Warm Up

1. Warm Up • Answer the following questions: • In what ways were Anglo Saxon women respected in their society? • Support the statement that Anglo Saxon religion was more concerned with ethics (morals; right and wrong) than with mysticism (spiritual truths).

2. Bards, Scops, Minstrals, and Poets • Along with shelter and a place for council meetings, the communal hall (or mead hall) was a place to gather to hear stories told.

3. In Anglo Saxon society, the bard, who sung of gods and heroes, was as respected as a warrior.

4. “…creating poetry was as important as fighting, hunting, farming, or loving.”

5. Playing to the tunes of a harp, poets sang mournful heroic tales that appealed to a people plagued by war, disease, and old age.

6. Since the Anglo Saxons did not believe in an afterlife, your fame, carried on through the bard’s poetry, was a warrior’s only hope to outlive death. • You lived in your people’s memory.

7. Unlike the Anglo Saxon’s who were constantly at war during the 5th century, the Celts were enjoying a time of peace. Ireland’s wild, ice-cold waters defended them against invading Vikings. Ireland’s Golden Age (432-750)

8. Patricius • In 432, all of Ireland was converted to Christianity by a Romanized Briton named Patricius. As a teenager, he had been captured, enslaved by Irish slave traders, and was forced to spend six (6) years as a sheepherder.

9. After escaping and become a Catholic bishop, he returned to Ireland, the very same people who had held him as a slave, to bring them Christianity.

10. Monasteries help Ireland, “burn and gleam in the darkness.” During this Golden Age, while Britain and Europe are engaged in war, “Irish monks founded monasteries that became sanctuaries of learning for refugee scholars from Europe and England.”

11. Anglo Saxon pagan beliefs and Christianity existed side-by-side. Monasteries served as centers of learning. Monks preserved classics in Latin and Greek, but also wrote down popular Anglo Saxon literature like Beowulf.

12. Scriptoriums were writing rooms developed for the monks. Each day, they would spend the daylight copying manuscripts by hand.

13. These rooms were actually outdoor walkways covered by “walls” made of oiled paper or glass. However, in the winter, these were little protection, and therefore, the ink often froze.

14. “Monks wrote on sheepskin ‘paper’ with a quill pen for the entire day copying manuscripts, all while obeying a rule of silence.”

15. Latin, at this time, was the only language accepted in “serious” study. • This ends with Alfred’s reign, when he commissions the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a long history of England. • This caused the English language to gain some respect, so monks began to copy English stories and poetry.