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Of, relating to, or characteristic of Anglo-Saxons, their descendants, or their language or culture; English.
Anglo-Saxons is the name collectively applied to the descendants of the Germanic people who settled in Britain between the late 4th and early 7th cents. Their backgrounds varied. Some came as mercenaries, others as invaders. They included, besides Angles and Saxons, Jutes and other groups. The eventual use of the name ‘English’ and ‘England’ for people and territory probably owes something to Bede, whose History of the English People dealt with the whole. He followed Pope Gregory I, who knew the people as Angles.
Much about the invasion and settlement is obscure, but for most of its history Anglo-Saxon England is one of the best-documented early medieval European societies. Besides Bede's History, historical sources include a number of saints' lives, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Many letters survive, those of the Anglo-Saxon missionary to the continent, Boniface, of particular importance. A great body of evidence relates to royal ideology, government, and administration: vernacular law codes (beginning with that of Æthelbert of Kent), charters, writs, and wills. Historians also benefit from the study of the language of vernacular texts, from that of place-names, of art (including sculpture), and of architecture. Archaeology, of burials, settlements, towns, kings' halls (Yeavering, Cheddar), monasteries, and churches, is critically important. Yet there are still uncertainties. Gaps in the evidence, problems of its interpretation and of reconciling different types, generate lively debate. Some may never be solved: it is salutary to realize how important subjects depend on chance survivals or discoveries—the ship-burial at Sutton Hoo (mound 1) and the poem Beowulf for example.
From obscure beginnings the Anglo-Saxons formed a number of kingdoms. The 7th-cent. trend was a shift in the balance of power from south and east (Kent and East Anglia) to north and west (Northumbria, Mercia, Wessex), and the take-over of smaller kingdoms by larger ones, the so-called heptarchy. The 8th cent. was a period of Mercian dominance and Northumbrian independence, the 9th of the rise of Wessex, and of the threat of the Vikings. They established their own kingdoms (of East Anglia and Northumbria). In the 10th cent. Wessex united England.
To the forging of one people Alfred, Athelstan, and Edgar made significant contributions. Encouragement was to be found in the pages of Bede and in the needs of the church. But the England of 1066 was not inevitable. Quite different borders could have been established. In the late 7th cent. one kingdom south of the Humber and another north, including southern Scotland, was a possibility; in the 10th a kingdom pushing into Wales rather than the Scandinavian-held north.
Society and culture changed over time. Anglo-Saxon paganism is not fully known. The great period of conversion was the 7th cent., an age of saints, especially in Northumbria (the missionary Aidan, the home-grown Wilfrid, Cuthbert, and others) and monastic foundations (including Lindisfarne, Whitby, Ripon, Hexham, and Monkwearmouth-Jarrow). A stratified society, in which ceorls and gesiths (royal companions) had different wergelds, its political life was dominated by the aristocracy. Historical development brought a growth in royal power and authority in a society wherein the participation in government of free men had a long history. On some issues—marriage and war, for example—the new religion might conflict with traditional values. Some features of Anglo-Saxon society seem alien, even incomprehensible, to modern eyes at first sight: the practice of blood-feud, the institution of the retinue (war-band), both of which contributed to a high level of violence in élite society, the combination of genuine piety with ferocity in warfare, and its condoning by clerics. Yet others seem modern: the status of women has been seen as comparatively high, some queens and royal ladies, particularly Æthelfleda, lady of the Mercians, and abbesses, notably Hilda and Ælfflæd of Whitby, playing an important part in political and religious life.
The Anglo-Saxon arrival had ended Britain's involvement with Roman culture and institutions, but this was recreated in the late 6th cent. Christianity, purveyed to theAnglo-Saxons almost entirely by non-British teachers, from the Irish, from Frankish Gaul, and from Rome (beginning with the mission of Augustine), brought England into the Mediterranean, Christian, Roman world. Missionaries worked amongst the Anglo-Saxons' still pagan continental kin. Boniface was prominent in Frankish church reform and functioned as representative of the pope to the Franks. Anglo-Saxon veneration of the papacy was strong and contributed to the growth of papal authority. Alcuin of York was adviser to Charlemagne and a leading figure in the Carolingian Renaissance.
