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The History of English Podcast
Episode 38: Nobles, Nuptials and a Cowherd Poet
01:05:10
The kingdom of Northumbria emerged as a center of scholarship and learning during the 7th century. We explore the political and religious events which led to the Northumbrian Renaissance. We also explore the importance of strategic marriages and marita...
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- [00:09]
Kevin Stroud
Welcome to the History of English Podcast, a podcast about the history of the English language. This is episode 38, nobles nuptials and a cowherd poet. In this episode, we're going to explore how the kingdom of Northumbria became the center of learning and scholarship in early Anglo Saxon Britain. We'll also explore the political and religious developments which led to that shift of power to the northernmost Anglo Saxon kingdom. And before I begin, let me make a quick note about the growth of the church in the early Anglo Saxon kingdoms. I recognize that at times, some of these episodes about early Old English sound more like a history of the English church than a history of the English language. But it's very important to keep in mind that these two themes are fundamentally linked for the next few centuries. To fully explain how English developed within Britain, we have to understand how the church developed. We've already seen how missionaries brought the Alphabet to Britain, and we've seen how monks applied that Alphabet to English and gave us some of our modern spellings. And we're going to continue to see those connections in this episode and many of the remaining episodes in the story of Old English. The fact is that most of the literacy in Anglo Saxon Britain was confined to these monasteries. So in order to trace the history of the language, we have to dig through those monasteries. But once we get into the later periods of Old English, the landscape will start to change a little bit. We'll soon turn our attention to the Vikings and the Norse influence on English, and then we can look at the rise of the English language under King Alfred and his successors. And then we can start to focus on the Normans. But before we get to all of that, we need to focus on the rise of Northumbria and what is sometimes called the Northumbrian Renaissance. We'll start to explore that period in this episode. And this early period is really essential to our overall story because it's the first great period of Anglo Saxon culture and literature, and that literature captured English when it was still a very young language. So over the next few episodes, we're going to explore this crucial period, and this story is bound together with the story of the early Church. So let's turn to this episode, and let's begin where we left off last time, with Old English poetry. And poetry is going to continue to be a part of the next couple of episodes, and there's a reason why I'm focusing on poetry at this point in the story of English. As it turns out, when language scholars study the history of languages, they notice that the earliest literature in most languages is almost always poetry. As we know, the first works written in the Greek Alphabet were epic poems like the Iliad and the Odyssey. So why is that? Well, it's because people relied upon the oral tradition before writing existed, and stories were passed along in the oral tradition through the technique of poetry. As we saw last time, poetry was a technique used by minstrels to help them remember long passages. So when ancient cultures first adopted writing, those poems were typically the first works to be captured for posterity by the Alphabet. In most languages, you have an extended period of poetry before you actually get to what is called prose. Basically works in the normal speech, like legal codes and histories and chronicles. English is actually a little bit of an exception to that rule because we have a pretty large body of Old English prose, including legal codes like Ethelbert's Code of Kent and Ine's Code from Wessex. We also have Bede's History of the English Church, which I've mentioned from time to time. And after the Viking invasion, we actually have a lot more text written in prose or normal speech. But with respect to this earliest period of Old English, in the 7th and 8th centuries, Old English is like most languages in that much of what survives, survives in the form of poetry. Now, the problem with those early poems is that most of them only survive in later manuscripts which were written down and compiled at later dates. So as we look at those poems, we don't generally know when they were originally composed, or, for that matter, who composed them. So it makes it difficult to establish any kind of a chronology or order. So let's begin this episode by considering the actual sources of Old English poetry which have survived to this day. And as it turns out, that's a subject which can be explored pretty quickly, because most Old English poetry survives in just four manuscripts. And collectively, those four manuscripts give us about 30,000 lines of poetry, including the entire Beowulf poem. And that's it. That's all that has survived from the Anglo Saxon period until today. And to put that into some perspective, the Iliad and the Odyssey together have almost that many lines. But the fact is that it's somewhat amazing that we have as many surviving poems as we do. The four manuscripts which do exist are really anthologies of multiple works which were compiled around the year 1000. So, thankfully, a few scribes around that time decided to write down a lot of the more common and familiar poems. But in order for those poems to get from the Anglo Saxons to us today, they had to overcome difficult two main hurdles. First, they had to be written down, and then they had to survive centuries of political and religious and social turmoil. Now, today, it seems like almost everything is documented in some form. But in early Britain, writing was reserved for only the most important text. There was still no paper, so books were still being made from vellum. And vellum was incredibly expensive. It took the skins of many animals to produce a single book. About 500 calf skins were required to make a single copy of the Bible. And when a book was produced, very few people could read it. It was usually housed in a monastery with only a few people having access to it. And there was no printing press, so it had to be completely written by hand, which would take many, many hours. So books were rare and incredibly expensive. I mean, they were luxuries. And even when books were produced, they were usually written in Latin, which was still considered the language of scholarship and the language of the Church. And that didn't really change until the events described later in this episode. So it's believed that only a few of those Old English poems were considered worthy of preservation in a rare and expensive manuscript. But fortunately, like I said, a few scribes around the year 1000 saw fit to write down and preserve some of those poems. But then those books had to survive centuries of turmoil. The first big hurdle came from Scandinavia. A substantial portion of Old English literature was destroyed by the Vikings when they plundered and looted the monasteries. And as if that wasn't bad enough, the Normans came along shortly afterward and destroyed a lot of what was