MemberlistThe Library Index  FAQFAQ   SearchSearch   RegisterRegister   ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   Log inLog in 
Dark Age Obscured (History)
Reply to topic Goto page Previous  1, 2, 3 ... 33, 34, 35 ... 39, 40, 41  Next
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
View user's profile
Reply with quote

If you thought this sounded familiar

This was all covered in the post on the Great Heathen Army in Legend. (New Concepts) Nothing new so far.

If you thought that Wystan sounded familiar as well but you can't place it.... Wigstan was the son of the mysterious Carolingian-influenced Wigmund (maybe) who recently featured in posts on COIN.

From Wiley's notes.

Notice the Wig of these so called Mercian Kings.

Wig = Vic = Wic

The Great Army was carrying around some silver coins with Arabic inscriptions.
Send private message
Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
View user's profile
Reply with quote

The Crypt/Baptistery I will take a punt and say it was Roman. There are lots of Roman pottery finds in Repton but no known Roman stone buildings. Archaeos were looking for Heathens.
Send private message
Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
View user's profile
Reply with quote

The Normans had it right, they put the relics of these so-called Anglo-Saxon saints to ordeal by fire. Walter of Cerisy, the first Norman Abbot of Evesham, subjected the relics of St. Wigstan to the fires. However, much to his chagrin, the relics began to shine.......
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Mark Horton went to great pains to say, and showed it with archive film, that the mass burial was of disarticulated bones. In fact the bone specialists prided themselves on how much work they have done identifying how many whole human beings these bore testimony to. Now we have, alas, only too much evidence of mass burials and they do not consist of disarticulated bones. They may be a bit hard to disentangle, they may be hard to identify but they are certainly not disarticulated. They are not, in Mark's graphic description

It was sort of crunch, crunch as one moved across this sea of human charnel, human debris

If you bury bodies they can't disarticulate themselves post mortem. In other words, these must be already skeletised remains that have been moved from where they were and reburied under this mound. If someone will provide me with an explanation as to why Vikings, Danes or Anglo-Saxons would do this, I will cease my caterwauling. Otherwise we must press on. And remember, guys, they have nailed themselves to an impossible mast. This is the reason they have been beating a path to Repton for forty years!
Send private message
Hatty
Site Admin

In: Berkshire
View user's profile
Reply with quote

I agree with Wiley's comments on the purported Anglo-Saxon crypt of St Wystan's church. Though lacking major Roman ruins, Repton is sited close to Icknield Street, named Ryknild Street in the twelfth century, which may account for the coins of 'Arabic silver'.

Nothing is known of St Wystan/Wigstan apart from a single reference in the infamous Croyland Chronicle

The Croyland or Crowland Chronicle is named for its place of origin, the Benedictine Abbey of Crowland or Crowland, in Lincolnshire. It was formerly also known as the Chronicle of Ingulf or Ingulphus after its supposed original compiler, the 11th-century abbot Ingulf. As that section of the text is now known to have been a later forgery, he is instead known as Pseudo-Ingulf.

The Historia Monasterii Croylandensis is attributed to Abbot Ingulph, an 11th-century Abbot of Croyland, but is generally accepted to be a 14th-century work. Those parts of the work written after Pseudo-Ingulf, that is the 15th century, are considered a valuable source.

Harley 2253 manuscript records various Saints' lives and includes a brief outline of Wigstan's martyrdom (Vita sancti Wistani). The manuscript is dated 14th century but the Life of St W was found to have been inserted in the fifteenth century.

A twelfth-century chronicler, Florence of Worcester, wrote that the saint's remains were buried at Repton. This would tie in with the 1153 foundation of the Austin priory at Repton which was dedicated to St Wystan. The church and a quarry were given to the Austin canons by Maud, widow of Ranulph, fourth earl of Chester, the lady of the manor of Repton.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Presumably then the priory at Repton was the pilgrimage centre. What's its relationship, in time and space, to the church in the programme? Ranulph & Maud ring a few bells and isn't it a bit unusual to give a quarry over to monks? No chathedrals in Derbyshire I know of.
Send private message
Hatty
Site Admin

In: Berkshire
View user's profile
Reply with quote

St Wystan's church was given to Repton Priory, founded 1172. It's the parish church and is supposed to have been reconstructed on the site of a former Anglo-Saxon abbey, that had been completely destroyed by the Great Danes in 873.

The Priory was initially an independent community, but after the death of Ranulf de Gernon, 4th Earl of Chester in 1153, it (along with most of his Derbyshire estates) became part of the dowry of his widow, Maud of Gloucester. Maud initially granted nearby St. Wystan's Church, Repton to the canons at Calke Priory, but subsequently had a new priory, dedicated to the Holy Trinity, built at Repton. In 1172 she moved the Canons from Calke to the new Repton Priory, with Calke then becoming a subordinate "cell" to Repton Priory

The crypt where St Wystan was said to be buried was the pilgrimage centre. It had been incorporated into the twelfth-century church but the earliest structural feature is a drain dated 7th century, so there's no evidence this was a crypt, never mind an 8th century Anglo-Saxon crypt. There appears to be very little Anglo-Saxon anything else in Repton.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

This makes little sense. An independent priory cannot become part of a dower, it's against canon law. Nobody can grant a church to anyone, it's against canon law. A lay person cannot move canons, it's against ... er... canon law. One priory cannot be a cell of another later priory, it's against canon law, though you can do it the other way round. This is almost certainly the story of how a family supporting the Norman Stephen in the Civil War managed to hang onto its estates when they lost out to the Plantagenet Henry II. The rights to the "St Wystan" pilgrimage business is in there somewhere. P. S But I'm no canon lawyer.

