tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19922276.post5983876422771929213..comments2023-11-29T07:39:34.401+00:00Comments on Carla Nayland Historical Fiction: Acha of Deira and Bernicia: daughter, sister, wife and mother of kingsCarlahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11901028520813891575noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19922276.post-83332892801989635642007-10-25T11:54:00.000+01:002007-10-25T11:54:00.000+01:00And with almost as many possible interpretations, ...And with almost as many possible interpretations, BernitaCarlahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11901028520813891575noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19922276.post-85966241294778110002007-10-24T12:44:00.000+01:002007-10-24T12:44:00.000+01:00As Rick says, it's fascinating, literary archaeolo...As Rick says, it's fascinating, literary archaeology.Bernitahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05264585685253812090noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19922276.post-78403910070305188242007-10-23T09:08:00.000+01:002007-10-23T09:08:00.000+01:00Gabriele - don't ask me. I'm doing my best to rem...Gabriele - don't ask me. I'm doing my best to remedy it :-)Carlahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11901028520813891575noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19922276.post-21204048139295683782007-10-22T20:27:00.000+01:002007-10-22T20:27:00.000+01:00This is such an interesting time and fun mess one ...This is such an interesting time and fun mess one wonders why there are not more novels set in 6-9th century Britain.Gabriele Campbellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17205770868139083575noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19922276.post-41932662091578389222007-10-21T10:50:00.000+01:002007-10-21T10:50:00.000+01:00"for sufficiently geeky values of fun." Call me a..."for sufficiently geeky values of fun." Call me a card-carrying geek :-)<BR/><BR/>I'll start with the usual caveat; we don't know what sources Bede was using, and your guess is as good as mine. <BR/><BR/>I personally think it's more likely that a person's age would be known than that a year of birth would be recorded. It might have been important to reckon a person's age for rites of passage, like a child being sent for fosterage or being formally accepted as an adult, for example. Some of these could be based on physical changes such as puberty, rather than on chronological age, but not all of them. E.g. Bede says in his autobiographical note "...on reaching seven years of age I was entrusted by my family to the most reverend Abbot Benedict ... for my education" and later "I was ordained deacon in my nineteenth year and priest in my thirtieth..." and later "From the time of my receiving the priesthood until my fifty-ninth year...." So it seems clear that Bede kept count of his age in years. If Bede, why not everyone else? (So I think I can claim support from Bede as well as the ghost of Tolkien!)<BR/><BR/>Conversely, birth years for children are frequently not recorded even in better-documented later times. Have a look on Alianore's blog for numerous examples of medieval aristocrats whose birth dates aren't known with any certainty and have to be estimated by back-calculating from things like marriage dates. It's noticeable that the <A HREF="http://omacl.org/Anglo/part2.html" REL="nofollow">Anglo-Saxon Chronicle</A> in Alfred's time, by which time it was being written more or less contemporarily with events, records celestial phenomena, consecrations of bishops and deaths of bishops, kings and ealdormen, but not births, not even the births of King Alfred's children. I think it's fair to say that it's unlikely that seventh-century Northumbria had more extensive written records than Alfred's court. <BR/><BR/>Bede certainly had records that were dated by local regnal years. For example, major church synods begin with "...in the tenth year of the reign of Egfrid King of the Northumbrians; in the sixth year of King Ethelfrid of the Mercians...." and so on. Apart from giving the scribes writer's cramp (!), this system must have had big problems with synchronising reigns that began on different dates, as you point out. It must have been an absolute nightmare when people wanted to keep records that applied to more than a single kingdom. Hence the need for a standardised system.<BR/><BR/>Dates were reckoned by lunar months. After the conversion to Christianity the Roman method of Ides and Kalends was used, along with saints' days (see the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle). (There was a sophisticated method of reckoning months before the conversion too, although it wasn't the same. See the Hobbits' calendar in the LOTR Appendix, which is based on it). <BR/>An accurate date for a king's death would have been needed to know when to start counting the regnal years. This is different to needing to know an accurate <I>birth date</I>, because nothing changes when a baby prince is born; he doesn't start being king when he is born, but he does <I>stop</I> being king when he dies. So regnal year systems need to know when a king dies with some accuracy, but they have no need to know when he was born. Hence you'd expect death dates to be recorded much more carefully than birth dates, which is what we see.<BR/><BR/>Plus, for kings who died in battle and became revered as saints (e.g. Oswald, Edwin), the date of death became the saint's feast day, which was another reason to record and remember it to the day.Carlahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11901028520813891575noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19922276.post-46828292750049814442007-10-20T15:43:00.000+01:002007-10-20T15:43:00.000+01:00This gets interesting, and rather fun - for suffic...This gets interesting, and rather fun - for sufficiently geeky values of fun. <BR/><BR/>My hidden assumption is that Bede inferred Oswald's age, based on some some now-lost source that gave only his year of birth, without a specific birthdate. Supposing that the year recorded worked out to 604, Bede simply did the subtraction 642 - 604 = 38, and did not feel the need to be pedantic and specify that if Oswald's was born late in the year he would only have been 37.