So the Education Secretary wants us to go back to the Dark Ages. But when were they and why were they dark? They are generally defined as the period after the fall of the Roman Empire at the end of the 5th century to the Norman Conquest in the second half of the 11th century.
Originally, they included the period up to the start of the Italian Renaissance in the 14th century – what we now call the Middle Ages. The “dark” refers to the fact that very little was written about those centuries or if it was, it has not survived. But here are a few things we do know about the era.
A NEW ANGLE
By 500AD the Romans were well and truly on the run. Their empire had shrunk by half and new invaders from northern Germany (the Angles and Saxons) were settling in southern Britain. The Angles named the conquered territory Angle-land which became England and the English we speak today derives from Anglo-Saxon spoken by the 6th-century incomers.
The Germanic tribes were themselves pushed out of their lands by invading Huns from the East. But by the 6th century the Huns were weakened by internal squabbling and the Slav people were on the rise in Eastern Europe.
Christianity had become the official faith both of the remains of the Roman Empire and the Germanic kingdoms and the church was consolidating its control of religious life all over Europe.
The Mayan civilisation in central America was at the peak of its prosperity with extraordinary technological and artistic developments. AD or not AD The year 500AD was a Leap Year and started on a Saturday but it was not known as 500AD at the time.
To the Ancient Romans it was the year 1253 ab urbe condita – meaning 1,253 years since the founding of the city of Rome. The Anno Domini dating system was devised in 525 but was not widely used until after 800.
The legend of King Arthur was born around 500AD. The year is a strong candidate as the date of the Battle of Badon Hill in which a force of Britons defeated an Anglo- Saxon war party.
Arthur is first mentioned as the leader of the victorious Britons in the Historia Brittonum from the early 9th century but is described as a soldier.
THE ONLY WAY WAS ESSEX
Around 500AD the East Saxons founded Essex as a separate kingdom.
FRANKLY, WE’RE FRENCH
The kingdom of the Franks, a confederation of Germanic tribes, was founded. It became known as Francia and eventually, France.
EMERGENCE OF ENGLAND
In 820 King Egbert of the West Saxons or Wessex unified his territory with the Kingdom of the Middle Angles or Mercia. Cornwall, the last remaining Roman British stronghold, also came under his control in 825. Egbert is considered the first king of all England.
The patron saint of Wales, St David, is thought to have been born in about 500AD in Pembrokeshire. He was a Welsh bishop who is said to have performed a miracle when he was preaching in the middle of a large crowd in the village of Brefi, mid-Wales.
A white dove settled on his shoulder and the ground where he stood rose up to form a hill. The dove became St David’s emblem and March 1, the date of his death in 589, is his feast day. His shrine within St David’s Cathedral in St David’s, Pembrokeshire, later became a popular place of pilgrimage throughout the Middle Ages.
ALFRED THE GREAT
King Alfred was King of the West Saxons or Wessex from 871 to 899. He repelled the Viking invaders at the Battle of Ashdown and was the first ruler to style himself King of the Anglo-Saxons and coined the term “Englisc” for both the people and their language to promote unity.
He is the only British or English king to be called “the Great” – and with good reason. He founded the Navy, reformed the legal system and the judiciary, insisting that all judges should be literate so they could apply themselves “to the pursuit of wisdom”.
He established a court school to educate not only his own sons and those of his noblemen but also clever boys of lowlier birth. He wanted teaching to be in English rather than Latin and commissioned translations from Latin into English of the books he deemed “most necessary for all men to know”.
The most famous story about Alfred is that when fleeing from the Vikings he took shelter in the Somerset Levels in the home of a peasant woman who left him to watch over the cakes she was baking. But he forgot and the cakes got burnt, earning him a scolding from the peasant woman who did not know who he was.
Alfred’s son Edward I or the Elder ruled from 901-925 and is remembered for siring 18 legitimate children – more than any other English king before or since.
BIRTH OF ISLAM
The prophet Muhammad was born around 570 in Mecca in presentday Saudi Arabia. He was in the habit of retreating to a cave to pray and it was there, at the age of 40, that he claimed to have had his first visitation from the Archangel Gabriel.
Initially his preaching met with hostility and he fled to Medina where he founded Islam in 622. By the time he died 10 years later, most of the Arabian Peninsula had converted to Islam.
Offa became King of Mercia (the Midlands) in 757 and extended his lands to most of southern England and East Anglia. To keep the Welsh in check he built the great raised earthen barrier which bears his name.
The border between Wales and England still mostly follows the path of Offa’s Dyke. Offa’s wife Cynethryth is the only Anglo-Saxon queen to be portrayed on coins.
In 768 Charles I (known as Charlemagne or Charles the Great) became King of the Franks. Six years later he added King of the Lombards to his titles and on Christmas Day 800 the Pope crowned him emperor of a united western Europe. For this reason Charlemagne is known as the Father of Europe, the first in western Europe since the Romans.
A skilled warrior he was also very learned and a great reformer who transformed the military, the government and the economy.
From 787 Vikings from Norway and Denmark began attacking the English coast and in 865, they succeeded in overrunning the country, promoting many years of war with the Anglo-Saxons.
UNREADY AND UNWANTED
The reign of King Ethelred the Unready from 979-1016 was an unmitigated disaster for England. The word “unready” comes from the Saxon word “unraed” meaning “uncounselled”. In other words, Ethelred wouldn’t listen to advice.
Consequently, he lost his crown to the Dane Sweyn Forkbeard. Sweyn died within the year after falling from his horse and Ethelred returned from exile to challenge Sweyn’s son, Canute. Then Ethelred died and his son Edmund Ironside was appointed king.
By then the country had had enough of pig-headed Ethelred and his ilk and Edmund was murdered in 1016, leaving Canute as the undisputed ruler of England.
Unlike the legend of Alfred and the cakes, the famous tale of King Canute commanding the waves to retreat is true. After the chaos of the Ethelred years, the English were so relieved to have stability in their lives that many regarded Canute as a god. The wave stunt was his way of demonstrating that he was merely human, like them.