#MedievalTwitter THREAD: about "Anglo-Saxon" and the claim that the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and so on used it to identify themselves. People are saying it's a "neutral" term that these people used. Well. How many times do you think it appears in Old English sources?
Three.pic.twitter.com/T58GA8N2P2
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It appears in three (3) surviving Old English texts. 1) The short poem "Aldhelm" 2) Charter S566 3) Translation of a Latin Bull of Pope Sergius That's it! Otherwise, Old English texts either talk about individual groups "Angles," "Saxons," or the "Englisc" as a whole.pic.twitter.com/kGfr9VP1pH
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Each of these sources, by the way, is fairly Latinate, either in genre or composition. The poem has perhaps the largest amount of Latin and Greek loan words of an OE text. Charters are a famously Latinate genre. The bull was Latin. Was the term seen as fairly Latinate?pic.twitter.com/SINIP2EKhl
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Other instances of "Anglo-Saxon" as a compound/group identity are from Latin sources, many not written in "England" itself. The ones from "English" authors date from a brief period from 800-1000 or so, and are also in the minority compared to the use of "English"pic.twitter.com/UQ75PvgLml
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This may suggest the term wasn't in common usage other than in Latin-speaking circles. Given that non-English sources in Ireland and on the continent more commonly used the term, its use by English authors writing in Latin may be an attempt to copy international writers.
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One can make TOO big of a deal of a "vernacular"/Latin divide, given the complicated history of how we talk about the vernacular (something
@MedievalPhDemon writes about), but the fact that the term "Anglo-Saxon" barely appears in Old English suggests it wasn't commonly used.1 reply 4 retweets 40 likesShow this thread -
SO. It's a term little used, and almost exclusively in Latin. For a long time, medievalists of this period didn't use it either, describing their subject as "Old English" or as the "Saxons."pic.twitter.com/jXd72ApW3p
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Then, in the 19th-century, it gains sudden popularity along with a surge of racism around the idea of a "noble Anglo-Saxon race" destined to conquer the world. And now it's being defended as a neutral and historical term when....it just isn't.pic.twitter.com/vpjRDWvMsB
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Erik "Mr. Bloodaxe" Wade Retweeted Erik "Mr. Bloodaxe" Wade
See also my previous thread on this and the sources listed in it:https://twitter.com/erik_kaars/status/1171730118429073409 …
Erik "Mr. Bloodaxe" Wade added,
Erik "Mr. Bloodaxe" Wade @erik_kaarsThread: I want to briefly rehearse the problems with the term "Anglo-Saxon" as a medieval term. In sum, it is a term with a racist history--in both Europe and America--since the 19th century at least. It also was not the primary term used in the medieval period.Show this thread5 replies 7 retweets 38 likesShow this thread -
Replying to @erik_kaars
There’s been a recent argument from an archaeologist who says that several English people referred to themselves as Saxons and thus this suggests a movement towards the term “Anglo-Saxon” and I find that so frustrating.
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That only suggests a mutability of identities not a hyphenated one. Or maybe that people thought Saxons and Anglian was interchangeable.
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