left over. As we know by now, the Normans had little or no respect for the language of the Anglo Saxons. They didn't see any need to preserve Old English writing or literature. But as bad as the Vikings and the Normans were, one of the biggest culprits in the destruction of Old English poetry was actually an English king, a very famous English king, Henry viii. As you probably know, Henry broke with the Catholic Church in Rome and he established the Church of England. Well, he also dissolved the monasteries. And in the aftermath, many priceless manuscripts were burned and destroyed. Some of the vellum pages were used as drum skins and roof insulation. They were even used to line beer barrels. And the net result of all this devastation and destruction was the permanent loss of a lot of Old English literature. But fortunately, between the time of the Vikings and the Normans, the English language had experienced a renaissance. This was the period of Alfred the Great, who was one of the most important figures not only in the history of England, but also in the history of the English language. He really made it a key part of his reign to preserve the language of the Anglo Saxons. And most Old English literature which survives comes from this period in the 10th and 11th centuries. And it was during that period that those four manuscripts which survive today were compiled. The largest of the four surviving manuscripts was donated to Exeter Cathedral by a bishop named Leofric in the year 1072. It contains poems like the Wanderer, the Seafarer and the Ruin. It also contains over 90 short poems in the form of riddles. Since the book was donated to Exeter Cathedral, it's known today as the Exeter Book. Like most of the surviving poems, we don't really know when the Exeter Book poems were originally composed. So we'll look at them a little more closely when we get to the period when the Exeter Book was actually compiled, around the end of the Anglo Saxon period. Another of the four surviving manuscripts was donated to Oxford University by an early owner of the book named Franciscus Junius. The book is actually named after him. It's called the Junius Manuscript. It contains four poems which all relate to Christian subjects. For reasons which I will discuss later, this collection is also sometimes called the Caedmon Manuscript, after the first known English poet. But as we'll see, that title is a little misleading because we really don't know who composed those four religious poems. The third manuscript was maintained in the personal library of Sir Robert Cotton, who was a member of Parliament during the reign of Queen Elizabeth and her successor, King James I. Now, when I say it was in his personal library, I don't mean a couple of bookshelves in his personal study. His library is generally considered to be the richest private collection of manuscripts ever amassed. It even outranked the Royal Library. Remember that Henry VIII had dissolved the monasteries a few years earlier, so some of the manuscripts in those monasteries found their way into the hands of private collectors like Cotton. His massive library included a book which contained five different works in Old English. Two of those works were poems. One was a poetic fragment which is called Judith Today. The other poem was an epic poem of over 3,000 lines. So this one poem comprises about 10% of all old English poetry. Again, it didn't have a title, so it was originally identified as 3,182 lines of alliterative verse beginning hvatwe gardena in Yerdagm. End quote. Of course, if you listened to the last episode, you know that that poem is known today as Beowulf. And we were very lucky to have this particular manuscript because in the year 1731, a fire broke out in Cotton's library. The fire actually destroyed several manuscripts, and this particular book of Old English literature was left charred and scorched. Of the five texts in that book, Beowulf actually suffered the worst damage. In addition to the fire, the ink has faded on many of the pages to the point where large portions of it are no longer legible. Shortly after the fire, the book was deposited with the British Library, which is the National Library of the uk. And thankfully, two transcriptions were made shortly after the book arrived at the British Library. And were it not for those two transcriptions, we wouldn't be able to read the Beowulf poem in its entirety today due to the faded ink. By the way, this particular book of Old English literature is called the Cotton Vitellius A15. And you might think that that name reflects some very sophisticated way of indexing the book by the British Library. But the real story isn't quite that impressive. The Cotton part comes from the name of James Cotton, who had the book in his library. He cataloged his books according to the busts of Roman emperors that stood on top of each of his bookcases. And this particular book, which contained the Beowulf poem, was kept in a bookcase that was topped by a bust of the Roman emperor Vitellius. So that's where the Vitellius part comes from. And it was the 15th book on the first shelf of the bookcase. So that's where the A15 comes from. So the names of these old manuscripts from Cotton's library are really just based on what shelf it was found on and which Roman emperor's bust was on top. So those are three of the four books of Old English poems. Exeter Junius and Cotton Vitellius. The fourth book probably has an interesting story as well, because it's actually located in Italy, not Britain. Unfortunately, we don't know very much about the early history of the book. It's called the Vercelli Book because it's located in a cathedral in Vercelli, Italy, and no one knows exactly how it got there. It's generally believed that it was taken to Italy in the 11th century by a group of pilgrims who were on their way to Rome. So that's the last of the four primary manuscripts which contain most of the poetry of Old English. Now, there are a few Old English poems which pop up in other places, like the Anglo Saxon Chronicle or Bede's History of the English Church. But as you can see, when we talk about Old English poetry, we pretty much put the entire collection in a small box. So that's part of the reason why modern scholars sometimes seem to obsess over every word of it. Now, in terms of poetry, there are different kinds of poems. Some of the later poems are religious in nature, and some of them are riddles. But a small group fall into a category known as heroic poetry. And heroic poetry draws on the traditional warrior culture of the Germanic tribes. These poems usually include themes of courage and honor, and they typically reflect the Germanic notions of loyalty to one's lord and the importance of maintaining a good reputation. Only five of the surviving poems fall into the category of heroic poems, and Beowulf is certainly the best example of that style. The heroic poems also include the poem Widsith, which I discussed in the last episode. Now, since this small group of poems reflects the Germanic warrior tradition, it's generally believed that those poems were composed very early on, before Christianity had spread throughout the Anglo Saxon kingdoms. As a general rule, the older the poem, the lesser the Christian influence. But at some point, a transition began to occur. As Christian influences became more prevalent. Old English poetry started to become Christian as well. Instead