title: Chinese language

text: The official Chinese designation for the major branches of Chinese is "fāngyán" (, literally "regional speech"), whereas the more closely related varieties within these are called "dìdiǎn fāngyán" (/ "local speech"). Conventional English-language usage in Chinese linguistics is to use "dialect" for the speech of a particular place (regardless of status) and "dialect group" for a regional grouping such as Mandarin or Wu. Because varieties from different groups are not mutually intelligible, some scholars prefer to describe Wu and others as separate languages. Jerry Norman called this practice misleading, pointing out that Wu, which itself contains many mutually unintelligible varieties, could not be properly called a single language under the same criterion, and that the same is true for each of the other groups.


title: Chinese language

text: Mutual intelligibility is considered by some linguists to be the main criterion for determining whether varieties are separate languages or dialects of a single language, although others do not regard it as decisive, particularly when cultural factors interfere as they do with Chinese. As explains, linguists often ignore mutual intelligibility when varieties share intelligibility with a central variety (i.e. prestige variety, such as Standard Mandarin), as the issue requires some careful handling when mutual intelligibility is inconsistent with language identity. John DeFrancis argues that it is inappropriate to refer to Mandarin, Wu and so on as "dialects" because the mutual unintelligibility between them is too great. On the other hand, he also objects to considering them as separate languages, as it incorrectly implies a set of disruptive "religious, economic, political, and other differences" between speakers that exist, for example, between French Catholics and English Protestants in Canada, but not between speakers of Cantonese and Mandarin in China, owing to China's near-uninterrupted history of centralized government.


title: Chinese language

text: Because of the difficulties involved in determining the difference between language and dialect, other terms have been proposed. These include "vernacular", "lect", "regionalect", "topolect", and "variety".


title: Chinese language

text: Most Chinese people consider the spoken varieties as one single language because speakers share a common culture and history, as well as a shared national identity and a common written form.


title: Chinese language

text: The phonological structure of each syllable consists of a nucleus that has a vowel (which can be a monophthong, diphthong, or even a triphthong in certain varieties), preceded by an onset (a single consonant, or consonant+glide; zero onset is also possible), and followed (optionally) by a coda consonant; a syllable also carries a tone. There are some instances where a vowel is not used as a nucleus. An example of this is in Cantonese, where the nasal sonorant consonants and can stand alone as their own syllable.


title: Chinese language

text: In Mandarin much more than in other spoken varieties, most syllables tend to be open syllables, meaning they have no coda (assuming that a final glide is not analyzed as a coda), but syllables that do have codas are restricted to nasals , , , the retroflex approximant , and voiceless stops , , , or . Some varieties allow most of these codas, whereas others, such as Standard Chinese, are limited to only , , and .


title: Chinese language

text: The number of sounds in the different spoken dialects varies, but in general there has been a tendency to a reduction in sounds from Middle Chinese. The Mandarin dialects in particular have experienced a dramatic decrease in sounds and so have far more multisyllabic words than most other spoken varieties. The total number of syllables in some varieties is therefore only about a thousand, including tonal variation, which is only about an eighth as many as English.


title: Chinese language

text: All varieties of spoken Chinese use tones to distinguish words. A few dialects of north China may have as few as three tones, while some dialects in south China have up to 6 or 12 tones, depending on how one counts. One exception from this is Shanghainese which has reduced the set of tones to a two-toned pitch accent system much like modern Japanese.


title: Chinese language

text: A very common example used to illustrate the use of tones in Chinese is the application of the four tones of Standard Chinese (along with the neutral tone) to the syllable "ma". The tones are exemplified by the following five Chinese words:


title: Chinese language

text: Standard Cantonese, in contrast, has six tones. Historically, finals that end in a stop consonant were considered to be "checked tones" and thus counted separately for a total of nine tones. However, they are considered to be duplicates in modern linguistics and are no longer counted as such:


title: Chinese language

text: Chinese is often described as a "monosyllabic" language. However, this is only partially correct. It is largely accurate when describing Classical Chinese and Middle Chinese; in Classical Chinese, for example, perhaps 90% of words correspond to a single syllable and a single character. In the modern varieties, it is usually the case that a morpheme (unit of meaning) is a single syllable; in contrast, English has many multi-syllable morphemes, both bound and free, such as "seven", "elephant", "para-" and "-able".


title: Chinese language

text: Some of the conservative southern varieties of modern Chinese have largely monosyllabic words, especially among the more basic vocabulary. In modern Mandarin, however, most nouns, adjectives and verbs are largely disyllabic. A significant cause of this is phonological attrition. Sound change over time has steadily reduced the number of possible syllables. In modern Mandarin, there are now only about 1,200 possible syllables, including tonal distinctions, compared with about 5,000 in Vietnamese (still largely monosyllabic) and over 8,000 in English.


title: Chinese language

text: This phonological collapse has led to a corresponding increase in the number of homophones. As an example, the small Langenscheidt Pocket Chinese Dictionary lists six words that are commonly pronounced as "shí" (tone 2): 'ten'; / 'real, actual'; / 'know (a person), recognize'; 'stone'; / 'time'; 'food, eat'. These were all pronounced differently in Early Middle Chinese; in William H. Baxter's transcription they were , , , , and respectively. They are still pronounced differently in today's Cantonese; in Jyutping they are "sap9", "sat9", "sik7", "sek9", "si4", "sik9". In modern spoken Mandarin, however, tremendous ambiguity would result if all of these words could be used as-is; Yuen Ren Chao's modern poem Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den exploits this, consisting of 92 characters all pronounced "shi". As such, most of these words have been replaced (in speech, if not in writing) with a longer, less-ambiguous compound. Only the first one, 'ten', normally appears as such when spoken; the rest are normally replaced with, respectively, "shíjì" / (lit. 'actual-connection'); "rènshi" / (lit. 'recognize-know'); "shítou" / (lit. 'stone-head'); "shíjiān" / (lit. 'time-interval'); "shíwù" (lit. 'foodstuff'). In each case, the homophone was disambiguated by adding another morpheme, typically either a synonym or a generic word of some sort (for example, 'head', 'thing'), the purpose of which is to indicate which of the possible meanings of the other, homophonic syllable should be selected.


title: Chinese language

text: However, when one of the above words forms part of a compound, the disambiguating syllable is generally dropped and the resulting word is still disyllabic. For example, "shí" alone, not "shítou" /, appears in compounds meaning 'stone-', for example, "shígāo" 'plaster' (lit. 'stone cream'), "shíhuī" 'lime' (lit. 'stone dust'), "shíkū" 'grotto' (lit. 'stone cave'), "shíyīng" 'quartz' (lit. 'stone flower'), "shíyóu" 'petroleum' (lit. 'stone oil').


title: Chinese language

text: Most modern varieties of Chinese have the tendency to form new words through disyllabic, trisyllabic and tetra-character compounds. In some cases, monosyllabic words have become disyllabic without compounding, as in "kūlong" from "kǒng" 孔; this is especially common in Jin.


title: Chinese language

text: Chinese morphology is strictly bound to a set number of syllables with a fairly rigid construction. Although many of these single-syllable morphemes ("zì", ) can stand alone as individual words, they more often than not form multi-syllabic compounds, known as "cí" (/), which more closely resembles the traditional Western notion of a word. A Chinese "cí" ('word') can consist of more than one character-morpheme, usually two, but there can be three or more.


title: Chinese language

text: All varieties of modern Chinese are analytic languages, in that they depend on syntax (word order and sentence structure) rather than morphology—i.e., changes in form of a word—to indicate the word's function in a sentence. In other words, Chinese has very few grammatical inflections—it possesses no tenses, no voices, no numbers (singular, plural; though there are plural markers, for example for personal pronouns), and only a few articles (i.e., equivalents to "the, a, an" in English).


title: Chinese language

text: They make heavy use of grammatical particles to indicate aspect and mood. In Mandarin Chinese, this involves the use of particles like "le" (perfective), "hái" / ('still'), "yǐjīng" / ('already'), and so on.


title: Chinese language

text: Chinese has a subject–verb–object word order, and like many other languages of East Asia, makes frequent use of the topic–comment construction to form sentences. Chinese also has an extensive system of classifiers and measure words, another trait shared with neighboring languages like Japanese and Korean. Other notable grammatical features common to all the spoken varieties of Chinese include the use of serial verb construction, pronoun dropping and the related subject dropping.


title: Chinese language

text: The entire Chinese character corpus since antiquity comprises well over 50,000 characters, of which only roughly 10,000 are in use and only about 3,000 are frequently used in Chinese media and newspapers. However Chinese characters should not be confused with Chinese words. Because most Chinese words are made up of two or more characters, there are many more Chinese words than characters. A more accurate equivalent for a Chinese character is the morpheme, as characters represent the smallest grammatical units with individual meanings in the Chinese language.


title: Chinese language

text: Estimates of the total number of Chinese words and lexicalized phrases vary greatly. The "Hanyu Da Zidian", a compendium of Chinese characters, includes 54,678 head entries for characters, including bone oracle versions. The "Zhonghua Zihai" (1994) contains 85,568 head entries for character definitions, and is the largest reference work based purely on character and its literary variants. The CC-CEDICT project (2010) contains 97,404 contemporary entries including idioms, technology terms and names of political figures, businesses and products. The 2009 version of the Webster's Digital Chinese Dictionary (WDCD), based on CC-CEDICT, contains over 84,000 entries.


title: Chinese language

text: The most comprehensive pure linguistic Chinese-language dictionary, the 12-volume "Hanyu Da Cidian", records more than 23,000 head Chinese characters and gives over 370,000 definitions. The 1999 revised "Cihai", a multi-volume encyclopedic dictionary reference work, gives 122,836 vocabulary entry definitions under 19,485 Chinese characters, including proper names, phrases and common zoological, geographical, sociological, scientific and technical terms.


title: Chinese language

text: The 7th (2016) edition of "Xiandai Hanyu Cidian", an authoritative one-volume dictionary on modern standard Chinese language as used in mainland China, has 13,000 head characters and defines 70,000 words.


