MEDIEVAL ORIGINS Volume 3

MEDIEVAL ORIGINS Volume 3 Dancing Lights Press Join our community at DancingLightsPress.com Follow us on Twitter @LightsPress SampleThe bearer of this document has the express file written permission of the publisher to make copies for personal use. Medieval Origins is based upon works in the public domain. Introduction and commentary copyright 2021 Berin Kinsman. All rights reserved. This is version 1.0 of this document. Special Thanks Denise Webster, Josephine Lawson, Agnes Foster, Homer Taylor, Jean Watson, Benjamin Silva, Roger Franklin, Dave Thompson, Keith Ferguson, Sidney Becker, Hugo Turner, Louis Williams, Lorene Alexander, Julio Meyer, Marguerite Townsend, Cameron Price, Kathleen Drake, Eunice Cobb, Roy Gray, Rachael Buchanan, Ignacio Ross, Santos McCormick, Javier Moss, Winston McKinney, Estelle Wolfe, Rudolph Hoffman, Grace Frank, Yolanda Burgess, Elias Barber, Hannah Cooper, Michelle Campbell, Ernesto Perry, Marco Lane, Nicholas Simmons, Melissa Joseph, Vicky Gibbs, Kara Walton, Dewey Hogan, Casey Carter, Bobby Cook, Shawn Reed, Nichole Sutton, Edgar Gardner, Jason Herrera, Kristopher Stephens, Armando Steele, Joshua Ortega, Ginger Hines, Jacob Jensen, Oliver Maldonado. They know why, and that’s what matters. Sample file CONTENTS TEUTON QUALITIES............................................1 THE ANGLO-SAXON COMITATUS.........................4 THE GERMANIC TRIBES....................................10 THE VIKINGS....................................................20 THE ARRIVAL OF CHRISTIANITY......................41 THE CONVERSION OF THE IRISH......................43 THE CONVERSION OF THE ENGLISH.................56 GAUL AND GERMANY.......................................70 THE OLD WORLD PASSES..................................87 ABOUT DANCING LIGHTS PRESS.......................90 Sample file Sample file TEUTON QUALITIES Henry Osborn Taylor There were intellectual as well as emotional differences between the Celts and Teutons. A certain hard rationality and grasp of fact mark the mentality of the latter. On land or sea they view the situation, realize its opportunities, their own strength, and the opposing odds: with definite and persistent purpose they move, they fight, they labour. The quality of purposefulness becomes clearer as they emerge from the forest obscurity of their origins into the open light of history. To a definite goal of conquest and settlement Theodoric led the Ostrogoths from Moesia westward, and fought his way into Italy. With persistent purposefulness Clovis and his Merovingian successors intrigued and fought. Among Anglo- Saxon pirates the aim of plunder quickly grew to that of conquest. And in times which were to follow, there was purpose in every voyage and battle of the Vikings. The Teutons disclose more strength and persistency of desire than the Celts. Their feelings were slower, less impulsive; also less quickly diverted, more unswerving, even fiercer in their strength. The general characteristic of Teutonic emotion is its close connection with some motive grounded in rational purpose. Caesar’s short sketch of the Germans gives the impression of barbarous peoples, numerous, brave, overweening. They Samplehad not reached the agricultural stage, but were devotedfile to war and hunting. There were no Druids among them. Their 1 bodies were inured to hardship. They lived in robust independence, and were subject to their chiefs only in war. Their fiercest folk, the Suevi, from boyhood would submit neither to labour nor discipline, that their strength and spirit might be unchecked. It was deemed shameful for a youth to have to do with women before his twentieth year. The Roman world knew more about these Germans by the year a.d. 99 when Tacitus composed his Germania. They had scarcely yet turned to agriculture. Respect for women appears clearly. These barbarians are most reluctant to give their maidens as hostages; they listen to their women’s voices and deem that there is something holy and prophetic in their nature. Upon marriage, oxen, a horse, and shield and lance make up the husband’s morgengabe to his bride: she is to have part in her husband’s valour. Fornication and adultery are rare, the adulteress is ruthlessly punished; men and maidens marry late. The men of the tribe decide important matters, which, however, the chiefs have previously discussed apart. The people sit down armed; the priests proclaim silence; the king or war-leader is listened to, and the assembly is swayed by his persuasion and repute. They dissent with murmurs, or assent brandishing their spears. There is thus participation by the tribe, and yet deference to reputation. This description discloses Teutonic freedom as different from Celtic political unrestraint. Tacitus also speaks of the Germanic Comitatus, consisting