of using poetic verse to praise Germanic warriors, the Anglo Saxons began to use poetry to praise God. And part of what's so fascinating about this transition is that we can actually pinpoint exactly when it occurred. It occurred in a monastery in Northumbria around the year 670. And in the rest of this episode, I'm going to explore the events which led to that important event in the history of English. And these events were really an outgrowth of the emergence of Northumbria as a center of learning and scholarship in the seventh century. This was a period which is sometimes called the Northumbrian Renaissance, and it's an essential period in the history of the English language. So let's turn our attention back to Anglo Saxon history, and let's see how this kingdom of Northumbria became such an important cultural and literary center. In the last episode, I discussed how the East Anglian king Redwald became the Bretwalda, or overlord, of the Anglo Saxons when Ethelbert died down in Kent. And I mention how he assumed that position in part by defeating the king of Northumbria and Aethelfrith and helping the exiled Prince Edwin to take the throne there. Well, when Aethelfrith died in battle, his sons fled the kingdom and they headed north into modern day Scotland. And they'll become very important to this story a little later. So we already have a developing theme when it comes to Northumbria, and that's the theme of exiled princes. Edwin had been on the run ever since his father was killed by Aethelfrid. And now that Edwin had returned home, the dead king's sons were now on the run. And the reason why all these princes in exile are so important to this story is because eventually each of them returned. And when they returned, they each brought something very important with them, something which shaped and changed the history of the kingdom. So the first prince to return was Edwin. As we saw last time, Edwin returned with the support of Redwall down in East Anglia, there was actually a great deal of mutual support between those two kings. Edwin's support helped Redwald to become the overlord of the Anglo Saxons. But Redwald's reciprocal support of Edwin allowed Edwin to become a strong king in his own right up in Northumbria. And that support, combined with Edwin's own political shrewdness, meant that Edwin was in a prime position to become the new overlord when Redwald died. And when Redwald died In the year 624, that's what happened. Edwin quickly emerged as the new leader of the Anglo Saxons. But even though Edwin was a powerful king, there were other kings out there who were potential rivals. One of those potential rivals was Ethelbert's son, who had succeeded Ethelbert as king down in Kent. So in order to manage any claims which might stem from that potential rival, Ed Edwin did what many kings of the Middle Ages did. He formed a marriage alliance. It turns out that Ethelbert and his wife Bertha down in Kent had had a daughter as well as a son. The daughter's name was Ethelburg. And Edwin realized that a marriage to Ethelburg would likely prevent her brother, the King of Kent, from causing any trouble. So the marriage was promptly arranged. And as it turns out, Edwin's calculated move worked. Even though Edwin's authority as Bretwalda never extended down to Kent, the Kentish king never gave Edwin any problems up in Northumbria. Now, it's important to keep in mind how important marriages were in the political history of Europe. Marriage alliances were crucial when forming political alliances. And we've also seen how marriages were crucial to the spread of the Church throughout Europe. Remember that the Frankish king Clovis married a Christian and she played a big role in his conversion. And Ethelbert married Clovis great granddaughter, and she played a big role in the conversion of Ethelbert and in the kingdom of Kent. And they had a daughter, this daughter Ethelberg, who was now married to Edwin up in Northumbria. And as you might have guessed History was getting ready to repeat itself. Ethelburg had agreed to marry the pagan king Edwin on the condition that she could continue to practice Christianity and she could bring a priest with her to Northumbria. Edwin agreed, and this was the first step in the ultimate conversion of Northumbria. So from Clovis to Ethelbert to Edwin, they all married women from the same maternal family line. And those women really changed the religious landscape of Western Europe. And I wanted to make that point because history often focuses on the contribution of kings and princes and male lines of descent. But here we have a female line of descent who contributed to history in their own way. So, as you can see, in terms of history, marriages were sometimes more important than wars. A defeated king was defeated, but that didn't mean he would convert, and a dead king couldn't convert. But a pagan king married to a Christian bride was ripe for the picking. So since marriages are a key part of this story, I thought it might be a good time to digress a little bit and talk about marriage, at least the English words associated with marriage. Because many of our modern English words associated with marriage can be traced back to the Anglo Saxons. And that should tell you something. Marriage tends to be a very conservative institution. The same traditions were honored from one generation to the next. So, not surprisingly, the terminology tends to remain basically the same over time. So let's start with the word wed. It's an Old English word which has changed very little over the centuries. The early Anglo Saxons sometimes used the word othwaid, which literally meant oath, wed, because a wedding was a type of oath or promise. Wed originally had a sense of a pledge or a covenant to do something. And we have to keep in mind that in many older cultures and even some modern cultures, marriages were often arranged, even among the commoners. And so it was in part a financial and an economic transaction. So they didn't always have the romantic elements that they have today. So we see that the word wed meant more of a binding covenant in Old English. It was basically a contract. By the way, the word wed is a Germanic word which is cognate with the word wage. We get wage from the francs via French. And in the word wage, we see another type of contract or promise, in that case, a promise to pay someone a specific amount of money in exchange for services. Now, the process of making an agreement to be married was wedlock, the original version of our word wedlock. A lot of people today think the lock part of that word actually means lock, as in to lock someone up. But that's not actually the case. Lock was an Old English word which meant activity, and it's completely unrelated to our modern word lock. It was a common suffix, but wedlock is the only surviving word in modern English which still has that suffix. So wedlock literally meant pledge, activity, but it referred to the general state of being married. And I've noted before how the Anglo Saxons loved to combine words together to make new words, since their vocabulary was very small compared to today. And wedlock is one of those compounds which has survived into modern English. The original sense of wed as a binding promise or oath can still be seen in a related word, betrothed. And betrothed is another word from this early period. First of all, we have a big clue that this is a very Old