An introduction to the study of the Middle Ages (375-814) / by Ephraim Emerton.

  • Emerton, Ephraim, 1851-1935.
Date:
[1888], ©1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An introduction to the study of the Middle Ages (375-814) / by Ephraim Emerton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    supposed to have made his missionary journeys in Ire- land hetween 430 and 493. But now, in 449, came a new people to conquer the Kelts of Britain and to change their whole condition as the Romans had never done. In 449 the first swarms of German invaders landed on the shores of Kent, near the mouth of the river Thames. They were a mixture of Jutes, Angles and Saxons from the North of Ger- many, near the mouth of the Elhe, and their united forces began soon to be known as the Anglo-Saxon1 people. They were a far wilder race than the other German peoples we have been studying, because they had always lived so much farther from civilizing contact with the Romans. They were heathens, who had never heard the name of Christ. Their conquest of England was slow but steady. In a little more than a century Christianity had almost disappeared from England proper, and was to be found only in Wales, Ireland, and Scotland. That was the state of things when the monk Gregory, not as yet chosen pope, while passing one day through the slave-market in Rome, saw a A^stke. group of beautiful, fair-haired boys put up for sale, and inquired who they were. Angles, was the answer. Well named, said Gregory, for they are beautiful as angels; where are they from ? Deira. Their land shall be freed from the ire of God (de ira). What is their king's name ? ^Ella. He shall be taught to sing ' Allelujah.' And Gregory determined that he would do what he could to recover the land of 1 I use the word Anglo-Saxon to mark, a little more clearly than the word English might do, the distinction from the British.