He classes himself as a mere novice in comparison to the Anglo-Saxon swordsmiths, maintaining that when he travels to see their works on display at the British Museum he comes away feeling like a rank amateur. Only when you have seen him at work can you understand how hard he is being on himself – his skills in this field today are highly sought after.
Much of his work involves being commissioned by archaeologists to reproduce as precisely as possible artefacts from various periods. The replica of the Sutton Hoo sword that he has made is one of the many objects he has reproduced from the original work of Anglo-Saxon smiths. When undertaking such work, he is always careful to record everything. He records the weight of the material before he starts, the number of times it goes in the fire, the amount of fuel used, the debris from both the anvil and the forge and the time taken for the completing of each part of the process. This way, the archaeologists get a full record of what happens when someone makes an Anglo-Saxon sword.
Hector Cole embodies the truth that the ironworker has to have an affinity with the material. Control of the fire is one of the keys to the art. A smith is able to 'read' the different kinds of sparks that the fire gives off; they tell him when his material is ready to weld. Making a blade requires skill and concentration, as the slightest mistake can result in failure. The heat has to penetrate to the core of the metal, but the danger for the smith is that the cutting edges will burn away before the centre is hot enough to weld. If that happens, then the blade has been ruined and the metal has to be recycled for some lesser use like making spears.
Most men in Anglo-Saxon times had a knife and a spear but not a sword. The sword was a high prestige weapon because it was so expensive to make. It was not just the amount of high quality metal required in its making that made it beyond the reach of most Anglo-Saxon men. It was also the time that it would take even a master sword smith to make a single blade. An Anglo-Saxon sword blade uses four different types of iron, each with its own specific function in creating the finished product. It was long thought that high-quality steel was unknown to the Anglo-Saxons, but more recent studies and experimental sword making has challenged this assumption.
The quality of the Anglo-Saxon swords has, in Hector Cole's expert opinion, been grossly underestimated (as we have seen was also the case with their house-and ship-building abilities). He believes that they were making blades of the same quality 600 years before the Japanese Samurai blades. The essence of a sword blade is that it will not break but will take a sharp edge. The Anglo-Saxon blade was fearsome – when sharpened, it could literally cut a man in two. There is one recorded example of someone cleaving his opponent from his collar bone right through to his hip.
The swirling patterns of the best Saxon swords are an aesthetic by-product of the technological improvements sought in the ceaseless quest for a stronger and more effective weapon. In folding over the metal, a stronger blade is forged and also there is a pattern that emerges as a consequence of this twisting of the metal. The herringbone design of the Sutton Hoo sword is one of a number of possible finishes known from the Anglo-Saxon world.
Despite their great cost, swords were often buried with their owners, as at Sutton Hoo. Rather surprisingly, there is little or no evidence that they were dug up again by thieves. In ancient Egypt many of the pharaohs' tombs were looted within weeks if not days of being sealed despite numerous precautions. Some belief or taboo seems to have prevented the Anglo-Saxons from such grave robbing. Unlike most other weapons, swords were sometimes believed to have almost an identity of their own; they were very personal pieces of equipment and were often given a name – an earlier chapter mentions the legend of Attila's sword and the broad parallels with the Excalibur story. As swords were often surrounded by a supernatural aura, it was perhaps fear of the consequences that let the swords and their owners rest in peace.
The smith, like the alchemist, was himself the stuff of magic and legend. In later times skilled smiths were rumoured to be in league with the devil and their forges seen as miniature infernos. I asked Hector Cole whether he thought the old smiths themselves saw any spiritual significance in what they were doing. He replied:
I don't think that the smiths would give it such a significance but the general populace would because it's magic. You see something that is, to most people a very resilient material suddenly become plastic. It is being shaped at the will of the smith. Then it becomes a rigid piece again. Then to have the patterning in it as well – you know that's magic, isn't it? You see the pattern come out, you'll see it is magic.
Not all swords were buried with their owners. The quality of some blades meant that they continued to be in service generation after generation, while their hilts changed according to need or fashion. Some blades that were made in the eighth and ninth centuries have been found in swords with hilts from the eleventh or twelfth century. The average Anglo-Saxon village blacksmith would have been able to produce the various utensils and other prerequisites of daily life – knives, axes, nails, chains for hanging pots above the fire, shears for fleecing sheep, needles for sewing, and so on. But the making of a sword required much greater expertise and specialist knowledge. The makers of the Sutton Hoo sword and other masterpieces from the Anglo-Saxon forges must have been highly sought after and highly valued in their societies. Like the master shipbuilders they were the most skilled exponents of their craft.
When Raedwald took his precious sword with him to the afterlife, borne in his great ship, much of the pagan independence of the Anglo-Saxons died with him. Many of his contemporaries had already converted to the Christian faith and the rest would soon follow in their footsteps. Yet the force of pagan northern Europe was not yet spent. The Scandinavian influence that we have seen both in Beowulf and at Sutton Hoo was to come to the fore again with the Vikings, whose world we will soon explore. The arts and crafts of the Anglo-Saxons were also to be retained and not lost in the process of conversion to Christianity. Many of the achievements of the pagan era were not obliterated but transformed under the sign of the cross.
