02-05-2007, 11:45 PM
Robert wrote, "Why do you say that Anglo-Saxons who migrated inland would have encountered Huns and Franks? These lived hundreds or thousands of miles away."
Several sources I have record armed conflict between the Franks and the Saxons during the sixth through ninth centuries. In fact, one admittedly dated source (Geoffry Ashe's The Quest for Arthur's Britain, Academy Chicago reprint edition, 1994, p.55) quotes "Procopius, writing in Constantinople toward the middle of the sixth century, describes Britain as inhabited by Britons, Angles and Frisians, the last evidently Saxons named for their previous home. All three races multiply fast, he says, and the surplus goes over to the continent [from Britain? reverse migration?], where the Frankish rulers permit settlement."
Don't know how reliable Procopius was, but he sounds like a contemporary source confirming contact between the Franks and Saxons, not to mention the tantalizing possibility that Angles and Saxons for some reason were moving out of Britain.
Ashe also quotes (p. 56) a ninth century chronicler at Fulda mentioning Saxons as descendants of those "forced out of Britain by the need for new land." That certainly varies from the common picture of both Anglo-Saxon genocide of the Celtic Briton and the assumption of the Anglo-Saxons totally victorious.
Ashe's motive in digging these sources up, of course, was to establish the possibility, if not the probability or certainly, that someone like the mythic King Arthur lived and slowed the Anglo-Saxon conquest of Britain sometime in the fifth or sixth century.
Robert is much better versed than me on the whole Vortigern/Ambrosius Aurelinus/Arthur business. Don't get him started. :wink:
Several sources I have record armed conflict between the Franks and the Saxons during the sixth through ninth centuries. In fact, one admittedly dated source (Geoffry Ashe's The Quest for Arthur's Britain, Academy Chicago reprint edition, 1994, p.55) quotes "Procopius, writing in Constantinople toward the middle of the sixth century, describes Britain as inhabited by Britons, Angles and Frisians, the last evidently Saxons named for their previous home. All three races multiply fast, he says, and the surplus goes over to the continent [from Britain? reverse migration?], where the Frankish rulers permit settlement."
Don't know how reliable Procopius was, but he sounds like a contemporary source confirming contact between the Franks and Saxons, not to mention the tantalizing possibility that Angles and Saxons for some reason were moving out of Britain.
Ashe also quotes (p. 56) a ninth century chronicler at Fulda mentioning Saxons as descendants of those "forced out of Britain by the need for new land." That certainly varies from the common picture of both Anglo-Saxon genocide of the Celtic Briton and the assumption of the Anglo-Saxons totally victorious.
Ashe's motive in digging these sources up, of course, was to establish the possibility, if not the probability or certainly, that someone like the mythic King Arthur lived and slowed the Anglo-Saxon conquest of Britain sometime in the fifth or sixth century.
Robert is much better versed than me on the whole Vortigern/Ambrosius Aurelinus/Arthur business. Don't get him started. :wink:
"Fugit irreparabile tempus" (Irrecoverable time glides away) Virgil
Ron Andrea
Ron Andrea
