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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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She's been a bit idle lately but at last Hatty's been banned again.
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Medieval Graffiti on Twitter
A medieval Chapel, probably built on top of a timber Saxon cathedral, and later converted to a stronghold or small castle. Where am I? And why is the weather so crap?
DomJohn: North Elmham
Harriet Vered: North Elmham church is designated early 12th C. Having failed to unearth any A-S archaeology, in 1982 Heritage Norfolk came up with "A Norman date is proposed for the whole building, on the basis of its architectural features and the construction techniques which were employed"
DomJohn: The 1954-58 excavations found evidence for extensive timber building (now widely accepted as the old cathedral) beneath the present late11th/early 12thC episcopal chapel modified as a fortified manor house in the late 14thC by big, bad Bishop Despenser http://heritage.norfolk.gov.uk/record-details?uid=MNF1014
Harriet Vered: Yes indeed but they found no A-S archaeology, viz: "The complete absence of Middle Saxon pottery suggests that it is unlikely that the building pre-dates the late ninth century" and 30 years later a 're-assessment' was carried out. See above.
DomJohn: They found extensive post holes for a large timber building. Are you suggesting that that was built some time between the Conquest and Losinga's building of the chapel c.1100? I refer you to Stephen Heywood's paper in the Journal of the British Archaeological Association 1982. The reassessment you refer to was the work of Stephen Heywood in the early 80s. Previously, it had been thought that the stone building that we see today was the remains of the Anglo-Saxon cathedral and was signposted as such. Stephen proved that it is the remains of a Norman chapel with late medieval modifications to turn it into a fortified manor house. However, there were archaeological remains of an earlier timber building underneath.
Harriet Vered: How did they manage to convert 'an earlier timber structure' into a cathedral that somehow got built and then vanished, entirely unnoticed/unrecorded? Pull the other one.
DomJohn: These were revealed in the 50s dig. They are, without doubt, the remains of a pre-Conquest building. That there was no middle Saxon pottery suggests a convenient post-quem date of 900. Stephen proposed in the BAA paper, and it is now widely accepted, that this was the cathedral.
Harriet Vered: : There are no contemporaneous records of a North Elmham church until the time of Bishop Herbert de Losinga (1091-1119). Remains 'now accepted as...'. Oh dear. How does a archaeologist tell the diff between secular and ecclesiastical timber remains, pray?
DomJohn: You do know the difference between North Elmham Church. Losinga's episcopal Chapel and the seat of the Anglo Saxon Bishops of East Anglia at Elmham, of which there are plenty of contemporary (not contemporaneous) references, don't you? Because it doesn't sound like it.
Harriet Vered: Funny how Anglo-Saxons built their most important structures from wood, while the Normans used stone. Handy, though, when it comes to not finding something even when its location is known from contemporary refs.
DomJohn: Oh, for heaven's sake, stop digging and educate yourself on Anglo-Saxon building in East Anglia. Start with Heywood's paper. You're making a fool of yourself. I'm afraid I can't engage with someone so insistent on arguing from a position of total ignorance. It profits nobody. [Hatty banned at this point.]
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I don't agree. Hatty enjoyed herself thoroughly. Not vintage but a doofer. I doubt that anyone noticed that the exchanges revealed that Hatty was correct. All they found, putting the most favourable light on everything, was a pre-Conquest wooden building. Well, ring-a-ding-ding. I trust you spotted the 'Stephen' reference indicating casually that DomJohn knew him personally. And all the 'probably', 'now widely accepted', 'without doubt'. The real story was contained in this passing reference
| Previously, it had been thought that the stone building that we see today was the remains of the Anglo-Saxon cathedral and was signposted as such. |
In other words everyone was committed to an Anglo-Saxon cathedral being there and when that was shown to be Norman they had to look underneath. "Oh, there it is! We're all right, panic over."
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Fair play to Dom.
He had one of the worst cases for an Anglo Saxon cathedral yet, North Elmham, but kept going longer....... perhaps the only worst example he could have chosen was South Elmham.
| it is a church or chapel of almost unique design in this country. One of the others is at North Elmham in Norfolk. |
It is Tweedledum to Tweedledee
| The atmospheric ruins known as the Minster are set in an earthwork or enclosure. Local finds in the fields had suggested that it was possibly a Roman camp or farmstead. It was also thought probable that there had been some sort of community here even earlier too, in the Iron Age. |
It's Roman.
https://www.southelmham.co.uk/the-minster/
There is actual archaeology. So the site becomes "romantic" "atmospheric", "enigmatic"....open to question, bit like how Dom should have presented North Elmham. Less archaeology = more certainty in some circles as detractors can't prove you wrong.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Can someone provide Wiley with an example of an Anglo Saxon quarry?
