Medieval Treasures, Part I

This past Christmas, while visiting the Washington DC area, I was blessed with an embarrassment of riches, a medieval two-fer. The first was like something out of a Tolkien dream, a priceless hoard of precious metals and ornaments from the Dark Ages, found lying beneath the earth; the second, a long-lost text from the 10th century whose story reads like a Gaston Leroux novel by way of Dan Brown.

Part I
Sic transit gloria Angli...

In July of 2009 [coincidentally right before I visited London for my first extended visit], an enormous hoard of gold and silver was dug up in Staffordshire, England. As it turned out the treasure dated back to the Anglo-Saxon era—a Sutton Hoo for the new millennium! I was dying to view the loot when I was actually over there, but the experts were still cleaning it up and had not put it on public display yet—I had to wait until the Brits brought it over here, to be exhibited at the National Geographic Museum in Washington, DC.

Thankfully they were open on Christmas Eve, since that was the only day I could go! Walking into the exhibit hall was like entering Smaug's cavern. I couldn't stop staring at these pieces.  They were breathtaking—incredibly detailed, dazzling and golden and captivating.  And mysterious. Who buried this collection and when? And why? Who was the man who displayed these pommel atop his sword, the warrior who had first worn that helmet plate, what do we know about their violent, cold, vivid world?

The defender of earls then

Commanded that eight steeds with bridles

Gold-plated, gleaming, be guided to hallward

Inside the building; on one of them stood then

An art-broidered saddle embellished with jewels

The Anglo-Saxons predated what we think of as England*--they were only two of a number of Germanic tribes that surged into the power vacuum that was the British isles after Shit Started Getting Real in the Roman Empire in the early 400s and onward [when the Romans pulled out of Britain because their empire was busy falling apart. You know how it is]. Everyone knows the date 1066, when William the Conqueror [or the Bastard, if you prefer--he answered to both names] won the Battle of Hastings**...but there was nearly 700 hundred years between the pullout of the Romans, and the appearance of the Normans [who were really Vikings just a few generations removed***]. What happened in the intervening years?

Well, an awful lot of fighting, mainly. The Germanic tribes--the Angles, the Saxons, the Jutes, the Frisians, all swept across the North Sea like a cold wind, all part of what the Germans call the Völkerwanderung, the Migration of Peoples, a long, long period from the 400s AD to roughly 900 or so, when seemingly every people in Europe was infected with restlessness and had to move, to go, to invade, to conquer.

Two of these tribe (the Visigoths and the Vandals) sacked Rome--in the same century! Before that Rome hadn't been sacked for 800 years but by the 5th century, things had deteriorated so badly in the Empire that a horde of illiterate long-haired tribesmen was able to bring down the Caput Mundi.

What were they seeking? What were they trying to accomplish? What caused so many kind of peoples, so many tribes and clans and kindred to pick up and move across the landmasses of Europe?

No one really knows.

Which brings us back to this glittering, alluring pile of gold, the perfect fancy for these turbulent, hungry times. As vast as the hoard was [the largest EVER from the Anglo-Saxon period!], it offered only a few, tantalizing clues as to its origins. For one thing almost all the objects were military in purpose--no coins, no combs or belts or jewelry, just things like hilt collars, scabbards, helmet plates. For another--most intriguingly--almost none of the pieces were intact; many of them were deliciously mangled and even torn.

"The Folded Cross."  This may have been held aloft into battle, as religious artifacts often were. 

His heart was filled and pierced with enchantment 

and with the desire of dwarves; 

and he gazed motionless, almost forgetting the frightful guardian, 

at the gold beyond price and count.

Like Bilbo, I too was dazzled, my heart was caught by these lovely, delicate, intricately worked objects, precious pieces over which some anonymous, long-dead artisan had worked, imagining his hands twisting the thin strands onto the plates, shaping and polishing the garnets, creating a thing of beauty to last the ages. 

A hilt collar--this would have decorated a sword handle.

Imagining some fierce Danish or Welsh fighter grappling with an enemy, their swords clashing and rending the gorgeous metalwork.

Notice the eagle's head on the left, and the scales on the other end.
The Anglo-Saxons loved visual jokes and puns such as this.

Imagining too how these riches ended up sleeping beneath the earth for over 1ooo years...Perhaps some enterprising Mercian warrior, lucky enough to be on the winning side [the typical Anglo-Saxon practice was for all the losers to be slaughtered], crept out under cover of darkness to strip the bodies and hurriedly buried his stash, hoping to retrieve it later.

Four bright jewels with gold-work embellished.