Part Three
NORTHERN LIGHTS
Chapter Seventeen
THE TWIN MONASTERIES
The holy man had deliberately chosen 'anti-culture' – the neighbouring desert, the nearest mountain crags. In a civilisation identified exclusively with town life, the monks had committed the absurd – they had made a city in the desert.
Peter Brown, The World of Late Antiquity
A new kind of force was sweeping across the northern world. Men with neither weapons nor wives were threatening the very survival of kings and warriors. They were Christian monks who saw themselves as wounding the body of Satan every time that they put pen to vellum. They truly believed that the pen was mightier than the sword. Their goal was to destroy the heathen and barbarian world with the teachings of the Bible and the 'civilising' force of the written word. These poor and celibate monks must have seemed very strange to the barbarians. Their extreme asceticism had no counterpart in a pagan Anglo-Saxon world. In order to understand how monasticism exerted a powerful influence on both the sovereigns and subjects of Britain, we must seek out its origins.
Monks and Missionaries
It is to Egypt in the latter part of the third century AD that the beginnings of monasticism can be traced. Who the first person to follow this path was we do not know, but St Anthony (c. 250-355) has gone down in history as its founding father. Anthony was immortalised by his biographer Athanasius, the patriarch of Alexandria, who wrote his life's story shortly after he died. By the time Anthony was eighteen years old, both of his parents had died. On hearing the gospel, he took literally the admonition to give up all one's worldly ties to follow in the footsteps of Christ.
As Christ had gone into the wilderness, so Anthony decided to live in a tomb at the edge of the desert and afterwards in a derelict desert fort where he spent twenty years in self-mortification. He then went back to Alexandria to attempt martyrdom in protest at the persecutio
n of Christians, but when the persecution subsided he returned to the desert to die, supposedly at the age of 105. He had spent over seventy of those years in the wilderness.
Despite his desires, Anthony found himself confronted by the problem that was to plague other pious hermits in the future. His very piety and example inevitably attracted followers eager for his guidance. The further he moved into the solitude of the desert and the more extreme his privations became, the more attractive an exemplar he became. Anthony, as an uncompromising hermit, did not want to formally organise those who were anxious to follow him. He took on only a handful of disciples.
Other spiritual guides such as Pachomius (younger than Anthony but his contemporary) were willing to organise their fellow seekers. Soon groups of up to two or three hundred men were living in villages of their own making. The ideal was that each would, when sufficiently spiritually prepared, go off into the desert on his own to seek salvation. Yet many of the aspirants remained in these villages which were, to all intents and purposes, monastic communities. The members of such communities were under the strict control of a man designated as their spiritual father or abba, from which the term 'abbot' derives.
The urban-based civilisation of Roman Britain had not, as we have seen, been simply taken over by the incoming Germanic peoples. The pagan Anglo-Saxon communities had, in the main, their own centres in a world more concerned with communication by river and sea than by road. When the monastic ideals of Egyptian origin reached England, they too were not to be cast in the old Roman mould. A new network of monasteries began to dot the landscape. They were often founded at places seemingly far from the centres of power and influence. But soon these monastic communities themselves became the hub of a new order disseminating their message far and wide. Remote monasteries in Britain became the northern equivalent of the original monastic communities that made up 'a city in the desert'. The monastic way of life was therefore no more dependent on the old Roman system of social organisation than that of the barbarian Anglo-Saxons.
As we have seen, Britain after the Romans was not left entirely at the mercy of the pagan immigrants from the continent. Celtic communities in both Britain and Ireland kept Christianity alive before the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons took place. This provides the background to the founding of the famous monastery of Lindisfarne dealt with in the following chapter.
The conversion of the Anglo-Saxons is thought to have begun in 597 when, with papal approval, Augustine and his forty-strong entourage arrived in Kent. Aethelbert, the king, fearing sorcery, had agreed to meet them only out in the open where their magic would be less baleful. The missionaries were armed with a silver cross and icons of Christ and they chanted in Latin. Soon realising that he had nothing to fear from the Christians, Aethelbert gave them free rein to expand their mission throughout his lands.
Whether to become a Christian was not just a matter of belief for the various Anglo-Saxon kings – it was also a decision that had political ramifications. It meant a dramatic break with tradition and possibly the loss of some pagan allies, but it also offered a number of benefits. To become a part of the Christian Roman Empire meant that one was joining an ever more powerful network that was threatening to engulf older, independent polities. The conversion of all the various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms was inevitable despite some wavering and even backsliding in some parts of the country. In 627 Edwin, who had been crowned king of Northumbria thanks largely to the intervention of Raedwald the pagan king of East Anglia, gave up his heathen ways and was baptised on 12 April, Easter Day. The quote from Bede on the dedication page of this book is said to be a faithful version of the words of one of Edwin's chief advisers, words that convinced the king to become a Christian.
