Observação importante: Ao visitarem esta página de novo, não se esqueçam de acionar o dispositivo de “reload, recarregar” [no Netscape Navigator] ou “refresh, atualizar” [no Microsoft Internet Explorer] dos seus browsers para que a informação no cache dos mesmos seja atualizada e vocês possam visualizar os novos dados colocados na página. Caso contrário, verão apenas informação antiga e desatualizada.

História da Língua Inglesa   

Invaders and Early Settlers of Britain –

The Jutes, Angles, Saxons, Frisians, Norse, Normans, and The Venerable Bede

Ethnic Background

By ethnic origin the English are a mongrel breed. Their language is polyglot, drawn from a variety of sources, and its vocabulary has been augmented by importations from all over the world. The English language does not identify the English, for it is the main language of Wales, Scotland, Ireland, many Commonwealth countries, and the United States. The primary source of the language, however, is the main ethnic stem of the English, the Anglo-Saxons, who invaded and colonized England in the 5th and 6th centuries. Their language provides about half the words in modern English vocabulary.

In the millennia following the last Ice Age, the British Isles were peopled by migrant tribes from the continent of Europe and, later, by traders from the Mediterranean area. During the Roman occupation, England was inhabited by Celtic Brythons, but the Celts withdrew before the Teutonic Angles, Saxons, and Jutes (from northwestern Germany) into the mountainous areas of western and northern Britain. The Anglo-Saxons neither preserved nor absorbed the Roman-British culture they found in the 5th century. There are few traces of Celtic or Roman Latin in the early English of the Anglo-Saxons, though some words survive in place-names, such as the Latin castra for camp providing the suffix "cester" and combe and tor, Celtic words for "valley" and "hill." Old Norse, the language of the Danes and Norsemen, left more extensive traces, partly because it had closer affinities to Anglo-Saxon and because the Danish occupation of large tracts of eastern and northern England was for a time deeply rooted, as some place-names show.

The history before the Norman Conquest is poorly documented, but what stands out is the tenacity of the Anglo-Saxons in surviving a succession of invasions. They united most of what is now England in the 9th, 10th, and 11th centuries, only to be overthrown by the Normans in 1066. For two centuries French became the language of the court and the ruling nobility; yet English prevailed and by 1362 had reestablished itself as an official language. Church Latin, as well as a residue of Norman French, was incorporated into the language during this period. It was subsequently enriched by the Latin and Greek of the educated scholars of the Renaissance. The seafarers, explorers, and empire builders of modern history have imported foreign words, most copiously from Europe but also from Asia. These words have been so completely absorbed into the language that they pass unselfconsciously as English. The English, it might be said, are great anglicizers.

The English have also absorbed and anglicized people of alien race, from Scandinavian pillagers and Norman conquerors to Latin churchmen. In the royal line, a Welsh dynasty of monarchs, the Tudors, was succeeded by the Scottish Stuarts, to be followed by the Dutch William of Orange and the German Hanoverians. For the Scots, the Welsh, and the Irish, English became their main language. England provided a haven for refugees from the time of the Huguenots in the 17th century to the totalitarian persecutions of the 20th century. Many Jews have settled in England. In recent decades there has been large-scale immigration from Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean, posing seemingly more difficult problems of assimilation, and restrictive immigration regulations have been imposed that are out of key with the open-door policy that had been an English tradition for many generations. To be counted English, it has never been necessary to be of purebred English stock, and indeed, there can be few English who are.

The Jutes

Members of a Germanic people who, with the Angles and Saxons, invaded Britain in the 5th century AD. The Jutes have no recorded history on the European continent, but there is considerable evidence that their home was in the Scandinavian area (probably Jutland) and that those who did not migrate were later absorbed by the Danes. According to the Venerable Bede, the Jutes settled in Kent, the Isle of Wight, and parts of Hampshire. In Kent their name soon died out, but there is considerable evidence in the social structure of that area that its settlers were of a different race from their neighbours. There is archaeological evidence to confirm Bede's statement that the Isle of Wight and Kent were settled by the same people, and their presence in Hampshire is confirmed by place-names.

The Angles

Members of a Germanic people, which, together with the Jutes and Saxons, invaded England in the 5th century AD. The Angles gave their name to England, as well as to the word Englisc, used even by Saxon writers to denote their vernacular tongue. The Angles are first mentioned by Tacitus (1st century AD) as worshipers of the deity Nerthus. According to the Venerable Bede in the Ecclesiastical History of the English People, their continental homeland was centred in Angulus, traditionally identified as the Angeln district in Schleswig between the Schlei inlet and the Flensburger Förde, which they appear to have abandoned at the time of their invasion of Britain. They settled in large numbers during the 5th and 6th centuries in the kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria, and East and Middle Anglia.

The Saxons

Members of a Germanic people who in ancient times lived in the area of modern Schleswig and along the Baltic coast. The period of Roman decline in the West was marked by vigorous Saxon piracy in the North Sea. During the early part of the 5th century AD, the Saxons spread rapidly through north Germany and along the coasts of Gaul and Britain. The coastal stretch from the Elbe to the Scheldt rivers, however, was held by the Frisians, on whom the Saxons had great influence.

