Anglo-Saxon invasion - fact or fiction?

[Rinan]

Thanks for your response! I'm going to have to take a look into that 7th century writing when I have the chance. I was of course aware that by the later dark ages Celtic languages were written down (which, by the way, together with English pose an enigma to me: why are these "vulgar" languages written down as opposed to the rest of Europe, where Latin remains the only written language for centuries)

A quick question though: Is it possible that Celtic languages being written down in the 7th century is a new development?
Because my argument was that they werent being written down during the migration period, i.e. 5th and 6th century. I assumed that for the entire Roman period, celtic languages were almost never written down, but I would love to stand corrected.

Nevertheless, my premise still stands: as a literary language, Latin reigned supreme in the Roman west. Therefore, Celtic languages would not have been able to hold their ground as elite languages such as Latin did in Gallia or Hispania. It simply had less 'cultural authority' to withstand the regime change. A Frank in Gaul would be confronted by a venerable and prestigious Latin. Nothing personal, but I doubt that Brythonic could demand the same awe from the Anglo-Saxons. Just like Punic or Berber or Gaulish or Thracian, etc. Never were able to match the prestige of Latin. So of course Celtic was established, and maybe it was written down, but it didn't have the prestige Latin had, nor its associated cultural package of Romanitas.

[Cyclops]

Look its been a while since I studied this but AFAIK Latin was scraped out of most of Roman Britannia as there wasn't an educated class to sustain it. There are oddments of Latin from the period of the putative "Saxon Invasion" like Gildas but the language is in a curious style reintroduced by Irish monks who developed an odd insular Latin that continentals found amusingly quaint.

Now I'm not casting aspersions on the Irish monks but if you're learning your Latin from blokes who paddle leather boats to Iceland for their summer holidays then you've probably experienced some culture loss. Lets say a flattening of the social structure with diminished financial liquidity.

The point of this is Latin culture was lost in Wales and Cornwall too, which were also somewhat Latinised, and persisted in Ireland in a most tenuous form (sustained by the relative tranquility and prosperity because they were undisturbed by the turmoil in the rest of Europe).

Roman Brittania wasn't a culture factory for Latin poets or religious writers like Italy, North Africa or Spain. I think it was an armed camp with people who spoke Latin but mostly weren't Italian, and spoke other languages as well. Once the Latin speaking elite (basically the officers and officials) left in the wake of various pretenders and the lifeline to other Latin speaking areas was cut off by the Franks, why would anyone learn or speak Latin?

So I think Latin in Britain was only really sustained as a religious language by the Irish. The rest used it as an elite language that allowed access to European elite culture. When there was no link to a Latin speaking elite culture (ie when the Franks were still speaking German) and there was poverty in Britain no-one learned Latin. When there was a bit more wealth and access to a Latin-speaking elite culture (ie the Franks started to learn Latin) it picked up again.

[Caesar Germanico]

Once the Latin speaking elite (basically the officers and officials) left in the wake of various pretenders and the lifeline to other Latin speaking areas was cut off by the Franks, why would anyone learn or speak Latin?

I don't think this is entirely true.Roman Britain had for most of its history a sizeable garrison of Roman troops, which spoke latin as evidenced by the Vindolanda tablets.As those kind of armies needed an economy for sustenance I would guess that latin speaking communities would have taken hold even up to the Hadrian Wall, furthermore eastern Britain was infact decently urbanized.To sustain Roman style urbanization you needed a sophisticated economy, traders and local industries, all in contact for centuries with the rest of the empire and the latin elite.

While modern day Wales was likely never Romanised to a great extent, I believe that eastern Britain was.Which meant that latin was widespread.The fact is when a province like Britain is totally cut off, the result will be a complete displacement of social and economical life.I mean, probabily even Italy suffered a heavy blow (in economic production and population) when Africa was lost, immagine what likely happened to Britain with total isolation.A scenario like this explains fairly well the success of the Anglo-Saxon invasion.

[Roma_Victrix]

Thanks for your response! I'm going to have to take a look into that 7th century writing when I have the chance. I was of course aware that by the later dark ages Celtic languages were written down (which, by the way, together with English pose an enigma to me: why are these "vulgar" languages written down as opposed to the rest of Europe, where Latin remains the only written language for centuries)

A quick question though: Is it possible that Celtic languages being written down in the 7th century is a new development?
Because my argument was that they werent being written down during the migration period, i.e. 5th and 6th century. I assumed that for the entire Roman period, celtic languages were almost never written down, but I would love to stand corrected.

