Anglo-Saxons
The Anglo-Saxons, the English or Saxons of Britain, were a cultural group who spoke Old English and inhabited much of what is now England and south-eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to Germanic settlers who became one of the most important cultural groups in Britain by the 5th century. Historically, the Anglo-Saxon period in Britain is considered to have started by about 450 and ended in 1066, with the Norman Conquest.[1] Although the details of their early settlement and political development are not clear, by the 8th century a single Anglo-Saxon cultural identity which was generally called Englisc, had developed out of the interaction of these settlers with the pre-existing Romano-British culture. By 1066, most of the people of what is now England spoke Old English, and were considered English. Viking and Norman invasions changed the politics and culture of England significantly, but the overarching Anglo-Saxon identity evolved and remained dominant even after the Norman Conquest of 1066.[2] Late Anglo-Saxon political structures and language are the direct predecessors of the high medieval Kingdom of England and the Middle English language. Although the modern English language owes less than 26% of its words to Old English, this includes the vast majority of everyday words.[3]
This article is about the medieval Anglo-Saxons. For other uses and specific sub-topics, see Anglo-Saxon (disambiguation).
In the early 8th century, the earliest detailed account of Anglo-Saxon origins was given by Bede (d. 735), suggesting that they were long divided into smaller regional kingdoms, each with differing accounts of their continental origins. As a collective term, the compound term Anglo-Saxon, commonly used by modern historians for the period before 1066, first appears in Bede's time, but it was probably not widely used until modern times.[4] Bede was one of the first writers to prefer "Angles" (or English) as the collective term, which eventually became dominant. Bede, like other authors, also sometimes used the collective term "Saxons", especially when referring to the earliest periods of settlement. Roman and British writers of the 3rd to 6th century had described Saxons as North Sea raiders. However, despite being used as collective terms, according to Bede the early Saxons, like the Angles, were only one of the groups from "Germania" who were ancestral to the Anglo-Saxons of Britain.
Anglo-Saxon material culture can be seen in architecture, dress styles, illuminated texts, metalwork and other art. Behind the symbolic nature of these cultural emblems, there are strong elements of tribal and lordship ties. The elite declared themselves kings who developed burhs (fortifications and fortified settlements), and identified their roles and peoples in Biblical terms. Above all, as archaeologist Helena Hamerow has observed, "local and extended kin groups remained...the essential unit of production throughout the Anglo-Saxon period."[5]
Ethnonym
In modern times, the term "Anglo-Saxons" is used by scholars to refer collectively to the Old English speaking groups in Britain; this includes groups distinguished by Bede in the 8th century as English (Angles), Saxons, or Jutish. The compound term has the advantage of covering the various English-speaking groups on the one hand, and distinguishing them from the historical mainland peoples (Saxons, Anglii) who are also referred to by Bede using the same terms. The term "Anglo Saxon" is not however a modern invention because it was also used in some specific situations already between the 8th and 10th centuries.
Before the 8th century, the most common collective term for the Old-English speakers was "Saxons", which was a word associated since the 4th century with raiders in North Sea coastal areas of Britain and Gaul. During the 8th century Bede and some of his contemporaries including Alcuin, and Saint Boniface, began to refer to the overall group in Britain as the English people (Latin Angli, gens Anglorum or Old English Angelcynn) thus using the same word to refer to both the larger group, and one part of it. In Bede's work the term "Saxon" is also used to refer sometimes to the Old English language, and also to refer to the early pagan Anglo-Saxons before the arrival of Christian missionaries among the Anglo-Saxons of Kent in 597.[6] The term "Saxon", on the other hand, was at this time increasingly used by mainland writers to designate specific northern neighbours of the Frankish kingdom of Austrasia. Bede therefore called these the "Old Saxons" (antiqui saxones).
