Brittany and the Atlantic Archipelago, 450–1200

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Brett ◽  
Fiona Edmonds ◽  
Paul Russell
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Viking Age ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
Distinctive Character ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
Language And Literature ◽  
Fresh Perspective ◽  
History Of

How did Brittany get its name and its British-Celtic language in the centuries after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire? Beginning in the ninth century, scholars have proposed a succession of theories about Breton origins, influenced by the changing relationships between Brittany, its Continental neighbours, and the 'Atlantic Archipelago' during and after the Viking age and the Norman Conquest. However, due to limited records, the history of medieval Brittany remains a relatively neglected area of research. In this new volume, the authors draw on specialised research in the history of language and literature, archaeology, and the cult of saints, to tease apart the layers of myth and historical record. Brittany retained a distinctive character within the typical 'medieval' forces of kingship, lordship, and ecclesiastical hierarchy. The early history of Brittany is richly fascinating, and this new investigation offers a fresh perspective on the region and early medieval Europe in general.

Tacitus Incognito: Opera as History in "L'incoronazione di Poppea"

1999 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wendy Heller
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Moral Thought ◽  
Sexually Explicit ◽  
History Of ◽  
Stoic Philosophy ◽  
Artistic Self ◽  
The Erotic

This essay considers opera's use of a particular history in seventeenth-century Venice: Cornelius Tacitus's Annals of the Roman Empire as transformed in Monteverdi's and Busenello's L'incoronazione di Poppea. In contrast with a recent hypothesis linking Tacitus, Poppea, and the Venetian Accademia degli Incogniti with Neostoicism, this essay argues that the members of the Accademia degli Incogniti used Tacitus's history of the Julio-Claudians as part of a highly specialized republican discourse on Venetian political superiority and sensual pleasures. After considering Incogniti philosophies and interest in the erotic in the context of Venetian political ideals and the influence of Tacitus on political and moral thought in early modern Europe, this essay places L'incoronazione di Poppea in the context of several other treatments of Tacitus produced during the mid-seventeenth century by Busenello's colleagues in the Accademia degli Incogniti, in which empire and the liabilities of female power are contrasted implicitly with Venice's male oligarchy. The Venetian rejection of Stoic philosophy and fascination with the erotic and the patriotic play themselves out in one of the opera's most peculiar distortions of the historical record-the scene following the death of Seneca in which the philosopher's nephew, the poet Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, known in Venice for his republican ideals, joins the emperor Nero in song to celebrate his uncle's death and Poppea's charms. As transformed by Monteverdi's sexually explicit music, Lucan's endorsement of artistic self-expression, sensual freedom, and republican ideals provides a critical counterpoint to Senecan support of the principate and moral restraint-a view that was far more compatible with Venetian concerns at midcentury.

Scandinavian Settlement in the North and West of the British Isles—an Archaeological Point-of-View

1976 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 95-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Ninth Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Viking Age ◽  
British Isles ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
Isle Of Man ◽  
The North ◽  
Infinite Variety ◽  
Firm Evidence

THE Scandinavians came to Britain first as raiders, then as settlers. The length of the periods of raiding, the form of raids, the character and duration of settlement and the speed with which Scandinavian influence was lost, varied considerably in the different regions. In simple terms the Viking Age lasted from 790 to 1070, but within and beyond these dates is infinite variety. In England the first settlements are not recorded before 876, eighty years or more after the first raids; in Scotland, however, there is fairly firm evidence of settlement in the first half of the ninth century, while in some parts of Scotland settlement may not even have been preceded by raids. It is clear too that Guthrum's conquests are of an entirely different character to those of Knut the Great. Guthrum was a petty chief. Knut a great ruler, was accepted as such by his royal contemporaries and his power achieved imperial proportions. In Ireland, where they settled in very limited areas, the Scandinavians lost most of their political power in the late tenth century. Their commercial importance there, however, grew by leaps and bounds, but even in this role they lost all semblance of influence after the Norman conquest of Ireland of 1169. Norse power was broken in western Scotland after the battle of Largs in 1263 (although Norse earls held sway in the Isles until 1331). The Isle of Man was transferred to the Scottish crown in 1266, while Orkney and Shetland remained Norwegian until the impignorations of 1468 and 1469.

I. Inquisitio as a Tool of Royal Governance under the Carolingian and Ottonian Kings

2016 ◽  
Vol 133 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
David S. Bachrach
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Traditional View ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
History Of ◽  
Carolingian Empire ◽  
Louis The Pious

Abstract The inquest (Latin inquisitio) was an important administrative tool in the hands of government officials of the later Roman empire and of the Regnum Francorum. Imperial and royal officials used inquests to safeguard the fisc, and also to assure accurate tax assessments. Scholars long have recognized that the inquest also served similar roles in the hands of government officials in the Carolingian empire during the reigns of Charlemagne and Louis the Pious. By contrast, most specialists in the history of the east Frankish kingdom and of its German successor under the Ottonian dynasty have argued that the lands east of the Rhine lacked the sophisticated administrative institutions that were characteristic Carolingian government in the first half of the ninth century. This study offers a corrective to the traditional view that both the eastern Carolingians and the Ottonians presided over administratively backward realms. It was rather the case that the eastern Carolingian rulers and their Ottonian successors used inquisitiones to safeguard the royal fisc from misuse, neglect, and theft. In addition, these rulers used inquests to maintain control over the assets of ecclesiastical institution.