English word thanks to that prefix be. It was a much more common prefix in Old English and Middle English, and we still have it in words like behold and befriend and behead. The troth part of betrothed is actually cognate with the word truth, and it reflects the original sense of a marriage as a relationship formed by a binding oath and covenant. So if you were betrothed, you were being truthful in your promise to be married to someone. The idea of a marriage as a type of covenant or contract is also reflected in another Old English word. When a man proposed to a woman and the woman accepted the man's proposal, it was customary for them to shake hands to bind their agreement. In Old English, this was called handfasten. It literally meant hand fastening. And again, this was the specific word used to describe an accepted marriage proposal. So the Anglo Saxons accepted a marriage proposal in the same way that people today seal a business deal with a handshake. The analogy of a marriage to a business deal is also represented by the way money often changed hands when two people got married. In order to protect the financial interest of the wife, Anglo Saxon men would make a payment to their new wife. But this wasn't done until the morning after they were married. In other words, after the marriage was consummated. So this payment was called the mourning gift, pronounced mohen gifu, and probably later pronounced mochenye fu. This was akin to the later concept of the dower. A dower was a payment to the bride's family. And the Anglo Saxons did have a similar concept called a weotuma. But dower and dowry are really concepts introduced by the Normans after 1066. A dower was a payment to the bride's family, and a dowry was a payment from the bride's family. But you can see that there was a definite financial component to marriages early on. And that's probably why a word like wed has an original sense of promise or covenant or contract. Now, today we call the actual wedding ceremony a wedding. Old English had the word as wedding, but it originally referred to the general state of being married. So it was basically the equivalent of the modern word marriage. And that's because Old English didn't actually have the word marriage. Words like marry and marriage and nuptial are actually words borrowed from the French after 1066, so they weren't used in Old English. So instead of French marriage, there was Old English marriage wedung or wedding today. But after the term marriage was borrowed into English, wedding became more restricted to the actual marriage ceremony itself. Before that happened, though, the Anglo Saxon word for the marriage ceremony was brudlop, literally bride run. Brud was bride, and lope meant run. Lope is actually cognate with the word lopez. And that term bride run appears to be a very old term which may have originated in ancient times, where the bride was basically kidnapped and whisked away. But it came to refer to the process of a bride leaving her family home to join the husband's home. The word lope meaning run, is also found in another modern English word related to marriage, elope. After the Normans arrived, they took that Old English word lope, meaning run, and applied it to describe a wife who left her husband for a new lover. In Middle English, that process was called alope. Today we have that word as elope, and the meaning is changed to mean the process of a man and a woman running away together to get married. But the term still has that sense of running found in the original word lopez, which you remember again is cognate with the word leap. Of course, the sense of marriage as a big leap is also reflected in the modern phrase take the plunge for getting married. Now, when a man and a woman got married, it was customary to have a big wedding feast. In Old English, a feast or festival was sometimes called an ale. Of course, ale also meant beer, and we still have that word in modern English. And a lot of ale was consumed at those Anglo Saxon feasts. So over time, the feast itself came to be called an ale. And there were actually lots of ales at the time. A cuckoo ale was an annual celebration held in the spring when the first song of the cuckoo was heard. And a clerk ale and a give ale were sometimes held during the Easter holidays to raise money for the church. And when two people Got married, they would have a bride ale. So that was just another one of those Anglo Saxon compound words which they like so much. And it's actually the root of the modern word bridal. And that may seem a little surprising at first. Bridal looks like a lot of words we have in modern English where we convert a noun into an adjective or an adverb by adding an ending to the end of the noun. So we change the word man from a noun into an adjective by adding the suffix li, and we get manly, and we do actually use the suffix al to convert a word like fate into the word fatal and a word like mort from French meaning death into the word mortal. So bridal looks like the word bride with that same al suffix. But that's not actually the case. Bridal is actually a compound word formed by putting two nouns together. So it was the bride, ale or bride's feast originally. And again, it basically was the equivalent of our modern day wedding reception. But over time, the term has evolved into an adjective to describe things associated with weddings in general. Now, after two people were married, the following period was, was called the fleeterwalken, literally the fleeting weeks. And that was basically the equivalent of our modern day honeymoon. The word honeymoon is a much more recent word dating from the late Middle English or Early Modern English period. Now, after marriage, it was customary for spouses to wear rings to commemorate their bond. But you didn't wear that ring on just any finger. You had to wear it on your third finger, the one which the Anglo Saxons call the ring finger. And of course, we still use that term today. And that's another one of those Old English compound words. The term ring finger appears in many Germanic languages, so it was an even older term, older than Old English, but it was likely borrowed from the early Romans. It appears that the tradition of wearing the wedding ring on the third finger started with them, and that term passed to the early Germanic tribes. So the phrase ring finger is probably a really old phrase going all the way back to the late Roman Empire. Since the Romans often used gold for those rings, that finger was sometimes called the golden ring finger, or if you're a James Bond fan, the gold finger. So if the tradition of putting the wedding ring on the third finger came from the Romans, why did they pick that finger? Well, that tradition stems from certain ideas which the Romans picked up from the Greeks. The Greeks and the later Romans thought that the third finger had a special nerve which extended from that finger to the heart. And they thought that that finger had a special palpatory sense, which enabled doctors to detect and identify diseases. It was a type of sixth sense. So in Latin, it came to be called the digitus medicus, literally the medical finger. And it was this special aspect of that third finger, its supposed connection to the heart, that led to the tradition of wearing the wedding ring on that finger. Over time, the Anglo Saxons had borrowed that idea from the Romans, since the Romans were considered to be