'Round the roof of the helmet a head-guarder outside

Braided with wires, with bosses was furnished,

That swords-for-the-battle fight-hardened might fail

Boldly to harm him... 

Perhaps the gold was buried in tribute--to an enemy, to a god, perhaps in thanksgiving to a battle won...

No one knows.  

*Although they gave us their name--Angle-land.  According to legend, Pope Gregory eyed a group of fair-haired, fair-skinned slaves in the Roman marketplace and wanted to know their origins.  Upon being told they were Angles, he quipped Non Angli, sed Angeli.  Oh, Gregory, you so funny...

**Which, by the way, was the very LAST successful invasion of the British Isles.  Take THAT, Philip II and Hitler!


*** Norseman --> Norman, just another variation on the Big Incestuous Melting Pot of Northern Europe.

The Wedding of a Prince

I’ve been buried in end-of-year activities (papers, proctoring, studying for finals), hence my sparse updates—but now that the semester is over I couldn’t let any more time pass without offering my congratulations to the new Duke and Duchess of Cambridge!  William was awarded his new title (along with Earl of Strathearn and Baron Carrickfergus—since his birth territorial designation is of Wales, the Queen is invoking the UK superfecta, apparently) by his grandmother the Queen.


As I watched the ceremony, it occurred to me that the funeral of the Princess of Wales had also taken place at Westminster Abbey--and perhaps the most vivid memories some of us have of Princes William and Harry are from that day.

• Those silent crowds throwing flower after flower onto the limousine.
• The princes' long, dreadful, brave march behind their mother’s cortege, accompanied by their father, grandfather and uncle Earl Spencer.  Imagine being 12, 15 years old--and having the cameras of the world on you as you are walking behind your mother's coffin.  Unbelievable.
• The envelope in front of the lilies, with "Mummy" in shaky handwriting.
• The spontaneous applause, like a fire crackling against the windows of the Abbey, from the crowds outside after Earl Spencer's philippic against the Royal family and the media.
• That beautiful hymn, Diana's favorite, "I Vow to Thee My Country."

Strange days, that first week in September 1997.  At the time, I felt that the Queen had had a verrrrry close call—I remember seeing those anguished British tabloid headlines begging for some kind of response.  WHERE IS OUR QUEEN?  WHERE IS HER FLAG?  The Queen initially responded to Diana's death by not responding--by retreating into her estate up north, forgetting that, as C.S. Lewis said, the monarch is not "a private person" and that she owed her people...something more than protocol.  They clearly wanted, needed something more.  The Russian peasants used to call their Tsar and Tsaritsa батюшка and мамочка --Little Father and Little Mother, recognizing the mystical, familial, parental bond between ruler and subject.

SHOW US YOU CARE.  Doesn't get much more direct than that.

The movie The Queen used the events of that week to explore the issues faced by a modern monarchy--in this era, the constitutional monarchy is a construct, an edifice of unspoken understanding between tradition and the people, and the modern ruler forgets that at her peril.  Neither Henry VIII, the most absolute of British kings, nor his great-great-grandnephew Charles I, whose execution ushered in the Commonwealth for a time--Elizabeth II's reign is the latest incarnation of that balancing act that reinvents itself every generation.  “Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown” indeed.


Of course Westminster Abbey is riddled with nuptial history—many, many royal weddings [including those of: the Duke of York (uncle to William and Harry); the Princess Royal (their aunt); Princess Margaret (their great-aunt); and the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh] have taken place there.  The princes' parents Charles and Diana, however, were wed at St. Paul’s over on the other, older side of town, closer to the financial district and Roman Londinium.  Other than The Wedding of the Century, St. Paul's is perhaps most famously known for its mention in the iconic Disney song "Feed the Birds."  Early each day, on the steps of St. Paul's/The little old bird woman comes...

The current St. Paul's (A on the map) was designed by Sir Christopher Wren after the Great Fire of London in 1666 that cleaned out most of the East End--but also finally eradicated the Plague that had reappeared every generation or so since the Black Death.

This semester, I wrote a paper for class on Prince William’s predecessor, William the Conqueror (or the Norman, or the Bastard—he had a plethora of sobriquets from which to choose).  William I is a direct ancestor of our Wills and was actually crowned at the Abbey some two months after he led his Norman troops to victory over the Anglo-Saxons in the Battle of Hastings.  And nearly a thousand years later his namesake stood in that historic sanctuary, pledging his troth to his bride, intoning the ancient Christian responses, surrounded by the ghosts of kings and queens, poets, soldiers, all hidden in the shadows watching as William Arthur Philip Louis became a man in front of his country and the world.


His mother would have been so proud.


Vivat Rex Guillelmi!