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Inventing History : forgery: a great British tradition (British History)
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Wile E. Coyote


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Hatty wrote:
Recently I posted about someone called Alcuin who is supposed to have invented 'Caroline miniscule' at Tours even though no monastery at Tours existed according to the (non)archaeology. Idly listening to the radio I heard an eminent somebody saying Alcuin was summoned to Aachen by Charlemagne. The greatest scholar enters the service of the greatest emperor.

But Aachen wasn't around in 800 AD or at least no-one has found 800 AD archaeology. Plenty of Roman, followed by the medieval in the course of excavations.

First the official version seamlessly connects the Carolingian period to the twelfth century and beyond, so for instance Aachen's town hall "stands on" Charlemagne's former council hall but the important bit, the palace, can only be "speculated on"

Today, the fact that documentation of the original basic building fabric is still lacking and that the processing of the results from earlier excavations and the traditional written sources is rather inadequate, leaves much to be desired. There is neither any systematic analysis and classification of the Carolingian designs nor are there any theories about how the importance of the palace was updated in the architecture of the following eras.


Alcuin..... gets sent to.... Aachen (stems from "Source")

Invents Caroline Miniscule..... a number of capitula came from Aachen

A capitulary (medieval Latin capitularium) was a series of legislative or administrative acts emanating from the Frankish court of the Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties, especially that of the first emperor of the Romans in the west since the deposition of Romulus Augustulus, Charlemagne. They were so called because they were formally divided into sections called capitula (plural of capitulum, a diminutive of caput meaning "head(ing)", i.e. chapters).

As soon as the capitulary was composed, it was sent to the various functionaries of the Frankish empire, archbishops, bishops, missi dominici and counts, a copy being kept by the chancellor in the archives of the palace. The last emperor to compose capitularies was Lambert in 898.

Interestingly

At the present day we do not possess a single capitulary in its original form; but very frequently copies of these isolated capitularies were included in various scattered manuscripts, among pieces of a very different nature, ecclesiastical or secular.


When I was researching knights arms and armour, the only detailed "earliest" references come from the so called capitulary of Aachen
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Hatty
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In: Berkshire
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Most instructive, Wile! Thank you.

Alcuin's of particular interest because he wrote a Life of St Willibrord. Willibrord is famous for founding Echternach Abbey (on the site of a Roman villa) and he features prominently in Mick's new book.

The earliest Life of Alcuin dated between 821 and 829 was commissioned by Aldric (also Aldericus, Audry), Abbot of Ferrieres. The abbey of Ferrieres has "an unfortunate history" in the words of a Catholic author

The Benedictine Abbey of Ferrières-en-Gâtinais has been most unfortunate from the view of historical science, having lost its archives, its charters, and everything which would aid in the reconstruction of its history. Thus legend and the existence of the abbey about the credulity have had full play.

Undaunted by such lacunae, historians are unanimous that Ferrieres was 'founded by Columba'.
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Wile E. Coyote


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Hatty wrote:
Most instructive, Wile! Thank you.

Alcuin's of particular interest because he wrote a Life of St Willibrord. Willibrord is famous for founding Echternach Abbey (on the site of a Roman villa) and he features prominently in Mick's new book.


No problem, I am concentrating on the Notker the Stammerer/The Monk of St Gall. According to Notker, Charlemagne's entire army was made up of heavy cavalry, even the horses wore mail..........Must have been quite a sight charging round the 8th century countryside.

The Monk/Notker has had mixed reviews
The monk's untitled work, referred to by modern scholars as De Carolo Magno ("Concerning Charles the Great") or Gesta Caroli Magni ("The Deeds of Charles the Great"), is not a biography but consists instead of two books of anecdotes relating chiefly to the Emperor Charlemagne and his family, whose virtues are insistently invoked. It was written for Charles the Fat,[7] great-grandson of Charlemagne, who visited Saint Gall in 883.[8] It has been scorned by traditional historians, who refer to the Monk as one who "took pleasure in amusing anecdotes and witty tales, but who was ill-informed about the true march of historical events", and describe the work itself as a "mass of legend, saga, invention and reckless blundering": historical figures are claimed as living when in fact dead; claims are attributed to false sources (in one instance,[9] the Monk claims that "to this King Pepin [the Short] the learned Bede has devoted almost an entire book of his Ecclesiastical History"; no such account exists in Bede's history – unsurprisingly, given that Bede died in 735 during the reign of Charlemagne's grandfather Charles Martel); and Saint Gall is frequently referenced as a location in anecdotes,


It seems to Wiley that Notker/The Monk was actually way behind his time, with his skilful reblending of history and saga........probably by about 4 or 5 centuries.......at a first glance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notker_the_Stammerer
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Mick Harper
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I rather disagree. If this were an actual work of forgery then the forger would surely have ensured the more obviously checkable facts would be correct. On the other hand, Saint's Lives--a genre that has a similarly sketchy time-line--also do this i.e. mixing spectacularly unbelievable incidents within a coherent internal frame of reference. It is also the pattern adopted by purported works of general history eg The History of the Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth. It is also the pattern adopted by the supposedly even more reliable annals that infest all the countries of Western Europe.

