HIS 119 (9/15 Quiz)

Saxons

A member of a Germanic people that inhabited parts of central and northern Germany from Roman times, many of whom conquered and settled in southern England in the 5th-6th centuries.

Vortigern

5th-century warlord in Britain, a leading ruler among the Britons. He may have been the "superbus tyrannus" said to have invited Hengist and Horsa (Anglo Saxons) to aid him in fighting the Picts and the Scots. But they revolted, killing his son in the process and adding Sussex and Essex to their own kingdom.

Redwald(East Angles)

A 7th-century king of East Anglia, a long-lived Anglo-Saxon kingdom which today includes the English counties of Norfolk and Suffolk. He was the son of Tytila of East Anglia and a member of the Wuffingas dynasty (named after his grandfather, Wuffa), who were the first kings of the East Angles.

Theow

A British slave of Anglo-Saxon times

Jutes

A member of a Germanic people that may have come from Jutland and, according to the Venerable Bede, joined the Angles and Saxons in invading Britain in the 5th century, settling in a region including Kent and the Isle of Wight.

Celts

A member of a group of peoples inhabiting much of Europe and Asia Minor in pre-Roman times.

Picts

A member of an ancient people inhabiting northern Scotland in Roman times

"Hew and Cry"

A process by which bystanders are summoned to assist in the apprehension of a criminal who has been witnessed in the act of committing a crime.

Overlord

A ruler, especially a feudal lord.

Shire

A traditional term for a division of land. The system was first used in Wessex from the beginning of Anglo-Saxon settlement, and spread to most of the rest of England in the tenth century, along with West Saxon political control.

Colman

Also know as Saint Colmán. Bishop of Lindisfarne from 661 until 664.

Wilfrid

Also known as Wilfrid the Younger, was the last Bishop of York, as the see was converted to an archbishopric during the time of his successor. I

Columba

An Irish abbot and missionary credited with spreading Christianity in what is today Scotland at the start of the Hiberno-Scottish mission. He founded the important abbey on Iona, which became a dominant religious and political institution in the region for centuries.

Anointing

Ceremonially confer divine or holy office upon (a priest or monarch) by smearing or rubbing with oil.

Edwin(Northumbria)

Edwin, (died Oct. 12, 632, Hatfield Chase, Eng.), Anglo-Saxon king of Northumbria from 616 to 633. He was the most powerful English ruler of his day and the first Christian king of Northumbria.

Pope Gregory

First of the popes to come from a monastic background. Gregory is a Doctor of the Church and one of the Latin Fathers. He is considered a saint in the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, Anglican Communion, and some Lutheran churches.

Lindisfarne

Holy Island has a recorded history from the 6th century. It was an important centre of Celtic Christianity under Saints Aidan of Lindisfarne, Cuthbert, Eadfrith of Lindisfarne and Eadberht of Lindisfarne. After Viking invasions and the Norman conquest of England a priory was reestablished. A small castle was built on the island in 1550.

Book of Kells

Illuminated manuscript Gospel book in Latin, containing the four Gospels of the New Testament together with various prefatory texts and tables. It was created in a Columban monastery in either Britain or Ireland or may have had contributions from various Columban institutions from both Britain and Ireland.

Iona

Iona is a small island in the Inner Hebrides off the Ross of Mull on the western coast of Scotland.

Oswy

King of Bernicia from 642 until his death. One of the sons of Æthelfrith of Bernicia, he became king following the death of his brother Oswald in 642. Unlike Oswald, Oswiu struggled to exert authority over Deira, the other Anglo-Saxon kingdom comprising medieval Northumbria, for much of his reign.

Ethelbert (Kent)

King of Kent (560-616): converted to Christianity by St Augustine; issued the earliest known code of English laws.

Alfred(871-899)

King of Wessex from 871 to 899. Alfred successfully defended his kingdom against the Viking attempt at conquest, and by the time of his death had become the dominant ruler in England.

Hilda

A Christian saint and the founding abbess of the monastery at Whitby, which was chosen as the venue for the Synod of Whitby. An important figure in the conversion of Anglo-Saxon England to Christianity, she was abbess at several monasteries and recognized for the wisdom that drew kings to her for advice.

Sebert (East Saxons)

A King of Essex in succession of his father King Sledd. He is known as the first East Saxon king to have been converted to Christianity.

Paulinus

A Roman missionary and the first Bishop of York. A member of the Gregorian mission sent in 601 by Pope Gregory I to Christianize the Anglo-Saxons from their native Anglo-Saxon paganism, Paulinus arrived in England by 604 with the second missionary group.

Vendetta

A blood feud in which the family of a murdered person seeks vengeance on the murderer or the murderer's family.

Canterbury

A city in Kent, in southeastern England, the seat of the archbishop of Canterbury

The Heptarchy

A country or region consisting of seven smaller, autonomous regions. 1.Kent 2.Sussex 3.Essex 4.Wessex 5.Mercia 6.East Anglia 7.Northumbria

Churl(Ceorl)

A freeman of the lowest rank in Anglo-Saxon England

Offa's Dyke

A large linear earthwork that roughly follows the current border between England and Wales. The structure is named after Offa, the 8th century king of Mercia, who is traditionally believed to have ordered its construction. Although its precise original purpose is debated, it delineated the border between Anglian Mercia and the Welsh kingdom of Powys.

Wergild (Wergeld)

The amount of compensation paid by a person committing an offense to the injured party or, in case of death, to his family.

Offa(757-796)

Offa was King of Mercia, a kingdom of Anglo-Saxon England, from 757 until his death in July 796. The son of Thingfrith and a descendant of Eowa, Offa came to the throne after a period of civil war following the assassination of Æthelbald. Offa defeated the other claimant, Beornred.

