Biblical Epics in Late Antiquity and Anglo-Saxon England

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick McBrine
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Biblical Epics

Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages: What Kind of Transition?

2011 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jairus Banaji
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Labour Force ◽  
Marxist Theory ◽  
Substantial Part ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Degree Of Control ◽  
Direct Management ◽  
Mode Of Production

AbstractThe stereotype of slave-run latifundia being turned into serf-worked estates is no longer credible as a model of the transition from antiquity to the middle ages, but Chris Wickham’s anomalous characterisation of the Roman Empire as ‘feudal’ is scarcely a viable alternative to that. If a fully-articulated feudal economy only emerged in the later middle ages, what do we make of the preceding centuries? By postulating a ‘general dominance of tenant production’ throughout the period covered by his book, Wickham fails to offer any basis for a closer characterisation of the post-Roman rural labour-force and exaggerates the degree of control that peasants enjoyed in the late Empire and post-Roman world. A substantial part of the rural labour-force of the sixth to eighth centuries comprised groups who, like Rosamond Faith’s inland-workers in Anglo-Saxon England, were more proletarian than peasant-like. The paper suggests the likely ways in which that situation reflected Roman traditions of direct management and the subordination of labour, and outlines what a Marxist theory of the so-called colonate might look like. After discussing Wickham’s handling of the colonate and slavery, and looking briefly at the nature of estates and the fate of the Roman aristocracy, I conclude by criticising the way Wickham uses the category of ‘mode of production’.

Lapidary traditions in Anglo-Saxon England: part I, the background; the Old English Lapidary

1978 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 9-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Kitson
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
British Library ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Precious Stones

Jewels have always fascinated man. They have been admired simply for their beauty – their depth of colour and their different propensities for catching and reflecting light. The combination of these qualities, rare in nature, has encouraged the attribution to them of many magical and medical powers. The rareness of gems and the distance and inaccessibility of the places from which many are obtained have caused them to figure curiously in legends and travellers' tales. The Anglo-Saxons appreciated the beauty of jewels, as their jewellery shows. Nor were they without interest in precious stones they could not possess; but it has been hard for modern readers to discover what their ideas about them were. The mid-eleventh-century manuscript, London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius A. iii, contains what is by common repute the oldest vernacular lapidary in western Europe. No edition has distinguished its sources accurately or analysed the process of its composition. It has been difficult, more generally, to see how the Anglo-Saxons' ideas fitted into those more widely current. There is no reliable published survey of lapidary writings between late antiquity and the late eleventh century.

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