La storia dell'Inghilterra dalle invasioni celtiche alla dinastia Tudor, Dispense di Inglese

Scarica La storia dell'Inghilterra dalle invasioni celtiche alla dinastia Tudor e più Dispense in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! From Early Britain to the Middle Ages The early history of Britain and its people, like that of many other countries, is marked by a repeated pattern of invasion, conquest and settlement. In each case, defeated populations were not displaced but became more or less incorporated by the new rulers, which led to a partial mixing of the cultures, religions and material practices. This is why it is more correct to speak about Roman-Celtic Britain. Similarly, there was often no great cohesion within each group. The struggle for power was constant, resulting in conflicting loyalties, internal divisions and widespread political instability. The Celts The Celts first appeared in Britain around 700 BC. Originating from the north-west of Germany, they brought with them an already sophisticated culture. Celtic priests were Druids and were considered living archives of tribal law, history, science, medicine and religion. They filled the roles of judge, doctor and mystic. The word druidae is of Celtic origin and combines the word roots of oak and knowledge. To became a Druid, students assembled in large groups for instruction and training for a period of up to 20 years. In legends Druids are described as possessing magical powers such as prophesy, control of the weather and curing illness. The Celts were originally a pagan culture who worshipped the elements: everything has a soul. Their places of worship included numerous stone circles erected during the Bronze Age. The most famous is Stonehenge, a group of enormous blue stones placed in concentric circles. It was an ancient temple and probably also an astronomical observatory. The construction took close to 2000 years. Nowadays Stonehenge has become a site of pilgrimage for groups of people who want to revive ancient rites and the old pagan cult of sun worshipping. The Celts were not a united people. They had no real sense of themselves as a nation, it was only when faced with powerful enemy that they grouped together to defend themselves. Roman Britain The Roman conquest of Britain began toughly in the year 55BC with the invasion of Julius Caesar. With their Latin heritage, the Romans introduced a literature culture into Britain for the first time in its history. The Latin language and civilisation became part of the structure of British society. The Romans built roads, fortifications, baths, amphitheatres and towns where they settled and from which they administered the rural Celtic population. Roman towns had running water and the houses had a drainage system, heating devices and water supply. In Britain the economic system of the early Roman Empire, based on a money economy and trade, had been fully accepted. Culturally Roman fashions were dominant and classical art and decoration were widely adopted. Yet the Roman advance was halted just north of what is now the border between England and Scotland. The Caledonians, as the Romans called the fierce inhabitants of Scotland, refused to be colonised and Emperor Hadrian decided to build a wall (Hadrian’s Wall) to keep the northern raiders out of Roman Britain. Hadrian was one of the few Roman emperors to renounce the policy of unlimited imperial expansion, preferring to settle for a smaller territorial base that could be governed and protected effectively. By the end of the fourth century the Roman Empire had begun to fall apart and in AD 409 the Emperor Honorius was forced to pull his Roman Legions out of Britain to defend Rome against attacks from the Visigoths. The Anglo-Saxon invasions In AD 410, barbarian raiders from northern Germany took advantage of the Roman withdrawal and began to intensify their attacks on Britain’s southern and eastern coasts. After the departure of the Roman legions, the Romanised Britons were forced to empty Saxon mercenaries to defend their shores. However these mercenaries refused to leave the country. The way was opened for another colonisation by the Anglo-Saxon invaders (Angles, Saxons and Jutes) who soon took control of much of eastern Britain. The Britons continued to resist the Saxon invaders but suffered from internal divisions. They found themselves increasingly isolated from the Roman world of which they had so long been apart. Eventually, the Anglo-Saxon managed to push the native Celtic population to resettle in Wales, Scotland, Cornwall and Brittany. The Birth of a Legend It was around the time of the Saxon invasions in the 5th century that the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table was born. There has been much debate among historians as to whether the legend is based on an actual person, perhaps a great military leader who led the Romanised Celtic Britons in their resistance against the Saxon invaders. Mention of a figure resembling Arthur is made in several documents of the medieval period, but these tend to be historically inaccurate. The fact is that very little is actually known about this period of British history. Anglo Saxon culture and the coming of Christianity It could be said that the Anglo-Saxons, at least in the early stages of their occupation, re-established pagan values. They were largely illiterate and instead of the Latin alphabet, their language used a series of cryptic characters called runes. Their Gods referred both to ancient Germanic and Scandinavian legends. A time of reform The last Norman king was Henry II. His reign saw the introduction of the first major reform which weakened the feudal structure of society. This was the common law and it concerned the English legal system. This marked the beginning of a more democratic and flexible legal system. When Henry died in 1189 he was succeeded by his son Richard I, who spent all but six months of his reign out of his country, engaged in various wars overseas (like the third crusade). The crusades, started by Pope Urban II, were intended as military expeditions to recover the Holy Land in particular the city of Jerusalem. Richard’s knightly virtues made him a figure of legend and he became known as “Lionheart”. Richard was succeeded by his brother John Lackland, who was extremely unpopular because of his avidity. He wanted to levy higher taxes to pay for disastrous wars to protect his lands in France and he became more and more dependent on the barons and Merchants. In 1215 his Financers decided to force him to sign a document known as Magna Charta, which prevented him from claiming taxes without the approval of the council