more advanced when it came to medicine. So the Anglo Saxons also borrowed that Latin term which meant medical finger, and they translated it into Old English as latch finger. Lache was the Old English word for a doctor or physician. So the Anglo Saxons actually ended up with two different names for that third finger, ring finger and latch finger. And because of its Latin roots, latch finger actually became more common after 1066 when the Normans arrived. Now, before I wrap up my look at marriage terms, I should remind you that I've mentioned words like wife and husband and bride and groom in earlier episodes. Wife was wif in Old English, and it was a general word for a woman originally, as in the word midwife. But by the end of the Anglo Saxon period, it was starting to take on the more specialized sense of a married woman. By the way, there's some evidence that the word wife comes from the same ultimate root as the word wife, weave. If that etymology is correct, a wife was originally a word which meant weaver, someone who weaves and makes clothes and other fabrics. This etymology is further supported by archaeological evidence in the graves of many Anglo Saxon women. It's quite common to find things like spindles, needles and thread. So this is considered analogous to burying men with swords and other weapons. So that's wife. But what about a young wife, a bride? Well, bride is another Old Germanic word which has actually changed very little since the time of Old English. Some scholars trace it back to the original Indo European word brew, which meant to cook and which gives us words like brew and broth in modern English. So those words may be cognate with bride. So just as wife may have originally meant a weaver, a bride may have been a brewer, someone who made brews and broths. By the way, we've seen the words husband and groom before. Husband was a compound word, husbanda, which literally meant house dweller and groom. Or bridegroom comes from that compound word bridguma, literally bridesman, guma being another word for man in Old English. So, as you can see, most of our modern words related to marriage can be traced back to the Anglo Saxons, and it shows how little the institution of marriage has changed over the centuries. So having looked at marriage words, let's turn our attention back to the marriage of Edwin of Northumbria to the Kentish Princess Ethelburg. I noted earlier that when Ethelburg married Edwin and traveled from Kent Kent up to Northumbria, she was accompanied by a monk. The monk's name was Paulinus and he was also consecrated as a bishop around this same time. And together, Ethelburg and Paulinus really put the pressure on Edwin to convert to Christianity. But Edwin held out for a while. Shortly after the marriage of Edwin and Ethelburg, they conceived a child together. And as the due date drew nearer, Edwin experienced a life changing and almost life ending event. Edwin's rivals down in Wessex decided that Edwin was becoming a little too powerful. So they sent an assassin to kill him. The assassin arrived in Northumbria with a plan to stab Edwin and the dagger was actually dipped in poison, so the poison would kill Edwin if the dagger itself didn't. According to Bede, the assassin was granted an audience with Edwin. And as the assassin approached Edwin, he pulled out the dagger. But one of Edwin's thanes, or attendants, saw the weapon and he threw himself in between the assassin and Edwin, and the attendant was killed in the attack. And Edwin was wounded, but it was a minor wound. And Bede tells us that this attack occurred on Easter of the year 626. And Bede also tells us that this was the same day that Ethelburg gave birth to a daughter. So, needless to say, it was an eventful day for Edwin. Bede also tells us that the wife's monk, Paulinus, met with the injured Edwin and he told Edwin that Christ had protected him and ensured the delivery of a healthy daughter. And he encouraged Edwin to convert to Christianity. Edwin reportedly told Polinus that if he recovered from his wounds and defeated his enemies who had sent that assassin, he would convert. And ultimately, Edwin did recover and he did lead an army all the way across Mercia into Wessex to slay the kings who had conspired to kill him. And he also expanded the kingdom of Northumbria westward into the Celtic regions. And as we'll see, this was ultimately his downfall. After his military excursions, Edwin returned to Northumbria, but he still didn't convert right away. But eventually, after much deliberation, he did make that decision. In the year 627, Edwin became the first Christian king of Northumbria. And under his leadership, the various independent kingdoms of Northumbria became completely consolidated under his rule. But Edwin had made many enemies along the way. When Edwin ploughed through Mercia to seek revenge on the leaders in Wessex, he had infuriated the Mercians. And as he expanded the territory of Northumbria to the west, he'd made enemies of the Welsh as well. So all of this culminated in a fascinating alliance. Up to this point, we have stories of Anglo Saxons fighting against Celtic Britons, otherwise known as the Welsh. But now the Anglo Saxon leader of Mercia, named Penda, actually entered into an alliance with the Welsh leader Cadwalan. It may have seemed like a strange alliance, but they each had a common enemy in Edwin. And this alliance ultimately proved to be devastating for almost everyone involved. In the year 632, the new allies, Cadwallen and Penda, invaded Northumbria. Together, they faced off against Edwin and they totally defeated his army. But more importantly, for our purposes, they killed Edwin in battle. Then they laid waste to Northumbria. Edwin's wife Ethelberg and his young daughter fled back to Kent, together with the monk Paulinus. By this point, Edwin also had sons and they remained in Northumbria. But they were also eventually killed, and that ensured that there was no immediate successor to the Northumbrian throne. Now, earlier in this episode, I noted that this story was partially about princes in exile. Each one returned to Northumbria and brought something very important with them. Edwin had returned and brought a Christian wife and bishop, and eventually Christianity itself, specifically the Roman version of Christianity practiced down in Kent. And now it was time for another fleeing prince to return. With Edwin and his sons now dead, that opened the door for Aethelfrid's sons to return home from Scotland. Now, one of the sons named Oswald, saw an opportunity to return home. Oswald returned and gathered an army and he led that army against that Welsh king, Cadwallen, about a year later. And Oswald emerged victorious and Cadwalan was actually killed in that battle. And as a result, Oswald was able to firmly establish himself as the new ruler of Northumbria. And he also emerged as the new Bretwalder, or overlord, of the Anglo Saxons. So we're moving the story forward. We're now around the year 633 or so, and under the leadership of Oswald, Northumbria quickly rose back to power as the dominant Anglo Saxon kingdom. I said that each of these princes brought something very important to Northumbria when they returned home. Edwin brought Roman Christianity and Oswald brought the Irish Celtic form of Christianity practiced in the north in modern day Scotland. And that's because Oswald had been living in the north while he was in