But England owed much to Europe. The books collected on the continent by Benedict Biscop, and the school of Canterbury, established by Archbishop Theodore, himself from Tarsus, brought her Christian culture and scholarship. From an early period Frankish support and influence were factors in English dynastic politics, most clearly visible in Charlemagne's support for some of Offa of Mercia's enemies. Carolingian ideas concerning church reform and kingship, Carolingian administrative and governmental institutions and practices, Carolingian coinage, and Carolingian art all had an impact in the 8th cent. Alfred learned much from Carolingian example. Government in the 10th and 11th cents. has much about it that seems Carolingian. Involvement with Normandy came in the late 10th cent. Trade, especially in slaves in the early period and wool in the later, brought great wealth, probably the main attraction for Cnut and William the Conqueror.
The Anglo-Saxon achievement was cultural, religious, economic, and political. Art, architecture, vernacular and Anglo-Latin writing, and scholarship are all remarkable. Not, originally, an urban people, Scandinavian activity and the development of Alfred's burhs lay behind their 10th- and 11th-cent. towns. Coinage was firmly under royal control. Prosperity sustained the frequent collection of large Danegelds. By the 11th cent., with its hundreds, shires, ealdormen and reeves, law courts, and tax-collecting, Anglo-Saxon England was, by European standards, remarkably sophisticated and advanced. There was no capital, but Winchester was almost a capital city. The country was united, though it was not uniform in every particular. The compilation of William I's Domesday Book would not have been possible without Anglo-Saxon administrative genius. This genius, largely West Saxon, is visible elsewhere, in the rational distribution of mints in the 10th cent., and in the shire system, almost unchanged until 1974.
1. A compound name used to describe amalgamated groups of Angles, Saxons, and others who from the 5th century ad were living away from their homelands, and to distinguish them from their kindred still on the continent.
2. The period in early English history between the collapse of British power c.ad 550 and the Norman conquest of ad 1066 when the eastern part of the country was dominated by migrant Angles and Saxons. The period is generally divided into three chronological subdivisions: the early Saxon period up to about ad 650, the middle Saxon period from about ad 650 to ad 850, and the late Saxon period from 850 down to ad 1066. The first of these broadly equates with what is also sometimes referred to as the pagan Saxons period. The Anglo-Saxon period saw the emergence of a series of seven kingdoms in England (the Heptarchy), the most important of which were Mercia, Northumbria, and Wessex. The Anglo-Saxons were also responsible for the establishment of the English language and a pattern of settlement that became characteristic of the medieval period and in part still survives today.
Bibliography
See P. H. Blair, An Introduction to Anglo-Saxon England (1954, repr. 1962); F. M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England (3d ed. 1971); D. M. Wilson, The Anglo-Saxons (rev. ed. 1971); D. J. V. Fisher, The Anglo-Saxon Age, 400–1042 (1973); G. R. Owen, Rites and Religions of the Anglo-Saxons (1985); M. J. Whittock, The Origins of England, 410–600 (1986).
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Anglo-Saxon is the collective term usually used to describe the ethnically and linguistically related peoples living in the south and east of the island of Great Britain (modern Great Britain/United Kingdom) from around the early 5th century AD to the Norman conquest of 1066. They spoke closely related Germanic dialects, and they are identified by Bede as the descendants of three powerful Germanic tribes, the Angles and the Saxons from today's northern Germany, and the Jutes from today's Denmark.
Place names seem to show that smaller numbers of some other German peoples came over: Frisians at Fresham, Freston, and Friston; Flemings at Flempton and Flimby; Swabians at Swaffham; perhaps Franks at Frankton and Frankley.
It was perhaps under Offa of Mercia (reigned 755-759), or under Alfred the Great (reigned 871–899) and his successors, that the several kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxons existed. Under the reign of Athelstan (reigned AD 924–937) the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom took shape into England.
The term "Anglo-Saxon" is from Latin writings going back to the time of King Alfred the Great, who seems to have frequently used the title rex Anglorum Saxonum or rex Angul-Saxonum.
The Old English terms ænglisc and Angelcynn ("Angle-kin", gens Anglorum) when they are first attested had already lost their original sense of referring to the Angles to the exclusion of the Saxons, and in their earliest recorded sense refers collectively to the Teutonic peoples who settled Great Britain in and after the 5th century.
Bede, writing in the early 8th century in his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, (I.15) suggests that:
Other early writers do not bear out consistent distinctions, though in custom the Kingdom of Kent presents the most remarkable contrasts with the other kingdoms. West Saxon writers regularly speak of their own nation as a part of the Angelcyn and of their language as Englisc, while the West Saxon royal family claimed to be of the same stock as that of Bernicia in the north. On the other hand, it is by no means impossible that the distinction drawn by Bede was based solely on names such as Essex (East Saxons) and East Anglia (East Angles). That Bede could envisage one English people (gentis Anglorum and Anglorum populi) at least demonstrates that the Anglo-Saxons could be thought of in such terms in the 8th century.
