History
A new exhibition of Anglo-saxon artefacts is truly illuminating
One of the more boring things historians do is argue over historical periods. When do the Middle Ages end, and the Renaissance or Enlightenment begin? What about the ‘long 18th century’ or the short 20th?
They can’t even agree on what to call these stretches of time. Ancien Régime or Early Modern? Victorian or Industrial Revolutionary? To most of us, it’s angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin stuff, best left to academics.
There is one of these debates, though, that I’m gripped by. What should we call the long stretch between the fall of Rome and the rise of the medieval kingdoms of Europe? It was the period populated with alien-sounding names such as Childeric and Ealhswith, when Vikings put to sea, and put much of the Atlantic world to the sword?
For centuries, this period was called the Dark Ages. Petrarch, the 15th-century Italian poet-scholar, extended the term up to his own time. But, more recently, it has stuck fast, in this country at least, to the period between the departure of the Romans around 410AD, and the Norman Conquest.
Following the fall of the greatest empire the world had ever known, there were, unsurprisingly, some chaotic times, as different peoples and their leaders vied for supremacy across Europe. So, naturally, the traces left behind by successive rivals can be sketchy. In England at least, the most obvious records of any civilisation, its buildings, are not much in evidence. There were undoubtedly some dark years during these centuries (as there have been in every century), but the effect of that label is to confine a whole civilisation to the shadows.
Two recent experiences have driven home to me how unfair – how frankly ridiculous – the notion of the Dark Ages is. The first was a visit to the astonishing Anglo-saxon Kingdoms exhibition at the British Library. The only thing remotely dark about it is the lighting; necessarily low to preserve the priceless manuscripts and artefacts on display, all of which are well illuminated (in every sense), once you get up close.
Like incredibly well-behaved Viking marauders, the curators have ransacked the treasures of their own collection and those of institutions across the country and the Continent.
Alongside the spellbindingly intricate artwork of Gospel books and psalters from the 6th century onwards are selected objects, from sculpted stone to finely worked jewellery, which demonstrate the skill and humanity of the Anglo-saxons.
The exhibition tells a fascinating, meticulously documented story of different Germanic-speaking peoples arriving, settling and ruling in post-roman Britain. It also charts the conversion of those peoples, and the way Christianity and power went hand in hand.
It is a scholar’s dream, then; but, for all of us, there are moments of wonder – and extraordinary contrast. First, there is the St Cuthbert Gospel, a tiny handbook in its original, red, goatskin binding, the very volume placed in the saint’s coffin after it was transferred to Durham in the 8th century.
Next to this beautiful relic is a giant product of the same Northumbrian book factory, the bible known as the Codex
Amiatinus. The Codex, which you’d struggle to fit in the boot of a hatchback, was taken from Jarrow to Italy 1,300 years ago, ending up in Florence. Long thought to have been an Italian production, but now established as an Anglo-saxon one, it has never before come back ‘home’.
There are nice moments of humour, including naughty riddles from the Exeter Book (‘I have heard of something wax in a corner, swell and pop, lift up the covers’ – dough, of course) and possibly the earliest ever donnish joke.
Egg-headed Aldhelm, Abbot of Malmesbury Abbey, advises a pupil to study at Canterbury rather than in Ireland in a letter with 15 words out of 16 all beginning with the letter P. P is the 15th letter in what the curators call the ‘Greek-inspired Latin’ alphabet – and Irish had no sound equating to the Latin P. Hilarious!
That sort of thing might have appealed to the learned audience at a recent talk in the House of Commons I attended, given by Simon Keynes, professor of AngloSaxon at Cambridge.
Standing beneath G F Watts’s Victorian rendition of Alfred Inciting the Saxons to Prevent the Landing of the Danes, he explained the Anglo-saxon origins of the building across the road, Westminster Abbey.
The professor also pointed out that our host, Alex Burghart, Tory MP for Brentwood and Ongar, might in AngloSaxon times have been the reeve of the local ealdorman, perhaps of Byrhtnoth, who died fighting the Danes at Maldon. In which case, he would be busily negotiating some mutually acceptable deal with his Danish counterparts. Plus ça change.
As for an alternative to the Dark Ages, how about the Illuminated Age?
‘Anglo-saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War’, the British Library, until 19th February 2019