title: Chinese language

text: Like any other language, Chinese has absorbed a sizable number of loanwords from other cultures. Most Chinese words are formed out of native Chinese morphemes, including words describing imported objects and ideas. However, direct phonetic borrowing of foreign words has gone on since ancient times.


title: Chinese language

text: Some early Indo-European loanwords in Chinese have been proposed, notably "mì" "honey", / "shī" "lion," and perhaps also / "mǎ" "horse", / "zhū" "pig", "quǎn" "dog", and / "é" "goose".


title: Chinese language

text: Ancient words borrowed from along the Silk Road since Old Chinese include "pútáo" "grape", "shíliu"/"shíliú" "pomegranate" and / "shīzi" "lion". Some words were borrowed from Buddhist scriptures, including "Fó" "Buddha" and / "Púsà" "bodhisattva." Other words came from nomadic peoples to the north, such as "hútòng" "hutong". Words borrowed from the peoples along the Silk Road, such as "grape," generally have Persian etymologies. Buddhist terminology is generally derived from Sanskrit or Pāli, the liturgical languages of North India. Words borrowed from the nomadic tribes of the Gobi, Mongolian or northeast regions generally have Altaic etymologies, such as "pípá", the Chinese lute, or "lào"/"luò" "cheese" or "yogurt", but from exactly which source is not always clear.


title: Chinese language

text: Modern neologisms are primarily translated into Chinese in one of three ways: free translation ("calque", or by meaning), phonetic translation (by sound), or a combination of the two. Today, it is much more common to use existing Chinese morphemes to coin new words to represent imported concepts, such as technical expressions and international scientific vocabulary. Any Latin or Greek etymologies are dropped and converted into the corresponding Chinese characters (for example, "anti-" typically becomes "", literally "opposite"), making them more comprehensible for Chinese but introducing more difficulties in understanding foreign texts. For example, the word "telephone" was initially loaned phonetically as / (Shanghainese: "télífon" , Mandarin: "délǜfēng") during the 1920s and widely used in Shanghai, but later / "diànhuà" (lit. "electric speech"), built out of native Chinese morphemes, became prevalent ( is in fact from the Japanese "denwa"; see below for more Japanese loans). Other examples include / "diànshì" (lit. "electric vision") for television, / "diànnǎo" (lit. "electric brain") for computer; / "shǒujī" (lit. "hand machine") for mobile phone, / "lányá" (lit. "blue tooth") for Bluetooth, and / "wǎngzhì" (lit. "internet logbook") for blog in Hong Kong and Macau Cantonese. Occasionally half-transliteration, half-translation compromises are accepted, such as / "hànbǎobāo" ( "hànbǎo" "Hamburg" + "bāo" "bun") for "hamburger". Sometimes translations are designed so that they sound like the original while incorporating Chinese morphemes (phono-semantic matching), such as / Mǎlì'ào for the video game character Mario. This is often done for commercial purposes, for example / "bēnténg" (lit. "dashing-leaping") for Pentium and / "Sàibǎiwèi" (lit. "better-than hundred tastes") for Subway restaurants.


title: Chinese language

text: Foreign words, mainly proper nouns, continue to enter the Chinese language by transcription according to their pronunciations. This is done by employing Chinese characters with similar pronunciations. For example, "Israel" becomes "Yǐsèliè", "Paris" becomes "Bālí". A rather small number of direct transliterations have survived as common words, including / "shāfā" "sofa", / "mǎdá" "motor", "yōumò" "humor", / "luóji"/"luójí" "logic", / "shímáo" "smart, fashionable", and "xiēsīdǐlǐ" "hysterics". The bulk of these words were originally coined in the Shanghai dialect during the early 20th century and were later loaned into Mandarin, hence their pronunciations in Mandarin may be quite off from the English. For example, / "sofa" and / "motor" in Shanghainese sound more like their English counterparts. Cantonese differs from Mandarin with some transliterations, such as "so faa" "sofa" and "mo daa" "motor".


title: Chinese language

text: Western foreign words representing Western concepts have influenced Chinese since the 20th century through transcription. From French came "bālěi" "ballet" and / "xiāngbīn", "champagne"; from Italian, "kāfēi" "caffè". English influence is particularly pronounced. From early 20th century Shanghainese, many English words are borrowed, such as / "gāoěrfū" "golf" and the above-mentioned / "shāfā" "sofa". Later, the United States soft influences gave rise to "dísikē"/"dísīkē" "disco", / "kělè" "cola", and "mínǐ" "mini [skirt]". Contemporary colloquial Cantonese has distinct loanwords from English, such as "kaa tung" "cartoon", "gei lou" "gay people", "dik si" "taxi", and "baa si" "bus". With the rising popularity of the Internet, there is a current vogue in China for coining English transliterations, for example, / "fěnsī" "fans", "hēikè" "hacker" (lit. "black guest"), and "bókè" "blog". In Taiwan, some of these transliterations are different, such as "hàikè" for "hacker" and "bùluògé" for "blog" (lit. "interconnected tribes").


title: Chinese language

text: Another result of the English influence on Chinese is the appearance in Modern Chinese texts of so-called / "zìmǔcí" (lit. "lettered words") spelled with letters from the English alphabet. This has appeared in magazines, newspapers, on web sites, and on TV: / "3rd generation cell phones" ( "sān" "three" + G "generation" + / "shǒujī" "mobile phones"), "IT circles" (IT "information technology" + "jiè" "industry"), HSK ("Hànyǔ Shuǐpíng Kǎoshì", /), GB ("Guóbiāo", /), / (CIF "Cost, Insurance, Freight" + / "jià" "price"), "e-home" (e "electronic" + "jiātíng" "home"), / "wireless era" (W "wireless" + / "shídài" "era"), "TV watchers" (TV "television" + "zú" "social group; clan"), / "post-PC era" (/ "hòu" "after/post-" + PC "personal computer" + /), and so on.


title: Chinese language

text: Since the 20th century, another source of words has been Japanese using existing kanji (Chinese characters used in Japanese). Japanese re-molded European concepts and inventions into , and many of these words have been re-loaned into modern Chinese. Other terms were coined by the Japanese by giving new senses to existing Chinese terms or by referring to expressions used in classical Chinese literature. For example, "jīngjì" (/; "keizai" in Japanese), which in the original Chinese meant "the workings of the state", was narrowed to "economy" in Japanese; this narrowed definition was then reimported into Chinese. As a result, these terms are virtually indistinguishable from native Chinese words: indeed, there is some dispute over some of these terms as to whether the Japanese or Chinese coined them first. As a result of this loaning, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese share a corpus of linguistic terms describing modern terminology, paralleling the similar corpus of terms built from Greco-Latin and shared among European languages.


title: Chinese language

text: The Chinese orthography centers on Chinese characters, which are written within imaginary square blocks, traditionally arranged in vertical columns, read from top to bottom down a column, and right to left across columns, despite alternative arrangement with rows of characters from left to right within a row and from top to bottom across rows (like English and other Western writing systems) having become more popular since the 20th century. Chinese characters denote morphemes independent of phonetic variation in different languages. Thus the character ("one") is uttered in Standard Chinese, in Cantonese and "it" in Hokkien (a form of Min).


title: Chinese language

text: Most written Chinese documents in the modern time, especially the more formal ones, are created using the grammar and syntax of the Standard Mandarin Chinese variants, regardless of dialectical background of the author or targeted audience. This replaced the old writing language standard of Literary Chinese before the 20th century. However, vocabularies from different Chinese-speaking areas have diverged, and the divergence can be observed in written Chinese.


title: Chinese language

text: Meanwhile, colloquial forms of various Chinese language variants have also been written down by their users, especially in less formal settings. The most prominent example of this is the written colloquial form of Cantonese, which has become quite popular in tabloids, instant messaging applications, and on the internet amongst Hong-Kongers and Cantonese-speakers elsewhere.


title: Chinese language

text: Because some Chinese variants have diverged and developed a number of unique morphemes that are not found in Standard Mandarin (despite all other common morphemes), unique characters rarely used in Standard Chinese have also been created or inherited from archaic literary standard to represent these unique morphemes. For example, characters like and for Cantonese and Hakka, are actively used in both languages while being considered archaic or unused in standard written Chinese.


title: Chinese language

text: The Chinese had no uniform phonetic transcription system for most of its speakers until the mid-20th century, although enunciation patterns were recorded in early rime books and dictionaries. Early Indian translators, working in Sanskrit and Pali, were the first to attempt to describe the sounds and enunciation patterns of Chinese in a foreign language. After the 15th century, the efforts of Jesuits and Western court missionaries resulted in some Latin character transcription/writing systems, based on various variants of Chinese languages. Some of these Latin character based systems are still being used to write various Chinese variants in the modern era.


title: Chinese language

text: In Hunan, women in certain areas write their local Chinese language variant in Nü Shu, a syllabary derived from Chinese characters. The Dungan language, considered by many a dialect of Mandarin, is nowadays written in Cyrillic, and was previously written in the Arabic script. The Dungan people are primarily Muslim and live mainly in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Russia; some of the related Hui people also speak the language and live mainly in China.


title: Chinese language

text: Each Chinese character represents a monosyllabic Chinese word or morpheme. In 100 CE, the famed Han dynasty scholar Xu Shen classified characters into six categories, namely pictographs, simple ideographs, compound ideographs, phonetic loans, phonetic compounds and derivative characters. Of these, only 4% were categorized as pictographs, including many of the simplest characters, such as "rén" (human), "rì" (sun), "shān" (mountain; hill), "shuǐ" (water). Between 80% and 90% were classified as phonetic compounds such as "chōng" (pour), combining a phonetic component "zhōng" (middle) with a semantic radical (water). Almost all characters created since have been made using this format. The 18th-century Kangxi Dictionary recognized 214 radicals.


title: Chinese language

text: Modern characters are styled after the regular script. Various other written styles are also used in Chinese calligraphy, including seal script, cursive script and clerical script. Calligraphy artists can write in traditional and simplified characters, but they tend to use traditional characters for traditional art.