The term Angli Saxones seems to have first been used in continental writing nearly a century before Alfred's time by Paul the Deacon, historian of the Lombards. There can be little doubt, however, that in this case it was used to distinguish the English Saxons from the continental Saxons.
The history of Anglo-Saxon England broadly covers early medieval England from the end of Roman Britain and the establishment of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the 5th century until the Conquest by the Normans in 1066.
Migration of Germanic peoples to Britain from what is now northern Germany and
southern Scandinavia is attested from the 5th century (e.g. Undley bracteate). Based on
Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis
Anglorum, the intruding population is traditionally divided into Angles,
Saxons, and Jutes, but their composition was likely less
clear-cut, and may also have included Frisians and Franks.
The Parker Library holds the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle which contains text that may be the first recorded
indications of the movement of these Germanic Tribes to Britain. The Angles and Saxons
and Jutes were noted to be a confederation in the Greek Geographia written by Ptolemy in around 150 AD.
AD 449. Here Mauricius and Valentinian succeeded to the kingdom and ruled 7 years. And in their days Hengist and Horsa, invited by Vortigern, king of the Britons, sought out Britain in the landing-place which is named Ebba's Creek, at first to help the Britons, but later they fought against them. The king ordered them to fight against the Picts, and they did so and had victory whosesoever they came. They then sent to Angeln and ordered them to send more help, and tell them of the worthlessness of the Britons and of the excellence of the land. They then sent them more help. These men came from three tribes of Germany: from the Old Saxons, from the Angles, from the Jutes came the Cantware and the Wihtware – that is the tribe which now lives on White – and that race in Wessex which they still call the race of the Jutes.
AD 455. Here Hengist and Horsa fought against Vortigern the king in the place which is called Aylesford, and his brother Horsa was killed. And after that Hengist, and Æsc his son, succeeded to the kingdom.
AD 457. Here Hengist and Æsc fought against the Britons in the place which is called Crayford, and there killed 4,000 men; and the Britons then abandoned the land of Kent and in great terror fled to the stronghold of London.
AD 465. Here Hengist and Æsc fought against the Welsh near Wipped’s Creek, and there killed 12 Welsh (Romano-Brythonic,) chieftains; and one of their Thegns, whose name was Wipped, was killed there.
AD 473. Here Hengist and Æsc fought against the Welsh and seized countless war-loot and the Welsh fled from the Englisc like fire.
AD 477. Here Ælle (Ælle of Sussex) and his 3 sons, Cymen and Wlencing and Cissa, came to the land of the Britain with 3 ships at the place which is named Cymen’s shore, and there killed many Welsh and drove some to flight into the wood which is named The Weald.
AD 485. Here Ælle fought against the Welsh near the margin of Mearcred’s Burn.
AD 488. Here Æsc succeeded to the kingdom, and was king of the inhabitants of Kent 24 years.
AD 491. Here Ælle and Cissa besieged Anderitum, and killed all who lived in there; there was not even one Briton left alive there.
AD 495. Here two chieftons; Cerdic and Cynric his son, came to Britain with 5 ships at a place which is called Cerdic’s Shore and the same day fought against the 'Welsh' (the Brythons.)
There is much debate on the extent of the Anglo-Saxon migration to Britain, see the main article for this debate.
Christianization of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom began around AD 600, and
was essentially complete in the mid 8th century. Throughout the 7th and 8th century power fluctuated between the larger kingdoms.
Bede records Aethelbert of Kent as being dominant at the close of the 6th century,
but power seems to have shifted northwards to the kingdom of Northumbria. The so-called 'Mercian Supremacy' dominated the 8th
century, though again it was not constant. Aethelbald and Offa, the two most powerful
kings, achieved high status. This period has been described as the Heptarchy, though this term
has now fallen out of academic use. The word arose on the basis that the seven kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia, Kent,
East Anglia, Essex, Sussex and Wessex were the main polities of south Britain. More recent
scholarship has shown that a number of other kingdoms were politically important across this period: Hwicce, Magonsaete, Lindsey and
Middle Anglia.