Mind you, that Anglo-Saxon drain is going to require some explaining away. They'll turn that into full blown monastery. Maybe a double. As you know, Vikings always remove the archaeology. Careless of them to leave that telltale feature behind.
Send private message
Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
View user's profile
Reply with quote

I rather like this on Ivar the Boneless.
wiki wrote:

In 1686, a farm labourer named Thomas Walker discovered a Scandinavian burial mound at Repton in Derbyshire close to a battle site where the Great Heathen Army overthrew the Mercian King Burgred of his kingdom. The number of partial skeletons surrounding the body—over 250—signified that the man buried there was of very high status. It has been suggested that such a burial mound is possibly the last resting place of the renowned Ivar .[15]

According to the saga, Ivar ordered that he be buried in a place that was exposed to attack, and prophesied that, if that was done, foes coming to the land would be met with ill-success. This prophecy held true, says the saga, until "when Vilhjalm bastard (William I of England) came ashore[,] he went [to the burial site] and broke Ivar's mound and saw that [Ivar's] body had not decayed. Then Vilhjalm had a large pyre made upon which Ivar's body was] burned... Thereupon, [Vilhjalm proceeded with the landing invasion and achieved] the victory."[16][17]


Wow!

A ghost historian has a different take.

Sir Simon Degee, travelling in Derbyshire in 1727 gives this account of an unusual story from an old labourer: “about 40 years since, cutting hillocks near the surface, he met with an old stone wall. When clearing it further, he found it to be a square enclosure of 15ft. In this he found a stone coffin, and saw in it the skeleton of a human body 9ft long, and round it one hundred skeletons of the ordinary size, laid with the feet pointing to the stone coffin. The head of the great skeleton he gave to Mr Bowes, master of Repton School. I enquired at this school and one of the present masters (who is the son of Mr Bowes) concerning the skull but it is lost; yet he says, he remembers the skull in his father’s closet, and that he often heard his father mention this gigantic corpse, and thinks that the skull was in proportion to a body of that stature. The present owner will not suffer it opened, the lady of the manor having forbidden it.”

This “grave” was in a field now covered by the northern position of the churchyard. It was eventually dug up again at the end of the 18th century, but this time only a confused jumble of bones was discovered.

https://mjwayland.com/repton-school-ghosts/

The thing about Giant stories is you rarely get intact finds.........
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

We must create a Credulousness League Table. Modern academics would be way top if you factor in 'access to data'. Otherwise middle of the table -- the desire for exciting stories being part of the human condition. Thankfully we are excited by stories of academic credulousness. And we don't have to pay nine thousand a year to listen to theirs.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

As Hatty pointed out, it's the dating that's critical. The exact wording used in the introduction was this [listen out for the 'until now' phraseology]

Previous attempts to date the Repton skeletons have proved inconclusive

When academics start coming all over modest you know they've got something to hide. They've had 264 (no of bodies) times 216 (no of bones in the human body) to choose from, they've had forty years to do the choosing and bones are particularly cheap and reliable when it comes to scientific dating techniques. The only result you really wouldn't expect is 'inconclusive'. You have to make that one up. Next we have the ritualistic reading from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

This was a Viking army. The Chronicle charts its bloody trail across Britain until in the year 873 it swept into Repton

and the ritualistic confession [listen out for the 'until now' phraseology]

But very little archaeological evidence of its existence has been found
Send private message
Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Hatty wrote:
I agree with Wiley's comments on the purported Anglo-Saxon crypt of St Wystan's church. Though lacking major Roman ruins, Repton is sited close to Icknield Street, named Ryknild Street in the twelfth century, which may account for the coins of 'Arabic silver'.


The diverse nature of the finds is suggesting to me they are collecting and melting assorted metal down and recycling.

Is it a mobile recycling plant, rather than an army?
Send private message
Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Maybe a number of centres each linked with groups of vici.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

I was, like Hatty, left gaping at the sleight-of-hand used to redate all the bones to make them ninth century. What the programme hasn't mentioned yet -- I can only take short doses so it may do later -- is that the sleight-of-hand does not just work for shifting sixth century bones into ninth century bones. One of the nuisances of the Laws of Physics is that they operate universally so it means that every single bone sample that has been carbon dated since the nineteen-sixties will now have to be re-examined for the presence of these newly discovered fishy isotopes and recalibrated to account for them. The archaeology will then have to be re-interpreted and the history based on the archaeology rewritten.

It's a mammoth task. Especially with the fish-eating mammoths. Yes! That's one of the benefits of the new dispensation. You don't actually have to prove anyone actually ate any fish which is a Godsend since the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle failed to mention any such culinary requirements on the part of our Danish guests. Our own archaeology and history of course is eloquent that they were a major, major feature of the British diet.

Which reminds me, we are going to have to be recallibrated too. A real nightmare since we're in the middle of genetic studies based on the old calibration. A nightmare for me personally because these now discredited genetic studies all backed THOBR. Damn!
Send private message
Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Untypically insular, Mr Harper.

Your Scandis are totally buggered.

It's a bit surprising that they never noticed all their own Viking bone dates were wrong.

It only goes to show we Brits are the world leaders in dating (err) making things up.
Send private message
Display posts from previous:   
Reply to topic Goto page Previous  1, 2, 3 ... 33, 34, 35 ... 39, 40, 41  Next

Jump to:  
Page 34 of 41

MemberlistThe Library Index  FAQFAQ   SearchSearch   RegisterRegister   ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   Log inLog in 


Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group