title: Chinese language

text: There are currently two systems for Chinese characters. The traditional system, used in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau and Chinese speaking communities (except Singapore and Malaysia) outside mainland China, takes its form from standardized character forms dating back to the late Han dynasty. The Simplified Chinese character system, introduced by the People's Republic of China in 1954 to promote mass literacy, simplifies most complex traditional glyphs to fewer strokes, many to common cursive shorthand variants. Singapore, which has a large Chinese community, was the second nation to officially adopt simplified characters, although it has also become the "de facto" standard for younger ethnic Chinese in Malaysia.


title: Chinese language

text: The Internet provides the platform to practice reading these alternative systems, be it traditional or simplified. Most Chinese users in the modern era are capable of, although not necessarily comfortable with, reading (but not writing) the alternative system, through experience and guesswork.


title: Chinese language

text: A well-educated Chinese reader today recognizes approximately 4,000 to 6,000 characters; approximately 3,000 characters are required to read a Mainland newspaper. The PRC government defines literacy amongst workers as a knowledge of 2,000 characters, though this would be only functional literacy. School-children typically learn around 2,000 characters whereas scholars may memorize up to 10,000. A large unabridged dictionary, like the Kangxi Dictionary, contains over 40,000 characters, including obscure, variant, rare, and archaic characters; fewer than a quarter of these characters are now commonly used.


title: Chinese language

text: Romanization is the process of transcribing a language into the Latin script. There are many systems of romanization for the Chinese varieties, due to the lack of a native phonetic transcription until modern times. Chinese is first known to have been written in Latin characters by Western Christian missionaries in the 16th century.


title: Chinese language

text: Today the most common romanization standard for Standard Mandarin is "Hanyu Pinyin", introduced in 1956 by the People's Republic of China, and later adopted by Singapore and Taiwan. Pinyin is almost universally employed now for teaching standard spoken Chinese in schools and universities across the Americas, Australia, and Europe. Chinese parents also use Pinyin to teach their children the sounds and tones of new words. In school books that teach Chinese, the Pinyin romanization is often shown below a picture of the thing the word represents, with the Chinese character alongside.


title: Chinese language

text: The second-most common romanization system, the Wade–Giles, was invented by Thomas Wade in 1859 and modified by Herbert Giles in 1892. As this system approximates the phonology of Mandarin Chinese into English consonants and vowels, i.e. it is largely an Anglicization, it may be particularly helpful for beginner Chinese speakers of an English-speaking background. Wade–Giles was found in academic use in the United States, particularly before the 1980s, and until 2009 was widely used in Taiwan.


title: Chinese language

text: When used within European texts, the tone transcriptions in both pinyin and Wade–Giles are often left out for simplicity; Wade–Giles' extensive use of apostrophes is also usually omitted. Thus, most Western readers will be much more familiar with "Beijing" than they will be with "Běijīng" (pinyin), and with "Taipei" than "T'ai²-pei³" (Wade–Giles). This simplification presents syllables as homophones which really are none, and therefore exaggerates the number of homophones almost by a factor of four.


title: Chinese language

text: Other systems of romanization for Chinese include Gwoyeu Romatzyh, the French EFEO, the Yale system (invented during WWII for U.S. troops), as well as separate systems for Cantonese, Min Nan, Hakka, and other Chinese varieties.


title: Chinese language

text: Chinese varieties have been phonetically transcribed into many other writing systems over the centuries. The 'Phags-pa script, for example, has been very helpful in reconstructing the pronunciations of premodern forms of Chinese.


title: Chinese language

text: Zhuyin (colloquially "bopomofo"), a semi-syllabary is still widely used in Taiwan's elementary schools to aid standard pronunciation. Although zhuyin characters are reminiscent of katakana script, there is no source to substantiate the claim that Katakana was the basis for the zhuyin system. A comparison table of zhuyin to pinyin exists in the zhuyin article. Syllables based on pinyin and zhuyin can also be compared by looking at the following articles:


title: Chinese language

text: There are also at least two systems of cyrillization for Chinese. The most widespread is the Palladius system.


title: Chinese language

text: With the growing importance and influence of China's economy globally, Mandarin instruction has been gaining popularity in schools throughout East Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Western world.


title: Chinese language

text: Besides Mandarin, Cantonese is the only other Chinese language that is widely taught as a foreign language, largely due to the economic and cultural influence of Hong Kong and its widespread usage among significant Overseas Chinese communities.


title: Chinese language

text: In 1991 there were 2,000 foreign learners taking China's official Chinese Proficiency Test (also known as HSK, comparable to the English Cambridge Certificate), then the number of candidates had risen sharply to 117,660 in 2005 and 750,000 in 2010.


title: Ford v Ferrari

text: Ford v Ferrari (titled Le Mans '66 in some European countries) is a 2019 American sports drama film directed by James Mangold and written by Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth, and Jason Keller. It stars Matt Damon and Christian Bale, with Jon Bernthal, Caitríona Balfe, Tracy Letts, Josh Lucas, Noah Jupe, Remo Girone, and Ray McKinnon in supporting roles. The plot follows a determined team of American and British engineers and designers, led by automotive designer Carroll Shelby and his British driver, Ken Miles, who are hired by Henry Ford II and Lee Iacocca to build a race car to defeat the perennially dominant Italian racing team Scuderia Ferrari at the 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans race in France.


title: Ford v Ferrari

text: "Ford v Ferrari" had its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival on August 30, 2019, and was theatrically released in the United States on November 15, 2019, by 20th Century Fox. The film grossed $225 million worldwide and received acclaim from critics, who lauded the performances (particularly Bale and Damon), Mangold's direction, the editing, and the racing sequences.


title: Ford v Ferrari

text: It was chosen by the National Board of Review as one of the ten best films of the year, and at the 92nd Academy Awards received four nominations, including Best Picture, and won Best Film Editing and Best Sound Editing. Bale also received nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Drama and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role.


title: Ford v Ferrari

text: In 1963, Ford Motor Company Vice President Lee Iacocca proposes to Henry Ford II to boost their car sales by purchasing Italian car manufacturer Ferrari, dominant in the 24 Hours of Le Mans.


title: Ford v Ferrari

text: Owner Enzo Ferrari uses Ford's offer to secure a deal with Fiat that allows him to retain ownership of the firm's racing team, Scuderia Ferrari. He insults Ford II and the whole Ford Motor Company. Ford orders his racing division to build a car to defeat Ferrari at Le Mans.


title: Ford v Ferrari

text: Iacocca hires Shelby American owner Carroll Shelby, a retired driver who won Le Mans in 1959. Shelby enlists his friend Ken Miles, a hot-tempered British racer and mechanic.


title: Ford v Ferrari

text: Shelby and Miles develop the UK-built Ford GT40 Mk I prototype at Los Angeles International Airport. At the launch of the new Ford Mustang, Miles gives a witheringly rude appraisal of it to Ford Senior Vice President Leo Beebe. Beebe campaigns against sending Miles to the 1965 24 Hours of Le Mans as a public relations liability. Shelby reluctantly excludes Miles and sends Phil Hill and Bruce McLaren to Le Mans. None of the Fords finish.


title: Ford v Ferrari

text: When Ford demands why he should not sack Shelby, Shelby explains that despite the GT40's reliability problems, it instilled fear in Enzo Ferrari by reaching 218 mph (350.8 km/h), on the Mulsanne Straight before breaking down. He says a racing car cannot be designed by committee. Ford tells him to continue the project and report directly to him. During testing of the GT40 Mk II, the recurrent problem of brake fade causes a crash and fire. The team realizes the rules permit replacing the whole brake assembly during the race.


title: Ford v Ferrari

text: In 1966, Beebe takes over the racing division. When he and Ford arrive to inspect the program Shelby locks Beebe in his office and terrifies Ford in a ride in the GT40. Shelby makes a deal with Ford: if Miles wins the 24 Hours of Daytona then he will race at Le Mans. If not, Ford will take full ownership of Shelby American. At Daytona, Beebe enters a second GT40 supported by a NASCAR team with quicker pit stops. Shelby clears Miles to push his car beyond the 7,000 RPM redline, and he wins.


title: Ford v Ferrari

text: At the 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans, Miles struggles with a faulty door during the first lap. He pits to fix it then sets lap records catching the Ferraris. The GT40 suffers brake fade while dicing with the prototype 330 P3 Ferrari of Lorenzo Bandini, so Miles limps into the pits for replacement of the entire braking system. Ferrari protests but Shelby assures race officials it is legal.


title: Ford v Ferrari

text: Miles and Bandini duel on the Mulsanne Straight until the Ferrari engine blows. With Fords in the top three positions, Beebe orders Shelby to have Miles slow down for the other Fords to catch him and give the press a three-car photo finish. Shelby tells Miles what Beebe wants but says it is Miles' call. Miles initially continues to set new lap records, but decides to comply on the final lap.


title: Ford v Ferrari

text: McLaren is declared the winner as, having started behind Miles, his car travelled further overall. Miles is placed second. Shelby accuses Beebe of deliberately costing Miles the win, but an unusually sanguine Miles lets it pass, saying to Shelby "you promised me the drive, not the win". From his vantage point Enzo Ferrari tips his hat to Miles on the track. As they walk off together, Miles tells Shelby they will win Le Mans next time.


title: Ford v Ferrari

text: Two months later, during testing at Riverside International Raceway, a mechanical failure in the J-car kills Miles in a crash. Six months later, Shelby parks outside Miles' widow Mollie's house and hesitates. Miles' son Peter arrives and the two talk about Miles. Shelby gives Peter a wrench that Miles once threw at him in anger.


title: Ford v Ferrari

text: Epilogue text says Ford continued its Le Mans winning streak in 1967, 1968, and 1969, and Miles was posthumously inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 2001.


