The Anglo-Saxons Quotes

“For the time being, however, two additional bishops was as far as the pope’s ambitious scheme was able to progress, and his command that London be the seat of the archbishop was never fulfilled. Canterbury, Æthelberht’s own capital, retained that distinction, with Augustine serving as its first incumbent.”
― Marc Morris, The Anglo-Saxons A History of the Beginnings of England: 400–1066

“But by the time of Edward’s succession in 899, Ecgwynn had either died or been discarded,”
― Marc Morris, The Anglo-Saxons A History of the Beginnings of England: 400–1066

“Bede, who would doubtless have furnished us with a detailed explanation of such a massive engineering project,”
― Marc Morris, The Anglo-Saxons A History of the Beginnings of England: 400–1066

“This was most obviously true in the contrast between thatched wooden churches and soaring stone basilicas,”
― Marc Morris, The Anglo-Saxons A History of the Beginnings of England: 400–1066

“the extreme wealth of the elite depended on the aggressive exploitation of the majority of the population, who are for the most part absent from the archaeological and written records.”
― Marc Morris, The Anglo-Saxons A History of the Beginnings of England: 400–1066

“According to another contemporary author, writing in the 970s, the king ordered that thieves and robbers were to be punished by having their eyes put out, their ears ripped off, their nostrils carved open and their hands and feet removed, before being scalped and left in the open fields at night to be eaten by wild beasts and birds.”
― Marc Morris, The Anglo-Saxons A History of the Beginnings of England: 400–1066

“Ecclesiastical History of the English People,”
― Marc Morris, The Anglo-Saxons A History of the Beginnings of England: 400–1066

“within a generation the villas and towns of Roman Britain had been almost completely abandoned. The implication of this data is unavoidable: society had collapsed. It was, in the words of one modern historian, ‘probably the most dramatic period of social and economic collapse in British history’.20 The further implications of this are appalling. The abandonment of towns and villas means huge numbers of people must have been on the move in search of shelter and food. The failure of normal trade and distribution networks indicates that food would have been in short supply. The absence of an army would have led to the rise of looting, pillaging and robbery. The rich could use their existing wealth to hire armed protection, but were evidently unable to remain in their luxurious but unfortified residences. Everyone else would have had to fend for themselves. One way or another, as happens when modern states fail and civil society dissolves, people must have perished in huge numbers, through famine, disease and violence.”
― Marc Morris, The Anglo-Saxons A History of the Beginnings of England: 400–1066

“They also include, at the end of the list, four men who were individually designated as dux – the Latin word for ‘leader’, later translated as ‘duke’, for which the Anglo-Saxon equivalent was ‘ealdorman’. This was a prestigious title, but at least three of these men had previously been pleased to describe themselves as kings of Sussex. Offa had demoted them to the rank of provincial governors.34”
― Marc Morris, The Anglo-Saxons: A History of the Beginnings of England

“Romans had once worshipped a pantheon of different gods, but in the course of the fourth century they had abandoned them for Christianity.”
― Marc Morris, The Anglo-Saxons: A History of the Beginnings of England

“What is important is that we attempt to see these people as they were, and try to shed the misconceptions about them that have developed in later centuries. This is not easy, for they come laden with much accumulated baggage. The enthusiastic revival of Anglo-Saxon personal names in the nineteenth century makes it hard not to think of the various Alfreds, Ediths and Harolds in this story as honorary Victorians. The reality, of course, is that they were very different, both to us, and to our more immediate forebears. In looking at their lives we will see many things that may strike us as admirable: their courage, their piety, their resourcefulness, their artistry, and their professed love of freedom. But we will also find much that is disconcerting: their brutality, their intolerance, their misogyny, and their reliance on the labour of slaves. Their society produced works of art that continue to dazzle, and institutions that are still with us today, but it was highly unequal, patriarchal, persecuting and theocratic. Their difference to us, even though they possessed certain similarities, is what renders them fascinating. We need to understand them, but we do not need to idolize them.”
― Marc Morris, The Anglo-Saxons: A History of the Beginnings of England

