Malcolm R. Godden, ed. and trans., The Old English History of the World: An Anglo-Saxon Rewriting of Orosius. (Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 44.) Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 2016. Pp xxi, 472. $29.95. ISBN: 978-0-674-97106-6.

Speculum ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 93 (4) ◽  
pp. 1203-1205
Author(s):  
Benjamin A. Saltzman
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Harvard University ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
English History ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

The Anglo-Saxons and the Goths: rewriting the sack of Rome

2002 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 47-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. R. Godden
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
English Version ◽  
Good Works ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City ◽  
Previous Occasion

On 24 August 410 the Goths under their king Alaric entered the city of Rome and spent three days pillaging it. They then moved south towards Sicily, possibly in the hope of escaping to Africa, but Alaric died and the Goths retreated back through Italy to Gaul, from where they were driven into Spain by Roman forces in 414. The sack of Rome was by all accounts of little material significance in the long and complex history of Roman engagement with barbarians; it was in fact the Goths' third visit to the city in three years, and on the previous occasion the senate had allowed them into Rome and collaborated with them in setting up the prefect of the city as emperor in opposition to Honorius, whose administration was based in Ravenna. Contemporary historians emphasized that the forces of the western empire had recovered their dominance within just three or four years at most, and recent historians have seen the attack on Rome as representing a failure on the part of the Goths, who had hoped to use the threat to Rome as a bargaining tool with the emperor in their pursuit of land and supplies. Honorius and his government seem to have been relatively untroubled. On the day after Alaric's seizure of Rome Honorius had time, from his palace in Ravenna, to issue an edict ordering that religious dissension among Christians in North Africa should cease and summoning a conference of all the Catholic and Donatist bishops to examine their dierences. The Liber pontificalis manages to give a quite detailed account of the time of Pope Innocent I (402–17) and his good works without once mentioning the Goths or the attack on Rome (Orosius explains that he happened to be away in Ravenna at the time). But the event acquired remarkable prominence, and a distinctive significance, in the Anglo-Saxon perception of their past, especially in the Alfredian period: it is mentioned prominently in two of Bede's historical works, in four of the Old English prose works associated with King Alfred, and in Æthelweard's Chronicle; it is the context and end-point of the Old English version of Orosius's History of the World; and it is the starting-point of King Alfred's account of Boethius. I want here to explore its developing significance for the Anglo-Saxons, and particularly for the Alfredian world.

The Anglian collection of royal genealogies and regnal lists

1976 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 23-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
David N. Dumville
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
British Library ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Corpus Christi ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

This collection of Old English royal records is found in four manuscripts: London, British Library, Cotton Vespasian B. vi; London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius B. v, vol. 1; Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 183; and Rochester, Cathedral Library, A. 3. 5. The present paper aims both to provide an accurate, accessible edition of the texts in the first three of these manuscripts and to discuss the development of the collection from its origin to the stages represented by the extant versions. We owe to Kenneth Sisam most of our knowledge of the history of the Anglo-Saxon genealogies. Although his closely argued discussion remains the basis for any approach to these sources, it lacks the essential aid to comprehension, the texts themselves. It is perhaps this omission, as much as the difficulty of the subject and the undoubted accuracy of many of his conclusions, that has occasioned the neglect from which the texts have suffered in recent years.

Map-Making in World History - an Interview with Kären Wigen

Itinerario ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-214
Author(s):  
Carolien Stolte
Keyword(s):  
World History ◽  
Harvard University ◽  
Asia Pacific ◽  
Stanford University ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Pacific Margin

This interview took place at Harvard University, where Kären Wigen, the Frances and Charles Field Professor in History of Stanford University gave the 2015 Reischauer Lectures. This year’s theme was ‘Where in the World? Map-Making at the Asia-Pacific Margin, 1600-1900.’ Carolien Stolte and Rachel Koroloff interviewed Professor Wigen to the tunes of Persian music at the Kolbeh of Kabob restaurant on Cambridge Street.

IV. John Lingard and the Simancas Archives

1967 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-76
Author(s):  
Edwin Jones
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
English History ◽  
Parish Priest ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
State Archives ◽  
Source Materials

John Lingard (1771–1851) was the first English historian to attempt to look at the history of England in the sixteenth century from an international point of view. He was unconvinced by the story of the Reformation in England as found in the works of previous historians such as Burnet and Hume, and believed that new light needed to be thrown on the subject. One way of doing this was to look at English history from the outside, so to speak, and Lingard held it to be a duty of the historian ‘to contrast foreign with native authorities, to hold the balance between them with an equal hand, and, forgetting that he is an Englishman, to judge impartially as a citizen of the world’. In pursuit of this ideal Lingard can be said to have given a new dimension to the source materials for English history. As parish priest in the small village of Hornby, near Lancaster, Lingard had few opportunities for travel. But he made good use of his various friends and former pupils at Douai and Ushaw colleges who were settled now in various parts of Europe. It was with the help of these friends that Lingard made contacts with and gained valuable information from archives in France, Italy and Spain. We shall concern ourselves here only with the story of Lingard's contacts with the great Spanish State Archives at Simancas.

