Angles (people)

Sources

Written sources

The historians have two major but posterior sources on the ancestors protohistoric of the Angles:

ecclesiastical History of the English people of Bède Worthy the, completed at the beginning of the 8th century.
the Anglo-Saxon , later chronicle and especially giving an account of the succession of the kings and the calamities of the Anglo-Saxon period in the kingdoms of the south of the island.

For these sources, it is necessary to add the Histoire written by Breton to the 6th century, which thus depicts the Angles like sanguinary invaders and who does not save either, moreover, the qualified kings of its people “tyrants”:

Of the ruin and the conquest of Brittany ( Of excidio and conquestu Britanniæ ), written in the Years 540 by Holy Gildas.

Lastly, although late and not being a historical source strictly speaking, the epopee of the Beowulf, which is based on the oral tradition to describe successes of an Angle of the East (?) with the service of a Danish king, Hrothgar, gives an account of imaginary pagan and heroic of the English aristocracy at the 7th century.

Archaeological sources

The archaeological sources of the Anglo-Saxon period inform us especially about the first Germanic establishments in the island of Brittany.

Close to Mucking, with the mouths of the the Thames, was discovered whole of several hundreds of underground huts with half, characteristic of the Ve-Life centuries. These last would have been used towards 400 to place mercenaries charged by Rome with protecting London.
Of many burials of this period shows an undeniable relationship with those discovered in north of the Germany and with the south of the Danish peninsula. In particular, of the ballot boxes of incineration is-angliennes 5th century would have been manufactured in Saxony.

History

According to Bède, the Angles came with quotas from Jutes and Saxons to answer the call of the Breton king Vortigern at the beginning of the 5th century: the territories on which this last reigned were threatened by the Scots, of the invaders come from Ireland. On the contrary, according to the Byzantine historian Procope, the first Angles were especially accompanied by Frisons. The presence of the latter is actually attested by archeology.

Other tribes followed another way; one finds trace in Poitou of it, where they settled with Angle-on-the Anglin, village which kept their name, as well as the river which passes to its feet.

Origins of the Angles according to the tradition

According to the tradition brought back by the legends, they would have been led to the combat by two brothers Jutes: Hengist and Horsa. These first kings of the Angles are introduced like the descendants of some Woden (Odin) according to Anglo-Saxon medieval historiography and the Germanic tradition. For Bède and according to the Christian tradition, they would have come from a “angle” (Latin angulus ) from the world and would have been used as instruments of the divine punishment against the Breton heretics in the opposite “angle”: future the England (from this eschatologic point of view, the world is then seen symbolically like a square, whose angles are the four cardinal points, and of which Rome, i.e. the Roman Church, occupies the center).

By thus attaching the Angles to the Christian tradition (of the Deutéronome, a book of the Old Testament), Bède does not act differently of the other national historians of the Middle Ages (Gregoire de Tours, Paul Diacre…) : he seeks to legitimate by the Christian religion the existence of the Germanic kingdoms of the Angles, while at the same time the origins of those are pagan. The Angles are then depicted like new elected people.

The installation on the island of Brittany

At all events, the exact geographic origin of the Angles is unknown. Their ancestral territories are however located on banks of the Baltic, between current Holland (the Frise of the Early middle ages) and the Denmark.

These mercenaries, or these pagan invaders were established in the island of Brittany and built their kingdoms by the force with the detriment of the Breton kingdoms. The withdrawal of the Roman troops had left the latter without defense, which was probably the main cause of the arrival of the Angles. As of 410, indeed, the Latin sources at sea mention the presence of pirates clippings north and in the English Channel, but it seems that their massive immigration began only in the Années 430.

Kingdoms of VIIe-VIIIe centuries

With the whole beginning of the 7th century, whereas these Germanic people were still pagan, there was a dozen Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the island. Among those, three were detached:

the kingdom of Northumbrie, whose people are described as people of the Angles by Bède. It is located at the north of the Humber river which constitutes a formidable natural border by its width.
the kingdom of Mercie, in the center, which remained a long time pagan under the king Penda and for which one is unaware of which was the dominant tribe.
the kingdom of Wessex (which draws its name from Saxon from the west) in south-west

Actually, at that time and more still thereafter, a king dominating asserted himself in the island: it is the case of the king northumbrien Edwin at the 7th century, of the kings mercians Æthelbald then Offa at the 8th century, and finally of the king of Wessex Egbert at the beginning of the 9th century. Also, towards 731, Bède is already aware of the Anglo-Saxon unit and it is very natural - by its nationality and because of re-elected Church northumbrienne - that it puts the “English” people especially ahead, in opposition to the Breton ones but also probably with Saxon and with the Jutes. The unit of the English people gets along thus like spiritual and cultural, beyond political differences which it does not call in question.

End of the kingdoms of the Angles

Nevertheless, as of the end of VIIIe century, from the Scandinavian invaders come to threaten the English coasts and plunder the monasteries of Lindisfarne (793), Jarrow (the monastery of Bède, in 794) and Iona (in 795). Those achieve military progress throughout the 9th century. In 879, the Danes of Guthrum, which has just received the baptism, settle definitively in Anglie Eastern ( Is-Anglia ), whereas the Norwegian Vikings reach York. It is the end, strictly speaking, of the “kingdoms of the Angles”.

Kingdoms of the Angles

According to Bède, the kingdoms populated by the Angles were:

the East Anglia or “kingdom of the Angles of the East”
the Mercie or “kingdom of the Angles of the medium”
the Northumbrie, joining together the kingdoms of Deira and Bernicie .

Actually, it is almost certain that the populations of these kingdoms were very mixed. Undoubtedly they were considered angles because of the reigning dynasty, taking into account the importance which the personal bonds for the Saxon ones had. Executives of the capacity, more than that any ethnic homogeneity, can explain this concept of identity. Moreover, at Bède, Latin natio (who indicates an ethnos group) is seldom employed, in any case not to designate the inhabitants of the kingdoms of the Angles.

Among these “kingdoms of the Angles”, two deserve an special attention:

the Northumbrie: the term indicates the grounds in the north of the river Humber. It is distinguished through the cultural radiation from its capital, York, as of the synod of Whitby, in 664 and more still at the time of Bède. The archi-episcopal school of York is rested by the archbishop Egbert of York, pupil of the precedent, and becomes a seedbed of English missionaries. Thereafter, the fame of the school reaches the continent under the direction of Alcuin. This last, with the invitation of Charlemagne which it meets with Rome, becomes the person in charge of the school of the Palate and thus takes part in the Carolingian Renaissance.
the kingdom of the Angles of the east or East Anglia is especially known for the discovery of a tomb royal with Sutton Hoo. This one was allotted to Redwald, of the dynasty of the Wuffingas. It is with this dynasty that the héro of the poem would belong epic Beowulf . If the attribution of the necropolis of Sutton Hoo to the one of the kings angles whose reign is attested by Bède remains an assumption, it does not remain about it less than this tomb delivered some splendid Germanic works of art very close to the Swedish style. This exceptional archaeological testimony would thus make lean the balance in favor of a Danish origin of the Angles. At the same time, the presence of a part of Gallic goldsmithery shows the reports/ratios that there was as of this time between the Anglo-Saxons and the Francs.

Other Angles

Like all the Cruel people, the Angles are not monolithic people. One finds of them branches elsewhere than in England. Thus a small tribe was established with the Early middle ages in the Haut-Poitou, with Angle-on-the Anglin, giving its name to a village and a river.

See too

Anglo-Saxon - Saxon - Bède Worthy the - Northumbrie - History of England

Simple: Angles

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