Continuity of Worldviews in Anglo-Saxon England

Continuity of Worldviews in Anglo-Saxon England The Twilight Age Volume One Bob Trubshaw Considerable new scholarship in recent decades has shed much light on Anglo-Saxon England. In this pioneering study Bob Trubshaw approaches the history and archaeology of the era from the perspective of the underlying worldviews – the ideas that are ‘taken for granted’ in a society rather than consciously chosen. By looking at the linguistic and iconographical evidence for these worldviews he shows that there is a surprising continuity from the pre-Christian era until about the tenth century. This viewpoint provides a new way of thinking about both early Christianity in Britain and the religion which it – to some extent – superseded. About The Twilight Age series Not that many decades ago English history between the fifth the eleventh centuries was deemed the ‘Dark Ages’, largely because of the lack of evidence. Much has changed, and scholarship has shed considerable light on the later centuries. However, by then, many parts of Britain were evolving into Anglo-Scandinavian culture. Evidence for the Anglo-Germanic fifth and sixth centuries is still scarce and difficult to interpret, so the epithet ‘Dark Ages’ is still apt. The years in between occupy a comparative ‘twilight zone’, fascinating because of numerous social changes, not least the various cultural transitions which ultimately led to Christianity being the dominant religion. The period spanning the seventh and eighth centuries and, sometimes, the decades either side can be thought of as the ‘Twilight Age’. This series of publications combines available evidence from archaeologists, historians and place-name scholars. This evidence is combined with a broader mix of paradigms than those usually adopted by early medievalists, including topography, cosmology, iconography and ethnography – especially current approaches to comparative religion. For details of other titles in The Twilight Age series please visit www.hoap.co.uk The Twilight Age series Volume 1: Continuity of Worldviews in Anglo-Saxon England Volume 2: Souls, Spirits and Deities: Continuity from paganism in early Christianity Volume 3: Continuity of Anglo-Saxon Iconography Volume 4: Minsters and Valleys: A topographical comparison of seventh and eighth century land use in Leicestershire and Wiltshire Volume 5: Rethinking Anglo-Saxon Shrines: A cosmological and topographical view of hohs and hlaws Volume 6: How Anglo-Saxons Found Their Way Volume 7: The Especially Sacred Grove: Six Hills and Vernemetum, Leicestershire Continuity of Worldviews in Anglo-Saxon England The Twilight Age Volume One Bob Trubshaw Heart of Albion Continuity of Worldviews in Anglo-Saxon England The Twilight Age Volume One Bob Trubshaw © Copyright Bob Trubshaw 2013; 2016 minor revisions 2017; 2020 The moral rights of the author and illustrators have been asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior written permission from Heart of Albion Press, except for brief passages quoted in reviews. Published as a downloadable PDF file only by: Heart of Albion 2 Cross Hill Close, Wymeswold Loughborough, LE12 6UJ [email protected] Visit our Web site: www.hoap.co.uk Contents Preface Preface to the 2016 edition 1 Understanding worldviews 1 2 The Dark Ages in the spotlight 15 3 More dead than alive 48 4 How language reveals – and limits – our worldviews 53 5 Heroes, martyrs and saints 62 6 Two unresolved questions 70 7 Where next? 74 Acknowledgements 77 Sources 78 Preface For more than twenty years my main aim as a writer has been to popularise current academic thinking. Initially such writing was about archaeology but over the decades I have ventured into folklore, mythology, cultural studies and – most recently – early Chinese and ancient Greek philosophies. Above all, I have become increasingly interested in the ways of thinking which, in any society, underlie more conscious decisions about beliefs and ideologies. Somewhere in the middle of this, and drawing also on history, linguistics and place-name studies, has been a long-standing interest in academics’ ever-evolving understanding of Anglo-Saxon society. Previously I have rarely attempted to summarise the broader aspects of academic thinking. Instead I picked up on specific insights and wove such insights together to head off in directions where the academic authors of the ideas might, quite understandably, fear to tread. Just such ‘adventures’ form the basis of the later chapters of this study. But the opening chapters attempt a much broader overview. And, because few historians or archaeologists approach their subject matter from the perspective of underlying patterns of thinking then I also begin with a brief preamble that attempts to explain what I mean by ‘worldviews’. My aim is to write for a popular readership. However I am well aware that any such attempts require making assumptions about readers’ prior knowledge. While any sort of generalisation is