Historical Perspective

... he slept with his fathers [ancestors], and Nadab his son reigned in his stead. Bible, 1 Kings 14:20

Yesterday I talked about how a little knowledge can change one’s perception; in particular an old and “worthless” violin becomes valuable when you learn Stradivarius made it. During the past month I’ve been doing a lot of Genealogy and have experienced similar paradigm shifts and “aha” moments.

One of the Holy Grails of genealogy is linking to a noble lineage. There is the prestige of course but also a sense of hitting the jackpot. Most noble lines are well documented so you get easy access to centuries of family history. Some noble lines even include genealogies back to Adam and Eve.

In my family tree I’ve rejected several popular and questionable links to nobility but still one or two remain. It’s been fun learning that I may to related to Robin Hood (Robert Earl of Huntington), Godiva and her husband Leofric, Earl of Mercia, and other notables. I take all this with a grain of salt and pinch of doubt. The historical reality of connecting to Adam and Eve is just as reliable as my Viking ancestors with a genealogy linking them to the Norse God Freyr. One Viking claimed descent from a polar bear, another from the Norse God Odin.

Anyhow, back to the theme, historical perspective. Where did the British nobility come from? The oldest lines date back to the Norman Conquest of 1066. This means that the noblest of the English are Frenchmen. How ironic given the centuries of French/English rivalry. And where did the French Normans come from – Frankish invaders and Vikings. Again ironic. The barbarians that defeated the Empire of Rome would build empires of their own that would someday become the height of culture and sophistication.

My current commuting CD is Late Antiquity: Crisis and Transformation whereby the instructor makes the case that the Dark Ages were not as dark as we think but merely a long transition from pagan Rome to Christian Europe. I looked up “Dark Ages” on Wikipedia and learned that modern scholars avoid the term. Some call it Late Antiquity, others The Age of Migration. Huh? What migration? So more research and this map from Wikipedia.

In the 300s and 400s AD, hostile climate in the north encouraged the Angles, Saxons and Jutes to invade England (displacing the Celts and fighting the Romans) – a few centuries later the pattern repeated with Vikings trying to displace the Saxons in Northumbria. To the far East, the army of Attilla the Hun (about 434-453) was destroying everything in its path. The Vandals, Ostrogoths, and Visigoths fled west and bumped into Rome. Rome fell and the “barbarians” then had free reign to migrate and settle across southern Europe.

In 767 the barbarians would create the “Holy Roman Empire” under Charlemagne, King of the Franks, which included most of Europe. Charlemagne claimed that he was the renewer of the Roman Empire, which had fallen into degradation under the Byzantines. From 801 AD onwards, Charlemagne used the title, "Charles, most serene Augustus crowned by God, the great, peaceful emperor ruling the Roman empire".

Bottom Line

To say I’m American describes my culture but not my family history given that America is merely two centuries old. Am I British (1700s-1066) or French Norman/Frank (1066-600) or Norse barbarian (600-?) or Roman (400 AD-100 BC) or …? It’s all a matter of perspective. Everything changes given enough time.