Similarly, a non-Anglo-Saxon contemporary of Bede, Paul the Deacon, referred variously to either the English (Angli), or Anglo-Saxons (Latin plural genitives Saxonum Anglorum, or Anglorum Saxonum), which helped him distinguish them from the European Saxons who he also discussed. In England itself this compound term also later came to be used in some specific situations, both in Latin and Old English. Alfred the Great, himself a West Saxon, was for example Anglosaxonum Rex in the late 880s, probably indicating that he was literally a king over both English (for example Mercian) and Saxon kingdoms. However, the term "English" continued to be used as a common collective term, and indeed became dominant. The increased use of these new collective terms, "English" or "Anglo-Saxon", represents the strengthening of the idea of a single unifying cultural unity among the Anglo-Saxons themselves, who had previously invested in identities which differentiated various regional groups.[6]
In contrast, Irish and Welsh speakers continued to refer to Anglo-Saxons as Saxons. The word Saeson is the modern Welsh word for "English people"; the equivalent word in Scottish Gaelic is Sasannach and in the Irish language, Sasanach.[7] Catherine Hills suggests that it is no accident "that the English call themselves by the name sanctified by the Church, as that of a people chosen by God, whereas their enemies use the name originally applied to piratical raiders".[8]
After the Norman Conquest
Following the Norman conquest, many of the Anglo-Saxon nobility were either exiled or had joined the ranks of the peasantry.[78] It has been estimated that only about 8% of the land was under Anglo-Saxon control by 1087.[79] In 1086, only four major Anglo-Saxon landholders still held their lands. However, the survival of Anglo-Saxon heiresses was significantly greater. Many of the next generation of the nobility had English mothers and learned to speak English at home.[80] Some Anglo-Saxon nobles fled to Scotland, Ireland, and Scandinavia.[81][82] The Byzantine Empire became a popular destination for many Anglo-Saxon soldiers, as it was in need of mercenaries.[83] The Anglo-Saxons became the predominant element in the elite Varangian Guard, hitherto a largely North Germanic unit, from which the emperor's bodyguard was drawn and continued to serve the empire until the early 15th century.[84] However, the population of England at home remained largely Anglo-Saxon; for them, little changed immediately except that their Anglo-Saxon lord was replaced by a Norman lord.[85]
The chronicler Orderic Vitalis, who was the product of an Anglo-Norman marriage, writes: "And so the English groaned aloud for their lost liberty and plotted ceaselessly to find some way of shaking off a yoke that was so intolerable and unaccustomed".[86] The inhabitants of the North and Scotland never warmed to the Normans following the Harrying of the North (1069–1070), where William, according to the Anglo Saxon Chronicle utterly "ravaged and laid waste that shire".[87]
Many Anglo-Saxon people needed to learn Norman French to communicate with their rulers, but it is clear that among themselves they kept speaking Old English, which meant that England was in an interesting tri-lingual situation: Anglo-Saxon for the common people, Latin for the Church, and Norman French for the administrators, the nobility, and the law courts. In this time, and because of the cultural shock of the Conquest, Anglo-Saxon began to change very rapidly, and by 1200 or so, it was no longer Anglo-Saxon English, but early Middle English.[88] But this language had deep roots in Anglo-Saxon, which was being spoken much later than 1066. Research has shown that a form of Anglo-Saxon was still being spoken, and not merely among uneducated peasants, into the thirteenth century in the West Midlands.[89] This was J.R.R. Tolkien's major scholarly discovery when he studied a group of texts written in early Middle English called the Katherine Group.[90] Tolkien noticed that a subtle distinction preserved in these texts indicated that Old English had continued to be spoken far longer than anyone had supposed.[89]
Old English had been a central mark of the Anglo-Saxon cultural identity. With the passing of time, however, and particularly following the Norman conquest of England, this language changed significantly, and although some people (for example the scribe known as the Tremulous Hand of Worcester) could still read Old English into the thirteenth century, it fell out of use and the texts became useless. The Exeter Book, for example, seems to have been used to press gold leaf and at one point had a pot of fish-based glue sitting on top of it. For Michael Drout this symbolises the end of the Anglo-Saxons.[91]
After 1066, it took more than three centuries for English to replace French as the language of government. The 1362 parliament opened with a speech in English and in the early 15th century, Henry V became the first monarch, since before the 1066 conquest, to use English in his written instructions.[92]
Brixworth, Northants: monastery founded c. 690, one of the largest churches to survive relatively intact
Legacy
Anglo-Saxon is still used as a term for the original Old English-derived vocabulary within the modern English language, in contrast to vocabulary derived from Old Norse and French.
Throughout the history of Anglo-Saxon studies, different narratives of the people have been used to justify contemporary ideologies. In the early Middle Ages, the views of Geoffrey of Monmouth produced a personally inspired (and largely fictitious) history that was not challenged for some 500 years. In the Reformation, Christians looking to establish an independent English church reinterpreted Anglo-Saxon Christianity. In the 19th century, the term Anglo-Saxon was broadly used in philology, and is sometimes so used at present, though the term 'Old English' is more commonly used. During the Victorian era, writers such as Robert Knox, James Anthony Froude, Charles Kingsley and Edward A. Freeman used the term Anglo-Saxon to justify colonialistic imperialism, claiming that Anglo-Saxon heritage was superior to those held by colonised peoples, which justified efforts to "civilise" them.[218][219] Similar racist ideas were advocated in 19th-century United States by Samuel George Morton and George Fitzhugh.[220] The historian Catherine Hills contends that these views have influenced how versions of early English history are embedded in the sub-conscious of certain people and are "re-emerging in school textbooks and television programmes and still very congenial to some strands of political thinking."[221]
The term Anglo-Saxon is sometimes used to refer to peoples descended or associated in some way with the English ethnic group, but there is no universal definition for the term. In contemporary Anglophone cultures outside Britain, "Anglo-Saxon" may be contrasted with "Celtic" as a socioeconomic identifier, invoking or reinforcing historical prejudices against non-English British and Irish immigrants. "White Anglo-Saxon Protestant" (WASP) is a term especially popular in the United States that refers chiefly to long-established wealthy families with mostly English ancestors. As such, WASP is not a historical label or a precise ethnological term but rather a reference to contemporary family-based political, financial and cultural power, e.g. The Boston Brahmin.
The term Anglo-Saxon is becoming increasingly controversial among some scholars, especially those in America, for its modern politicised nature and adoption by the far-right. In 2019, the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists changed their name to the International Society for the Study of Early Medieval England, in recognition of this controversy.[222]