In the 9th century, the Viking challenge grew to serious proportions. Alfred the Great's victory at Edington in 878 brought intermittent peace, but the Norsemen with the foundation of Jorvik gained a permanent foothold in Britain.
An important development of the 9th century was the rise of the Kingdom of Wessex, and Alfred by the end of his reign (899) was recognized as overlord by several southern kingdoms. Æthelstan was the first king to achieve direct rulership of what we would now consider 'England'.
The end of the 10th century saw renewed Scandinavian interest in England, with the
conquests of Sweyn of Denmark and his son Canute. After
various fluctuations, by 1066, there where several people with a claim to the English throne,
resulting in two invasions and the battles of Stamford Bridge and
Hastings, giving rise to the High Medieval
Anglo-Saxon architecture describes a period in the history of architecture in England, and parts of Wales, from the mid-5th century until the Norman Conquest of 1066.
Early Anglo-Saxon buildings in Britain were generally simple, constructed mainly using timber with thatch for roofing. Generally preferring not to settle in the old Roman cities, the Anglo-Saxons built small towns near their centres of agriculture. In each town, a main hall was in the centre, and other forms of building of the townspeople.
There are few remains of Anglo-Saxon architecture, with no secular work remaining above ground. At least fifty churches are of Anglo-Saxon origin, with many more claiming to be, although in some cases the Anglo-Saxon part is small and much-altered. All surviving churches, except one timber church, are built of stone or brick, and in some cases show evidence of re-used Roman work.
The architectural character of Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastical buildings range from Coptic influenced architecture in the early period; basilica influenced Romanesque architecture; and in the later Anglo-Saxon period, an architecture characterised by pilaster-strips, blank arcading, baluster shafts and triangular headed openings.
Anglo-Saxon art covers the period from the time of King Alfred (871–899), with the revival of English culture after the end of the Viking raids, to the early 12th century, when Romanesque art became the new movement. Prior to Alfred there had been the Hiberno-Saxon culture (the fusion of Anglo-Saxon and Celtic techniques and motifs) which ceased with the Vikings.
Anglo-Saxon art is mainly known today through illuminated manuscripts. It includes the Benedictional of St. Æthelwold manuscript, which drew on Hiberno-Saxon art, Carolingian art and Byzantine art for style and iconography. A "Winchester style" developed that combined both northern ornamental traditions with Mediterranean figural traditions, and can be seen in the Leofric Missal (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodl, 579). The Harley Psalter was a knockoff of the Carolingian Utrecht Psalter —all of which underscore the larger trend of an Anglo-Saxon culture coming into increasing contact with, and under the influence of, a wider Latin Mediæval Europe.
Manuscripts were not the only Anglo-Saxon art form, although they are the most well known to have survived. Perhaps the best known piece of Anglo-Saxon art is the Bayeux Tapestry which was commissioned by a Norman patron from English artists working in the traditional Anglo-Saxon style. The most common example of Anglo-Saxon art is coins, with thousands of examples extant and more being found every year. Anglo-Saxon artists also worked in fresco, ivory, stone carving, metalwork (see Fuller brooch for example) and enamel, but few of these pieces had survived.
Anglo-Saxon, also called Old English, was the language spoken under Alfred the Great
and continued to be the common language of England (non-Danelaw) until after the Norman Conquest of 1066 when, under
the influence of the Anglo-Norman language spoken by the
Anglo-Saxon is far closer to early Germanic than Middle English. It is less Latinized and retains many morphological features (nominal and verbal inflection) that were lost during the 12th to 14th centuries. The language today which is closest to Old English is Frisian, which is spoken by a few hundred thousand people in the northern part of the Netherlands and Germany.
Before literacy in the vernacular "Old English" or Latin became widespread, the Runic alphabet, called the futhorc (also known as futhark) was used for inscriptions. When literacy became more prevalent, a form of Latin script was used with a few letters derived from the futhork: 'Eth,' 'Wynn,' and 'Thorn.'
The letters regularly used in printed and edited texts of Old English are the following:
with only rare occurrences of j, k, q, v, and z.
Very few law codes exist from the Anglo-Saxon period, giving us an insight into legal culture beyond the influence of Roman law. How this legal culture developed over the course of the Anglo-Saxon period is important for the understanding of contemporary developments, except how law developed following the Norman Conquest.
Anglo-Saxon literature (or Old English literature) encompasses literature written in Old English during the 600-year Anglo-Saxon period of Britain, from the mid-5th century to the Norman Conquest of 1066. These works include genres such as epic poetry, hagiography, sermons, Bible translations, legal works, chronicles, riddles, and others. In all there are about 400 surviving manuscripts from the period, a significant corpus of both popular interest and specialist research.