exile. Specifically he'd been living at that monastery up in Iona, which the first Irish missionaries had established about a century before. That monastery had given the Celtic Church a foothold within Britain. And while he was living there, Oswald was baptized and he became a Christian. And when Oswald returned to Northumbria at Edwin's death, he wanted to bring that northern monastic tradition with him. And this is really where all these various pieces of church history and political history and language history start to come together. You see, that monastery up in Iona wasn't just any monastery. It served both a religious and an educational purpose. Back in continental Europe, the traditional Roman educational system had broken down. When the empire collapsed, as we know, Germanic tribes rushed in and took over. And that ushered in the so called Dark Ages. The classical Roman education largely disappeared there. But one place where it survived was in Ireland. Ireland had never been invaded by Germanic tribes, so the early church there was able to maintain many of the Roman educational traditions. They continued to use many of the classical Latin manuscripts and text, and they continued to copy those manuscripts. So while manuscripts were destroyed and lost back on the continent, they survived in Ireland. And when the Irish Celtic Church spread over to northern Britain, to Iona, what they brought was both a religious movement and a scholarly movement. And that made it somewhat unique. And that was the tradition which Oswald now wanted to bring with him down to Northumbria. After becoming king, he sent a request to Iona for a bishop to come and establish a monastery in his kingdom. And that missionary was Aidan, later to be known as Saint Aidan. When Aidan arrived in Northumbria, he decided to establish himself on the island of Lindisfarne. And that's where he built a monastery. And that monastery eventually became one of the most important monasteries in all of Anglo Saxon Britain. You may have heard of the Lindisfarne Gospels, an incredible illuminated manuscript which was produced there a couple of generations later, around the year 700. The illuminated letters and patterns in that manuscript mixed Celtic and Anglo Saxon designs. But it wasn't just a book, it was a work of art. And like most religious texts from that period, it was written in Latin. But around the year 950, another monk named Aldred translated the Latin text into Old English. And that old English translation is the oldest surviving version of the Gospels in the English language. Now, the Lindisfarne Gospels tend to get most of the attention, but it's important to keep in mind that other illuminated gospels were also produced there. And Lindisfarne quickly became a center of learning and scholarship as much as a center of religious Study. And it wasn't just the monastery at Lindisfarne that's so important. Other monasteries were soon built throughout Northumbria. A few years later, a monastery was built at a place called Jarrow. That's the monastery where Bede lived. And it also became a center of Anglo Saxon learning. Other monasteries were built in other Northumbrian towns like Durham, York and Whitby. And those monasteries began to change the culture of the region. And over the following decades, people from throughout Western Europe began to flock to Northumbria to study at those monasteries. The kingdom became one of the most important and influential cultural centers in all of Europe. A key part of the scholarship provided by those monasteries was advanced training in the skill of reading and writing. And so those new monasteries meant that literacy also spread throughout Northumbria. And those monks were using the Irish version of the Alphabet, which I discussed a few episodes back. So initially, they were writing in Latin, the language of the church. But as I've noted before, the scribes began to write notes and translations in the margins in Old English. So our first body of Old English literature originated in those Northumbrian monasteries. And that process of creating illuminated manuscripts gave us some new words in the English language as well. One word which it gave us is the word miniature and its shortened form, mini, as in minivan and miniskirt and iPad mini. At first glance, that seems like a word which might have originated with the Greeks. After all, we get common prefixes like mono and micro from Greek. But mini developed around this time in the early Middle Ages, and it derived from the ink used in monasteries throughout Europe. In many of those early monasteries, the titles and headings were written in red ink to contrast with the black ink in the rest of the text. Red ink was also used in the drawings of those illuminated manuscripts. And the Latin word for that red pigment was minium. And that produced the verb miniera, meaning to color with red pigment. And that term was later applied to the general process of illuminating a manuscript. That word was then borrowed into English. And since the pictures and illuminated manuscripts were smaller than full size portraits, the term miniature came to mean any small portrait or painting. And over time, miniature came to mean any small version of something else. And that word was later shortened to many. So both mini and miniature both come from the word for red ink used in illuminated manuscripts. In the later Middle Ages, church calendars also used red ink to signify religious holidays. And this technique of using red ink to mark holidays and Sundays is still used in many modern calendars handed out by churches. And other religious groups. Those days came to be known as red letter days, and that term still exists in modern English. Again, a red letter day is directly related to this particular use of red ink by church scribes. Now, it's important to keep in mind that the literary impact of these monasteries didn't happen overnight. It took several decades for the full impact to be felt throughout Northumbria. But once that first monastery was established at Lindisfarne, the whole thing sort of snowballed and it ushered in the first great period of Anglo Saxon culture. And as we'll see in an upcoming episode, it was even a model for Charlemagne when he became King of the Franks a short time later. So, having said that, let's turn our attention back to the political history of Northumbria. Oswald continued as the king of Northumbria for about a decade, and he maintained the legacy which his predecessor Edwin had established. The kingdom remained politically powerful, but it also continued to have old enemies on its borders. Even though the Welsh king Cadwallen had been killed by Oswald, the Mercian king Penda was. Was still the king next door in Mercia, and he also remained a staunch pagan. And so it's not really surprising that the rivalry between Mercia and Northumbria didn't end with the death of Edwin. The circumstances are unclear, but in the year641 or642, Penda's Mercian forces and Oswald's Northumbrian forces met again in battle. And the sometimes brutal Anglo Saxon history repeated itself. Oswald met the same fate as his predecessor Edwin. About a decade earlier, Oswald died on the battlefield and Penda's forces once again emerged victorious. Now, I noted earlier that Oswald had a brother. Those were the two sons of Aethelfrith who had fled into exile way back when Edwin became king. One of them, Oswald, had