British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences

British Academy/Royal Irish Academy Joint Symposium

Anglo-Saxon/Irish Relations before the Vikings

The emergence of a post-Conversion English manuscript-culture, AD 664-c.800

David Dumville (Aberdeen)

Our sources for the period from 597 make very clear the prominence of Gaelic and Romano-Continental elements in the evangelisation of England and the development of a literate culture in England. Any British contribution is more shadowy and intangible. After the Council of Whitby (664) - a major event for Northumbria and for Anglo-Gaelic ecclesiastical relationships, and with knock-on effects into Southumbrian England - the beginnings of native development of literature must be supposed, complicated and expanded by whatever Archbishop Theodore and Abbot Hadrian sought to achieve. In this paper I wish to concentrate first on a re-examination of the script-system of the period before about 750, paying particular attention to changes in the Insular-script hierarchy in both England and Gaeldom. Secondly, I shall reconsider the relationship of the two manuscript-cultures in the early years of the ninth century, once English scribes had abandoned the practice of late Antique majuscule-script.