The expansion of the Saxons brought collision with the Franks. In 772 the Frankish ruler Charlemagne decided on a campaign of conquest and conversion of the Saxons. With interruptions, the Saxon wars lasted 32 years and ended with the incorporation of the Saxons into the Frankish empire.

The Venerable Bede (in Historia ecclesiastica) described the Germanic invaders of Britain as Angles, Saxons, and Jutes and said that the East, West, and South Saxons (of Essex, Wessex, and Sussex) were descended from the Saxons. However, Bede was not always careful to distinguish Angles and Saxons; and, furthermore, all the invaders of Britain were closely related and spoke dialects similar to each other and to the Frisian language. The dialects of the continental Saxons, on the other hand, underwent considerable approximation to High German, and their affinity to those of the English and the Frisians is only to be traced in sporadic spellings in texts now extant, of which none is older than the 9th century. When Procopius (Gothic Wars, c. 550) alleged that the inhabitants of Britain were Britons, Angles, and Frisians, he was no doubt confusing Frisians and Saxons, owing to their close relationship and to the extensive Saxon settlements among the Frisians.

Anglo-Saxon England

The Invaders and their Early Settlements

Although Germanic foederati, allies of Roman and post-Roman authorities, had settled in England in the 4th century AD, tribal migrations into Britain began about the middle of the 5th century. The first arrivals, according to the 6th-century British writer Gildas, were invited by a British king to defend his kingdom against the Picts and Scots. A tradition reached Bede that the first mercenaries were from three tribes – the Anglo-Saxon.

Angles, Saxons, and Jutes--which he locates on the Cimbric Peninsula, and by implication the coastlands of northwestern Germany. Archaeology, however, suggests a more complex picture showing many tribal elements, Frankish leadership in the first waves, and Frisian contacts. Revolt by these mercenaries against their British employers in the southeast of England led to large-scale Germanic settlements near the coasts and along the river valleys. Their advance was halted for a generation by native resistance, which tradition associates with the names of Ambrosius Aurelianus and Arthur, culminating in victory about 500 by the Britons at the Battle of Mons Badonicus at an unidentified location. But a new Germanic drive began about 550, and before the century had ended, the Britons had been driven west to the borders of Dumnonia (Cornwall and Devon) and to the Welsh Marches, while invaders were advancing west of the Pennines and northward into Lothian.

The fate of the native British population is difficult to determine. The case against its large-scale survival rests largely on linguistic evidence, such as the scarcity of Romano-British words continuing into English and the use of English even by Northumbrian peasants. The case against wholesale extermination also rests on linguistic evidence, such as place-names and personal names, as well as on evidence provided by urban and rural archaeology. Certainly few Britons in England were above servile condition. By the end of the 7th century people regarded themselves as belonging to "the nation of the English," though divided into several kingdoms. This sense of unity was strengthened during long periods when all kingdoms south of the Humber acknowledged the overlordship (called by Bede an imperium) of a single ruler, known as a bretwalda, a word first recorded in the 9th century.

The first such overlord was Aelle of Sussex, in the late 5th century; the second was Ceawlin of Wessex, who died in 593. The third overlord, Aethelberht of Kent, held this power in 597 when the monk Augustine led a mission from Rome to Kent; Kent was the first English kingdom to be converted to Christianity. The Christian church provided another unifying influence, overriding political divisions, although it was not until 669 that the church in England acknowledged a single head.

The Frisians

Inhabitants of a historic region of The Netherlands and Germany fronting the North Sea and including the Frisian Islands. It has been divided since 1815 into Friesland, a province of The Netherlands, and the Ostfriesland and Nordfriesland regions of northwestern Germany. Frisia is the traditional homeland of the Frisians, a Germanic people who speak a language closely related to English.

In prehistoric times of uncertain date, the tribal Frisians migrated to the North Sea coastal region between the mouth of the Rhine River (at Katwijk, north of The Hague) and the mouth of the Ems River and ousted the resident Celts. Much of their land was then covered by lakes and estuaries and was exposed to the incursions of the sea, so the inhabitants lived mostly on man-made mounds called terps. Slowly, as the shifting of the waters allowed, they brought the lower-lying land under cultivation and protected themselves against the sea by building more terps (dikes were not practicable). Most of these were in the modern provinces of Friesland and Groningen.

From the 1st to the 5th century AD, the Frisians were more or less tributary to the Romans. Frisia was then infiltrated by Angles and Saxons on their way to England and was subsequently conquered by the Franks under Charlemagne, who converted the Frisians to Christianity.

The Norse (Vikings)

Also called Norseman or Northman, members of the Scandinavian seafaring warriors who raided and colonized wide areas of Europe from the 9th to the 11th century and whose disruptive influence profoundly affected European history. These pagan Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish warriors were probably prompted to undertake their raids by a combination of factors ranging from overpopulation at home to the relative helplessness of victims abroad.