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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| Hatty wrote: | | The bits of cloth or 'clooties' hung from branches at or near sacred springs/wishing wells are very similar to bunting. They're presumed to be offerings to some Celtic deity or other |
The earliest written reference to a 'clootie' or rag well is in an anonymous letter written c. 1600, A Description of Cleveland in a Letter Addressed by H. Tr. to Sir Thomas Chaloner, which describes St. Oswald’s Well, Great Ayton in north Yorkshire
| “they teare of a ragge of the shirte, and hange yt on the bryers thereaboutsâ€. |
A chaloner, according to etymologists, is someone who makes or sells blankets which seems fitting for Yorkshire and its sheep-rearing history but the seventeenth-century Chaloners went further as the first to set up a Yorkshire alum industry.
Up to about 1500 supplies of alum for this country came from various foreign sources. But during the 16th C. it was imported mainly from Papal and Spanish mines, neither, as can be imagined, acceptable to Henry VIII. In 1545 the search for domestic sources began. Singer lists no fewer than six attempts, made between 1545 and the end of the century, to produce alum, twice in Ireland; in Cornwall, the Isle of Wight, Dorset and Bournemouth. All failed. The first signs of success were achieved by the Chaloner family at Guisborough in North Yorkshire
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http://www.wovepaper.co.uk/alumessay2.html
It may be the rags hanging from branches by St Oswald's well were left over from alum dyeing, or test samples of colour fixing. Either way it isn't clear which Sir Thomas Chaloner was the recipient of the letter, the courtier or his naturalist cousin (?1564-1615). As Wiki says, the two Thomas Chaloners are often confused/conflated but we're getting used to ambiguous family pairings.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Nice. It reminds us of two things we don't pay enough attention to. First, England by Tudor times was already restlessly innovative in a new kind of way. Alum had been a Papal monopoly (I didn't know about Spain) since, as it were, Roman times and everyone had been putting up with it. England, whether forced to or not -- I would guess not -- started pulling out all the stops in an obviously systematic way.
Second, it sheds some kindly light on the much excoriated system of selling monopolies to courtiers. The English Civil War demonstrated that any source of royal income was to be prized above rubies but it really could bring home the bacon if you gave the right monopoly to the right young thruster.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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Someone on Facebook has posted that 'the oldest library in the world is that of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh, Assyria (668-630 BC)' which was famously burned down and it suddenly struck me that our purportedly oldest library collection came from Ashburnham House. This nomenclature may not presage the fate of the stored documents but both cases seem decidedly whiffy.
There are said to have been two great collections at Ashurbanipal, discovered in quick succession. Wiki says
| The library is an archaeological discovery credited to Austen Henry Layard; most tablets were taken to England and can now be found in the British Museum, but a first discovery was made in late 1849 in the so-called South-West Palace, which was the Royal Palace of king Sennacherib |
Transportation of such a remarkable collection was no doubt eased by Layard, archaeologist and adventurer, being Britain's titular Ambassador of Constantinople. Terms & conditions were reportedly to "pack and dispatch to England any antiquities [he] found ... provided, however, there were no duplicates."
| Three years later, Hormuzd Rassam, Layard's assistant, discovered a similar "library" in the palace of King Ashurbanipal (668-627 BC), on the opposite side of the mound. Unfortunately, no record was made of the findings, and soon after reaching Europe, the tablets appeared to have been irreparably mixed with each other and with tablets originating from other sites. Thus, it is almost impossible today to reconstruct the original contents of each of the two main "libraries". |
Hormuzd Rassam not only discovered a library albeit second time round, he also discovered the Epic of Gilgamesh tablets, famous as the world's oldest literature. So why isn't he the most famous archaeologist in the world?
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Quite an interesting development in the Hatty vs Facebook & Twitter battle. She has taken to casually dismissing Bede as being a non-historical source on the grounds the earliest actual copy we have is (it varies) sixteenth century. Not so long ago this would have been greeted with fury by people brought up on him as Holy Writ from schooldays. And then, if she persisted, it would be patiently explained to her that all these 'ancient' sources are copies-of-copies. Hatty's "Then show me the copies" or even '"Show me the historical references to there being copies" would just have evinced careful ignoral. Because of course no-one can.
I hope this is true, it would be nice to have the earliest reference to Bede as well as the earliest Bede. Oddly, the first is more important than the second. However, re the above, I get the impression things are changing. In our favour.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| Hatty wrote: | | Someone on Facebook has posted that 'the oldest library in the world is that of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh, Assyria (668-630 BC)' which was famously burned down and it suddenly struck me that our purportedly oldest library collection came from Ashburnham House. |
Both histories derive from a common source. One was Anglicized. The other made foreign.
