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Meetings with Remarkable Forgeries (British History)
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Mick Harper
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Behind every great man there's a women behind a man. How best can we tear the eejits in bits? Keep us advised. It's a smoking glass.
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Boreades


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Mick Harper wrote:
How best can we tear the eejits in bits? Keep us advised. It's a smoking glass.


He says :
When St. Olaf's saga mentions a sunstone, the context is obviously religious and spiritual, just as the place where that Uunartoq disk was discovered, in a monastery.


"Obviously"? Really? Howzat?

Then:
These kinds of stones were akin to relics to medieval people.


How does he know that? It must be a relic because ... err .... Or is it just more along the tired old line of "high-caste ritual objects".

Time to start working down a list of logical fallacies?

I don't have a TwitFace account, so perhaps you can have the honour of throwing the first stone into his glass house.

Here's some archaeos (but not historians):

Researchers from Hungary’s Eötvös Loránd University believe that a piece of a small wooden disc discovered in an eleventh-century convent in Greenland may have been used as a “twilight compass” by the Vikings on their 1,600-mile journey across the North Atlantic from Norway to Greenland.

Discovered in 1948 in a 11th century convent in Greenland and known as the Uunartoq disc, the object – a partially surviving wooden disk, 7 cent. in diametre and once sporting a central pin, was originally seen as part of decoration. Still, its secret was revealed when used with a pair of crystals, or sunstones, and a wooden slab. With sunstones pinpointing the position of the sun below the horizon, and the slab determining cardinal direction, the disc was working as a compass within four degrees of error!

https://www.archaeology.wiki/blog/2014/03/27/a-viking-twilight-compass/
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Mick Harper
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This is an interesting exchange among the tweetipies

https://twitter.com/gawanmac/status/985176821107916800
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Mick Harper
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Can we have some volunteers to attend this conference? The AEL will provide luncheon baskets.

https://twitter.com/mems_ukc
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Mick Harper
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2016 Meetings with Remarkable Books published
Receives overwhelming world wide acclaim. Fair enough, it's an excellent book.
2017 Meetings with Remarkable Forgeries published
Receives no attention except occasional damnation.but it is read, however cursorily, by a fair cross section of critics. It is, in my opinion, a demolition job of unchangeable authority and importance.
2018 Meetings with Remarkable Books paperback is published
It is reviewed by one of the critics who received Forgeries. Her (Jan Morris)'s opinion is unchanged. "This huge study is the most enjoyable work of high scholarship I have ever read."
Either I am deluded or they are. Not talented or untalented, not academic or non-academic, not right or wrong, but deluded or not-deluded.

Mind you, I got a microsecond frisson of joy, turning to the Guardian paperback section and seeing the first book up was Meetings with Remarkable... They can't take that away from me.
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Hatty
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An interesting snippet on parchment. Artists wishing to protect their works from forgers may opt for parchment and cut off a small piece so its DNA can be used in future authentication.
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Mick Harper
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Draw your own conclusions from this abstract of Fécamp, Cluny, and the Invention of Traditions in the Later Eleventh Century by Benjamin Pohl and Steven Vanderputten

In 1001 Duke Richard II of Normandy appointed William of Dijon as the first abbot of La Trinité de Fécamp. Together with his patron, William initiated a programme of monastic reform which scholarship has long seen as a deliberate imitation of Cluniac custom. This equation has been based on a corpus of early Norman charters that are widely held to have exempted Fécamp from Rouen’s episcopal authority as early as 1006, explicitly evoking Cluny in an attempt to abolish the bishop’s rights in the election and blessing of abbots. Following a comprehensive reassessment of the historical and diplomatic evidence, this article argues that Cluny did not become a model for Fécamp before the second half of the eleventh century. It questions notions of continuity by demonstrating that both the charters and the traditions to which they pertain are in fact later eleventh-century inventions, which medieval forgers and modern readers alike have projected back onto earlier periods.

Who on earth could they mean by 'modern readers'?
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Mick Harper
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For those of you who like an easy workout, this is from a Julian P Harrison

Made in Dagenham! This Anglo-Saxon charter was issued in the 680s. Hodilredus, kinsman of King Sebbi of the East Saxons, granted land in Dagenham and other places in Essex to Abbess Hedilburg for the minster at Barking.
Cotton MS Augustus II 29 http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Cotton_MS_Augustus_II_29

Poor old Jules thinks it's from the 680's. What a sap. Just find out when the minster was actually built (not when they say it was built) and you'll have the true age and provenance of the charter. I should think it will be around 1200. But the fact it's a Cotton Library production means it could be way later but that will mean there'll be some dodgy Proddie stuff attached -- probably concerning the early 'British' Church.

PS Wasn't someone working on the difference between a minster and a cathedral? The city of Barking! The collective noun for manuscript specialists.
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Hatty
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British Listed Buildings describes Barking Abbey as "C12 and later". Historic England just says "the foundations no longer survive... The present ruins date to the twelfth century when the abbey was rebuilt". No-one can say exactly where the earlier version was.

Not a lot to say about Abbess Hedilburg. Google assumes, not unreasonably, you meant Heidelberg.

British History Online (formerly Victoria County History) references Bede as the source of the foundation(s)

The materials for the early history of this famous monastery are very scanty, although the main fact of its foundation is clear and definite. We learn from Bede and the Nova Legenda Anglie that Erkenwald, before he became bishop of London, founded two monasteries—one at Chertsey for himself, and another at Barking for his sister Ethelburga.


