The British Settlement Of Brittany

Covering the period AD 350-950, this book by three distinguished French scholars examines why and how, in Late Antiquity and the early Dark Ages, Britons from the Roman province of Britannia went over to Armorica, part of ancient Gaul, and settled there.

"Brittany is rich in arch ...

What is it about Brittany that makes it such a favourite destination for the British? To answer this question, Bretons and Britons explores the long history of the Bretons, from the time of the first farmers around 5400 BC to the present, and the very close relationship they have had with their British neighbours throughout this time. More than simply a history of a people, Bretons and Britons is also the author's homage to a country and a people he has come to admire over decades of engagement. Underlying the story throughout is the tale of the Bretons' fierce struggle to maintain their distinctive identity. As a peninsula people living on a westerly excrescence of Europe they were surrounded on three sides by the sea, which gave them some protection from outside interference, but their landward border was constantly threatened - not only by succeeding waves of Romans, Franks, and Vikings, but also by the growing power of the French state. It was the sea that gave the Bretons strength and helped them in their struggle for independence. They shared in the culture of Atlantic-facing Europe, and from the eighteenth century, when a fascination for the Celts was beginning to sweep Europe, they were able to present themselves as the direct successors of the ancient Celts along with the Cornish, Welsh, Scots, and Irish. This gave them a new strength and a new pride. It is this spirit that is still very much alive today.

This volume focuses on Wendy Davies's work on early medieval Breton texts and their implications. Beginning with core analyses of the Redon and Landévennec cartularies, it continues with papers that tease out some of the key social implications of the 9th-century Redon material - on the nature of political power, on rural communities, on the settlement of disputes, and on transmission of property. While the Redon charters have long been known as a source of fundamental importance for Breton history, the author's database (established in the 1980s) allowed much greater understanding of the role of individuals - at all social levels, and particularly peasant level - than had previously been possible. Attention to the detail of the east Breton past also includes papers on some of the results of her fieldwork, on building stone in particular. Early medieval Brittany is not merely interesting in itself (and it is certainly not some Celtic backwater): Breton evidence can usefully be differentiated from the evidence of other Celtic areas and has a significant role in wider issues of European history. As well as papers on the familiar themes of kingship, rulership, cult sites and cemeteries, the final section highlights the distinctive quality of the Breton evidence for the protection of sacred and personal space, for slavery and serfdom and for village-level courts.

New essays shed light on the mysterious St Samson of Dol and his Vita.

This book offers a new assessment of early Christianity in south-west Britain from the fourth to the tenth centuries, a rich period which includes the transition from Roman to native British to Saxon models of church. The book will be based on evidence from archaeological excavations, early texts and recent critical scholarship and cover Wessex, Devon and Cornwall. In the south-west, Wessex provides the greatest evidence of Roman Christianity. The fifth-century Dorset villas of Frampton and Hinton St Mary, with their complex baptistery mosaics, indicate the presence of sophisticated Christian house churches. The fact that these two Roman villas are only 15 miles apart suggests a network of small Christian communities in this region. The author uses evidence from St Patrick’s fifth-century ‘Confessions’ to describe how members of a villa house church lived. Wessex was slowly Christianised: in Gloucestershire, the pagan healing sanctuary at Chedworth provides evidence of later use as a Christian baptistery; at Bradford on Avon in Wiltshire, a baptistery was dug into the mosaic floor of an imposing villa, which may by then have been owned by a bishop. In Somerset a number of recently excavated sites demonstrate the transition from a pagan temple to a Christian church. Beside the pagan temple at Lamyatt, later female burials suggest, unusually, a small monastic group of women. Wells cathedral grew beside the site of a Roman villa’s funeral chapel. In Street, a large oval enclosure indicates the probable site of a ‘Celtic’ monastery. Early Christian cemeteries have been excavated at Shepton Mallet and elsewhere. Lundy Island, off the Devon coast, provides evidence of a Celtic monastery, with its inscribed stones that commemorate early monks. At Exeter, a Saxon anthology includes numerous riddles, one of which describes in detail the production of an illuminated manuscript in a south-western monastery. Oliver Padel’s meticulous documentation of Cornish place-names has demonstrated that, of all the Celtic regions, Cornwall has by far the highest number of dedications to a single, otherwise unknown individual, typically consisting of a small church and a farm by the sea. These small monastic ‘cells’ have hitherto received little attention as a model of church in early British Christianity, and the latter part of the text focuses on various aspects of this model, as lived out in coastal and in upland settlements, on islands, and in relation to larger Breton monasteries. Study of 60 Breton sites has demonstrated possible connections between larger Breton monasteries and smaller Cornish cells.

What is it about Brittany that makes it such a favourite destination for the British? To answer this question, Bretons and Britons explores the long history of the Bretons, from the time of the first farmers around 5400 BC to the present, and the very close relationship they have had with their British neighbours throughout this time. More than simply a history of a people, Bretons and Britons is also the author's homage to a country and a people he has come to admire over decades of engagement. Underlying the story throughout is the tale of the Bretons' fierce struggle to maintain their distinctive identity. As a peninsula people living on a westerly excrescence of Europe they were surrounded on three sides by the sea, which gave them some protection from outside interference, but their landward border was constantly threatened - not only by succeeding waves of Romans, Franks, and Vikings, but also by the growing power of the French state. It was the sea that gave the Bretons strength and helped them in their struggle for independence. They shared in the culture of Atlantic-facing Europe, and from the eighteenth century, when a fascination for the Celts was beginning to sweep Europe, they were able to present themselves as the direct successors of the ancient Celts along with the Cornish, Welsh, Scots, and Irish. This gave them a new strength and a new pride. It is this spirit that is still very much alive today.