The ‘archbishopric’ of Dol and the ecclesiastical politics of ninth-century Brittany

1982 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 59-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia M. H. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Strong Sense ◽  
English Channel ◽  
The West ◽  
Social Patterns ◽  
History Of ◽  
Civil Government

In the history of the invasions which marked the end of the Roman empire in the west, the Armorican peninsula of northwestern Gaul holds a distinctive place. It witnessed the only substantial settlements by people whose homeland lay within the Roman empire, and who had been subject to Roman civil government for several centuries. These settlers crossed the English Channel probably between the late fourth and early seventh centuries. Establishing new communities in the sparsely populated areas of western Armorica, they brought with them their own language, social patterns and Christian organisation, and a strong sense of affinity with the Celts of Wales and Cornwall from whom they derived.’ Whilst the Britons were establishing themselves as Bretons, the Franks were asserting their hold over the remainder of northern Gaul. A few of them settled in the eastern approaches to the peninsula, in the Roman civitates of Rennes and Nantes. Culturally and politically, only this part of Armorica was attached to Merovingian Gaul, having as its kings the descendants of Clovis, and as its bishops members of the Gallo-Roman aristocracy.

‘The greatest irregular’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Scurr
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Thomas Carlyle ◽  
History Of ◽  
Dramatic Narrative ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

Thomas Carlyle claimed that his history of the French Revolution was ‘a wild savage book, itself a kind of French Revolution …’. This chapter considers his stylistic approaches to creating the illusion of immediacy: his presentation of seemingly unmediated fact through the transformation of memoir and other kinds of historical record into a compelling dramatic narrative. Closely examining the ways in which he worked biographical anecdote into the fabric of his text raises questions about Carlyle’s wider historical purposes. Pressing the question of what it means to think through style, or to distinguish expressive emotive writing from abstract understanding, is an opportunity to reconsider Carlyle’s relation to his predecessors and contemporaries writing on the Revolution in English.

‘Importunity Which Mocked All Denial’: The Amherst Charity Fund and the Foundation of Amherst College

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carl I Hammer
Keyword(s):  
Early Growth ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Williams College ◽  
Education Society ◽  
Amherst College ◽  
History Of ◽  
Noah Webster

This chapter discusses the complex history of the Amherst Charity Fund and Amherst College, located in western Massachusetts. The story of the Charity Fund, an independent fund which financed the foundation and early growth of Amherst College through designated scholarships and loans, incorporates many elements of the larger American myth. This chapter offers an alternative story based on the surviving historical record. In particular, it draws on the accounts of Noah Webster and Rufus Graves. It also cites the founding in 1815 of the Hampshire Education Society, whose aims contrast sharply with those embraced by the trustees of Amherst Academy, and how Amherst’s history was intertwined with that of Williams College. Finally, it highlights the important roles played by such men as Pastor David Parsons and Samuel F. Dickinson.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ildar Garipzanov
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Dominant Role ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Sources Of Authority ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Periods

The concluding chapter highlights how the cultural history of graphic signs of authority in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages encapsulated the profound transformation of political culture in the Mediterranean and Europe from approximately the fourth to ninth centuries. It also reflects on the transcendent sources of authority in these historical periods, and the role of graphic signs in highlighting this connection. Finally, it warns that, despite the apparent dominant role of the sign of the cross and cruciform graphic devices in providing access to transcendent protection and support in ninth-century Western Europe, some people could still employ alternative graphic signs deriving from older occult traditions in their recourse to transcendent powers.

Urban Space and Aristocratic Power in Late Antique Rome

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Machado
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
The Social ◽  
Traditional Elite ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City

This book analyses the physical, social, and cultural history of Rome in late antiquity. Between AD 270 and 535, the former capital of the Roman empire experienced a series of dramatic transformations in its size, appearance, political standing, and identity, as emperors moved to other cities and the Christian church slowly became its dominating institution. Urban Space and Aristocratic Power in Late Antique Rome provides a new picture of these developments, focusing on the extraordinary role played by members of the traditional elite, the senatorial aristocracy, in the redefinition of the city, its institutions, and spaces. During this period, Roman senators and their families became increasingly involved in the management of the city and its population, in building works, and in the performance of secular and religious ceremonies and rituals. As this study shows, for approximately three hundred years the houses of the Roman elite competed with imperial palaces and churches in shaping the political map and the social life of the city. Making use of modern theories of urban space, the book considers a vast array of archaeological, literary, and epigraphic documents to show how the former centre of the Mediterranean world was progressively redefined and controlled by its own elite.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document