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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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If dowsing works how is it no dowser has ever been able to pass even the most cursory of blind trials?
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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I will ask the next dowser I meet.
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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Back to the Indiculus superstitionem et paganiarum.
I fear this may be another candidate for the Forgeries list.
| The Indiculus superstitionum et paganiarum represents a list on superstitions we encounter in Cod. Pal. Lat. 577, fol. 7r. Its origin, function and provenance have been disputed by historians ever since its discovery in the seventeenth century. |
https://studenttheses.uu.nl/handle/20.500.12932/29227
So scrub that explanation for Nymet, Nemeton, etc
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| I will ask the next dowser I meet. |
He will say what they always say. 'We can't do it in artificial conditions.'
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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| Boreades wrote: | Back to the Indiculus superstitionem et paganiarum.
I fear this may be another candidate for the Forgeries list. |
According to the paper that Borry found, the Codex containing the Indiculus superstitionem et paganiarum was discovered by Bishop Ferdinand von Fürstenberg, author of historical works, Latin poetry and papal librarian in charge of the Vatican Library, where the Codex came to light, though
| above all, he devoted himself to academic work, for example, producing numerous copies of documents from the Vatican archives. These included the Capitulatio de partibus Saxoniae by Charlemagne. Some finds he left to others to publish, some he published himself. In addition, he emerged as a sponsor of large-scale academic projects such as the publication of Acta Sanctorum by Jean Bolland and his successor, the Bollandists. The discovery of documents from his Westphalian homeland prompted Ferdinand's decision to write a history of the Bishopric of Paderborn. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_of_F%C3%BCrstenberg_(1626–1683)
Little wonder that Borry's source voiced doubts about the manuscript's origins
| By using historical, palaeographical and codicological evidence and methodology, historians since the seventeenth century have been trying to figure out the provenance, function and compilation date of the Indiculus.. This was not an easy task, since the list was copied into Pal. Lat. 577 without a title, preface or any ndication of its purpose. |
It appears they used every means they could except the scientific method.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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Someone in the Medieval England group on Facebook wrote a long piece about the Seax of Beagnoth, so named because the blade has been inscribed with the name Beagnoth. Wiki says it is
| the only known complete inscription of the twenty-eight letter Anglo-Saxon runic alphabet, as well as the name "Beagnoth" in runic letters. |
Even Anglo-Saxonists consider that unusual so I had a butcher's out of curiosity.
The Seax of Beagnoth is a 10th-century masterpiece that defies the ages. Found in the Thames in 1857, this iron knife is more than a weapon; it’s a relic of Anglo-Saxon prestige, decorated with intricate patterns of copper, brass, and silver wire. But it’s not just the craftsmanship that leaves historians stunned—its blade features a unique, complete inscription of the 28-letter Anglo-Saxon runic alphabet, making it one of the rarest discoveries of its kind.
⚔️ Discovered by a laborer named Henry J. Briggs, the Seax of Beagnoth made its way to the British Museum in 1857. Augustus Wollaston Franks, an antiquary at the time, immediately identified it as resembling the rare scramasax of the Franks. But scholars now favor the term “long seax” to better describe the blade, and its inscription tells a tale of ancient warriors, magic, and possibly the swordmaker's pride.
🛡️ The seax measures an impressive 72.1 cm (28.4 inches) in length, with a 55.1 cm (21.7-inch) blade, perfect for cutting through history as well as enemies. The design of the blade is extraordinary, with geometric patterns created from inlaid copper, brass, and silver strips hammered into the surface. This technique was common among Anglo-Saxon and Viking weapons during the 9th and 10th centuries, but the Seax of Beagnoth’s decoration stands out for its beauty and intricacy.
🗡️ On one side of the blade, the inscription features the full 28-letter Anglo-Saxon futhorc, the only known example of its kind on a weapon. The opposite side of the blade bears the name "Beagnoth" in runic letters, likely the name of the owner or maker. This personalization could have carried magical significance, suggesting that the runic alphabet was more than just a writing system—it was a potent tool for invoking protection or power. |
Over the course of a quarter of a century, the finder, Henry Briggs (1843-67), described as a 'labourer', was a habitual discoverer of antiquities (including the 'Battersea Shield') according to the British Museum's biographical note
| Sold British archaeological material to the Museum 1843-1867 on 43 occasions. He is described in one register entry as a labourer. The material he sold to the Museum mainly or exclusively were found in the river Thames |
Augustus Franks was running the Department of British and Medieval Antiquities at that time. Quite keen on runes wasn't he?
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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A 10th-century iron knife? Decorated with copper, brass, and silver wire? In the River Thames?
In the words of Victor Meldrew
I do not believe it!