<BR/><BR/>If Bede's source specified his <I>age,</I> 38, and the figure was precise rather than inferred, then you are correct. I just wonder if birthdates were even recorded in this era. <BR/><BR/>I seem to recall reading that much later medieval people were more prone to celebrate their name saint's feast day than their actual birthday. Which I admit says nothing about pagans nearly 1000 years earlier, but suggests that giving special significance to birthdates is not a given, and that therefore what was recorded as a person's age might not be precise in our sense.<BR/><BR/>The ghost of Tolkien is on your side, however - the fact that hobbits make such a big deal of birthday celebrations suggests that this struck a great Anglo-Saxonist as being very ancient custom. Whatever else you can say about hobbits, they are certainly English!<BR/> <BR/>But the bigger chronology question, as you note, is how Bede worked out his chronology even to the year. I seem to recall that the AD system was invented by Diogenes Exiguus, c. 500, but only came into common use with Bede, who had the insight to realize that a universal chronology was handy.<BR/><BR/>I would guess, from historical analogies, that Bede's sources probably gave dates by local regnal years or the like, which he had to cross-tabulate. There must have been a host of ambiguities - if a king came to the throne in May of 610, was "the tenth year of his reign" the calendar year 620, or the period May 620-May 621? Not to mention complications like the calendar year beginning in March. Thank God for standardized dating!<BR/><BR/>Someone, though, must have been keeping precise dates in some form, because Bede dates Oswald's death not just to a year but August 5. Oswy also has his death pegged to an exact date.Rickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16932015378213238346noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19922276.post-75127715356171615092007-10-20T10:15:00.000+01:002007-10-20T10:15:00.000+01:00Yes, I do mean the latest possible date, well spot...Yes, I do mean the <I>latest</I> possible date, well spotted! I've corrected the post.<BR/><BR/>Re the back-calculation of birth dates, a full year's spread is about the <I>least</I> precise it can be if you have a precise death date and an age at death, isn't it? Taking Oswald, as he was 38 on 5 August 642, he could have only just turned 38, in which case his birth date would have been 4 August 604, or he could have been a day short of turning 39, in which case his birth date would have been 6 August 603. Or anywhere in between. But it can't be outside that date range or he would have been 37 or 39 when he died, not 38. I'd dearly like to get it more precise than that, as a precise birth date for Oswald would narrow the possible range for Acha's marriage. <BR/><BR/>I daresay it's possible that Bede was estimating the age and knew only that Oswald was 'about 38'. That widens the range even further, as you say. So I'd rather take Bede at face value and assume that he <I>did</I> know the king's age! It's not all that unlikely, as if the early English celebrated their birthdays more or less as we do now, Oswald's age at death might well have been known and remembered. <BR/><BR/>There's also a further complication in that Bede is thought to have invented the AD dating system, so whatever records he was working from wouldn't have used it. Which raises the question of what 'birth year' would have been available for quick maths. Not the AD calendar year that we automatically use now! And this is before you start arguing about adjusting dates because the year used to begin in March instead of on 1 January (I gather this particular controversy isn't settled). <BR/><BR/>Chronology is the bedrock of history; without a chronology you can't cross-connect different sources. The absence of a chronology is one of the big stumbling blocks in the 5th and 6th centuries - there's hardly an uncontested date between the Rescript of Honorius in 410 and the arrival of Augustine in Kent in 597, so in between you can pretty much write "Here Be Dragons" and imagine anything you like. Which is why Bede's account is so important, since it's with his record that chronology starts up again.<BR/><BR/>It is indeed a fascinating puzzle, which is part of what draws me to the period. Unlike the 5th and 6th centuries there's a bit of evidence for guidance, so although the possible interpretations are wide they aren't limitless. You can put Acha's sympathies on either her husband's side or her brother's or somewhere in between, but you can't have her die of a broken heart like a tragic heroine.Carlahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11901028520813891575noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19922276.post-83814930934228977092007-10-20T00:59:00.000+01:002007-10-20T00:59:00.000+01:00Taking a break from US politics to get desperately...Taking a break from US politics to get desperately pedantic here. Surely you mean that 590 is the <I>latest</I> possible date for Acha's birth, if she had a child in 603-4.<BR/><BR/>Even more pedantic, I wonder if it isn't over-precise to say, for example, that Oswald must have been born between August 603 and August 604. Bede obviously had a precise death date for Oswald, but would he have known Oswald's birth date so precisely? My first thought is that he probably knew the birth year, and did quick math to get age 38.<BR/><BR/>None of which bears on your actual point, but I sometimes wonder about these little chronology things.<BR/><BR/>More substantively, what a fascinating puzzle, reconstructing people and events that are only sketchily documented. <I>How did Acha feel about this deadly conflict between her birth family and her husband?</I> How, indeed? I like your peace-weaver suggestion, but as you say it's speculation, itself weaving together tiny fragments of evidence.Rickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16932015378213238346noreply@blogger.com