returned when Edwin died, and now the other son, Oswy, was about to make his return. This is the third of our fleeing princes who returned home to Northumbria. So if Edwin brought Roman Christianity and Oswald brought Irish Celtic Christianity, what did Oswy bring? Well, ultimately, he brought a resolution to the conflict between those two movements. After Oswald's death, it took his brother Oswy a little while to secure his position as King of Northumbria. Originally, Oslo was only the king of the old region of Bernicia, part of the larger kingdom of Northumbria. But then he tried to reunite the entire region. One thing Oswy did to secure his claim to the entire territory of Northumbria was to strengthen his ties to the former king Edwin. Edwin had been a well respected and beloved king and his death had only strengthened his reputation. So to establish a link to Edwin, Oswe decided to marry Edwin's daughter, who'd been in exile down in Kent. Remember, this is the daughter who was supposedly born to Edwin on the same day in which she survived that assassin's attack. So she and her mother had fled back to Kent when Edwin was killed. But now she was an adult, and once again we see the importance of a strategic marriage alliance. Let's also keep in mind that this daughter of Edwin, named Enflad, was yet another descendant in that same line of important women who had converted kings throughout France and Britain. But this time Osli was already Christian, so no conversion was necessary. But Inflad had been raised in the Roman Catholic tradition with its base down in Kent. Her father was Edwin and her grandparents were Ethelbert and Bertha, the first Christian couple to rule an Anglo Saxon kingdom. So she was strongly Roman Catholic. But Oswy was part of the Irish Celtic church tradition which his brother Oswald had introduced. So both versions of Christianity were mixing together in Northumbria, and the new king and queen personified the conflicts between those traditions. Those differences would continue to fester, but Oswi had more pressing concerns, specifically that King Penda next door in Mercia, the one that had killed his brother and was partially responsible for the death of Edwin. Osley knew that he was going to have to deal with Penda eventually. But that marriage to Edwin's daughter had secured his position within Northumbria, and it also gave him an ally in Kent. As Oswi's power grew, he inevitably drew the ire of Penda, who saw Oswi as a growing threat. And that threat ultimately culminated in another invasion by Penda. But this time the result was different. To the surprise of many, Oswi not only fought bravely against Penda, but Oswi's forces actually defeated and killed Penda in battle. And with the death of Penda, Osli finally emerged as the dominant Anglo Saxon king. And he succeeded his brother Oswald as the last Bretwalder or overlord mentioned by Bede. Needless to say, this was a monumental event in the history of the region. Part of the reason why Northumbria was able to flourish for much of the next century is because the constant looming threat of Penda was removed. And with Penda's death, Mercia itself was ripe for conversion. So Oswi encouraged missionaries from Northumbria to travel to Mercia, and by the year 700, the entirety of what would become known as England was Christian. But what kind of Christian? A Roman Catholic Christian or an Irish Celtic Christian? This divide had been lingering in the background for a while, but as long as there was a regional divide between the two groups, the differences weren't really that much of an issue. But now they were mixing together in the middle. In places like Northumbria, this was becoming more of a problem. Some of the differences between the groups were cosmetic. Literally, Roman monks shaved a bald patch in their hair on the top of their heads. But the Irish monks followed the tradition of the Druids, and they shaved across the top of their head from ear to ear, and they left the hair growing in the back. But beyond the differences in appearance, there were also some structural differences. The Roman oriented Christians in the south looked directly to the Pope in Rome. But the Irish oriented Christians in the north had developed their own organization. The Roman Church emphasized powerful bishops, whereas the Irish Church emphasized monasteries and powerful abbots. But the most practical difference was the calculation of the date of Easter. The northern monasteries followed the Irish tradition and calculated Easter a week ahead of the Roman Church. And this created lots of problems, especially for married couples who each followed a different tradition. Married couples like, well, the king and queen. So while King Ozwy celebrated Easter, his wife Enflad was still observing the fast of Lent. And this was increasingly common as these type of mixed marriages were on the rise. So we're back to our theme of marriage, because it was actually marriages like Osli and Inflads that motivated the need to resolve some of these conflicts. So the Roman monks persuaded Osli to summon both sides to a big summit meeting called a synod at the new abbey in Whitby in the year 664. Now Oswy chaired the debate. The Romans had most of Europe on their side, and the Celtic Christians had part of the British Isles on their side. Osley heard both sides of the argument and he ultimately came down in favor of the Roman Church. And this was a major turning point in English history because it ensured that the English church would follow the Roman model going forward, not the Irish Celtic model. And many scholars actually put this date of 664 right up there with 1066 in terms of the overall impact on the history of England thereafter. The Anglo Saxons had one church view which served as a galvanizing force and helped to unify them over time. Now, that one world view may have ensured that everyone used the same date to calculate Easter and everyone wore the same hairstyle in the monasteries. But those northern monasteries continued to mix religious training and scholarship in a way that was still unique in much of Britain and Europe. And that monastery at Whitby, where the synod was held, was really ground zero for this movement. That monastery produced the first English poet who we know by name, and it produced an abbess who was one of the first people to advocate the use of English to spread the Christian message. So let's turn our attention to that monastery. Now, Whitby is a small town along the northeast coast of England. Outside of the importance of its monastery, the town may be most famous as a key setting in Bram Stoker's Dracula. The ship, which runs aground along the English coast near the beginning of the novel, does so at Whitby. But long before Bram Stoker, the town of Whitby was famous for its monastery. It was actually founded by Oswy shortly after he defeated and killed the Mercian king Penda. At a time when Oswe was still trying to establish connections to the earlier king, Edwin, he decided to appoint Edwin's grandniece, Hilda, as the abbess of the monastery. So Hilda was the cousin of his wife in flat, and she will emerge as one of the key figures in the early history of English. One thing to note about Hilda is that she was an abbess, not an abbot. And that was really not that unusual at the time. Several monasteries like the one at Whitby, were. Were designed for both men and women. They were