowledge of early England relies: the Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, the Ecclesiastical History of the English People.

In the year 449, Marcian being made emperor with Valentinian, ruled the empire for seven years. The nation of the Angles, or Saxons, being invited by the aforesaid king, arrived in Britain. Those who came over were of the three most powerful nations of Germany: Saxons, Angles, and Jutes. From the Jutes are descended the people of Kent and of the Isle of Wight, and those in the province of the West-Saxons who are to this day called Jutes, seated opposite the Isle of Wight. From the Saxons, that is the country which is now called Old Saxony, came the East-Saxons, the South-Saxons and West-Saxons. From the Angles, that is the country which is called Anglia, are descended the East-Angles, the Middle-Angles, the Mercians, all the race of the Northumbrians, that is, of those nations that dwell on the north side of the river Humber. and the other nations of the English. The first two commanders are said to have been Hengist and Horsa.

In AD 449 no one spoke English in Britain. Churchill describes the population of the time.

C+Of all the tribes of the Germanic race none was more cruel than the Saxons. Their very name, which spread to the whole confederacy of Northern tribes, was supposed to be derived from the use of a weapon, the seax, a short one-handed sword. Although tradition and the Venerable Bede assign the conquest of Britain to the Angles, Jutes and Saxons together, it is probable that before their general exodus from Schleswig-Holstein the Saxons had virtually incorporated the other two strains.

According to Bede, Aelle was the first bretwalda, or ruler of Britain. Bret means, Britain, Walda means ruler. So Aelle was the first of seven kings who claimed the kingdoms south of the Humber, probably in the final quarter of the fifth century.

C+ In Germany they had no kings. They developed them in Britain from leaders who claimed descent from the ancient gods. The position of the king continually increased in importance, and his supporters or companions gradually formed a new class in society, which carried with it the germ of feudalism, and was in the end to dominate all other conventions. But the lord was master; he must also be protector. He must stand by his people, must back them in the courts, feed them in time of famine, and they in return must work his land and follow him in war. To make himself secure became his paramount desire. But how was this to be achieved? Only by the king gathering round him a band of the most successful warriors and interesting them directly in the conquest and in the settlement. He had nothing to give them but land. The spoils of war were soon consumed but the land remained for ever, but to give individual warriors title to any particular tract was contrary to the whole tradition of the German tribes. Now under the hard pressures of war and pioneering land increasingly became private property.

Here are the seeds of the landed gentry. Everything it had, including title ant position, it owed to the monarch. This is the basis of aristocracy. But there was more than one king because, geographically, there had to be. There were limitations on the way fifth- and sixth-century people could travel. Also, no one now had an army that could be structured to subjugate the whole island race and the Saxons were migrating, not enlarging an existing empire Nevertheless, it is warfare that propels nations, however fragmented. And it was war in the year 577 that expanded the hold of the Saxons over the defending Britons.

In the 570s and 580s, the southern Britons had been subjugated by the English - those who lived in the southern counties as they are now called - who made up the Sutangli, or Southern Angles, or Southern English. And this north-south divide affected the history of this island race. As the historian, Sir Frank Stenton, points out, 'From the age of the migrations down to the Danish wars of the ninth century, the peoples south of the Humber were normally subject to the authority of a common overlord. The term 'common overlord' means that different parts were ruled by a sort of underlord or lesser king.

C+… this new institution of personal leadership established in the divinely descended war chief sank deeply into the fibre of the Anglo-Saxon invaders [but] they were never able to carry the evolution of kingship forward to a national throne.

(from “This Sceptred Isle” by Christopher Lee, L. 1990 )