advisors. The document stated also that no free man could be arrested, imprisoned or similar without a fair trial. It was to be during the reign of John’s son, Henry III, the first of the Plantagenets, that the power of these nobles was further realized. In 1258 a parliament was formed and the nobles began to effectively govern the country themselves. This model parliament laid the foundation for the modern day House of Lords and House of Commons. Church and State Because a king’s legitimacy depended largely on the support of the Church, the Church in turn was able to exert a large measure of control over affairs of state, but this relationship between Church and State was often an uneasy one. An episode related to this conflict of interest was the case of Thomas Becket, who was made Archbishop of Canterbury by King Henry II, the king hoped that by giving the job to his friend he could control the power of the church, but the things wasn’t so easy and Henry resolved the problem of Becket’s opposition by having him murdered in Canterbury Cathedral. He was made saint and martyr, adding power and credibility to the Church of England. The fortunes of war One of the effects of the Norman Conquest was to link England with Normandy in the North of France. The struggle for possession of various French lands became a matter of contention which started off a series of disputes between rival families and became more and more complicated by royal intermarriages. The longest of these disputes started around 1337, when King Edward III claimed the French crown with the justification that his mother, Isabella of France, was the daughter of the French king, Philip IV. The war lasted over a century and became known as the Hundred Years’ war. The causes were partly territorial and partly economic and the decisive French victory over England happened in 1453. When the Hundred Years’ War ended, a blood feud started between the two rival houses of Lancaster and York. This was known as the War of the Roses because the emblem of both families was a rose, red for Lancaster and white for York. The last York king, the tyrant Richard III, was killed in battle in 1485 by Henry Tudor, who took the throne himself, opening the way for the Tudor dynasty. The shaping of opinion All of this fighting and feuding was of course supported by an ideology in which war was exalted as a noble occupation. The idea of chivalry was introduced around the middle of the 12th century. This was a set of values (loyalty, bravery, honesty…) by which knights were supposed to live and die. It was an extremely important element of the courtly romances, centered around the figure of King Arthur. In more practical terms, the king and his government had to convince public opinion that war campaigns were justified, in order to ensure the financial and material support raised through taxes and military service. Well-developed methods of communication and propaganda were used to this end, from official proclamations to letters and even songs and ballads celebrating military triumphs. Church sermons were also an effective means of promoting the war. On his return from France in 1417, Henry V was portrayed as a Christian soldier fighting a crusade against French. The Black Death The war with France was interrupted in 1348 by the Black Death, an epidemic bubonic plague which spread rapidly through Europe. The plague was caused by infected rats which travelled on the ships that were trading with Europe. The Black Death is reported to have killed half of the English population of that time. However, due to the shortage of the labour, the living conditions of the poor paradoxically improved: labour became a valuable commodity and peasants were able to demand payment for their work and better conditions. The Peasants’ Revolt The new found prosperity and freedom of the peasants was a cause of great alarm to the noble and merchant landowners who controlled parliament. It was for this reason and to finance the continuing war with France, that Richard II imposed a tax on all population, but the peasant workers had already begun to organize themselves into a prototypical union and were preparing a revolt. In 1381, the peasants marched on London and occupied the city. Many corrupt merchants and clergymen were executed. The government agreed to meet the peasants’ demands on condition that they disperse. It was the beginning of the end, the rebels weren’t strong enough to depose the government and seize power. When they returned home, the government executed their leader and the peasants were taken back into servitude. Despite this failure, the working people began to see themselves as a class and the nobility began to fear and respect them. A new sense of time Another good illustration of the changes that were occurring in the late Middle Ages is the merchant. The profession of merchant was among the most despised categories of labour because it wasn’t a work related to the image of God. In addition, traditionally the Church had prohibited usury, but as economic activity expanded, it felt obliged to moderate its position. Thus the merchant slowly became a valued and esteemed member of the new society. A new sense of time Linked to the rise of the merchants was a new idea of time that went against early Christian doctrine. In the eyes of the Church, time was eternal and belonged to God. Agricultural workers had only to think of time in the cyclical terms of the changing of seasons. But with the rise of trading this idea had to change, for example: prices could rise or fall depending on how long a journey took or how much a craftsman spent on a job. This effectively means that time can be bought or sold and the Church was strongly against this practice. Yet inevitably Church could do nothing to halt progress and the new concept of time was tolerated also by the Church. The explosion of trades and the emergence of the middle classes The growth of towns brought with it an explosion of new occupations: artisans and tradesmen… for example. These skilled artisans organized themselves into guilds and founded an urban bourgeoisie. Labour became more organized and many of the old religious taboos disappeared. Meanwhile in the countryside a new minor aristocracy (the gentry) was emerging among freeholders of land who were becoming wealthy through the income generated from agriculture and rents. Farmer began to enclose open fields and the idea of labour in the service of God was gradually replaced by the idea of working for money. Another consequence was the spread of education beyond the realm of the Church and the monasteries and the new upper-middle class educated their children.