title: Ford v Ferrari

text: A film based on the rivalry between Ford and Ferrari for the dominance at the Le Mans endurance race had long been in works at 20th Century Fox. Initially, it was going to star Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt from an original screenplay titled "Go Like Hell," by Jason Keller, the name being taken from the book, "Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and" "Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans" by A.J. Baime. The project fell apart, however, after writers Jez Butterworth and John-Henry Butterworth drafted a script and Joseph Kosinski was brought on to direct, due to the budget being too high.


title: Ford v Ferrari

text: On February 5, 2018, it was announced that James Mangold had been brought on board to direct the film based on the previous script by Keller and the Butterworths. Later, Caitríona Balfe, Jon Bernthal, and Noah Jupe joined the cast alongside Christian Bale and Matt Damon in the lead roles. In July 2018, Jack McMullen was cast in the film to play one of Miles's key British mechanics, and Tracy Letts also joined to play Henry Ford II, along with Joe Williamson. In August 2018, JJ Feild was cast in the film to play the automotive engineer Roy Lunn, the head of Ford Advanced vehicles in England and the right-hand man to Henry Ford II. Mangold approached Harrison Ford for a part in the film. Composer Marco Beltrami confirmed in an interview that he would be scoring the film, Beltrami having previously worked with Mangold on "", "The Wolverine" and "Logan".


title: Ford v Ferrari

text: Filming began on July 30, 2018, and lasted for 67 days, taking place in California; New Orleans, Louisiana; Atlanta; Savannah; and Statesboro, Georgia, as well as Le Mans, France. Race scenes that appear in the film as Daytona were filmed at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana; many other race scenes were filmed at a Honda test track in Mojave Valley (doubling for the Willow Springs Raceway) and at the Porsche Experience in Carson (for the Dearborn test track). A few scenes were filmed at tracks and roadways in Georgia such as Hwy 46 in Statesboro, Georgia. The Le Mans grandstands, pits, and garages were replicated at the Agua Dulce Airpark in Agua Dulce. The hangar area where the cars were developed (originally at LAX) was filmed at Ontario International Airport in Ontario, California.


title: Ford v Ferrari

text: "Ford v Ferrari" premiered at the Telluride Film Festival on August 30, 2019, and screened at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 9, 2019. It was subsequently released in the United States on November 15 by 20th Century Fox in 2D, IMAX, and Dolby Cinema formats. It was previously scheduled to be released on June 28.


title: Ford v Ferrari

text: The film was released on digital format by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment on January 28, 2020, and on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray and DVD on February 11, 2020.


title: Ford v Ferrari

text: "Ford v Ferrari" grossed $117.6 million in the United States and Canada, and $107.9 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $225.5 million.


title: Ford v Ferrari

text: In the United States and Canada, the film was released alongside "Charlie's Angels" and "The Good Liar", and was projected to gross $23–30 million from 3,528 theaters in its opening weekend. It made $10.9 million on its first day, including $2.1 million from Thursday night previews. It went on to debut to $31.5 million, topping the box office. In its second weekend the film dropped 50% to $15.7 million, finishing second behind newcomer "Frozen II", and then made $13.2 million in its third weekend (including $19 million over the five-day Thanksgiving frame), finishing third. It continued to hold well in the following weeks, making $6.7 million and $4.1 million in its fourth and fifth weekends.


title: Ford v Ferrari

text: On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of . The website's critics consensus reads, ""Ford v Ferrari" delivers all the polished auto action audiences will expect – and balances it with enough gripping human drama to satisfy non-racing enthusiasts." Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 81 out of 100, based on 47 critics, indicating "universal acclaim." Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film a rare grade of "A+," while those at PostTrak gave it an overall positive score of 87% (with an average 4.5 out of 5 stars), with 68% saying they would definitely recommend it.


title: Ford v Ferrari

text: Mick LaSalle of "San Francisco Chronicle" gave the film a 4 out of 4 stars, saying that it "is what it promises to be, a blast from the past" and writing: ""Ford v Ferrari" could have just been a sports story, dramatizing an interesting chapter in racing, and it would have been fine. But in showing Ford and his minions' constant interference in the dedicated work of Miles and Shelby, this James Mangold film becomes a tale of souls battling the soulless." Eric Kohn of "Indiewire" gave the film a "B", saying that ""Ford v Ferrari" excels at evoking the sheer thrill of the race—'a body moving through space and time', as one character says—and it's compelling enough in those moments to make the case that nothing beats the thrill of competition." "Variety"s Peter DeBruge praised the racing sequences and the performances of Bale and Damon, writing: "The best sports movies aren't so much about the sport as they are the personalities, and these two go big with their performances."


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: The Anglo-Saxons were a cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo-Saxons happened within Britain, and the identity was not merely imported. Anglo-Saxon identity arose from interaction between incoming groups from several Germanic tribes, both amongst themselves, and with indigenous Britons. Many of the natives, over time, adopted Anglo-Saxon culture and language and were assimilated. The Anglo-Saxons established the concept, and the Kingdom, of England, and though the modern English language owes somewhat less than 26% of its words to their language, this includes the vast majority of words used in everyday speech.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: Historically, the Anglo-Saxon period denotes the period in Britain between about 450 and 1066, after their initial settlement and up until the Norman Conquest.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: The early Anglo-Saxon period includes the creation of an English nation, with many of the aspects that survive today, including regional government of shires and hundreds. During this period, Christianity was established and there was a flowering of literature and language. Charters and law were also established. The term "Anglo-Saxon" is popularly used for the language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons in England and southeastern Scotland from at least the mid-5th century until the mid-12th century. In scholarly use, it is more commonly called Old English.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: The history of the Anglo-Saxons is the history of a cultural identity. It developed from divergent groups in association with the people's adoption of Christianity and was integral to the founding of various kingdoms. Threatened by extended Danish Viking invasions and military occupation of eastern England, this identity was re-established; it dominated until after the Norman Conquest. Anglo-Saxon material culture can still be seen in architecture, dress styles, illuminated texts, metalwork and other art. Behind the symbolic nature of these cultural emblems, there are strong elements of tribal and lordship ties. The elite declared themselves kings who developed "burhs", and identified their roles and peoples in Biblical terms. Above all, as archaeologist Helena Hamerow has observed, "local and extended kin groups remained...the essential unit of production throughout the Anglo-Saxon period." The effects persist, as a 2015 study found the genetic makeup of British populations today shows divisions of the tribal political units of the early Anglo-Saxon period.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: The term "Anglo-Saxon" began to be used in the 8th century (in Latin and on the continent) to distinguish "Germanic" groups in Britain from those on the continent (Old Saxony and


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: Anglia in Northern Germany). Catherine Hills summarised the views of many modern scholars in her observation that attitudes towards Anglo-Saxons, and hence the interpretation of their culture and history, have been "more contingent on contemporary political and religious theology as on any kind of evidence."


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: The Old English ethnonym "Angul-Seaxan" comes from the Latin "Angli-Saxones" and became the name of the peoples the English monk Bede called "Angli" around 730 and the British monk Gildas called "Saxones" around 530. Anglo-Saxon is a term that was rarely used by Anglo-Saxons themselves. It is likely they identified as "ængli", "Seaxe" or, more probably, a local or tribal name such as "Mierce", "Cantie", "Gewisse", "Westseaxe", or "Norþanhymbre". After the Viking Age, an Anglo-Scandinavian identity developed in the Danelaw.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: The term "Angli Saxones" seems to have first been used in mainland writing of the 8th century; Paul the Deacon uses it to distinguish the English Saxons from the mainland Saxons ("Ealdseaxe", literally, 'old Saxons'). The name, therefore, seemed to mean "English" Saxons.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: The Christian church seems to have used the word Angli; for example in the story of Pope Gregory I and his remark, ""Non Angli sed angeli"" (not English but angels). The terms "ænglisc" (the language) and "Angelcynn" (the people) were also used by West Saxon King Alfred to refer to the people; in doing so he was following established practice. Bede and Alcuin used "gens Anglorum" to refer to all the Anglo-Saxons: Bede referred to the people of the pre-Christian period as 'Saxons', but all becoming 'Angles' after accepting Christianity (in accordance with Pope Gregory I's use of the word "Anglorum" for the entire mission); Alcuin contrasted 'Saxons' with 'Angles', the former referring only to continental Saxons and the latter being associated with Britain. Bede's choice of terminology contrasted with the norm among his contemporaries, both Angle and Saxon, who collectively identified as 'Saxons' and their country as "Saxonia". Aethelweard also followed Bede's usage, systematically editing all mentions of the word 'Saxon' to 'English'.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: The first use of the term Anglo-Saxon amongst the insular sources is in the titles for Æthelstan around 924: "Angelsaxonum Denorumque gloriosissimus rex" (most glorious king of the Anglo-Saxons and of the Danes) and "rex Angulsexna and Norþhymbra imperator paganorum gubernator Brittanorumque propugnator" (king of the Anglo-Saxons and emperor of the Northumbrians, governor of the pagans, and defender of the Britons). At other times he uses the term "rex Anglorum" (king of the English), which presumably meant both Anglo-Saxons and Danes. Alfred used "Anglosaxonum Rex". The term (King of the English) is used by Æthelred. Cnut the Great, King of Denmark, England, and Norway, in 1021 was the first to refer to the land and not the people with this term: (King of all England). These titles express the sense that the Anglo-Saxons were a Christian people with a king anointed by God.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: The indigenous Common Brittonic speakers referred to Anglo-Saxons as "Saxones" or possibly "Saeson" (the word "Saeson" is the modern Welsh word for 'English people'); the equivalent word in Scottish Gaelic is "Sasannach" and in the Irish language, "Sasanach". Catherine Hills suggests that it is no accident "that the English call themselves by the name sanctified by the Church, as that of a people chosen by God, whereas their enemies use the name originally applied to piratical raiders".