of a chief and a band Sampleof youths drawn together by his repute, who fight byfile his side and are disgraced if they survive him dead upon the field. In time of peace they may seek another leader from a tribe at 2 war; for the Germans are impatient of peace and toil, and slothful except when fighting or hunting. They had further traits and customs which are barbaric rather than specifically Teutonic: cruelty and faithlessness toward enemies, feuds, wergeld, drinking bouts, gambling, slavery, absence of testaments. Between the time of Tacitus and the fifth century many changes came over the Teuton tribes. Early tribal names vanished, while a regrouping into larger and apparently more mobile aggregates took place. The obscure revolutions occurring in Central Europe in the second, third, and fourth centuries do not indicate social progress, but rather retrogression from an almost agricultural state toward stages of migratory unrest. We have already noted the fortunes of those tribes that helped to barbarize and disrupt the Roman Empire, and lost themselves among the Romance populations of Italy, Gaul, and Spain. We are here concerned with those that preserved their native speech and qualities, and as Teuton peoples became contributories to the currents of medieval evolution. Sample file 3 THE ANGLO-SAXON COMITATUS Henry Osborn Taylor When the excellent Apollinaris Sidonius, writing in the middle of the fifth century to a young friend about to enter the Roman naval service off the coasts of Gaul, characterized the Saxon pirates as the fiercest and most treacherous of foes, whose way is to dash upon their prey amid the tempest, and for whom shipwreck is a school, he spoke truly, and also illustrated the difference that lies in point of view. Fierce they were, and hardy seamen, likewise treacherous in Roman eyes, and insatiate plunderers. From the side of the sea they represented the barbarian disorder threatening the world. The Roman was scarcely interested in the fact that these men kept troth among themselves with energy and sacrifice of life. The Saxons, Angles, Jutes, whose homes ashore lay between the Weser and the Elbe and through Sleswig, Holstein, and Denmark, possessed interesting qualities before they landed in Britain, where under novel circumstances they were to develop their character and institutions with a rapidity that soon raised them above the condition of their kin who had stayed at home. Bands of them had touched Britain before the year 411, when the Roman legions were withdrawn. But it was only with the landing of Hengest and Horsa in 449 that they began to come in conquering force. The Anglo-Saxon conquest of the island went on for two centuries. Information Sampleregarding it is of the scantiest; but the Britons seem file to have been submerged or driven westward. There is at least no 4 evidence of any friendly mingling of the races. The invaders accepted neither Christianity nor Roman culture from the conquered, and Britain became a heathen England. While these Teuton peoples were driving through their conquest and also fighting fiercely with each other, their characters and institutions were becoming distinctively Anglo-Saxon. Under stress of ceaseless war, military leaders became hereditary kings, whose powers, at least in intervals of peace, were controlled by the Witan or Council of the Wise, and limited by the jurisdiction of the Hundred Court. Likewise the temporary ties of the Teutonic Comitatus became permanent in the body of king’s companions (thegns, thanes), whose influence was destined to supplant that of the eorls, the older nobility of blood. The Comitatus principle pervades Anglo-Saxon history as well as literature; it runs through the Beowulf epic; Anglo-Saxon Biblical versifiers transfer it to the followers of Abraham and the disciples of Christ; and every child knows the story of Lilla, faithful thegn, who flung himself between his Northumbrian king, Edwin, and the sword of the assassin—the latter sent by a West Saxon king and doubtless one of his faithful thegns. Their law consisted mainly in the graded wergeld for homicide, in an elaborate tariff of compensation for personal injuries, and in penalties for cattle-raiding. Beyond the matter of theft, property law was still unwritten custom, and contract law did not exist. The rules of procedure, for Sampleinstance in the Hundred Court, were elaborate, as isfile usual in a primitive society where the substantial rights are simple, and the important thing is to induce the parties to submit to 5 an adjudication. Similar Teutonic customs obtained elsewhere. But the course of their development in Saxon England displays an ever clearer recognition of fundamental principles of English law: justice is public; the

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