Episode 4: Getting Medieval on the English
Are you worried about being called “racist” for agreeing with President Trump’s recent tweets inviting those who hate our country or who are not happy here to leave? Would you prefer that American schools taught a more traditionally English-centered narrative of our nation’s history? Let me tell you a little bit about the Venerable Bede, author of the first history of the English nation.
Video with subscription at Unauthorized.tv (History and Logos Channel)
References
Texts
- Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People), trans. by A. M. Sellar (London: George Bell and Sons, 1907); trans. by Bertram Colgrave, ed. by Judith McClure and Roger Collins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969, 1994)
- Gildas, De excidio et conquestu Britanniae (On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain), trans. by J.A. Giles and T. Habington (1842)
- Geoffry of Monmouth, Historia regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain), trans. by A. Thompson and J.A. Giles (London: Strand, 1842); trans. by Lewis Thorpe (London: Penguin, 1977)
- William of Newburgh, Historia rerum Anglicarum (History of English Affairs), trans. Joseph Stevenson (Seeleys: Fleet Street and Hanover Street, 1856)
How John Fonte thinks we should tell American history
- “A Transformation of the American Regime?,” American Greatness, July 14, 2019
- St. Louis, Missouri, founded by the French in 1764, named after the crusader king St. Louis IX (d. 1270).
- Albuquerque, New Mexico, founded by the Spanish in 1706; according to Wikipedia (I know, my bad!) named after Francisco Fernández de la Cueva, 10th Duke of Alburquerque and Viceroy of New Spain from 1702 to 1711; according to Infogalactic, named by Francisco Cuervo y Valdes after the 8th Duke of Alburquerque, who was Viceroy of New Spain from 1653 to 1660 (NB the additional “r”).
- Pueblo ruins at Bandelier National Monument, twelfth through sixteenth centuries (a.k.a. “medieval”).
- Santa Fe, New Mexico, founded by the Spanish in 1610, full name: “La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Asís” (The Royal Town of the Holy Faith of Saint Francis of Assisi).
- “La Conquistadora,” statue of the Virgin Mary brought to Santa Fe in 1626 by Fray Alonso de Benavides
Vox Day and John Red Eagle’s warning about the Magic Dirt
- Cuckservatives: How “Conservatives” Betrayed America (Castalia House, 2015)
Further reading on the way Bede created the image of himself as an historian
- Walter Goffart, Narrators of Barbarian History (A.D. 550-800): Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede, and Paul the Deacon (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988)
Cover image
- “Non Angli, sed angeli, si Christiani,” Chapel of St. Gregory and St. Augustine, Westminster Cathedral, London
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| The Heptarchy Map from J.G. Bartholomew, A Literary and Historical Atlas of Europe (1914) |
Course Study Guide
This course is excellent. I love that you weave modern politics into your lecture. Was the story of Britain's lost of language, customs, culture and history a cautionary tale? I can't wait to share it with my students.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely a cautionary tale! Thank you for watching!
DeleteProf. Brown---
ReplyDeleteThis particular lecture made me curious about how medievals thought of war between Christianized peoples and the expansion and consolidation of territory even after the supposed main mission of Christendom (to Christianize!) had already been accomplished. Bede attributes the marginalization of the Britons by the Anglo-Saxons to divine providence, as if he's accepting that the end of their story was a chapter in history closed not as much by the actions of the Anglo-Saxons as by God. Now, this is between pagans, so we can just attribute this to fallen human nature, that brigands will do what brigands do. But how can a Christian be a brigand against another Christian? Isn't this giving in to the temptations of the civitas terrena rather than focusing instead on the common civitas Dei, the Church? I think here of Philip the Fair (and I know I'm getting ahead of the course) and his attempts to make the French kingdom and Church into a sort of self-sufficient reality. Isn't this wrong? Are the Christian kingdoms just stubborn holdovers of earlier pagan times, and should be dispensed with? They tend to bring about arbitrary realities that lead to needless bloodshed, like the dispute over the rights to Aquitaine between Philip IV of France and Edward I of England. Can't Aquitaine just be Aquitaine qua Aquitaine, rather than qua property of the French or the English king? Would Christendom not be better expressed as a single empire, which respects regional custom but also seeks to avoid inward conflict? Moreover, the nation-state, or any invading force into regional tradition, causes the extinction of regional genius and tempts the post-moderns into believing that history really is just arbitrary power games. I think of what Augustine said in the City of God about the pirate seized by Alexander the Great, who, when asked "what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, answered with bold pride: 'What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you who do it with a great fleet are styled emperor.'" I know traditional-minded Catholics like to think of the rise of the modern secular state as latrocinium, but I'm not sure the medieval kingdoms can escape this charge either. Would you agree?