Well, beginning in the 4th century AD Primitive Irish, the linguistic predecessor to Old Irish and oldest known Goidelic language in the Celtic language family, was written in an alphabet called Ogham. The Ogham alphabet continued in use not just for writing Primitive Irish from the 4th to 6th centuries, but also Old Irish from the 6th to 9th centuries. The Latin alphabet was introduced to Ireland for the first time by mainland Catholic missionaries in the 5th century, namely the bishop Palladius. However, I'm not 100% sure when the Latin alphabet was first used to write Old Irish. However, there are dual Ogham and Latin transcriptions in stone found from what is now Wales, dating to this early period. This is perhaps evidence that the invention of Ogham was inspired by the existence of the Latin alphabet in nearby Britain.

That being said, the Ogham alphabet looks nothing like the Latin alphabet:



We'll never know, but perhaps it was invented without the Latin written script in mind. In 1443, the Joseon Koreans, whose ancestors had for centuries used the Chinese logographic writing system, created the Hangul alphabet out of thin air. That is if you discount the theories that this Korean alphabet was influenced by 15th-century alphabets that already existed in Central Asia (derived ultimately from the Phoenician tradition that spawned the Greek and Latin alphabets). If the Irish created theirs all on their own that would have been an enormous achievement, considering how there is no firmly-known predecessor for Ogham. One camp in academia speculates that it was based on Latin, others positing its origins in Germanic runes or even the Greek alphabet.

[René Artois]

Post-Roman Britain is a great topic to discuss. Unfortunately the lack of evidence, historical and archaeological, means these arguments rarely get any further than hypotheses that can't really be proved or disproved.

Historically the best people can normally come up with is Gildas, and a lot of what he says can be disproved through archaeological evidence, putting all the rest of his writings into doubt. For example the famines, massacres, abandonment of towns, and end of Roman imports can all be seen to be false claims.

Famine - look to the Fields of Britannia project. "At the broadest scale, the data suggests widespread continuity of open landscapes across lowland areas, particularly in the ‘East Anglia’ and ‘Central’ regions which were the least wooded areas in all periods: here, the extent of woodland in the early medieval period was actually less than in the Roman period" I.e. Pollen evidence tells us that for the most part, farm land continued to be farmed.

Massacres - there have been no mass graves found from this period.

Abandonment of Towns - there's (albeit limited) evidence of inhabitation in Wroxeter, Cirencester, and Gloucester.

End of Roman Imports - see Ewan Campbell's work on imports such as ARS and PRS.

Archaeologically it is clear that settlement styles changed, particularly in Eastern England. Lack of excavated examples limit interpretation on a larger scale though. West Stow and Cowdery's Down are 2 great examples of rural settlement. Not to mention possible higher status settlements like Yeavering.

Material culture points to neither Celtic nor Roman culture being dominant, but Anglo-Saxon. We can see distinctive metalwork and pottery (including rune inscribed cremation urns), as well as the famous groups of grave goods of "royal" burials like Prittlewell and Sutton Hoo. These all point to at the very least, significant contact with Scandinavia and Northern German.

The big question is how does this material culture reflect the population? Were they British people adopting these ways after an elite Anglo-Saxon takeover? Was it mass-migration? It's hard to tell at the moment but the future looks promising, with the new techniques becoming available, allowing better dating and interpretation of evidence.
E.g.

[Magister Militum Flavius Aetius]

Wow! ... who is this man?

Could you post a link to the historical books written and published by this guy about Ancient Britain? Or maybe just the name of the British University in which he teaching Ancient and Medieval History? ... Thanks a lot!

He's never written a book but he has written several papers published in scholarly journals. He's the notorious leader of Fectio.

Now returning to the real world, I suggest the reading of Peter Heather's 'Empires and Barbarians' where what happened in Britain is explained in a pretty convincing way, Heather thinks that the Invasion was a real mass migration and not just a case of substitution of the elites, Heater examinates the structure of the ownership of the lands and its radical changes after the Saxon Invasion, read it if you have the occasion, it's not coming from the Sky, but it's a good historical book.

This is actually a fantastic book. I recommend it as well.

b) Saxons and Vikings were only a few centuries apart, they were basically the same people, only the Saxons had been christianised in the 7th century. Their languages were similar and the customs, apart from those that Christianity had stamped out were similar too. So, having the Vikings spread their culture was not that difficult, local elite and peasants recognised most of it on some level.