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: The early Anglo-Saxon period covers the history of medieval Britain that starts from the end of Roman rule. It is a period widely known in European history as the Migration Period, also the "Völkerwanderung" ("migration of peoples" in German). This was a period of intensified human migration in Europe from about 375 to 800. The migrants were Germanic tribes such as the Goths, Vandals, Angles, Saxons, Lombards, Suebi, Frisii, and Franks; they were later pushed westwards by the Huns, Avars, Slavs, Bulgars, and Alans. The migrants to Britain might also have included the Huns and Rugini.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: Until AD 400, Roman Britain, the province of "Britannia", was an integral, flourishing part of the Western Roman Empire, occasionally disturbed by internal rebellions or barbarian attacks, which were subdued or repelled by the large contingent of imperial troops stationed in the province. By 410, however, the imperial forces had been withdrawn to deal with crises in other parts of the empire, and the Romano-Britons were left to fend for themselves in what is called the post-Roman or "sub-Roman" period of the 5th century.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: It is now widely accepted that the Anglo-Saxons were not just transplanted Germanic invaders and settlers from the Continent, but the outcome of insular interactions and changes.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: Writing c. 540, Gildas mentions that sometime in the 5th century, a council of leaders in Britain agreed that some land in the east of southern Britain would be given to the Saxons on the basis of a treaty, a "foedus," by which the Saxons would defend the Britons against attacks from the Picts and Scoti in exchange for food supplies. The most contemporaneous textual evidence is the "Chronica Gallica of 452", which records for the year 441: "The British provinces, which to this time had suffered various defeats and misfortunes, are reduced to Saxon rule." This is an earlier date than that of 451 for the "coming of the Saxons" used by Bede in his "Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum," written around 731. It has been argued that Bede misinterpreted his (scanty) sources and that the chronological references in the "Historia Britonnum" yield a plausible date of around 428.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: Gildas recounts how a war broke out between the Saxons and the local population – historian Nick Higham calls it the "War of the Saxon Federates" – which ended shortly after the siege at 'Mons Badonicus'. The Saxons went back to "their eastern home". Gildas calls the peace a "grievous divorce with the barbarians". The price of peace, Higham argues, was a better treaty for the Saxons, giving them the ability to receive tribute from people across the lowlands of Britain. The archaeological evidence agrees with this earlier timescale. In particular, the work of Catherine Hills and Sam Lucy on the evidence of Spong Hill has moved the chronology for the settlement earlier than 450, with a significant number of items now in phases before Bede's date.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: This vision of the Anglo-Saxons exercising extensive political and military power at an early date remains contested. The most developed vision of a continuation in sub-Roman Britain, with control over its own political and military destiny for well over a century, is that of Kenneth Dark, who suggests that the sub-Roman elite survived in culture, politics and military power up to . Bede, however, identifies three phases of settlement: an exploration phase, when mercenaries came to protect the resident population; a migration phase, which was substantial as implied by the statement that "Anglus" was deserted; and an establishment phase, in which Anglo-Saxons started to control areas, implied in Bede's statement about the origins of the tribes.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: Scholars have not reached a consensus on the number of migrants who entered Britain in this period. Härke argues that the figure is around 100,000 to 200,000. Bryan Ward-Perkins also argues for up to 200,000 incomers. Catherine Hills suggests the number is nearer to 20,000. A computer simulation showed that a migration of 250,000 people from mainland Europe could have been accomplished in as little as 38 years. Recent genetic and isotope studies have suggested that the migration, which included both men and women, continued over several centuries, possibly allowing for significantly more new arrivals than has been previously thought. By around 500, communities of Anglo-Saxons were established in southern and eastern Britain.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: Härke and Michael Wood estimate that the British population in the area that eventually became Anglo-Saxon England was around one million by the start of the fifth century; however, what happened to the Britons has been debated. The traditional explanation for their archaeological and linguistic invisibility is that the Anglo-Saxons either killed them or drove them to the mountainous fringes of Britain, a view broadly supported by the few available sources from the period. However, there is evidence of continuity in the systems of landscape and local governance, decreasing the likelihood of such a cataclysmic event, at least in parts of England. Thus, scholars have suggested other, less violent explanations by which the culture of the Anglo-Saxons, whose core area of large-scale settlement was likely restricted to what is now southeastern England, East Anglia and Lincolnshire, could have come to be ubiquitous across lowland Britain. Härke has posited a scenario in which the Anglo-Saxons, in expanding westward, outbred the Britons, eventually reaching a point where their descendants made up a larger share of the population of what was to become England. It has also been proposed that the Britons were disproportionately affected by plagues arriving through Roman trade links, which, combined with a large emigration to Armorica, could have substantially decreased their numbers.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: Even so, there is general agreement that the kingdoms of Wessex, Mercia and Northumbria housed significant numbers of Britons. Härke states that "it is widely accepted that in the north of England, the native population survived to a greater extent than the south," and that in Bernicia, "a small group of immigrants may have replaced the native British elite and took over the kingdom as a going concern." Evidence for the natives in Wessex, meanwhile, can be seen in the late seventh century laws of King Ine, which gave them fewer rights and a lower status than the Saxons. This might have provided an incentive for Britons in the kingdom to adopt Anglo-Saxon culture. Higham points out that "in circumstances where freedom at law, acceptance with the kindred, access to patronage, and the use and possession of weapons were all exclusive to those who could claim Germanic descent, then speaking Old English without Latin or Brittonic inflection had considerable value."


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: There is evidence for a British influence on the emerging Anglo-Saxon elite classes. The Wessex royal line was traditionally founded by a man named Cerdic, an undoubtedly Celtic name cognate to Ceretic (the name of two British kings, ultimately derived from *Corotīcos). This may indicate that Cerdic was a native Briton and that his dynasty became anglicised over time. A number of Cerdic's alleged descendants also possessed Celtic names, including the 'Bretwalda' Ceawlin. The last man in this dynasty to have a Brittonic name was King Caedwalla, who died as late as 689. In Mercia, too, several kings bear seemingly Celtic names, most notably Penda. As far east as Lindsey, the Celtic name "Caedbaed" appears in the list of kings.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: Recent genetic studies, based on data collected from skeletons found in Iron Age, Roman and Anglo-Saxon era burials, have concluded that the ancestry of the modern English population contains large contributions from both Anglo-Saxon migrants and Romano-British natives.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: In the last half of the 6th century, four structures contributed to the development of society; they were the position and freedoms of the "ceorl," the smaller tribal areas coalescing into larger kingdoms, the elite developing from warriors to kings, and Irish monasticism developing under Finnian (who had consulted Gildas) and his pupil Columba.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: The Anglo-Saxon farms of this period are often falsely supposed to be "peasant farms". However, a "ceorl", who was the lowest ranking freeman in early Anglo-Saxon society, was not a peasant but an arms-owning male with the support of a kindred, access to law and the "wergild"; situated at the apex of an extended household working at least one hide of land. The farmer had freedom and rights over lands, with provision of a rent or duty to an overlord who provided only slight lordly input. Most of this land was common outfield arable land (of an outfield-infield system) that provided individuals with the means to build a basis of kinship and group cultural ties.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: The Tribal Hidage lists thirty-five peoples, or tribes, with assessments in hides, which may have originally been defined as the area of land sufficient to maintain one family. The assessments in the "Hidage" reflect the relative size of the provinces. Although varying in size, all thirty-five peoples of the Tribal Hidage were of the same status, in that they were areas which were ruled by their own elite family (or royal houses), and so were assessed independently for payment of tribute. By the end of the sixth century, larger kingdoms had become established on the south or east coasts. They include the provinces of the Jutes of Hampshire and Wight, the South Saxons, Kent, the East Saxons, East Angles, Lindsey and (north of the Humber) Deira and Bernicia. Several of these kingdoms may have had as their initial focus a territory based on a former Roman "civitas".


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: By the end of the sixth century, the leaders of these communities were styling themselves kings, though it should not be assumed that all of them were Germanic in origin. The Bretwalda concept is taken as evidence of a number of early Anglo-Saxon elite families. What Bede seems to imply in his "Bretwalda" is the ability of leaders to extract tribute, overawe and/or protect the small regions, which may well have been relatively short-lived in any one instance. Ostensibly "Anglo-Saxon" dynasties variously replaced one another in this role in a discontinuous but influential and potent roll call of warrior elites. Importantly, whatever their origin or whenever they flourished, these dynasties established their claim to lordship through their links to extended kin, and possibly mythical, ties. As Helen Geake points out, "they all just happened to be related back to Woden".


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: In 565, Columba, a monk from Ireland who studied at the monastic school of Moville under St. Finnian, reached Iona as a self-imposed exile. The influence of the monastery of Iona would grow into what Peter Brown has described as an "unusually extensive spiritual empire," which "stretched from western Scotland deep to the southwest into the heart of Ireland and, to the southeast, it reached down throughout northern Britain, through the influence of its sister monastery Lindisfarne."


