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92 Pages·2016·2.26 MB·English

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superseded.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
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Loughborough, LE12 6UJ
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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.