called double monasteries. The monks and nuns lived in different areas, but they were all under the rule of the same person, and that person was often a woman, not a man. And Hilda was one of the most influential of those women. Her monastery became a training school for church statesmen. Bede tells us that her wisdom was so great that bishops, kings and ordinary people traveled to Whitby to speak with her. And her influence was so great that King Oswy selected the Whitby Abbey to host that senate to decide which version of Christianity was going to be used going forward. But for our purposes, the most significant thing about Whitby is that it was the home of a poor cowherd named Cadmon. And thanks to Bede, we have his remarkable story. Cadmun was an elderly man who took care of the monastery's cows and horses. So he slept in the stables. And it appears that he was somewhat embarrassed to speak in front of others. The name Cdmon is a Celtic name, so it's very possible that English wasn't his first language. And that may be why he was so shy. During meal times, he would eat with the monks, and very often the monks would pull out a lyre or harp. And they would start singing songs and reciting poems, and they would pass the harp around. But Kadimon always excused himself before the harp got to him. He was too shy to try to sing or compose poems in front of the monks. Well, one night this happened, and Cadmon left, and he went back to the stables and he fell asleep. And while he was dreaming, a figure appeared to him and asked him to sing a song. And Cadmon asked what he should sing about, and the figure said, sing about the creation. Cadmon then spontaneously sang a song about the biblical creation story. And this is the song or hymn which Cadmon sang in his Northumbrian English dialect. Nschulen hergen heban rikes werd me tudes merchte endes modgedank werk wo du fader svehi vondora gaevus echedrichten orestelidae erstschop eldebarnum Heaven tirufa haleg schepen damedengerd mon cuneswerd echedrichten after therum fuldu Freyja el mechteg. In modern English it reads somewhat awkwardly, as now we should praise Heaven's guardian, the Creator's might and his mind's thought. The work of the wonder Father, how each of the wonders the Eternal Lord established. At the beginning he shaped for the children of men Heaven as a roof, the Holy Creator, then middle Earth, mankind's guardian, the Eternal Lord afterwards made the earth for men, the Lord Almighty. The next morning, Kadman told his superior at the monastery about his dream. And he even recited the hymn which had come to him in that dream. And the superior sent him to see the abbess Hilda. And Hilda assembled a group of scholars at the monastery, and they listened to Cadman's hymn. Everyone assembled was stunned. They then decided to give Cadman a little test. They told him some stories from the Bible, stories which he had never heard before, and they asked him if he could compose poems based around those stories. And he returned the next morning, and sure enough, he composed more poems which were considered just as beautiful. Everyone assembled concluded that Kadmon had received a gift from God. And Bede tells us that Hilda embraced his gift and told him that he should join the monastery as a monk. And from that point on, Hilda encouraged Cadmon to compose his religious poems in English, what we would call Old English poetry today, the same kind of poetry which we looked at in the last episode. And Bee tells us that Cadmon's songs and poems were so beautiful to hear that his teachers themselves wrote and learned from him, and we're told that he composed poems covering the entire story of Genesis, the story of Exodus, and large portions of the New Testament. Unfortunately, all that had survived from Caedmon was that original hymn. And that hymn survives thanks to Bede. Actually, Bede recorded it in Latin, but fortunately later monks translated the poem into English in several copies of Bede's manuscript. So we actually have that hymn in several Old English dialects. I noted near the beginning of this episode that one of the four surviving manuscripts of Old English poetry was a collection of religious poems called the Junius Manuscript. It turns out that all of the poems cover the same subjects which Caedmon supposedly wrote about or composed poems about. And some scholars concluded that these were in fact Cadmon's other poems. And that's why this collection is also sometimes called the Caedmon Manuscript. But later scholars have generally rejected that theory. The only poem which we can definitely attribute to Cadmon was that original poem which I read earlier, known as Cadmun's Hymn. And next to Beowulf, it's arguably the most important poem composed in Old English. So why is it so important? First, it's important to keep in mind that up to this point, Latin was the language of the Church. By tradition, all things holy had to be said and written in Latin. Church services were conducted in Latin and the Bible was written in Latin. So if you quoted Scripture, you quoted Latin. The bottom line, if you didn't say it in Latin, it wasn't holy. No one dared to sing Christian poems or recite Christian texts in English. English was considered the language of the pagans. But all of that changed with Cadmun, and give Hilda credit for recognizing and encouraging that gift. She concluded that anyone, even the humblest cowherd, could understand the teachings of the Church in their own language. They didn't have to learn or speak Latin. And since Kadiman's gift was considered miraculous, it appeared that God had sanctioned English as an alternative to Latin. The door was now open for English to take its place beside Latin within those monasteries. And it's not surprising that after Cdmon and Hilda, we start to get more and more text in Old English. So in Hilda, we see the various themes of this episode come together. She illustrates the important role of women in this early period of Anglo Saxon history. She also illustrates the important role of monasteries in encouraging the use of English. And lastly, she represented the strategic importance of a good marriage alliance. But in this case, it. It was a marriage of two languages. From now on, both Latin and English would be used together. To spread the message of the Church, the language of the Romans and the language of the Anglo Saxons would start to mix together to serve the same ultimate purpose. And along the way, the English language started to embrace Latin words and Latin concepts. And as we'll see, this process was well underway long before the Normans arrived. So I'm going to conclude this episode on that note. Next time, we're going to continue to explore this period of Northumbrian culture known as the Northumbrian Renaissance. And we're going to see how English was increasingly adopted and used by monks in religious literature. And it wasn't just a matter of using the English language. It was the way they used the language. It was the way they took Germanic words and themes and poetic styles and they adapted it to Christian concepts. And it was also the way they began to weave Latin words into English sentences, thereby making English a much more versatile and expressive language. So over the next couple of episodes, we're going to examine this early marriage of English and Latin. So until next time, thanks for listening to the History of English podcast. Sa.