Bretwalda

Old English word, the first record of which comes from the late 9th century Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. It is given to some of the rulers of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms from the 5th century onwards who had achieved overlordship of some or all of the other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.

Britons

One of the people of southern Britain before and during Roman times.

Heriot

Originally a death-duty in late Anglo-Saxon England, which required that at death, a nobleman provided to his king a given set of military equipment, often including horses, swords, shields, spears and helmets. It later developed into a kind of tenurial feudal relief due from villeins.

Aidan

An Irish monk and missionary credited with restoring Christianity to Northumbria. He founded a monastic cathedral on the island of Lindisfarne, served as its first bishop, and travelled ceaselessly throughout the countryside, spreading the gospel to both the Anglo-Saxon nobility and to the socially disenfranchised

Beowulf

An Old English epic poem celebrating the legendary Scandinavian hero Beowulf. Generally dated to the 8th century, it was the first major poem in a European vernacular language and is the only complete Germanic epic that survives. It describes Beowulf's killing of the water monster Grendel and its mother and his death in combat with a dragon, and includes both pagan and Christian elements.

Earldorman

An ealdorman (from Old English ealdorman, lit. "elder man"; plural: "ealdormen") is the term used for a high-ranking royal official and prior magistrate of an Anglo-Saxon shire or group of shires from about the ninth century to the time of King Cnut.

Ethelberga

An early Anglo-Saxon queen consort of Northumbria, the second wife of King Edwin. As she was a Christian from Kent, their marriage triggered the initial phase of the conversion of the pagan north of England to Christianity.

The Ordeal

Ancient judicial practice by which the guilt or innocence of the accused was determined by subjecting them to an unpleasant, usually dangerous experience. Classically, the test was one of life or death and the proof of innocence was survival.

Cedd

Anglo-Saxon monk and bishop from Northumbria. He was an evangelist of the Middle Angles and East Saxons in England and a significant participant in the Synod of Whitby, a meeting which resolved important differences within the Church in England.

Arthur/Mt. Badon

Arthur was a legendary king of Britain, historically perhaps a 5th- or 6th-century Romano-British chieftain or general. An ancient British battle in which, according to one theory, the forces of King Arthur successfully defended themselves against the Saxons in ad 516.

Augustine

Augustine of Canterbury (first third of the 6th century - probably 26 May 604) was a Benedictine monk who became the first Archbishop of Canterbury in the year 597. He is considered the "Apostle to the English" and a founder of the English Church. Augustine was the prior of a monastery in Rome when Pope Gregory the Great chose him in 595 to lead a mission, usually known as the Gregorian mission, to Britain to Christianize King Æthelberht and his Kingdom of Kent from Anglo-Saxon paganism.

Chad

Chad (Old English: Ceadda; died 2 March 672) was a prominent 7th century Anglo-Saxon churchman, who became abbot of several monasteries, Bishop of the Northumbrians and subsequently Bishop of the Mercians and Lindsey People. He was later canonised as a saint. He was the brother of Cedd, also a saint.

Coifi

Coifi or Cofi was the priest of the temple at Goodmanham in Northumbria in 627. Bede's description of Coifi is that of the chief of priests in Northumbria; the fact that he is the chief priest suggests that there was some sort of organised pagan priesthood in existence during Coifi's time.

Interlace

Decorative element found in medieval art. In interlace, bands or portions of other motifs are looped, braided, and knotted in complex geometric patterns, often to fill a space.

Oswald

Oswald was the son of Æthelfrith of Bernicia and came to rule after spending a period in exile; after defeating the British ruler Cadwallon ap Cadfan, Oswald brought the two Northumbrian kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira once again under a single ruler, and promoted the spread of Christianity in Northumbria.

Bertha

Saint Bertha or Saint Aldeberge (b. Estimated around c. 565 d. in or after 601) was the queen of Kent whose influence led to the Christianization of Anglo-Saxon England. She was canonized as a saint for her role in its establishment during that period of English history.

Council of Whitby

Seventh-century Northumbrian synod where King Oswiu of Northumbria ruled that his kingdom would calculate Easter and observe the monastic tonsure according to the customs of Rome, rather than the customs practised by Irish monks at Iona and its satellite institutions. The synod was summoned in 664 at Hilda's double monastery of Streonshalh (Streanæshalch), later called Whitby Abbey.

Hiberno-Saxon

Style of art produced in the post-Roman history of the British Isles. The term derives from insula, the Latin term for "island"; in this period Great Britain and Ireland shared a largely common style different from that of the rest of Europe.

Angles

The Anglo-Saxons were a people who inhabited Great Britain from the 5th century. They included people from Germanic tribes who migrated to the island from continental Europe, and their descendants; as well as indigenous British groups who adopted some aspects of Anglo-Saxon culture and language

Witan

The council of the Anglo-Saxon kings in and of England; its essential duty was to advise the king on all matters on which he chose to ask its opinion. It attested his grants of land to churches or laymen, consented to his issue of new laws or new statements of ancient custom, and helped him deal with rebels and persons suspected of disaffection. Its composition and time of meeting were determined by the king's pleasure.

Thanet

The district, which is governed by Thanet District Council, is located on the north eastern tip of Kent, and is predominantly coastal, with north, east and southeast facing coastlines.

Primogeniture

The right of succession belonging to the firstborn child, especially the feudal rule by which the whole real estate of an intestate passed to the eldest son.

Ethelbald

The second of the five sons of King Æthelwulf of Wessex and Osburh. He was king of Wessex from 858 to 860.

Sutton Hoo

The site in Suffolk of a Saxon ship burial of the 7th century ad, containing magnificent grave goods including jewellery and gold coins.

Woden

The supreme god and creator, god of victory and the dead. God of Anglo Saxon paganism. Wednesday is named after him. Also know as Odin.