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: In June 597 Columba died. At this time, Augustine landed on the Isle of Thanet and proceeded to King Æthelberht's main town of Canterbury. He had been the prior of a monastery in Rome when Pope Gregory the Great chose him in 595 to lead the Gregorian mission to Britain to Christianise the Kingdom of Kent from their native Anglo-Saxon paganism. Kent was probably chosen because Æthelberht had married a Christian princess, Bertha, daughter of Charibert I the king of Paris, who was expected to exert some influence over her husband. Æthelberht was converted to Christianity, churches were established, and wider-scale conversion to Christianity began in the kingdom. Æthelberht's law for Kent, the earliest written code in any Germanic language, instituted a complex system of fines. Kent was rich, with strong trade ties to the continent, and Æthelberht may have instituted royal control over trade. For the first time following the Anglo-Saxon invasion, coins began circulating in Kent during his reign.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: In 635 Aidan, an Irish monk from Iona, chose the Isle of Lindisfarne to establish a monastery which was close to King Oswald's main fortress of Bamburgh. He had been at the monastery in Iona when Oswald asked to be sent a mission to Christianise the Kingdom of Northumbria from their native Anglo-Saxon paganism. Oswald had probably chosen Iona because after his father had been killed he had fled into south-west Scotland and had encountered Christianity, and had returned determined to make Northumbria Christian. Aidan achieved great success in spreading the Christian faith, and since Aidan could not speak English and Oswald had learned Irish during his exile, Oswald acted as Aidan's interpreter when the latter was preaching. Later, Northumberland's patron saint, Saint Cuthbert, was an abbot of the monastery, and then Bishop of Lindisfarne. An anonymous life of Cuthbert written at Lindisfarne is the oldest extant piece of English historical writing, and in his memory a gospel (known as the St Cuthbert Gospel) was placed in his coffin. The decorated leather bookbinding is the oldest intact European binding.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: In 664, the Synod of Whitby was convened and established Roman practice as opposed to Irish practice (in style of tonsure and dates of Easter) as the norm in Northumbria, and thus "brought the Northumbrian church into the mainstream of Roman culture." The episcopal seat of Northumbria was transferred from Lindisfarne to York. Wilfrid, chief advocate for the Roman position, later became Bishop of Northumbria, while Colmán and the Ionan supporters, who did not change their practices, withdrew to Iona.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: By 660, the political map of Lowland Britain had developed with smaller territories coalescing into kingdoms, and from this time larger kingdoms started dominating the smaller kingdoms. The development of kingdoms, with a particular king being recognised as an overlord, developed out of an early loose structure that, Higham believes, is linked back to the original "feodus". The traditional name for this period is the Heptarchy, which has not been used by scholars since the early 20th century as it gives the impression of a single political structure and does not afford the "opportunity to treat the history of any one kingdom as a whole". Simon Keynes suggests that the 8th and 9th century was a period of economic and social flourishing which created stability both below the Thames and above the Humber.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: Middle-lowland Britain was known as the place of the "Mierce", the border or frontier folk, in Latin Mercia. Mercia was a diverse area of tribal groups, as shown by the Tribal Hidage; the peoples were a mixture of Brittonic speaking peoples and "Anglo-Saxon" pioneers and their early leaders had Brittonic names, such as Penda. Although Penda does not appear in Bede's list of great overlords, it would appear from what Bede says elsewhere that he was dominant over the southern kingdoms. At the time of the battle of the river Winwæd, thirty "duces regii" (royal generals) fought on his behalf. Although there are many gaps in the evidence, it is clear that the seventh-century Mercian kings were formidable rulers who were able to exercise a wide-ranging overlordship from their Midland base.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: Mercian military success was the basis of their power; it succeeded against not only 106 kings and kingdoms by winning set-piece battles, but by ruthlessly ravaging any area foolish enough to withhold tribute. There are a number of casual references scattered throughout the Bede's history to this aspect of Mercian military policy. Penda is found ravaging Northumbria as far north as Bamburgh and only a miraculous intervention from Aidan prevents the complete destruction of the settlement. In 676 Æthelred conducted a similar ravaging in Kent and caused such damage in the Rochester diocese that two successive bishops gave up their position because of lack of funds. In these accounts there is a rare glimpse of the realities of early Anglo-Saxon overlordship and how a widespread overlordship could be established in a relatively short period. By the middle of the 8th century, other kingdoms of southern Britain were also affected by Mercian expansionism. The East Saxons seem to have lost control of London, Middlesex and Hertfordshire to Æthelbald, although the East Saxon homelands do not seem to have been affected, and the East Saxon dynasty continued into the ninth century. The Mercian influence and reputation reached its peak when, in the late 8th century, the most powerful European ruler of the age, the Frankish king Charlemagne, recognised the Mercian King Offa's power and accordingly treated him with respect, even if this could have been just flattery.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: Michael Drout calls this period the "Golden Age", when learning flourished with a renaissance in classical knowledge. The growth and popularity of monasticism was not an entirely internal development, with influence from the continent shaping Anglo-Saxon monastic life. In 669 Theodore, a Greek-speaking monk originally from Tarsus in Asia Minor, arrived in Britain to become the eighth Archbishop of Canterbury. He was joined the following year by his colleague Hadrian, a Latin-speaking African by origin and former abbot of a monastery in Campania (near Naples). One of their first tasks at Canterbury was the establishment of a school; and according to Bede (writing some sixty years later), they soon "attracted a crowd of students into whose minds they daily poured the streams of wholesome learning". As evidence of their teaching, Bede reports that some of their students, who survived to his own day, were as fluent in Greek and Latin as in their native language. Bede does not mention Aldhelm in this connection; but we know from a letter addressed by Aldhelm to Hadrian that he too must be numbered among their students.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: Aldhelm wrote in elaborate and grandiloquent and very difficult Latin, which became the dominant style for centuries. Michael Drout states "Aldhelm wrote Latin hexameters better than anyone before in England (and possibly better than anyone since, or at least up until John Milton). His work showed that scholars in England, at the very edge of Europe, could be as learned and sophisticated as any writers in Europe." During this period, the wealth and power of the monasteries increased as elite families, possibly out of power, turned to monastic life.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: Anglo-Saxon monasticism developed the unusual institution of the "double monastery", a house of monks and a house of nuns, living next to each other, sharing a church but never mixing, and living separate lives of celibacy. These double monasteries were presided over by abbesses, who became some of the most powerful and influential women in Europe. Double monasteries which were built on strategic sites near rivers and coasts, accumulated immense wealth and power over multiple generations (their inheritances were not divided) and became centers of art and learning.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: While Aldhelm was doing his work in Malmesbury, far from him, up in the North of England, Bede was writing a large quantity of books, gaining a reputation in Europe and showing that the English could write history and theology, and do astronomical computation (for the dates of Easter, among other things).


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: During the 9th century, Wessex rose in power, from the foundations laid by King Egbert in the first quarter of the century to the achievements of King Alfred the Great in its closing decades. The outlines of the story are told in the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle", though the annals represent a West Saxon point of view. On the day of Egbert's succession to the kingdom of Wessex, in 802, a Mercian ealdorman from the province of the Hwicce had crossed the border at Kempsford, with the intention of mounting a raid into northern Wiltshire; the Mercian force was met by the local ealdorman, "and the people of Wiltshire had the victory". In 829, Egbert went on, the chronicler reports, to conquer "the kingdom of the Mercians and everything south of the Humber". It was at this point that the chronicler chooses to attach Egbert's name to Bede's list of seven overlords, adding that "he was the eighth king who was Bretwalda". Simon Keynes suggests Egbert's foundation of a 'bipartite' kingdom is crucial as it stretched across southern England, and it created a working alliance between the West Saxon dynasty and the rulers of the Mercians. In 860, the eastern and western parts of the southern kingdom were united by agreement between the surviving sons of King Æthelwulf, though the union was not maintained without some opposition from within the dynasty; and in the late 870s King Alfred gained the submission of the Mercians under their ruler Æthelred, who in other circumstances might have been styled a king, but who under the Alfredian regime was regarded as the 'ealdorman' of his people.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: The wealth of the monasteries and the success of Anglo-Saxon society attracted the attention of people from mainland Europe, mostly Danes and Norwegians. Because of the plundering raids that followed, the raiders attracted the name Viking – from the Old Norse "víkingr" meaning an expedition – which soon became used for the raiding activity or piracy reported in western Europe. In 793, Lindisfarne was raided and while this was not the first raid of its type it was the most prominent. In 794, Jarrow, the monastery where Bede wrote, was attacked; in 795 Iona was attacked; and in 804 the nunnery at Lyminge Kent was granted refuge inside the walls of Canterbury. Sometime around 800, a Reeve from Portland in Wessex was killed when he mistook some raiders for ordinary traders.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: Viking raids continued until in 850, then the "Chronicle" says: "The heathen for the first time remained over the winter". The fleet does not appear to have stayed long in England, but it started a trend which others subsequently followed. In particular, the army which arrived in 865 remained over many winters, and part of it later settled what became known as the Danelaw. This was the "Great Army", a term used by the "Chronicle" in England and by Adrevald of Fleury on the Continent. The invaders were able to exploit the feuds between and within the various kingdoms and to appoint puppet kings, such as Ceolwulf in Mercia in 873 and perhaps others in Northumbria in 867 and East Anglia in 870. The third phase was an era of settlement; however, the "Great Army" went wherever it could find the richest pickings, crossing the English Channel when faced with resolute opposition, as in England in 878, or with famine, as on the Continent in 892. By this stage, the Vikings were assuming ever increasing importance as catalysts of social and political change. They constituted the common enemy, making the English more conscious of a national identity which overrode deeper distinctions; they could be perceived as an instrument of divine punishment for the people's sins, raising awareness of a collective Christian identity; and by 'conquering' the kingdoms of the East Angles, the Northumbrians and the Mercians, they created a vacuum in the leadership of the English people.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: Danish settlement continued in Mercia in 877 and East Anglia in 879—80 and 896. The rest of the army meanwhile continued to harry and plunder on both sides of the Channel, with new recruits evidently arriving to swell its ranks, for it clearly continued to be a formidable fighting force. At first, Alfred responded by the offer of repeated tribute payments. However, after a decisive victory at Edington in 878, Alfred offered vigorous opposition. He established a chain of fortresses across the south of England, reorganised the army, "so that always half its men were at home, and half out on service, except for those men who were to garrison the burhs", and in 896 ordered a new type of craft to be built which could oppose the Viking longships in shallow coastal waters. When the Vikings returned from the Continent in 892, they found they could no longer roam the country at will, for wherever they went they were opposed by a local army. After four years, the Scandinavians therefore split up, some to settle in Northumbria and East Anglia, the remainder to try their luck again on the Continent.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: More important to Alfred than his military and political victories were his religion, his love of learning, and his spread of writing throughout England. Keynes suggests Alfred's work laid the foundations for what really made England unique in all of medieval Europe from around 800 until 1066.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: Alfred knew that literature and learning, both in English and in Latin, were very important, but the state of learning was not good when Alfred came to the throne. Alfred saw kingship as a priestly office, a shepherd for his people. One book that was particularly valuable to him was Gregory the Great's "Cura Pastoralis" (Pastoral Care). This is a priest's guide on how to care for people. Alfred took this book as his own guide on how to be a good king to his people; hence, a good king to Alfred increases literacy. Alfred translated this book himself and explains in the preface:


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: What is presumed to be one of these "æstel" (the word only appears in this one text) is the gold, rock crystal and enamel Alfred Jewel, discovered in 1693, which is assumed to have been fitted with a small rod and used as a pointer when reading. Alfred provided functional patronage, linked to a social programme of vernacular literacy in England, which was unprecedented.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: This began a growth in charters, law, theology and learning. Alfred thus laid the foundation for the great accomplishments of the tenth century and did much to make the vernacular more important than Latin in Anglo-Saxon culture.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: A framework for the momentous events of the 10th and 11th centuries is provided by the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle". However charters, law-codes and coins supply detailed information on various aspects of royal government, and the surviving works of Anglo-Latin and vernacular literature, as well as the numerous manuscripts written in the 10th century, testify in their different ways to the vitality of ecclesiastical culture. Yet as Keynes suggests "it does not follow that the 10th century is better understood than more sparsely documented periods".


