In the twenty-one months between May 1896 and December 1897, there was a tailing-off in advertisements for Hungarian music in the Vienna press.

9.1 Introduction

If church-raiding was all but abandoned in the era of Amlaíb and Ímar, with the implication that the regime had access to more regular revenues, the last quarter of the century saw some reversion to raiding. Church-raiding is recorded mostly in the central eastern region in the later ninth century. As shown, this reflects two factors, textual and historical. From about 850 to about 890, there was a marked contraction in annalistic coverage of ecclesiastical affairs generally. A south midlands Clonmacnoise-focused strand disappears from the extant annals for more than a generation, re-emerging only about 890. Allowing for this text-internal factor, Viking church-raiding in reality was probably more restricted in range and, after about 850, it all but ceases in the south midlands and is confined, where it occurs at all, to the central east. This is certain from about 890, when a resurgence in Viking church-raiding affects only the central east, despite restoration of the south midlands Clonmacnoise-focused strand in the ecclesiastical record. It seems likely, but is not demonstrable, that church-raiding was similarly restricted in range for much of the period after 850.

As we will see, Viking activity generally, after the era of Amlaíb and Ímar, was largely confined to the central eastern region. This is an indicator that the fortunes of the Vikings in Ireland, and in Dublin, in particular, were probably in decline in the last quarter of the ninth century.

This series of volumes examining the reception of the Charlemagne myth in different linguistic cultures of medieval Europe springs from ‘Charlemagne in England’, a project supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council to study the literary presence of the emperor in medieval England, an area where the historical Charlemagne had never set foot, let alone reigned.

The spread of Charlemagne's myth after his death was even more extensive than was his empire during his life. This larger enterprise, therefore, an investigation of the appropriation of the matter of Charlemagne across Europe, required a network of specialists working on texts written in different languages and different geographical areas. Yet these languages were not culturally independent, but rather interdependent: it was largely through the medium of French, with its cultural hegemony, that the legend of Charlemagne spread widely, though Latin was also an important vehicle for texts perceived as historical truth. Furthermore, the same geographical area could be the ‘host’ for more than one language, the literatures of which would draw upon each other.

One particular challenge for the project was the question of overlap between geographical areas and cultural or linguistic zones. This is exemplified by the original project focused on Charlemagne in England, a multilingual land of overlapping cultural zones in one geographic area, with Latin, French and English literary cultures and other languages operating in particular areas or social groups.

During the final two decades of the eleventh century, Western Christendom was engulfed by a fiercely contested schism. On the one side was Clement III (1080– 1100), who was elected pope at the Synod of Brixen on the 15 June 1080 and consecrated in Rome on the 24 March 1084. On the other was Gregory VII (1073–85) and his successors, Victor III (1086–7), Urban II (1088–99), and Paschal II (1099–1118). Despite outliving three of his opponents and spending much of his pontificate in Rome, Clement ended up the defeated party, being condemned as a schismatic and heresiarch. Following Clement's death on 8 September 1100, Paschal led an aggressive campaign against Clement's memory. Paschal had Clement's body disinterred from its tomb and tossed into the Tiber, before seeking to destroy all traces of his defeated opponent's existence in a thorough campaign of damnatio memoriae.

Anglo-Norman England has traditionally been seen as remaining neutral during this schism following the death of Gregory VII in 1085, with no pope recognized in England until William Rufus sided with Urban II in 1095. Some, such as Frank Barlow, have interpreted this decade of neutrality rather cynically, viewing William the Conqueror and William Rufus as having no intention of recognizing Clement III and instead exploiting the schism to avoid papal interference in England.

This chapter sketches the political behaviour of the principal noble Catholic families in the aftermath of the failed ‘alterations’ of 1569–71 and foregrounds the continuing role of the Stanleys as the major surviving Catholic or crypto-Catholic affnity.

Cecil and his allies were able to manipulate the ‘Ridolf Plot’ to immobilise the Catholic party in court and council and achieve a complete political recovery. Cecil, who in 1570 had prepared for fight, was reinforced in the queen's confdence as her principal minister and ennobled as Lord Burghley in February 1571. The defeated party's 1571 Treatise of Treasons provided, as Peter Lake illustrates, an ‘extraordinarily plausible account’ of the crisis now over. The ‘returning clique of Edwardian Protestant insiders, ‘the crew and band of the party Protestant’, led by the two ‘Catilines’, the ‘English machiavels’, Cecil and Bacon, had turned the tables and triumphed over the Catholic noble coalition which in 1569 and 1570 had attempted to unseat them.1 The Elizabethan regime, though shaken, was confrmed in its Protestant stance. Catholic magnates adjusted to political defeat and the balance in the council moved further to the left. As Cecil later put it, in ‘cankered humour’ and ‘rash and malicious mockery’ his political ascendancy came to be termed the Regnum Cecilianum.