Was the Library at Ashurbanipal at Nineveh known in the historical record prior to its discovery?
BTW - I'm highly suspicious of the Epic of Gilgamesh.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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| Ishmael wrote: | | Was the Library at Ashurbanipal at Nineveh known in the historical record prior to its discovery? |
This is just the sort of question that's never asked except on this site. There's no mention of the Library of Ashurbanipal in any historical document.
| BTW - I'm highly suspicious of the Epic of Gilgamesh. |
Your suspicions are completely justified. The tablet was in fragments and pieced together by scholars from the newly founded Assyriology field. And behold, there are yet more fragments to add to the collection
| scholars were well aware that new fragments of the poem could possibly turn up — modern readers are most familiar with a version discovered in Nineveh in 1853 — and during the war in Iraq, as looters pillaged ancient sites, they finally did. The Sulaymaniah Museum acquired the tablet in 2011, as part of a collection purchased from a smuggler |
The circumstances of the latest acquisitions are not reassuring. Who decided they had been part of the Epic tablet dug up in 1849 or where they were found isn't clear
The collection was composed of 80-90 tablets of different shapes, contents and sizes. All of the tablets were, to some degree, still covered with mud. Some were completely intact, while others were fragmented. The precise location of their excavation is unknown, but it is likely that they were illegally unearthed from, what is known today as, the southern part of the Babel (Babylon) or Governorate, Iraq (Mesopotamia).
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https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/epic-of-gilgamesh-new-verses-discovered-worlds-oldest-story-180956844/
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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That's why he's the Venerable Bede, the only famous Christian that never got canonised.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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| Boreades wrote: | Manichaeism spread with extraordinary rapidity throughout both the east and west. It reached Rome through the apostle Psattiq, by 280 C.E., who was also in Egypt in 244 and 251. The faith was flourishing in the Fayum area of Egypt in 290. Manichaean monasteries existed in Rome in 312, during the time of Pope Miltiades. By 354, Hilary of Poitiers wrote that the Manichaean faith was a significant force in southern France. ... The faith maintained a sporadic and intermittent existence in the west (Mesopotamia, Africa, Spain, France, North Italy, the Balkans) for a thousand years.
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Manichaeism
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This business of "Fayum portraits" came up on Twitter and everyone's falling over themselves to tweet how advanced they are, unbelievable the Ancient Egyptians could produce such naturalistic art, more typical of the Renaissance than 2nd/3rd century B.C. etc etc. You get the picture.
Wiki says
Mummy portraits or Fayum mummy portraits are a type of naturalistic painted portrait on wooden boards attached to Upper class mummies from Roman Egypt. They belong to the tradition of panel painting, one of the most highly regarded forms of art in the Classical world. The Fayum portraits are the only large body of art from that tradition to have survived. They were formerly, and incorrectly, called Coptic portraits.
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Panel-painting is associated with the Classical world but this series of 'mummy portraits' for some reason was never applied in other contexts. So when was the first Fayum portrait discovered?
| The Fayum Mummy portraits were painted between roughly 50 BCE and 250 CE. However, no archeological finds are recorded until 1615, when the Italian explorer Pietro della Valle became the first European to see a Fayum Mummy portrait during a visit to Saqqara-Memphis. |
Pietro [1586-1652] was an author and composer who embarked on the grandest of Grand Tours out east. leaving Venice in 1614 and only arriving in Rome in 1626, but 'the rest of his life was uneventful'. Odd then that the one memorable work of Pietro's life, his 'Travels', was published by his sons posthumously (only translated into English in 1665)
Caption says
This heavily gilt portrait was found in winter 1905/06 by French Archaeologist Alfred Gayet and sold to the Egyptian Museum of Berlin in 1907. |
I think they mean Albert Gayet who wrote the first book ever published on Coptic art, in fact he almost single-handedly discovered it during the fifteen years he spent discovering Coptic necropolises. Together with a French colleague he
| discovered the monasteries of Saint-Jean, in Saqqarah , and of Baouit , in Middle Egypt . The two scholars thus rediscovered Coptic art , the most beautiful objects of which are shared between the Cairo museum and the Louvre. |
Coincidentally or not, the oldest panel paintings ever found (dated 5th and 6th century B.C.) are from St Catherine's Monastery, one of the places Pietro went to on his travels.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Just after they were 'discovering' their version of the Oxus Treasure for the Louvre
| Considerable comfort has been received from the objects' similarity to later Achaemenid finds, many excavated under proper archaeological conditions, which the Oxus Treasure certainly was not. In particular, finds of jewellery including armlets and torcs in a tomb at Susa by a French expedition from 1902 onwards (now in the Louvre) are closely similar to the Oxus finds |
but not unfortunately like any Achaemenid (ancient Persian) art excavated since then under, you know, proper proper archaeological conditions. But at least it wasn't a one-off. Adding in Augustus Franks' Oxusian version of Ancient Persian art, it was a two-off! Britain 1 France 1 History 0.