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: During the course of the 10th century, the West Saxon kings extended their power first over Mercia, then into the southern Danelaw, and finally over Northumbria, thereby imposing a semblance of political unity on peoples, who nonetheless would remain conscious of their respective customs and their separate pasts. The prestige, and indeed the pretensions, of the monarchy increased, the institutions of government strengthened, and kings and their agents sought in various ways to establish social order. This process started with Edward the Elder – who with his sister, Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, initially, charters reveal, encouraged people to purchase estates from the Danes, thereby to reassert some degree of English influence in territory which had fallen under Danish control. David Dumville suggests that Edward may have extended this policy by rewarding his supporters with grants of land in the territories newly conquered from the Danes and that any charters issued in respect of such grants have not survived. When Athelflæd died, Mercia was absorbed by Wessex. From that point on there was no contest for the throne, so the house of Wessex became the ruling house of England.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: Edward the Elder was succeeded by his son Æthelstan, who Keynes calls the "towering figure in the landscape of the tenth century". His victory over a coalition of his enemies – Constantine, King of the Scots; Owain ap Dyfnwal, King of the Cumbrians; and Olaf Guthfrithson, King of Dublin – at the battle of Brunanburh, celebrated by a poem in the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle", opened the way for him to be hailed as the first king of England. Æthelstan's legislation shows how the king drove his officials to do their respective duties. He was uncompromising in his insistence on respect for the law. However this legislation also reveals the persistent difficulties which confronted the king and his councillors in bringing a troublesome people under some form of control. His claim to be "king of the English" was by no means widely recognised. The situation was complex: the Hiberno-Norse rulers of Dublin still coveted their interests in the Danish kingdom of York; terms had to be made with the Scots, who had the capacity not merely to interfere in Northumbrian affairs, but also to block a line of communication between Dublin and York; and the inhabitants of northern Northumbria were considered a law unto themselves. It was only after twenty years of crucial developments following Æthelstan's death in 939 that a unified kingdom of England began to assume its familiar shape. However, the major political problem for Edmund and Eadred, who succeeded Æthelstan, remained the difficulty of subjugating the north. In 959 Edgar is said to have "succeeded to the kingdom both in Wessex and in Mercia and in Northumbria, and he was then 16 years old" (ASC, version 'B', 'C'), and is called "the Peacemaker". By the early 970s, after a decade of Edgar's 'peace', it may have seemed that the kingdom of England was indeed made whole. In his formal address to the gathering at Winchester the king urged his bishops, abbots and abbesses "to be of one mind as regards monastic usage . . . lest differing ways of observing the customs of one Rule and one country should bring their holy conversation into disrepute".


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: Athelstan's court had been an intellectual incubator. In that court were two young men named Dunstan and Æthelwold who were made priests, supposedly at the insistence of Athelstan, right at the end of his reign in 939. Between 970 and 973 a council was held, under the aegis of Edgar, where a set of rules were devised that would be applicable throughout England. This put all the monks and nuns in England under one set of detailed customs for the first time. In 973, Edgar received a special second, 'imperial coronation' at Bath, and from this point England was ruled by Edgar under the strong influence of Dunstan, Athelwold, and Oswald, the Bishop of Worcester.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: The reign of King Æthelred the Unready witnessed the resumption of Viking raids on England, putting the country and its leadership under strains as severe as they were long sustained. Raids began on a relatively small scale in the 980s but became far more serious in the 990s, and brought the people to their knees in 1009–12, when a large part of the country was devastated by the army of Thorkell the Tall. It remained for Swein Forkbeard, king of Denmark, to conquer the kingdom of England in 1013–14, and (after Æthelred's restoration) for his son Cnut to achieve the same in 1015–16. The tale of these years incorporated in the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" must be read in its own right, and set beside other material which reflects in one way or another on the conduct of government and warfare during Æthelred's reign. It is this evidence which is the basis for Keynes's view that the king lacked the strength, judgement and resolve to give adequate leadership to his people in a time of grave national crisis; who soon found out that he could rely on little but the treachery of his military commanders; and who, throughout his reign, tasted nothing but the ignominy of defeat. The raids exposed tensions and weaknesses which went deep into the fabric of the late Anglo-Saxon state, and it is apparent that events proceeded against a background more complex than the chronicler probably knew. It seems, for example, that the death of Bishop Æthelwold in 984 had precipitated further reaction against certain ecclesiastical interests; that by 993 the king had come to regret the error of his ways, leading to a period when the internal affairs of the kingdom appear to have prospered.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: The increasingly difficult times brought on by the Viking attacks are reflected in both Ælfric's and Wulfstan's works, but most notably in Wulfstan's fierce rhetoric in the "Sermo Lupi ad Anglos", dated to 1014. Malcolm Godden suggests that ordinary people saw the return of the Vikings as the imminent "expectation of the apocalypse," and this was given voice in Ælfric and Wulfstan writings, which is similar to that of Gildas and Bede. Raids were taken as signs of God punishing his people; Ælfric refers to people adopting the customs of the Danish and exhorts people not to abandon the native customs on behalf of the Danish ones, and then requests a "brother Edward" to try to put an end to a "shameful habit" of drinking and eating in the outhouse, which some of the countrywomen practised at beer parties.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: In April 1016, Æthelred died of illness, leaving his son and successor Edmund Ironside to defend the country. The final struggles were complicated by internal dissension, and especially by the treacherous acts of Ealdorman Eadric of Mercia, who opportunistically changed sides to Cnut's party. After the defeat of the English in the Battle of Assandun in October 1016, Edmund and Cnut agreed to divide the kingdom so that Edmund would rule Wessex and Cnut Mercia, but Edmund died soon after his defeat in November 1016, making it possible for Cnut to seize power over all England.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: In the 11th century, there were three conquests: one by Cnut in 1016; the second was an unsuccessful attempt of Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066; and the third was conducted by William of Normandy in 1066. The consequences of each conquest changed the Anglo-Saxon culture. Politically and chronologically, the texts of this period are not Anglo-Saxon; linguistically, those written in English (as opposed to Latin or French, the other official written languages of the period) moved away from the late West Saxon standard that is called "Old English". Yet neither are they "Middle English"; moreover, as Treharne explains, for around three-quarters of this period, "there is barely any 'original' writing in English at all". These factors have led to a gap in scholarship, implying a discontinuity either side of the Norman Conquest, however this assumption is being challenged.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: At first sight, there would seem little to debate. Cnut appeared to have adopted wholeheartedly the traditional role of Anglo-Saxon kingship. However an examination of the laws, homilies, wills, and charters dating from this period suggests that as a result of widespread aristocratic death and the fact that Cnut did not systematically introduce a new landholding class, major and permanent alterations occurred in the Saxon social and political structures. Eric John remarks that for Cnut "the simple difficulty of exercising so wide and so unstable an empire made it necessary to practise a delegation of authority against every tradition of English kingship". The disappearance of the aristocratic families which had traditionally played an active role in the governance of the realm, coupled with Cnut's choice of thegnly advisors, put an end to the balanced relationship between monarchy and aristocracy so carefully forged by the West Saxon Kings.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: Edward became king in 1042, and given his upbringing might have been considered a Norman by those who lived across the English Channel. Following Cnut's reforms, excessive power was concentrated in the hands of the rival houses of Leofric of Mercia and Godwine of Wessex. Problems also came for Edward from the resentment caused by the king's introduction of Norman friends. A crisis arose in 1051 when Godwine defied the king's order to punish the men of Dover, who had resisted an attempt by Eustace of Boulogne to quarter his men on them by force. The support of Earl Leofric and Earl Siward enabled Edward to secure the outlawry of Godwine and his sons; and William of Normandy paid Edward a visit during which Edward may have promised William succession to the English throne, although this Norman claim may have been mere propaganda. Godwine and his sons came back the following year with a strong force, and the magnates were not prepared to engage them in civil war but forced the king to make terms. Some unpopular Normans were driven out, including Archbishop Robert, whose archbishopric was given to Stigand; this act supplied an excuse for the Papal support of William's cause.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: The fall of England and the Norman Conquest is a multi-generational, multi-family succession problem caused in great part by Athelred's incompetence. By the time William of Normandy, sensing an opportunity, landed his invading force in 1066, the elite of Anglo-Saxon England had changed, although much of the culture and society had stayed the same.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: Following the Norman conquest, many of the Anglo-Saxon nobility were either exiled or had joined the ranks of the peasantry. It has been estimated that only about 8% of the land was under Anglo-Saxon control by 1087. In 1086, only four major Anglo-Saxon landholders still held their lands. However, the survival of Anglo-Saxon heiresses was significantly greater. Many of the next generation of the nobility had English mothers and learnt to speak English at home. Some Anglo-Saxon nobles fled to Scotland, Ireland, and Scandinavia. The Byzantine Empire became a popular destination for many Anglo-Saxon soldiers, as it was in need of mercenaries. The Anglo-Saxons became the predominant element in the elite Varangian Guard, hitherto a largely North Germanic unit, from which the emperor's bodyguard was drawn and continued to serve the empire until the early 15th century. However, the population of England at home remained largely Anglo-Saxon; for them, little changed immediately except that their Anglo-Saxon lord was replaced by a Norman lord.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: The chronicler Orderic Vitalis, who was the product of an Anglo-Norman marriage, writes: "And so the English groaned aloud for their lost liberty and plotted ceaselessly to find some way of shaking off a yoke that was so intolerable and unaccustomed". The inhabitants of the North and Scotland never warmed to the Normans following the Harrying of the North (1069–1070), where William, according to the "Anglo Saxon Chronicle" utterly "ravaged and laid waste that shire".