The Ingervones and Vendel Cultures were two completely different peoples, let alone the Nordi that would become the Vikings. They had cultural similarities, but were not the same.

Roman Britain had for most of its history a sizeable garrison of Roman troops, which spoke latin as evidenced by the Vindolanda tablets.

38,000 men in 395 according to my estimates of the Notitia Dignitatum. I'm working on fixing the citations but it will be back up on Academia.edu shortly.

@Rene Artois

The situation in Britain is directly comparable to the situation in Noricum. Bryan Ward-Perkins shows the point of Severinus of Noricum rather well in his book The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization.

[Rinan]

I agree that Noricum is good unit of comparison for Roman Britain. It shows that, as the Roman order collapsed, there was chaos, misery, collapse of social order, political reorganisation on a smaller scale and Germanic leaders coming in to replace the local elite and put themselves in power. Trade suffered, people died in war and raids, cities shrunk; but the local population was not eradicated. That might be exactly what happened in Britannia. Good suggestion!

Well, beginning in the 4th century AD Primitive Irish, the linguistic predecessor to Old Irish and oldest known Goidelic language in the Celtic language family, was written in an alphabet called Ogham. The Ogham alphabet continued in use not just for writing Primitive Irish from the 4th to 6th centuries, but also Old Irish from the 6th to 9th centuries. The Latin

That's quite fascinating, and 300 inscriptions is quite a lot. But anyway, I can still make one objection: this was apparently used for Irish (Gaelic) and not Brythonic, which is the language we should be discussing. Anyway, in linguistics there is the principle that two languages can co-exist (diaglossia), whilst one is more prestigious, and the other taking hundreds of years to dissapear (as is happening right now with minority languages like Breton). When the formal register requires knowledge of English, it might at one point not be useful anymore to learn your native language. Also, linguistic influence from one language on the other can be very hard to trace sometimes, when for example a target language is influenced on the level of syntax, or loanwords come in the form of loan translations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calque).

[Roma_Victrix]

That's quite fascinating, and 300 inscriptions is quite a lot. But anyway, I can still make one objection: this was apparently used for Irish (Gaelic) and not Brythonic, which is the language we should be discussing. Anyway, in linguistics there is the principle that two languages can co-exist (diaglossia), whilst one is more prestigious, and the other taking hundreds of years to dissapear (as is happening right now with minority languages like Breton). When the formal register requires knowledge of English, it might at one point not be useful anymore to learn your native language. Also, linguistic influence from one language on the other can be very hard to trace sometimes, when for example a target language is influenced on the level of syntax, or loanwords come in the form of loan translations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calque).

Right, Ogham was used to write Primitive Irish and early Old Irish in Ireland, Wales, and to a lesser extent Scotland, yet I'm unaware of its use in England proper during the so-called (or aptly-named) Dark Ages. Moreover, I don't see any evidence that Brythonic speakers would have used it from the 4th century onwards, or found it relevant to their Celtic dialect. Without a written literary culture attached to their language, it becomes clear how the language died out in favor of Old English in all strata of society, and certainly upper society that was more inclined to write and converse in Latin.

[Cyclops]

There's a fair wodge of Welsh texts written in the Latin script (eg the Mabinogion) which start appearing once Britain gets reconnected to europe in the late Saxon period. I guess the return of wealth (and perhaps an awareness of loss of culture?) led to this development, with Welsh elites seeking to preserve/transmit their oral culture.

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38,000 men in 395 according to my estimates of the Notitia Dignitatum. I'm working on fixing the citations but it will be back up on Academia.edu shortly....

Do the records give indications of the origins of these troops? I have always guessed they might be Germanic types resettled away from Germania.

... Anyway, in linguistics there is the principle that two languages can co-exist (diaglossia), whilst one is more prestigious, and the other taking hundreds of years to dissapear...

Yes this is a critical point. Had the Brythonic languages begun a decline from the moment of Roman invasion? Was there another language competing in this mix?

What we need is a diary of a late Roman Briton written in Brythonic and Latin, describing the languages they heard in the street.

[Magister Militum Flavius Aetius]

Do the records give indications of the origins of these troops? I have always guessed they might be Germanic types resettled away from Germania.

Many units are carryovers from Auxilia units in the 1st-3rd centuries AD. For example, the Cohortis Frixagorum is a carryover of the old Cohors I Frisiavonum, recruited from a people known as the Frisiavones, who were part of the Frisii.