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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| Hatty wrote: | | Boreades wrote: | Manichaeism spread with extraordinary rapidity throughout both the east and west. It reached Rome through the apostle Psattiq, by 280 C.E., who was also in Egypt in 244 and 251. The faith was flourishing in the Fayum area of Egypt in 290. Manichaean monasteries existed in Rome in 312, during the time of Pope Miltiades. By 354, Hilary of Poitiers wrote that the Manichaean faith was a significant force in southern France. ... The faith maintained a sporadic and intermittent existence in the west (Mesopotamia, Africa, Spain, France, North Italy, the Balkans) for a thousand years.
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Hatty, thanks for the nudge. Something about that "spread with extraordinary rapidity" has been nagging at me for a long time. I've only just realised it's just like the Tironensian monks.
| Tiron was the first of the new religious orders to spread internationally. Within less than five years of its creation, the Order of Tiron owned 117 priories and abbeys in France, England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. |
Somewhere else(?) there was discussion about this, IIRC with a conclusion that the Tironensian business had expanded rapidly by assimulation of other monastic clans, and "rebranding", not simply by "organic growth". In Scotland (at least) it might have been by assimulating (and protecting) the Culdees.
So what?
I suspect that the Manichaeism rapid expansion was also by assimulation and/or rebranding.
But of what? I've no idea so far.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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It may interest you to know that, in one of the chapters of our present book, I keep screaming at madam that the Tironensians are the key and she keeps screaming back at me ... well, I don't know because I never listen. It's the height of bad manners to scream at people. I had not made a Manichean connection but for sure 'dualism' is involved somewhere along the line.
Thought for the day: isn't it the big difference between Christianity and Islam?
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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There's very little evidence that the Tironensian Order actually existed.
| There is no history of the Order of Tiron. Modern work includes Guillemin, 1999 and Thompson, 2009. The modern place-name is Thiron, but the abbey and the order are conventionally spelt Tiron. |
According to palaeographical analysis by an expert from Cambridge, the monastery's cartulary dates to the 1100s. This is the only 'evidence' of the monastery's existence and we are well aware that palaeography is not a scientific process by any stretch of the imagination
| The monastery of Tiron was founded in the 1100s. The precise date of its foundation is unclear, but the life of the founder, Vita Beati Bernardi Tironiensis (BHL 1251) indicates that the first mass was held at a wooden church on Easter day (25 April) 1109. It is the foundation narrative presented in the vita that has always dominated the Tironensian studies, but it needs to be supplemented by a substantial surviving archive, among which is a cartulary or record book, compiled in the 12th century |
At least two red flags here. A wooden church is handy when it can't be traced which is presumably the case as the church isn't named and, strangely, Bernard himself isn't mentioned in any other document.
BHL = Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, which is a cause for concern. One daren't even think about provenance. It appears the earliest record of the Tironensians is in the 17th century
A complete copy of the cartulary (H 1375) was made in the 17th century, probably by the Maurists after they took over Tiron in 1629.
The printed edition of the cartulary, Cartulaire de l’abbaye de la Sainte-Trinité de Tiron by Lucien Merlet (1827-1898), the archivist of the Eure-et-Loir, would not satisfy modern critical standards. Merlet rearranged the entries into a chronological order determined by himself, did not publish all the acts, and included material not in the cartulary. It is, in fact, more appropriate to describe his edition as a selective archival history, but his work has been influential and has provided the main outline history of the community. |
https://journals.openedition.org/tabularia/1273
When a work is described as influential, it often turns out there isn't anything else with which to compare it.
Lucien Merlet, a palaeographer and President of the Archaeological Society of Eure-et-Loir, was a respected stalwart of French academia if somewhat disingenuous, judging by his book titles e.g.
History and description of the cathedral church of Chartres: dedicated by the Druids to a virgin who was to give birth, Vincent Sablon (1619-1693); revised and augmented by a description of the church of Sous-terre and an account of the fire of 1836, Lucien Merlet, 1860;
Topographical dictionary of the department of Eure-et-Loir: including ancient and modern place names, 1861
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