distinctions between the secular and spiritual life, in turn engendered a revival of monastic culture in England; monks were invited from Fleury and Cluny to encourage those of native birth. The tenth and eleventh centuries, as a result, were a period of vigorous activity; it is not surprising, therefore, that “the presence in England of foreign scholars was perhaps never so marked as during the eleventh century.” 10
Yet one caveat may be entered here. In the “Regularis Concordia” of the late tenth-century Council of Winchester, effectively promulgating the monastic restoration of that period, the emphasis rests upon “one Rule and one country.” 11 There always was a recognition of native or national values. Anglo-Saxon scribes continued to use and develop a specifically English script while employing the Carolingian minuscule for Latin texts, a development which is paralleled by the expansion of Old English prose and by the continuing life of the ancient alliterative patterns of verse. It has likewise been supposed that there was “a fairly reluctant acceptance of some styles and fashions; except in a number of more or less isolated cases, there was no wholesale adoption of continental modes.” 12 So there is, on the face of it, a paradox or at least a disparity between England as part of European civilisation and England as the burgeoning source of a native culture.
The same conditions will present themselves throughout this book. There is at this early stage no need to reconcile them, except to notice the degree of absorption or assimilation present within the English sensibility. It has often been described as a mixed or mongrel kind, a hybrid like the people from which it derives, but it is distinctive precisely because of its willingness to adapt and to adopt other influences. The sensibility is as heterogeneous as its literature, as varied and various as the grand houses or cathedrals which were constructed piece by piece. It has been said that its uniqueness lies in the sum of its differences, but the real process is one of adoption and transformation where two hitherto incompatible influences—in the period under review they may be named as the Celtic and the Classical—are somehow amalgamated and thereby enlarged within a common sensibility. There is conflation and elaboration, not division or reduction. Thus the architecture of the Normans was incorporated and transcended by the English Romanesque, a transformation described by one historian as occurring “on the foundations . . . established by Alfred, Dunstan, Aethelwold, and others in Wessex.” 13 The origins of the English sensibility are once again traced far back.
CHAPTER 6
The Song of the Past
Bede was the true
begetter of English history, precisely because of his innate antiquarianism and his obsession with past times. In his
Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum
he “likes to speak of relics of the past, of British defences, of Roman earthworks and walls, of ruined churches, of Horsa’s tomb, and so forth.” 1 Like Stukeley and Aubrey, almost a thousand years later, he was already possessed by a vision of English antiquity among old stones and broken monuments; like other Anglo-Saxons before him he wondered at the spectacle of dilapidated temples or ruined towns. Antiquarianism, in England, has always been compounded by a vision of Englishness itself; it is not a question of nationalism, which is often mistakenly introduced as an explanation or an easy device, but rather of the sentiment that in the relics of the past there is some inkling of what England is “really like.” Antiquarians are in this respect often political radicals appealing, for example, to Saxon liberties as opposed to a corrupt Hanoverian polity.
Bede also possessed this indigenous fervour; his introduction of Old English place-names is one example, but he also elucidates the figures of English myth and folklore. He gives the names of the months according to
Yet one caveat may be entered here. In the “Regularis Concordia” of the late tenth-century Council of Winchester, effectively promulgating the monastic restoration of that period, the emphasis rests upon “one Rule and one country.” 11 There always was a recognition of native or national values. Anglo-Saxon scribes continued to use and develop a specifically English script while employing the Carolingian minuscule for Latin texts, a development which is paralleled by the expansion of Old English prose and by the continuing life of the ancient alliterative patterns of verse. It has likewise been supposed that there was “a fairly reluctant acceptance of some styles and fashions; except in a number of more or less isolated cases, there was no wholesale adoption of continental modes.” 12 So there is, on the face of it, a paradox or at least a disparity between England as part of European civilisation and England as the burgeoning source of a native culture.
The same conditions will present themselves throughout this book. There is at this early stage no need to reconcile them, except to notice the degree of absorption or assimilation present within the English sensibility. It has often been described as a mixed or mongrel kind, a hybrid like the people from which it derives, but it is distinctive precisely because of its willingness to adapt and to adopt other influences. The sensibility is as heterogeneous as its literature, as varied and various as the grand houses or cathedrals which were constructed piece by piece. It has been said that its uniqueness lies in the sum of its differences, but the real process is one of adoption and transformation where two hitherto incompatible influences—in the period under review they may be named as the Celtic and the Classical—are somehow amalgamated and thereby enlarged within a common sensibility. There is conflation and elaboration, not division or reduction. Thus the architecture of the Normans was incorporated and transcended by the English Romanesque, a transformation described by one historian as occurring “on the foundations . . . established by Alfred, Dunstan, Aethelwold, and others in Wessex.” 13 The origins of the English sensibility are once again traced far back.
CHAPTER 6
The Song of the Past
Bede was the true
begetter of English history, precisely because of his innate antiquarianism and his obsession with past times. In his
Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum
he “likes to speak of relics of the past, of British defences, of Roman earthworks and walls, of ruined churches, of Horsa’s tomb, and so forth.” 1 Like Stukeley and Aubrey, almost a thousand years later, he was already possessed by a vision of English antiquity among old stones and broken monuments; like other Anglo-Saxons before him he wondered at the spectacle of dilapidated temples or ruined towns. Antiquarianism, in England, has always been compounded by a vision of Englishness itself; it is not a question of nationalism, which is often mistakenly introduced as an explanation or an easy device, but rather of the sentiment that in the relics of the past there is some inkling of what England is “really like.” Antiquarians are in this respect often political radicals appealing, for example, to Saxon liberties as opposed to a corrupt Hanoverian polity.
Bede also possessed this indigenous fervour; his introduction of Old English place-names is one example, but he also elucidates the figures of English myth and folklore. He gives the names of the months according to
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