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: Many Anglo-Saxon people needed to learn Norman French to communicate with their rulers, but it is clear that among themselves they kept speaking Old English, which meant that England was in an interesting tri-lingual situation: Anglo-Saxon for the common people, Latin for the Church, and Norman French for the administrators, the nobility, and the law courts. In this time, and because of the cultural shock of the Conquest, Anglo-Saxon began to change very rapidly, and by 1200 or so, it was no longer Anglo-Saxon English, but early Middle English. But this language had deep roots in Anglo-Saxon, which was being spoken much later than 1066. Research has shown that a form of Anglo-Saxon was still being spoken, and not merely among uneducated peasants, into the thirteenth century in the West Midlands. This was J.R.R. Tolkien's major scholarly discovery when he studied a group of texts written in early Middle English called the Katherine Group. Tolkien noticed that a subtle distinction preserved in these texts indicated that Old English had continued to be spoken far longer than anyone had supposed.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: Old English had been a central mark of the Anglo-Saxon cultural identity. With the passing of time, however, and particularly following the Norman conquest of England, this language changed significantly, and although some people (for example the scribe known as the Tremulous Hand of Worcester) could still read Old English into the thirteenth century, it fell out of use and the texts became useless. The Exeter Book, for example, seems to have been used to press gold leaf and at one point had a pot of fish-based glue sitting on top of it. For Michael Drout this symbolises the end of the Anglo-Saxons.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: The larger narrative, seen in the history of Anglo-Saxon England, is the continued mixing and integration of various disparate elements into one Anglo-Saxon people. The outcome of this mixing and integration was a continuous re-interpretation by the Anglo-Saxons of their society and worldview, which Heinreich Härke calls a "complex and ethnically mixed society".


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: The development of Anglo-Saxon kingship is little understood, but the model proposed by York considered the development of kingdoms and writing down of the oral law-codes to be linked to a progression towards leaders providing mund and receiving recognition. These leaders who developed in the sixth century were able to seize the initiative and to establish a position of power for themselves and their successors. Anglo-Saxon leaders, unable to tax and coerce followers, extracted surplus by raiding and collecting food renders and 'prestige goods'. The later sixth century saw the end of a 'prestige goods' economy, as evidenced by the decline of accompanied burial, and the appearance of the first 'princely' graves and high-status settlements. The ship burial in mound one at Sutton Hoo (Suffolk) is the most widely known example of a 'princely' burial, containing lavish metalwork and feasting equipment, and possibly representing the burial place of King Raedwald of East Anglia. These centres of trade and production reflect the increased socio-political stratification and wider territorial authority which allowed seventh-century elites to extract and redistribute surpluses with far greater effectiveness than their sixth-century predecessors would have found possible. Anglo-Saxon society, in short, looked very different in 600 than it did a hundred years earlier.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: By 600, the establishment of the first Anglo-Saxon 'emporia'(alternatively 'wics') appears to have been in process. There are only four major archaeologically attested wics in England - London, Ipswich, York, and Hamwic. These were originally interpreted by Hodges as methods of royal control over the import of prestige goods, rather than centre of actual trade-proper. Despite archaeological evidence of royal involvement, emporia are now widely understood to represent genuine trade and exchange, alongside a return to urbanism. Bede's use of the term "imperium" has been seen as significant in defining the status and powers of the bretwaldas, in fact it is a word Bede used regularly as an alternative to "regnum"; scholars believe this just meant the collection of tribute. Oswiu's extension of overlordship over the Picts and Scots is expressed in terms of making them tributary. Military overlordship could bring great short-term success and wealth, but the system had its disadvantages. Many of the overlords enjoyed their powers for a relatively short period. Foundations had to be carefully laid to turn a tribute-paying under-kingdom into a permanent acquisition, such as Bernician absorption of Deira. The smaller kingdoms did not disappear without trace once they were incorporated into larger polities; on the contrary their territorial integrity was preserved when they became ealdormanries or, depending on size, parts of ealdormanries within their new kingdoms. An example of this tendency for later boundaries to preserve earlier arrangements is Sussex; the county boundary is essentially the same as that of the West Saxon shire and the Anglo-Saxon kingdom. The Witan, also called Witenagemot, was the council of kings; its essential duty was to advise the king on all matters on which he chose to ask its opinion. It attested his grants of land to churches or laymen, consented to his issue of new laws or new statements of ancient custom, and helped him deal with rebels and persons suspected of disaffection.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: Only five Anglo-Saxon kingdoms are known to have survived to 800, and several British kingdoms in the west of the country had disappeared as well. The major kingdoms had grown through absorbing smaller principalities, and the means through which they did it and the character their kingdoms acquired as a result are one of the major themes of the Middle Saxon period. Beowulf, for all its heroic content, clearly makes the point that economic and military success were intimately linked. A 'good' king was a generous king who through his wealth won the support which would ensure his supremacy over other kingdoms. King Alfred's digressions in his translation of Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy, provided these observations about the resources which every king needed:


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: This is the first written appearance of the division of society into the 'three orders'; the 'working men' provided the raw materials to support the other two classes. The advent of Christianity brought with it the introduction of new concepts of land tenure. The role of churchmen was analogous with that of the warriors waging heavenly warfare. However what Alfred was alluding to was that in order for a king to fulfil his responsibilities towards his people, particularly those concerned with defence, he had the right to make considerable exactions from the landowners and people of his kingdom. The need to endow the church resulted in the permanent alienation of stocks of land which had previously only been granted on a temporary basis and introduced the concept of a new type of hereditary land which could be freely alienated and was free of any family claims.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: The nobility under the influence of Alfred became involved with developing the cultural life of their kingdom. As the kingdom became unified, it brought the monastic and spiritual life of the kingdom under one rule and stricter control. However the Anglo-Saxons believed in 'luck' as a random element in the affairs of man and so would probably have agreed that there is a limit to the extent one can understand why one kingdom failed while another succeeded. They also believed in 'destiny' and interpreted the fate of the kingdom of England with Biblical and Carolingian ideology, with parallels, between the Israelites, the great European empires and the Anglo-Saxons. Danish and Norman conquests were just the manner in which God punished his sinful people and the fate of great empires.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: Although Christianity dominates the religious history of the Anglo-Saxons, life in the 5th and 6th centuries was dominated by pagan religious beliefs with a Scandinavian-Germanic heritage.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: Pagan Anglo-Saxons worshipped at a variety of different sites across their landscape, some of which were apparently specially built temples and others that were natural geographical features such as sacred trees, hilltops or wells. According to place name evidence, these sites of worship were known alternately as either "hearg" or as "wēoh". Most poems from before the Norman Conquest are steeped in pagan symbolism, and their integration into the new faith goes beyond the literary sources. Thus, as Lethbridge reminds us, "to say, 'this is a monument erected in Christian times and therefore the symbolism on it must be Christian,' is an unrealistic approach. The rites of the older faith, now regarded as superstition, are practised all over the country today. It did not mean that people were not Christian; but that they could see a lot of sense in the old beliefs also"


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: Early Anglo-Saxon society attached great significance to the horse; a horse may have been an acquaintance of the god Woden, and/or they may have been (according to Tacitus) confidants of the gods. Horses were closely associated with gods, especially Odin and Freyr. Horses played a central role in funerary practices as well as in other rituals. Horses were prominent symbols of fertility, and there were many horse fertility cults. The rituals associated with these include horse fights, burials, consumption of horse meat, and horse sacrifice. Hengist and Horsa, the mythical ancestors of the Anglo-Saxons, were associated with horses, and references to horses are found throughout Anglo-Saxon literature. Actual horse burials in England are relatively rare and "may point to influence from the continent". A well-known Anglo-Saxon horse burial (from the sixth/seventh century) is Mound 17 at Sutton Hoo, a few yards from the more famous ship burial in Mound 1. A sixth-century grave near Lakenheath, Suffolk, yielded the body of a man next to that of a complete horse in harness, with a bucket of food by its head.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: Bede's story of Cædmon, the cowherd who became the 'Father of English Poetry,' represents the real heart of the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons from paganism to Christianity. Bede writes, "[t]here was in the Monastery of this Abbess (Streonæshalch – now known as Whitby Abbey) a certain brother particularly remarkable for the Grace of God, who was wont to make religious verses, so that whatever was interpreted to him out of scripture, he soon after put the same into poetical expressions of much sweetness and humility in Old English, which was his native language. By his verse the minds of many were often excited to despise the world, and to aspire to heaven." The story of Cædmon illustrates the blending of Christian and Germanic, Latin and oral tradition, monasteries and double monasteries, pre-existing customs and new learning, popular and elite, that characterizes the Conversion period of Anglo-Saxon history and culture. Cædmon does not destroy or ignore traditional Anglo-Saxon poetry. Instead, he converts it into something that helps the Church. Anglo-Saxon England finds ways to synthesize the religion of the Church with the existing "northern" customs and practices. Thus the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons was not just their switching from one practice to another, but making something new out of their old inheritance and their new belief and learning.


title: Anglo-Saxons

text: Monasticism, and not just the church, was at the centre of Anglo-Saxon Christian life. Western monasticism, as a whole, had been evolving since the time of the Desert Fathers, but in the seventh century, monasticism in England confronted a dilemma that brought to question the truest representation of the Christian faith. The two monastic traditions were the Celtic and the Roman, and a decision was made to adopt the Roman tradition. "Monasteria" seem to describe all religious congregations other than those of the bishop.