Re-opening the Roads to Rome
The following year, 628, saw the birth of Benedict Biscop into a noble family in Northumbria. Few people today have heard of Benedict Biscop, yet his role in the history of England should not be overlooked. According to Bede, he was an old man in a young man's body and his sober nature disinclined him from the world of sensual pleasures. He grew up to be a valued member of the Northumbrian court and was favoured by the then king Oswiu. Yet he yearned after the spiritual life and decided at the age of twenty-five to give up his status and career and make a pilgrimage to Rome in order to visit the tombs of the Apostles.
Biscop's first port of call was the Roman Christian stronghold of Kent. It was there that he met a fellow Northumbrian noble named Wilfrid. Wilfrid had been a monk at Lindisfarne where, at this time, the Celtic church still held sway. He was dissatisfied with their interpretation of Christianity, which was the very reason he had relocated to Kent. Yet he, like Biscop, wanted to go to the source. It was only the concerns for his safety voiced by the Kentish king Erconbert that had so far prevented him from making what was then the long and hazardous journey to Rome. The king, reassured by the arrival of Biscop, gave his blessing to the two would-be pilgrims to make their way there together.
One of the first places they stopped was Lyons, where the local archbishop convinced Biscop's companion to stay for about a year. Wilfrid later went on to Rome and returned home triumphantly with a copy of the much sought-after Benedictine Rule, probably the first to reach the shores of Britain. Biscop decided to press on alone. The route that he took across Europe is not clear but he arrived safely in Rome in 654. He spent about a year there before returning to Britain where he eagerly shared his experiences and new-found knowledge with his Christian brethren. We know next to nothing about the next ten years of his life, but it is likely that he travelled around Italy and Gaul, staying in a number of monasteries and absorbing everything he could. He reappears in the history books in 664, by which time he was back in Northumbria.
Almost straightaway his restless and inquisitive spirit led him to set out once again for Rome. One of the main aims of these early monks was to collect as many books as possible. Books were the lifeblood of the monastic network that stretched across much of Europe. In a Britain that was only just emerging from the non-literate traditions of the pagan kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxons, books were a genuine novelty. Yet they were far more than that. Books opened up a whole new way of transmitting and recording knowledge, not just about the Christian faith and the codes of conduct that monks were expected to follow, but they also provided a window into the classical heritage that had long been obscured. Fuelled by the books and the learning they embodied, the monks from Britain had returned to their homeland and set about changing the intellectual and spiritual landscape for ever.
On his way back from his second trip to Rome in 664–5, Biscop decided to visit a monastic community that had achieved widespread fame for its leading role in the intellectual world which was being formed. Like so many other monasteries, that of St Honorat was deliberately founded far from the centres of commerce and political power. It was built on the small Mediterranean island of Lérins off the coast of Provence. It was there that Biscop finally committed himself for good to the monastic life and received the tonsure. He also decided to call himself Benedict as a mark of respect and allegiance to Benedict of Nursia (c. 480–550), the author of the hugely influential Rule bearing his name.
Rome called him for a third time in 667, where a twist of fate was to change his life. An entourage had been sent to Rome by Oswiu and Egbert (the new king of Kent). At its head was a man named Wighard who was to be consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury by the Pope. His royal patrons had given Wighard the job of reconciling the Celtic and Roman factions within the English Church. It was only three years since the Synod of Whitby had begun the healing of this divide. Fate decided that Wighard was not to live to see this happen. Both he and his companions died of the plague shortly after arriving in Rome. The Pope sought a replacement for the post of archbishop and selected Theodore of Tarsus as the most suitable candidate. He would, however, need an interpreter to help him in his mission, and Biscop's reputation and experience made him the ideal choice. The two arrived in Ca
nterbury in 671.
Having helped install Theodore, Biscop found himself free again and went off to Rome for a fourth time. Book-buying was still one of his main priorities and he collected numerous volumes on his travels. Before the era of printing, books were not easy to come by. Yet Biscop was part of a vanguard who realised just how important books would become and he managed to obtain many works that would become prohibitively expensive for his counterparts in the next generation. In 673 the great traveller Biscop was back in Northumbria tirelessly pursuing his goal. The new king Egfrith agreed to give him some land on the north bank of the river Wear (Wearmouth) to found a monastery, which was to be named St Peter's. Today Wearmouth is known as Monkwearmouth and is in the heart of Sunderland.
With his king's approval, a monk named Ceolfrith was made prior of St Peter's. Biscop wanted its church to be made of stone, but by this time there were no masons available – when the Romans left Britain they took their building technology with them. So Biscop went off to Gaul to find some, and shortly arrived home with the necessary craftsmen. No sooner was their work under way than he went back again, this time in search of glaziers whose art, known in Roman times, had also been lost in his homeland. The stained glass that was the result adorned the small church windows. It was almost certainly the first glass to be made since the Romans had left Britain.
He made sure that these foreign craftsmen taught the English to work in stone and glass so that future projects could be undertaken by native workmen. Work on the monastery proceeded quickly, allowing Biscop to go back again to Rome, this time with Ceolfrith at his side. In 681 they returned laden with books and all kinds of religious objects for adorning their church – relics, pictures, priestly apparel and icons. He also brought back one of Rome's most distinguished cantors, who taught the monks of Wearmouth how to chant and sing in the Roman style.
Barbarians- Secrets of the Dark Ages Page 19