profoundly risky, I have become increasingly aware that people outside the relevant university departments – even those who have a genuine interest in Anglo-Saxon England – have rarely kept up with the substantial shifts in how academic historians and archaeologists now view the era once termed the ‘Dark Ages’ but which, as a result of their combined efforts, now seems – at least in parts – comparatively well-illuminated. In part this lack of awareness is because modern day academe offers no ‘Brownie points’ for making recent research available to a wider public – and may of the denizens of the academy, for understandable reasons, feel that any attempt to offer an overview is too intimidating. While a few television programmes – not least those of Michael Wood – have shared academic awareness with the public, the simple fact is that a sixty-minute documentary can convey fewer ideas than even one chapter of a book. Continuity of Worldviews in Anglo-Saxon England So the first three chapters of this study look at just a few of these changes in understanding of the Anglo-Saxon era. The literature I draw upon is vast and I make no claims to have explored all the papers published in an ever-increasing number of peer-reviewed journals. However I have attempted to read the more major contributions published as books (although not all are specifically cited). An attempt to summarise all the key aspects of those books would result in a massive tome. So these opening chapters are anything but a comprehensive summary. Instead they draw attention to a ‘sample’ of the issues. This is not a random sample but, rather, an attempt to selectively set the stage for the subsequent chapters. Despite the vast academic literature about the conversion to Christianity in Europe generally and Britain more specifically, the relevant sources are tantalisingly brief and written from the perspective of evangelical proselytising so reveal little about what the churchmen are converting people from. And, as will be explored later, even when we think these sources are giving us some clues, that information may simply be generic rather than a reflection of what was actually happening. Nevertheless by adopting a number of perspectives largely ignored by historians we can identify more about what people in the early Christian era did or thought – and, more especially, simply assumed. I hope that by providing these overly-selective – although still rather distended – introductory chapters then my subsequent discussions will make a little more sense to those whose knowledge of early medieval England was largely formed from the small number of books about the period available in the 1960s to 1980s. However if you want to skip through the first three chapters and go straight to the ‘meat and gravy’ in Chapter Four onwards then just go ahead. Bob Trubshaw Avebury September 2013 Preface to the 2016 edition This study was written and initially published as a stand-alone work. Over the next two years the key ideas became the basis of many of the articles published on a website called Anglo-Saxon Twilight; (www.indigogroup.co.uk/twilight) and several other PDF 'booklets'. At the beginning of 2016 I decided to make a revamped version into the first of an ongoing series of PDF booklets with the overall title of The Twilight Age; the prelims to this work include a 'mission statement' about the series. Making this work the first volume in The Twilight Age series reflects the chronological sequence in which these studies were researched. More importantly, all of the subsequent studies develop, in various ways, the insights into continuity of worldviews explored here. I hope the later works in the series make adequate sense even if this study has not been read, but many of the remarks will gain additional depth and significance. The three chapters of the first edition which discussed carvings have been deleted. These now form the basis of Volume Three of The Twilight Age series, Continuity of Anglo-Saxon Iconography. Chapter Five is entirely new to this edition. Many other changes have been made, reflecting how my ideas have been developed while researching and writing more recent works. Bob Trubshaw Avebury January 2016 Front cover and next page: ‘Madonna and Child’ by Peter Eugene Ball. Photographed while on loan to Southwell Cathedral July 2008. Chapter One Understanding worldviews If we want to understand the deeper aspects of Anglo-Saxon thinking – what I call for convenience ‘worldviews’ – then first we need to have a fairly clear idea about how such worldviews are expressed in what people think and do. We also need to have some clear ideas about how such worldviews change. Overtly this study attempts to better understand the changes and continuities in Anglo-Saxon thinking during the transition from ‘paganism’ to early Christianity. However, for reasons that will become clearer, we need to resist seeing this simply as a change in religion.

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