The Vikings were made up of landowning chieftains and clan heads, their retainers, freemen, and any energetic young clan members who sought adventure and booty overseas. At home these Scandinavians were independent farmers, but at sea they were raiders and pillagers. During the Viking period the Scandinavian countries seem to have possessed a practically inexhaustible surplus of manpower, and leaders of ability, who could organize groups of warriors into conquering bands and armies, were seldom lacking. These bands would negotiate the seas in their longships and mount hit-and-run raids at cities and towns along the coasts of Europe. Their burning, plundering, and killing earned them the name vikingr, meaning "pirate" in the early Scandinavian languages.

The exact ethnic composition of the Viking armies is unknown in particular cases, but the Vikings' expansion in the Baltic lands and in Russia can reasonably be attributed to the Swedes. On the other hand, the nonmilitary colonization of the Orkneys, Faroes, and Iceland was clearly due to the Norwegians.

In England, desultory raiding occurred in the late 8th century but began more earnestly in 865, when a force led by the sons of Ragnar Lodbrok--Healfdene, Inwaer, and perhaps Hubba--conquered the ancient kingdoms of East Anglia and Northumbria and reduced Mercia to a fraction of its former size. Yet it was unable to subdue the Wessex of Alfred the Great, with whom in 878 a truce was made, which became the basis of a treaty in or soon after 886. This recognized that much of England was in Danish hands. Although hard pressed by fresh armies of Vikings from 892 to 899, Alfred was finally victorious over them, and the spirit of Wessex was so little broken that his son Edward the Elder was able to commence the reconquest of Danish England. Before his death in 924 the small Danish states on old Mercian and East Anglian territory had fallen before him. The more remote Northumbria resisted longer, largely under Viking leaders from Ireland, but the Scandinavian power there was finally liquidated by Edred in 954. Viking raids on England began again in 980, and the country ultimately became part of the empire of Canute. Nevertheless, the native house was peacefully restored in 1042, and the Viking threat ended with the ineffective passes made by Canute II in the reign of William I. The Scandinavian conquests in England left deep marks on the areas affected, in social structure, dialect, place-names, and personal names.

The Normans

An Early Commentator: The Venerable Bede

b. 672/673, traditionally Monkton in Jarrow, Northumbria
d. May 25, 735, Jarrow; canonized 1899; feast day May 25

Bede also spelled Baeda or Beda, Anglo-Saxon theologian, historian, and chronologist, best known today for his Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum ("Ecclesiastical History of the English People"), a source vital to the history of the conversion to Christianity of the Anglo-Saxon tribes. During his lifetime and throughout the Middle Ages Bede's reputation was based mainly on his scriptural commentaries, copies of which found their way to many of the monastic libraries of western Europe. His method of dating events from the time of the incarnation, or Christ's birth--i.e., AD--came into general use through the popularity of the Historia ecclesiastica and the two works on chronology. Bede's influence was perpetuated at home through the school founded at York by his pupil Archbishop Egbert of York and was transmitted to the Continent by Alcuin, who studied there before becoming master of Charlemagne's palace school at Aachen.

Nothing is known of Bede's parentage. At the age of seven he was taken to the Monastery of St. Peter, founded at Wearmouth (near Sunderland, Durham) by Abbot St. Benedict Biscop, to whose care he was entrusted. By 685 he was moved to Biscop's newer Monastery of St. Paul at Jarrow. Bede was ordained deacon when 19 years old and priest when 30. Apart from visits to Lindisfarne and York, he seems never to have left Wearmouth-Jarrow. Buried at Jarrow, his remains were removed to Durham and are now entombed in the Galilee Chapel of Durham Cathedral.

Bede's works fall into three groups: grammatical and "scientific," scriptural commentary, and historical and biographical. His earliest works include treatises on spelling, hymns, figures of speech, verse, and epigrams. His first treatise on chronology, De temporibus ("On Times"), with a brief chronicle attached, was written in 703. In 725 he completed a greatly amplified version, De temporum ratione ("On the Reckoning of Time"), with a much longer chronicle. Both these books were mainly concerned with the reckoning of Easter. His earliest biblical commentary was probably that on the Revelation to John (703?-709); in this and many similar works, his aim was to transmit and explain relevant passages from the Fathers of the Church. Although his interpretations were mainly allegorical, treating much of the biblical text as symbolic of deeper meanings, he used some critical judgment and attempted to rationalize discrepancies. Among his most notable are his verse (705-716) and prose (before 721) lives of St. Cuthbert, bishop of Lindisfarne. These works are uncritical and abound with accounts of miracles; a more exclusively historical work is Historia abbatum (c. 725; "Lives of the Abbots").

In 731/732 Bede completed his Historia ecclesiastica. Divided into five books, it recorded events in Britain from the raids by Julius Caesar (55-54 BC) to the arrival in Kent (AD 597) of St. Augustine. For his sources he claimed the authority of ancient letters, the "traditions of our forefathers," and his own knowledge of contemporary events. Bede's Historia ecclesiastica leaves gaps tantalizing to secular historians. Although overloaded with the miraculous, it is the work of a scholar anxious to assess the accuracy of his sources and to record only what he regarded as trustworthy evidence. It remains an indispensable source for some of the facts and much of the feel of early Anglo-Saxon history.

Copyright © 1994-2000 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Voltar ao começo da página Voltar à página principal