The most famous works from this period include the poem Beowulf, which has achieved national epic status in Britain. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a collection of important early English history. Cædmon's Hymn from the 7th century is the oldest surviving written text in English.
The indigenous pre-Christian belief system of the Anglo-Saxons was a form of Germanic paganism and therefore closely related to the Old Norse religion, as well as other Germanic pre-Christian cultures.
Christianity (particularly the Roman) gradually replaced the indigenous religion of the Saxons in England around the 7th and 8th centuries AD. Christianity was introduced into Northumbria and Mercia by monks from Ireland, but the Synod of Whitby settled the choice for Roman Christianity. As the new clerics became the chroniclers, the old religion was partially lost before it was recorded and today historians' knowledge of it is largely based on surviving customs and lore, texts, etymological links and archaeological finds.
One of the few recorded references is that a Kentish King would only meet the missionary St. Augustine in the open air, where he would be under the protection of the sky god, Woden. Written Christian prohibitions on acts of paganism are one of historians' main sources of information on pre-Christian beliefs.
Despite these prohibitions, numerous elements of the pre-Christian culture of the Anglo-Saxon people survived the Christianisation process. Examples include the English language names for days of the week:
"Anglo-Saxon" is still used as a term for the original West Germanic component of the English language, which was later expanded and developed through the influence of the concept of Old Norse and Norman French, though linguists now more often refer to it as Old English. In the 19th century the term "Anglo-Saxon" was broadly used in philology, and it is still, to some degree, used this way nowadays.
For other uses, see Anglo-Saxon.
In popular usage in Canada and the United States, the term "Anglo-Saxon" (as in "White Anglo-Saxon Protestant" or "WASP") has evolved into a politicised term with little connection to its academic definition. Until about 1960 the term of European origin who fits a certain socio-economic and/or ethnic profile.
For over a hundred years, the French have used "Anglo-Saxon" to refer to the
A good collection of the source material can be found in
For early contemporary understandings of what it meant to be 'Anglo-Saxon' or 'English' see
For modern interpretations overviews can be found in
For an introduction to aspects of Anglo-Saxon culture, see the articles in
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
Dansk (Danish)
adj. - angelsaksisk, oldengelsk
n. - angelsakser
Nederlands (Dutch)
Angelsaksisch, van Engelse afkomst, Angelsaksische, Oud-Engels, platvloers Engels, modern Engels
Français (French)
adj. - anglo-saxon
n. - Anglo-saxon
Deutsch (German)
adj. - angelsächsisch
n. - Angelsächsisch
Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - Αγγλοσάξονας
adj. - αγγλοσαξονικός, Αγγλοσάξονας
Italiano (Italian)
anglosassone
Português (Portuguese)
n. - anglo-saxão (m)
adj. - anglo-saxão
Русский (Russian)
англосакс, англосаксонский
Español (Spanish)
adj. - anglosajón
n. - anglosajón
Svenska (Swedish)
n. - anglosaxare
adj. - anglosaxisk
中文（简体） (Chinese (Simplified))
盎格鲁-撒克逊人的, 盎格鲁-撒克逊语的, 盎格鲁-撒克逊人, 盎格鲁-撒克逊语
中文（繁體） (Chinese (Traditional))
adj. - 盎格魯-撒克遜人的, 盎格魯-撒克遜語的
n. - 盎格魯-撒克遜人, 盎格魯-撒克遜語
한국어 (Korean)
adj. - 앵글로색슨인[족, 어]의
n. - 앵글로색슨인[어]
日本語 (Japanese)
n. - アングロサクソン人, アングロサクソン語
adj. - アングロサクソン人の, アングロサクソン語の, 英国系の
العربيه (Arabic)
(الاسم) أنجلوساكسوني : سكان انجلترا الجرمان قبل الفتح النورماني عام 1066 (صفه) لغه الأنجلوسكسون, اللغه النجليزيه, انجلوسكسوني, انجليزي
עברית (Hebrew)
adj. - אנגלו-סקסוני, אנגלו-סקסי
n. - אנגלית מודרנית (ארה"ב), אנגלית עתיקה, העם האנגלי עד לפלישה הנורמנית (6601), אדם אנגלו-סקסי, אנגלית לא מתורבתת (מדוברת)
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