Edgar the Ætheling: Anglo-Saxon prince, rebel and crusader

1985 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 197-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Hooper
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Special Interest ◽  
Large Contribution ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
History Of ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
William Of Malmesbury

In the years which followed the Norman Conquest, the Old English aristocracy was largely deprived of its lands and offices, both lay and ecclesiastical. The resistance of the English nobility to the Norman Conquest made a large contribution to its own eclipse, but it is rarely that we are afforded a glimpse of the fortunes of an individual. The historian may, however, dwell in some detail on the career of one man, Edgar the Ætheling. Episodes from his life are preserved in a variety of works composed in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle contains several entries relating to his activities after 1066, and the D version shows a special interest in Edgar and his family. Among Latin histories, those of John of Worcester, William of Malmesbury and Orderic Vitalis follow his activities, although none of these authors was well informed about his life. Edgar appears not to have made a strongly favourable impression upon any of them: to the anonymous compilers of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle he was the rightful heir to the throne of England, but to both William and Orderic he was indolent. There is little difficulty involved in bringing together the known episodes of his life, and although his royal blood makes him a far from typical example the picture that emerges gives a useful insight into how one Englishman fared in the unstable political climate of the years immediately preceding the Norman Conquest, and in its aftermath. It is intended here to assemble the evidence for the life of Edgar and to treat him not as a footnote to history, which is how he has often fared at the hands of historians, but as a character of no small importance in the history of the Norman Conquest of England.

The decoration of the Tanner Bede

1992 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 115-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Gameson
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
English Translation ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Early History ◽  
Considerable Importance ◽  
Primary Concern ◽  
Bodleian Library ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Facsimile Edition ◽  
History Of

Oxford, Bodleian Library, Tanner 10 is the oldest extant copy of the Old English translation of Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum. The volume dates from the early tenth century. This in itself adds significantly to its interest, for manuscripts produced in England during the sixty or so years from s. ix2–x1 are scarce. It is ornamented with a remarkable set of decorated initials which are of considerable importance for understanding the characteristics and development of manuscript art during this period, and this is our primary concern here. The text of Tanner 10 was edited at the end of the last century, its codicology and palaeography have recently been reviewed, and a complete facsimile edition is currently being prepared: an examination of its extensive decoration is long overdue. To put this art-work in its context, before turning to the manuscript itself, it will be helpful first to review briefly the main classes of decorated initials which appear in late Anglo-Saxon books as a whole, and then to examine the early history of the particular type that was used in the Tanner Bede.

scholarly journals King Edgar's charter for Pershore (AD 972)

2008 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 31-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter A. Stokes
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Single Sheet ◽  
First Time ◽  
Important Evidence

AbstractS 786 is one of the so-called Orthodoxorum charters, a group of documents which provide important evidence about the Anglo-Saxon chancery, the development of charters in the tenth century, and the history of Pershore Abbey and the tenth-century Benedictine reforms. The document has therefore received a great deal of attention over the past century or so, but this attention has been focussed on the surviving tenth-century single sheet, and so a second, significantly different version of the text has lain unnoticed. This second version is preserved in a copy made by John Joscelyn, Latin Secretary to Archbishop Matthew Parker. Among the material uniquely preserved in this copy are Old English charter bounds for Wyegate (GL), Cumbtune (Compton, GL?) and part of the bounds probably for Lydney (GL), as well as a reference to a grant by Bishop Werferth of Worcester. In this article both versions of the document are discussed and are published together for the first time, and a translation of the single sheet is provided. The history of the two versions is discussed in some detail, and the text of a twelfth-century letter which refers to the charter is also edited and translated.

The scholarly recovery of the significance of Anglo-Saxon records in prose and verse: a new bibliography

1980 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 223-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. G. Stanley
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Entire Body ◽  
Old English Literature ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

The new bibliography by Stanley B. Greenfield and Fred C. Robinson of the entire body of publications on Old English literature provides the occasion for reviewing not so much the bibliography itself as the subject it covers. This article is, of course, not a brief history of Anglo-Saxon studies from the dissolution of the monasteries in Henry VIII's reign to the 1970s. It is a highly selective exemplification of some of the changing aims and achievements of scholars when they went to the vernacular records in prose and verse that survive from Anglo-Saxon times.

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