Quite what is really going on still eludes me.
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Wile E. Coyote


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Wiley reckons Notker is the man to follow.....he draws a picture....his retelling is a bit like the old Ladybird history books, when Alexander cuts the Gordian knot, you got a picture of the knot, when Alfred burnt the cakes, you had a picture. Notker includes as true all the stuff that modern historians dismiss as folklore or, wait for it...according to the latest research they find was true after all (wowee....TV doc on that one). Notker knows the difference between right and wrong, good and bad, and he can spot a good Charlemagne when he sees him. He is not afraid to write history from his own place.

To those who claim that Notker was guilty of a......

"mass of legend, saga, invention and reckless blundering":

Wiley asks them to look in their Dark Age mirror. Has anyone done it better?

To those who question his chronology, Wiley respectfully points out that their obsession with a linear chronology based on the birth of Christ (which they admit even within their own world view they got wrong) is probably holding them back. This didn't stop Notker telling his story, as he rightly (given the paucity of available facts) placed understanding in front of accuracy.

If only modern historians were to do the same.
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Mick Harper
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a linear chronology based on the birth of Christ (which they admit even within their own world view they got wrong)

This is obviously critical but I don't know exactly what you are driving at, Wiley. I don't know who 'they' are but as far as I am aware the only error conceded is that it might be 10 BC, 4 BC, 6 AD etc. Not significant for our purposes. I believe it is the case that Josephus is still the only historical evidence. Even this is considered by some an interpolation but in any case Josephus himself needs the utmost scrutiny.
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Wile E. Coyote


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Mick Harper wrote:
the only error conceded is that it might be 10 BC, 4 BC, 6 AD etc. Not significant for our purposes.


It's not just a case of error, these can occur. Accuracy within paradigms is important but overrated. In fact insistence on "accuracy" is a frequent mechanism to stop a paradigm challenge.
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Wile E. Coyote


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Mick Harper wrote:
On the other hand, Saint's Lives--a genre that has a similarly sketchy time-line--also do this i.e. mixing spectacularly unbelievable incidents within a coherent internal frame of reference.


I don't disagree other than where you say unbelievable, I say memorable.

KJV wrote:
Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass. 10And I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim, and the horse from Jerusalem, and the battle bow shall be cut off: and he shall speak peace unto the heathen: and his dominion shall be from sea even to sea, and from the river even to the ends of the earth.


Did Zechariah 500 years BC or so ago predict Jesus? Or did Jesus act out Zechariah? Either way, it has withstood the test of time.
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Wile E. Coyote


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My local book shop, (October) is still unable to order Mick's latest tome so I decided to look around. On the shelves was a book about King Lucius. Eh? I am not particularly good at the Stuarts, but hell I can't remember that bugger at all....what was really disheartening was he was then described as the "First King of Britain". Now normally I start at the beginning (a very good place to start...) so this was a bit of an oversight, Wiley doesn't pride himself on accuracy but getting it wrong at the start, you can't really get away with that...... A few pages in and it turns out that King Lucius was the "world's" first christian ruler.

I couldn't stand the embarrassment, I scurried away. Safe at home I googled King Lucius......

George Forrest Browne wrote:
You are, of course, familiar with the story that Lucius, a British king, requested Eleutherus, or Eleutherius, Bishop of Rome 171 to 185, to send some one to teach his people Christianity, of which he had himself some knowledge. The documents which profess to be the letters connected with this request are unskilful forgeries. A note is appended to the name of Eleutherus in the Catalogue of Roman Pontiffs to the effect that "he received a letter from Lucius, a British king, requesting that he might be made a Christian." But this is a later addition, for it does not exist in the earlier catalogue, which was itself written nearly 200 years after the supposed event. It is an addition of the kind of which we have, alas! so many examples at Rome and elsewhere, but especially and above all at Rome: a statement inserted in later times for the sake of magnifying the claims to ecclesiastical authority, and affording evidence, in an uncritical age, of their recognition by former generations. The credit of this fallacious insertion has rather unkindly, but perhaps not unjustly, been assigned to Prosper of Aquitaine, of whom we shall hear again[25]. It is quite in his style.


So that's alright then but quite: when did Lucius disappear from the historical record? When were these forgeries exposed?

Bede has Lucius in the record. (Cripes, he might not be as reliable as thought? ) So we need to look a tad later.

wiki wrote:
Following Bede, versions of the Lucius story appeared in the 9th-century Historia Brittonum, and in 12th-century works such as Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, William of Malmesbury's Gesta pontificum Anglorum, and the Book of Llandaff.


In fact Luciuis is still going strong in the Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland 1577, and in 1661 when Percy Enderbie gives us his Cambria Triumphans or Britain in its Perfect Lustre, dedicated to King Charles. Enderbie (a Welsh enthusiast....he has wiki entries in Welsh...but none in English) has a full list of Archbishops of London since the time of King Lucius to the time of the Saxons........