Chertsey's just as bad. Its charter of A.D. 672, 'confirmed by Wulfhere, king of the Mercians', is widely regarded as spurious and "the bounds of much later date". British History Online says of it

Grave doubts have been cast upon the authenticity of the early charters, and particularly as to the charter above referred to. The style of the king, witnesses and bounds all contain errors probably of a thirteenth century scribe.
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Mick Harper
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This is rather interesting. If scholarly opinion is reasonably unanimous in taking the view that
a) the Barking Charter is genuine seventh century but
b) the Chertsey Charter is a thirteenth century concoction
then what are we to make of Bede who gives them both a tick?

Of course it is entirely possible that Bede, Barking and Chertsey are all genuinely seventh century but why is the thirteenth century Chertsey needing to come up with a spurious seventh century charter? Clearly, since it did, there must have been a good reason and that same reason will presumably apply to Barking. Now, it may be that Barking was lucky enough to have kept hold of its seventh century charter (though it didn't manage to keep hold of any of its buildings) so it didn't have to create one de novo as poor old Chertsey had to. But that raises the true AE question.

What can you say about a group of experts who can confidently assign genuineness on the basis of inspection, even though they concede that this is not possible other than by pure subjectivity, and yet refuse the simple and cheap procedure of scientifically testing any of them? Even from their point of view, one would have thought they would, say, carbon date the Barking charter in order to have a benchmark for judging other contemporaneous charters. But of course that's the reason they don't. They will discover all the charters are contemporaneous. Thirteenth century contemporaneous.
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Hatty
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Someone on Twitter posted a picture of the 'golden boots' of King Edgar, a detail from a charter dated 966 refounding the New Minster at Winchester. It was in the Cotton Library, now the British Library



It is striking how the long pointy shoes resemble late fourteenth-century footwear fashion.



The British Library makes the point that this is a unique charter, signalling the introducion of the Rule of Benedict

This charter (Cotton Vespasian A. viii), in the unusual format of a book rather than a single sheet of parchment, commemorates the introduction of Benedict's Rule at New Minster in 964. The manuscript was completed two years later, and is written entirely in gold — the only known such example from the late Anglo-Saxon era. Its importance is further indicated by the large full-page miniature of the King at the beginning of the book.

http://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2011/06/index.html
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Mick Harper
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Good spot but isn't there more to this? Consider

1. When we, in 2018, watch a 1980's Startrek episode trying to depict 2250 space uniforms we immediately see they are 'old-fashioned' i.e. 1980's fashions tweaked to look futuristic. No subterfuge is intended.
2. When we look at a Renaissance painting of a Biblical scene and everyone is dressed in 16th century Italianate clothes we smile but either the artist doesn't know or doesn't care what first century people wore. The Roman soldiers will look fairly authentic. No subterfuge is intended.
3. When we look at a thirteenth century manuscript (or even much later, it's that Cotton feller again) that is trying to pass itself off as a tenth century one, we can expect subterfuge but not necessarily what the creator intended. Let's look at those pix again.

I disagree slightly about the shoes. Yes, they seem to be rather courtly high medieval but also sort of 'shoe-like' as if the artist didn't know any different. Startrek has the same problem (but knows it) and kits out everyone in knee-high leather boots, which are a) fetching and b) have been around for several hundred (thousand?) years so can be expected to last another coupla thou. But look at those clothes! They're pure Startrek. Fetching but not fashionable. Sui generis in a medieval sort of way. Of course we know that a short tunic and sheer male legs is a High Medieval giveaway (and of course a Tudor/Stuart giveaway) but the artist didn't know. If everyone he knows does it, why wouldn't the Anglo-Saxons have done it.

And of course the clueless old twenty-first century manuscript specialists agree with him.
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Hatty
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According to Levi Roach and the British Library, the "earliest surviving single-sheet Anglo-Saxon charter" comes from Kent. Not St Augustine's but Reculver.

Origin: England.Provenance:Reculver Minster, Kent.Benedictine cathedral priory of Holy Trinity or Christ Church, Canterbury, Kent.Sir Robert Bruce Cotton (b. 1571, d. 1631), 1st baronet, antiquary and politician


Reculver monastery was long ago lost to the sea though Roman material, from the earlier 'Saxon Shore' fort, got reused for the church. No A-S monastic material can be reliably identified yet BL asserts so confidently this is the oldest surviving charter. The only evidence that a 'minster' ever existed, apart from the ASC, is a stone cross that's been dated to the 7th century, later relocated to Canterbury Cathedral. Not much to go on.

Reculver church with its twin towers was a significant seamark just along the coast from Herne Bay in north-east Kent. It was sited at the entrance to the Wantsum Channel that separated the Isle of Thanet from the mainland.
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Mick Harper
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Add 'fell into the sea' to our list of reasons why no Anglo-Saxon church (building or archaeology) survives.
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Mick Harper
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Alison Hudson, project curator of early medieval English manuscripts at the British Library, no less, has added to our glorious collection of Cotton Library 'curiosities':
On this day 1023 AD Wulfstan, bishop of Worcester and archbishop of York, died.

His pointy handwriting can be found in many manuscripts, including this poem praising a bishop called... Wulfstan

Cotton MS Vespasian A XIV, f. 148v

So remember, lads and lassies, if you want to get on in the early medieval world, the road to advancement is humble (but distinctive) drudgery in the scriptorium. And don't forget to pop your own name in, just in case you later get a bishop's hat.
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