“When England broke with Rome in the sixteenth century, scholars sought to prove that the Anglo-Saxon Church had originally been a pristine, home-grown institution, unsullied by papal influence. During the Civil War of the seventeenth century, Parliamentarians argued that the freedoms and representative powers they were fighting for had once belonged to their Anglo-Saxon ancestors and been lost in 1066. Almost all of this was myth, but it was enduring and pervasive.”
― Marc Morris, The Anglo-Saxons: A History of the Beginnings of England

“To the Anglo-Saxons themselves, the cities established by the Romans were places of mystery, wondrous but useless, the haunted relics of a vanished civilization. The phrase used in more than one Old English poem to describe their massive ruins was enta geweorc – ‘the work of the giants’.7”
― Marc Morris, The Anglo-Saxons A History of the Beginnings of England: 400–1066

“(The word ‘lord’ derives from the Old English hlaford, meaning ‘loaf-guardian’, or ‘bread-giver’.)”
― Marc Morris, The Anglo-Saxons A History of the Beginnings of England: 400–1066

“Although the poem is ostensibly Christian – it speaks of a single God, to whom successful characters occasionally give thanks – almost all of the attitudes it celebrates are those of a pagan past. It exalts the loyalty of warriors to their lord, even to the extent of being willing to die for him, and its heroes are overwhelmingly concerned with their earthly renown”
― Marc Morris, The Anglo-Saxons A History of the Beginnings of England: 400–1066

“By 376 those others included the Goths, a more settled people who lived on the frontier of the eastern empire. That year, because of Hunnish attacks, many thousands of Goths sought and received permission to cross the Danube and settle in imperial territory.”
― Marc Morris, The Anglo-Saxons A History of the Beginnings of England: 400–1066

“The oaths of loyalty they had sworn to Swein had expired on his death,”
― Marc Morris, The Anglo-Saxons A History of the Beginnings of England: 400–1066

“The Danish conqueror had breathed his last on 3 February 1014,”
― Marc Morris, The Anglo-Saxons A History of the Beginnings of England: 400–1066

“run through by a spear-wielding St Edmund,”
― Marc Morris, The Anglo-Saxons A History of the Beginnings of England: 400–1066

“Only at the end of the eleventh century was it reported that the king had died of supernatural causes,”
― Marc Morris, The Anglo-Saxons A History of the Beginnings of England: 400–1066

“for the Book of Revelation had foretold that Satan would be unbound 1,000 years after Christ’s birth.”
― Marc Morris, The Anglo-Saxons A History of the Beginnings of England: 400–1066

“A crucial difference between Æthelred and Alfred, however, is that Alfred fought against his enemies in person.”
― Marc Morris, The Anglo-Saxons A History of the Beginnings of England: 400–1066

“it forced Æthelred to do what Byrhtnoth had refused to countenance, and pay the vikings to cease their plundering.”
― Marc Morris, The Anglo-Saxons A History of the Beginnings of England: 400–1066

“warlord who would later become king of Norway.”
― Marc Morris, The Anglo-Saxons A History of the Beginnings of England: 400–1066

“Then, in the summer of 991, a much larger force arrived from Scandinavia.”
― Marc Morris, The Anglo-Saxons A History of the Beginnings of England: 400–1066

“In spite of the escalation, there was as yet no sense of an impending crisis.”
― Marc Morris, The Anglo-Saxons A History of the Beginnings of England: 400–1066

“but the vikings who targeted Kent and Hampshire are likely to have come directly from Scandinavia”
― Marc Morris, The Anglo-Saxons A History of the Beginnings of England: 400–1066

“from 980 onwards the Chronicle reports attacks on various towns and monasteries around the south coast.”
― Marc Morris, The Anglo-Saxons A History of the Beginnings of England: 400–1066

“people were once again becoming alarmed at the sight of viking sails.”
― Marc Morris, The Anglo-Saxons A History of the Beginnings of England: 400–1066

“988. From that point on, there was no one to resist the king’s authority.”
― Marc Morris, The Anglo-Saxons A History of the Beginnings of England: 400–1066