It appears that poor King Lucius (to fit in the orthodox A/S narrative) has been downgraded by modern historians to semi legendary. Wiki advises us he is not to be confused with the Saint of the same name whilst doing exactly that!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_of_Britain
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aurelius



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Fascinating, Wile.

A review of the book concludes:

It turns out that there is a quite independent tradition of a Christian British king called Lucius having travelled to the province of Raetia (now in Switzerland) and evangelised it. He is even said to be buried in the Cathedral of Chur and is the patron of the diocese. This tradition was already recorded in Chur in the seventh century and was not widely known in England before the sixteenth. The details of the two traditions do not resemble each other and so it is reasonable to see them as independent. Knight closes with some quite remarkable evidence that Romano British tribes were actually displaced by the Empire from Northern Britain to Raetia at exactly the period in which the Liber Pontificalis places Lucius. They were even from the far north of the Province of Britannia. One can hardly say better than that.


Lucius was a very common name in Roman times and there was a famous military commander Lucius Artorius Castus of the mid C2nd

http://www.romeacrosseurope.com/?p=4695#sthash.zMJvP594.dpbs

but which was commemorated here?

http://pastscape.org.uk/hob.aspx?hob_id=467887
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Wile E. Coyote


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aurelius wrote:

Lucius was a very common name in Roman times and there was a famous military commander Lucius Artorius Castus of the mid C2nd


Still thinking. First thoughts are it is to do with pagan conversion.

You are, of course, familiar with the story that Lucius, a British king, requested Eleutherus, or Eleutherius, Bishop of Rome 171 to 185, to send some one to teach his people Christianity, of which he had himself some knowledge.


Lucius=Light. Was Lucius the enlightened king? Lucius and Aurelius were co-emperors. Aurelius= Golden... Lucius= Light. The story goes that Lucius used to sprinkle gold-dust on his blond hair to make it brighter. (at least according to wiki). Maybe there is more to this two emperors arrangement.


Lucius Verus is pictured here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Verus#/media/File:Lucius_Verus_Denarius.jpg

Incidentally the Pagan conversion story (according to Bede),
“Bene, nam et angelicam habent faciem, et tales angelorum in caelis decet esse coheredes”


The Pagan conversion story according to Wiley, after a strong black coffee, is that you take light (Lucius) and make it golden. (Aurelius)(??)
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aurelius



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Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.
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Wile E. Coyote


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According to Clapham John, b. 1566.

In his.....................

"The historie of Great Britannie declaring the successe of times and affaires in that iland, from the Romans first entrance, vntill the raigne of Egbert, the West-Saxon prince; who reduced the severall principalities of the Saxons and English, into a monarchie, and changed the name of Britannie into England."


He lists the.....

Archbishops of London from the time of Lucius, vntill the comming in of the Saxons.

1 Thean.
2 Clavus.
3 Cador.
4 Obinns.
5 Conanus.
6 Paladius.
7 Stephanus.
8 Iltut.
9 Dedwinus.
10 Thedredus.
11 Hillarius.
12 Guidilinus.
13 Vodinus, who lived, when the Saxons first entred the land.


He is also convinced that Lucius was the first christian King/Prince

It is reported, that he was founder of a Church at Cornhill in London, which he dedicated to Saint Peter, placing therein one Thean, an Arch-bishop, to have a superintendence over the other Bishops within his principalitie: and that the Metropolitan seat continued there in the succession of 13. Archbishops (about the space of 400. years) vntil the comming of Augustine the Monk, who translated the Archbishoprike from London to Can­terburie.

And now Christianitie (being thus generally recei­ved among the Britans) kept on her course vntainted, and without opposition, till the time of Dioclesian the Emperour, who kindled the fire of that raging perse­cution (the last and longest in the Primitive Church) which consumed the lives of many Christian Mar­tyrs, as well in Britannie, as other places. But retur­ning to the raigne of Lucius, and considering the state of Britannie vnder his government: we may justly ad­mire the felicitie of those times, ascribing to the Britans for their greatest glory, that among all other nations, they had the happinesse to see and enjoy the first Chri­stian Prince.


There are quite a variety of early lists... Wiki deals with it under Bishops of London. Noting the names and dates of the early list are uncertain. I confess I am not much surer about the post 600 list. But there again it is the Dark Ages........you would expect it to be more opaque.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishop_of_London
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aurelius



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Wile E. Coyote wrote:


According to Clapham John, b. 1566.


Aha, the man on the omnibus...alarm bells will be ringing in AE-land because early in his career Clapham worked for

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Cecil,_1st_Baron_Burghley

under whose patronage was

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Nowell

who came into the possession of the only extant manuscript of Beowulf.

They were all, in an atmosphere of religious febrility, sucking up to Queen Elizabeth I. An Anglo-Saxon mythology was, if not born, refined and polished...
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Wile E. Coyote


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There are a number of Roman coins with a Emperor Lucius on them. The circulation of these coins could lead to a belief amongst traders of a King/Coin Lucius.
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