Iron rusts to nothing in ten years, let alone ten centuries. Adding copper and brass decoration would just speed up the process by Galvanic Corrosion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galvanic_corrosion
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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The Thames was so polluted in the nineteenth century it coated everything in a protective sheath of concentrated cloacal matter. (You have to be an organic chemist to understand.) Proving once and for all that none of Henry Briggs finds could have been deposited in the Thames before the nineteenth century.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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| Dig Ventures wrote: | | How To Tell If You’ve Found An Anglo-Saxon Monastery? |
Good question. Err, because it looks like a monastery, it has certain qualities that I associate with the remains of monasteries that I have actually seen?
| While medieval monasteries tend to be compact, stone-built and laid out according to a pretty standardised ground-plan, Anglo-Saxon ones were more spread out, often built of wood (at least initially), and did not conform to any kind of rigid ground plan – its constituent buildings could be almost anywhere within the monastery bounds. |
Noooooh! 0/1
OK, off to a bad start. Maybe it has cloisters?
| Cloisters are the architectural manifestation of the theological concept of ‘enclaustration’ (withdrawing from the world to worship) and probably one of the first things you think of when you picture a monastery. And yet the earliest examples don’t appear until the end of the 8th century in Carolingian Francia at places like Lorsch, or until the 9th century in places like Inden in Germany and St Wandrille in Normandy. In England, they don’t seem to have arrived until the Saxo-Norman revival of monasticism in the late 10th and 11th centuries, although no one seems to know exactly where the first one was – if you have the answer to this, please do let us know! |
Damn.....
That's 0 of of 2 for Wiley......
Well I seem to remember that they were stuck out in the middle of nowhere? Just where you would least expect. Which is after all why the Vikings could sneak attack and plunder them of their riches.
| Rather than having cloisters to shut them off from the world, the boundaries of earlier monasteries, like Iona, Lindisfarne and even Lyminge, were more often defined by natural features in the landscape – islands, headlands and river bends were all popular, and they all brought the added benefit of access to the ‘whale roads’ of contemporary writing. Hilltops were also common, literally raising the monastery above the day-to-day world – as at recently excavated Lyminge, Kent, which was located on the end of a chalk spur overlooking a natural spring. The case of Lindisfarne is also a classic, combining a coastal island location, and a headland on the island defining three sides of the site; finding the fourth boundary feature would be a wonderful discovery. |
Get in my son!! I was sort of right 1/3. Confidence is rising.
They were smaller than the later ones?
| Overall the early monastic settlements were more varied and dispersed in layout, and often spread out over much larger areas of land than later ones. Within, there would usually have been more open ground than one might expect, with buildings spaced some distance apart, and inner zones for worship, habitation and light industry divided by earthwork boundaries. |
doh! 1/4
They were made of stone to last ?
The majority of buildings at most monasteries were built using timber until after the Norman Conquest and it was often the church that was built in stone first, as at Lindisfarne and at Lyminge. However, hard evidence for the structures and layout of Saxon and Norman monasteries in England is still limited and all future clues will be important.
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I can't even understand their answer now. Still I am taking that I am half right
1.5/5
Time to play my sure fire certainty.
Because monks lived there, we are surely going to find evidence of a Monkish ordered regulated type of existence.
| It was still another few hundred years until we can see recognisable Benedictine rule being applied in England around the 10th and 11th centuries, or for the other monastic orders familiar from the high Medieval period to arrive. By the end of the 13th century, as well as Benedictines there were Cluniacs, Carthusians, Cistertians, Augustinians, Premonstratensians, and Gilbertines in England – and that is not including the Orders of friars, the Dominicans (Blackfriars), Fransiscans (Greyfriars) and Carmelites (Whitefriars). Monasticism in the high Medieval period was more regulated, and more complicated. |
Jesus, they did their own hippie type of thing. 1.5/6
Did they have anything in common with the later fellas?
| The key differences notwithstanding, many features of later Medieval monasteries were present in an earlier, simpler or smaller-scale form in Anglo-Saxon monasteries. For example, early stained glass windows appeared at some of the richest monasteries, such as Jarrow in Northumbria, although they were much smaller than later on, with no firm evidence for pictorial designs. Likewise, the habits worn by monks (tunics and scapulae of undyed wool in the Anglo-Saxon period) and hair styles (Roman-style tonsured hair) changed little; the relative wealth and luxuries (wine, precious metal plate, silks, spices, pigments), the libraries and scriptoria, and the focus on hospitality and agriculture as well as worship. | |
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Highly masterful. You forgot to mention the vast majority of these Anglo-Saxon monasteries can't be found at all! And when they can be, everything has to be extrapolated from 'a circumvallation ditch' or a flat stone that 'could be a scriptorium desk' or whatever.
The overall situation is much more pitiful than you have described. I even fear you may have provided them with more ammunition. I still think AE-Viking raids every summer on Lindisfarne, Iona et al with balaclavas and Kalashnikovs is the answer.
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