Old English (Anglo-Saxon) Period

(450-1100 A.D.)

Origins, Historical, and Cultural Outline:

• Paleolithic/Mesolithic Period from 250,000/50,000 years ago? to around 5,000 BC
• Neolithic period, c. 5000-2000 BC, agriculture, mound tombs
• Bronze Age, 2000-500 B.C.
• Bronze Age: Indo-European language, burial with drinking vessels, flint, metal, Stonehenge III, 2300 BC
• farms, circular huts, oblong fields 1200 BC
• Celtic inhabitants arrived around 750 BC, hill forts
• Iron Age, population growth; Celtic people; Celtic Bretons, hence Britannia; Celtic languages: Gaelic, Britannic (and later Welsh, Breton, Cornish)
• Belgian Gaul (Celtic) migrations, coins, potter's wheel, practice of cremation c. 100 BC
• Julius Caesar invades Britain, 55/54 BC
• 43/50 A.D., Roman Emperor Claudius, Roman conquest; Romanization/Christianization, Latin
• conquest of southern and midland peoples completed, 78-85 AD, Roman Governor Agricola
• Roman historian, Tacitus, Germania (98 A.D.), description of life of Germanic tribes, concept of comitatus
• Hadrian's Wall (73 miles long), 121-127 A.D.
• Roman departure 410 AD, Britain besieged by Picts, Scots and Saxons
• British leader Vortigern invites Saxons (Angles, Saxons, Jutes) into alliance against Picts and Scots; Jute leaders Hengest and Horsa, Jute settlements in Thanet, Kent, and Isle of Wight
• Saxons rebel against Britons 442
• Large-scale Germanic invasions (Angles, Saxons, Jutes), 449; Saxon settlements in Sussex and Wessex, 477- 495; Celts driven into Wales and Cornwall; British resistance, King Arthur, Mt. Badon British victory 500; but Anglo-Saxons in control by sixth century; also invasions of Angles and settlements in East Anglia, the Midlands, and Northumbria; term "Anglo-Saxons": originally Saxons in England (as opposed to continental Saxons); Angles, Angul-cynn, Englisc, Engla-lond
• Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy: Northumberland, East Anglia, Mercia (Angles), Kent (Jutes), Essex, Sussex, Wessex (Saxons); seventh century Northumbrian dominance, eighth century Mercian dominance, ninth/tenth century West Saxon dominance
• Pope Gregory sends St. Augustine (the "Apostle of the English," a Roman Benedictine monk, NOT the more famous St. Augustine who lived 354-430 A.D.) to Kent 597; Aethelbert I of Kent (Jutes), converted to Christianity by Augustine, first Christian king of Anglo-Saxon England (Rex Anglorum), also compiled law code (c. 600) (definitions and rules of kinship, wergild, slaves and freemen/ceorl, nobles); Christianization of Anglo-Saxons by Roman and Irish missionaries (St. Aidan and others, 635-655); Wyrd and Providence
• Cenotaph of East-Anglian Raedwald at Sutton Hoo, 625
• Caedmon, oldest poetic vernacular work ("Hymn of Creation", c. 670), monastery at Whitby; Widsith (c. 650-700)
• Lindisfarne Gospels, 698, Latin Vulgate text with interlined Old English paraphrase
• Venerable Bede (673-735), Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (731); Ruthwell Cross (early 8th c); origins of Beowulf?
• Mercian King Offa (757-796); Alcuin of York (732-804), high level of scholarship
• first Viking attacks 787, sack of Lindisfarne Priory 793; Book of Kells: Irish illuminated manuscript of four gospels (8th c.)
• West Saxon King Egbert (802-839); Cynewulf (c. first half of 9th c.), Juliana, Elene, Fates of the Apostles, Christ
• King Alfred (849-899), ruled (871-899), revival of learning, beginnings of Anglo Saxon Chronicle, victories over Vikings at Ashdown 871, Edington 878, Treaty of Wedmore 878, Danish king Guthrum forced to accept Christianity and retreat to Danelaw
• West Saxon dialect became literary standard of Old English literature; oral tradition
• second half of tenth century: Dunstan, Ethelwold, Oswald, monastic reform, copying of manuscripts
• Battle of Brunanburh 937, English army under Aethelstan defeated army of Northmen, Scots and Welsh allies; poem Battle of Brunanburh recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
• Exeter Book (c. 1000) manuscript containing the Wanderer and the Seafarer, Widsith, The Wife's Lament, Guthlac, Juliana, Christ, The Ruin, etc.
• Junius Manuscript (c. 1000), containing the Old English Genesis, Exodus, Daniel, and Christ and Satan
• Vercelli Book (c. 1000), manuscript containing Dream of the Rood, Andreas, Elene, Fates of the Apostles, etc.
• Battle of Maldon 991; poem Battle of Maldon recorded in manuscript Cotton Otho (destroyed by fire in 1731), currently known version comes from transcript made in 1724 by John Elphinstone
• Cotton Vitellius (c. 1000), manuscript containing Beowulf, Judith, partially destroyed by fire in 1731
• Aethelred II Unraed (978-1016); peak of monastic and literary revival: Aelfric (955-1020), Catholic Homilies, Lives of the Saints; Wulfstan d. 1023, Sermo Lupi ad Anglos
• Early eleventh century renewed Norse invasions
• Danish Cnut ruler of England, r. 1016-1035
• Edward the Confessor (last Anglo-Saxon king) r. 1042-1066
• Norman invasion;William the Conqueror, Battle of Hastings 1066, end of Anglo-Saxon Period

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