What does the future hold for Black people when the past is burdened with pain and trauma? This question lies at the core of Afrofuturism, rooted in African-American culture, and Africanfuturism, rooted in African culture. Both frameworks grapple with a fundamental dilemma from different geographies: Is the future shaped by the creation of new worlds or identities, as seen in the modern Africanfuturist work of Nnedi Okorafor's Binti Trilogy? Or is it forged through the reclamation of things denied, merging past and future in a cyclical return to a fuller understanding of self, as exemplified in Frederick Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself? Could the future look like Binti's world in Okorafor's fictional work: a move to different galaxies as Binti navigates space to find new ways for herself and her people to assimilate in a society that has long ago cast them out? Or could the future be informed by Douglass’ real-life narrative – one shaped by the brutal realities of enslavement? To focus on Douglass: Born to an enslaved mother, likely raped by her white enslaver – a common act of sexual violence that fed both lust and profit (338), as children inherited their mother's bondage – Douglass was torn from his mother at birth. He saw her only rarely, when she risked traveling twelve miles between plantations at night, returning before sunrise to avoid brutal whippings – violence he witnessed repeatedly from overseers throughout his childhood. He called such brutality ‘the blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery’ (339), a terror seared into him when he saw his Aunt Hester ‘tied up to a joist, and whip[ped] upon her naked back till she was literally covered with blood’ (339).

In the medieval French Perlesvaus, its narrator characterises the eponymous hero as the best knight in the world, for example in the context of his fight with his uncle, the King of Castle Mortal:

8.1 Introduction

Chapter 6 outlined a transition in the first half of the ninth century from mostly opportunistic to more calculated Viking church-raiding: bigger campaigns, creation of bases at strategic locations, alliances between Vikings and Irish, and involvement of Viking ‘royals’. Chapter 7 studied closely the events of 848–853. The dynasty of Laithlinn, apparently from Norway, sought to impose itself in Ireland, in 848–850, but was attacked in 851–852 by ‘Black Foreigners’. These were seemingly Danes, primarily, whose intervention coincided with upheaval in Denmark, the impact of which was also felt in Francia and England. By contrast with them, ‘Fair Foreigners’ at this point denotes the regime originating in Laithlinn. The Viking order in Ireland survived this threat, however, and was secured in 853 by the arrival from Laithlinn of Amlaíb, who, with joint king Ímar, and for a period also Auisle, established an enduring regime at Dublin. The period up to the mid- 840s had seen strategic and political influences on Viking church-raiding emerge. The crisis of 848–853 and its outcome brought strategy and politics to centre stage, so that church-raiding thereafter, though apparently much reduced in volume and range, was more deliberately targeted. This and following chapters analyse the politico-military context of church-raiding.

Quantitative analysis of Viking engagement with native Irish polities revealed a rise in the 830s to a level that persisted to c. 875.

The major constraints on farmers’ decision-making have been identified as the natural environment and the human environment of institutions determining behaviour in rural societies. This book has attempted to gauge the effects of these two constraints for the reclaimed wetlands along the southern North Sea coast over the period from c. 900 to the end of the twentieth century. Humans attempted to control the waterlogged landscape by creating physical infrastructure, which in turn demanded the creation of institutional infrastructure – formal and informal rules and organisations – with which to organise maintenance of the waterworks. This institutional infrastructure was required because wetland reclamation and maintenance of infrastructure were collective efforts of farmers, lords and communities that needed to be coordinated. Over the millennium under study, humans were able to transform the landscape into productive farmland through creating physical and institutional infrastructure, but they also caused unintended changes in the landscape that forced them to adapt their infrastructure and institutions. Institutional arrangements were embedded in the continuously changing natural environment and as such were also required to be adjusted continuously.

The above certainly does not mean that this book aims to reintroduce environmental determinism into historiography. Throughout the areas that were transformed, physical infrastructure was uniform: dikes to protect the land from flooding; ditches, canals, culverts and sluices to drain excess water from the fields. The institutional arrangements for the organisation of maintenance showed a considerable variation, however. Divergent institutions could be applied successfully to the same environmental issue. This makes the North Sea Lowlands a fascinating laboratory within which to study the effects of different institutions on the development of agriculture.