But these old Auxilia Units no longer were recruited from Germanic tribes specifically: the Batavi, Frisiavones, and several others were all gone by the mid-4th century and hadn't been recruited from these tribes specifically since prior to the reign of Carcalla.

Anyway, in linguistics there is the principle that two languages can co-exist (diaglossia), whilst one is more prestigious, and the other taking hundreds of years to dissapear (as is happening right now with minority languages like Breton).

This is rather evident in the Barbarian successor states, where the administrative functions in Gothic Spain, Gothic Italy, Burgundy, and Merovingian Gaul all took place in Latin, while the commoners were slowly mixing Latin and the introduced Germanic languages.

E.g. In the Visigothic Military in the 6th Century, terms like Centurio (Latin) and Tiuphadus (Latinized Gothic) were being used alongside each other.

[Aru]

Barbarian successor states

There's an expression I never heard before.

[Magister Militum Flavius Aetius]

The Barbarians carried over the Roman Administrative, Economic, and Military systems, with influence from their own cultures, into the middle ages. This took the Roman monoculture and broke it down into several new cultures.

In Italy and North Africa, the Roman reconquest destroyed much of the infrastructure, sending those two areas into the "Dark Ages." But places like France and Spain had the infrastructure maintained.

[Aru]

Then it's Roman successor states. They succeeded Rome.

[Cyclops]

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In Italy and North Africa, the Roman reconquest destroyed much of the infrastructure, sending those two areas into the "Dark Ages." But places like France and Spain had the infrastructure maintained.

Thats a grim historical irony, when Belisarius and Narses can be seen as the eradicators of Rome in the West.

Then it's Roman successor states. They succeeded Rome.

Po-tay-to po-tar-to. I'd say the ERE was Roman successor state in some ways.

I've read the terms "successor states" " barbarian successor states" and "Germanic successor states" before descibing the post-Roman polities in the former WRE. It makes perfect sense as written.

[Aru]

Barbarian successor states implies they succeeded the Barbarian state. ERE is not a successor, it IS Rome. Trebizond and Epirus were their successors.

[Magister Militum Flavius Aetius]

I'd say the ERE was Roman successor state in some ways.

There were 2 Roman successor states: The Domain of Soissons, which was technically a vassal of the Frankish Kingdom, and the Romano Mauri Kingdom, which was absorbed into the Eastern Roman Empire in 533 AD. You could also say Julius Nepos was a successor state, but he was technically the legitimate Western Roman Emperor, so in a way he wasn't.

The Eastern Roman Empire was not a successor state because Rome cannot succeed itself lol. It was the Roman Empire.

The Germanic Successor states were the Vandal Kingdom, the Suebic Kingdom, the Visigothic Kingdom, Odoacer's Scirian Kingdom of Italy, The Burgundian Kingdom, and the Merovingian Frankish Kingdom.

[Cyclops]

Barbarian successor states implies they succeeded the Barbarian state. ERE is not a successor, it IS Rome. Trebizond and Epirus were their successors.

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The Eastern Roman Empire was not a successor state because Rome cannot succeed itself lol. It was the Roman Empire.
...

Yes I quite agree and it would be silly to overstate the break in continuity.

I was musing on the fault line that runs between say Justinian and Maurice on the one hand and Heraclius on the other. In some ways the ERE is a new thing. I'm thinking of the "Christianisation" of Imperial ideology, the ossification of Latin (in many ways the fall of Latin is more profound in the East, it becomes a stilted technical language basically without local native speakers), the erosion of city life and so on.

I guess I'm thinking about the overall staggered and staggering collapse of the pan-Mediterranean polity and the diminishged states that rose from the dust.

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The Germanic Successor states were the Vandal Kingdom, the Suebic Kingdom, the Visigothic Kingdom, Odoacer's Scirian Kingdom of Italy, The Burgundian Kingdom, and the Merovingian Frankish Kingdom.

Yes, the Germanic successor states were in such a fascinating position regarding legitimacy. I think the Gothic Kingdoms prided themselves on their "legitimate" status having been granted lands at times by emperors whom they also despised and opposed (I think the Vandals had a similar paradoxical relationship with Roman culture with their religious differences and taste for Latin poetry).

I think the Franks hungered for a piece of that same legitimacy at the same time as they affected independent validity (I think the Merovingians had a political thing for Gothic princesses). This crystalises in the moment Pope Leo produces an unexpected Imperial crown. I would have loved to have seen Big Karl's face when that was offered.