Post by Innse Iboth on Mar 22, 2007 19:05:17 GMT -5
I think the "sudden disappearance" of the Picts is more an artefact of the spurious modern categories and distinctions we apply to the past than anything to do with what actually happened. We think of clear distinct well defined periods in history and regions in geography that are "inhabited" as it were by our subject, but in reality these distinctions are much more blurred.
For example, the Kingdom of Scotland as understood in the modern sense is traditionally dated from 843 AD and the accession of Cinaed I. However he was "Rex Pictorum" - "King of the Picts" - and his immediate successors were Kings of Alba in exactly the same sense that previous individuals normally associated with Pictish hegemony had been. The term "Scotia" is first applied I think during the reign of Malcolm II, quite possibly to legitimise the extent of the domains over which he wielded authority, which stretched to the north of Ireland and England. What that means to me is that the term Scotland, as distinct from Alba or Pictavia, is adopted as a self-consciously unifying synthesis in the 11th century, and one way it achieves this is by asserting a unifying dominant role for the Scots, here understood as the Dalriadic line back to Fergus Mor Mac Erc in the 5th century. Conferring this dominant unifying role upon the Dalriadic line implies some historical discontinuity, and the Picts become the victims of the discontinuity regardless of what really happened.
Consider that the seats of royal and ecclesiastical authority after the supposed decline of the Picts remained the former Pictish power centres, such as Forteviot, Arbroath, Dunkeld, St Andrews, Fordun, Abernethy, etc. and that even the royal standard remained the Pictish wild boar until the familiar lion rampant was adopted by William I in the 12th century. I would argue for continuity rather than catastrophe.
It should be recalled that the appalling paucity of manuscipt evidence from the early middle ages for Scotland is not due to it not having been created, but rather, two periods of destruction of manuscipt evidence:
1) The Wars of Independence; when the English were not deliberately trying to eradicate any traces of a distinct Scottish identity by their vandalism, they destroyed our manuscipt record by accident. For example, 3/4 of the Scottish rolls of the exchequer were destroyed when 3 of the 4 English ships removing them to London from Edinburgh sank in the north sea in 1296. Note that the volume of this resource now sadly lost to us required 4 ships to move it.
2) The Reformation, which was pursued with particular zeal in Scotland, resulted in the destruction of many records held in churches in the 16th century.
I suspect that, the conventional belief that the Picts had no written records notwithstanding, they did in fact produce a great deal, most if not all of which has been lost. I cannot believe that the culture that produced the finest sculpture of the dark ages, such as the symbol stones and the St Andrews sarcophagus, and that successfully opposed the Romans, the Anglo-Saxons and the Danes, and was Christianised at an early stage (long before Columba - e.g. Ninnian's mission to the southern Picts) boasting many monastic and contemplative foundations, was not a literate culture.
For example, the Kingdom of Scotland as understood in the modern sense is traditionally dated from 843 AD and the accession of Cinaed I. However he was "Rex Pictorum" - "King of the Picts" - and his immediate successors were Kings of Alba in exactly the same sense that previous individuals normally associated with Pictish hegemony had been. The term "Scotia" is first applied I think during the reign of Malcolm II, quite possibly to legitimise the extent of the domains over which he wielded authority, which stretched to the north of Ireland and England. What that means to me is that the term Scotland, as distinct from Alba or Pictavia, is adopted as a self-consciously unifying synthesis in the 11th century, and one way it achieves this is by asserting a unifying dominant role for the Scots, here understood as the Dalriadic line back to Fergus Mor Mac Erc in the 5th century. Conferring this dominant unifying role upon the Dalriadic line implies some historical discontinuity, and the Picts become the victims of the discontinuity regardless of what really happened.
Consider that the seats of royal and ecclesiastical authority after the supposed decline of the Picts remained the former Pictish power centres, such as Forteviot, Arbroath, Dunkeld, St Andrews, Fordun, Abernethy, etc. and that even the royal standard remained the Pictish wild boar until the familiar lion rampant was adopted by William I in the 12th century. I would argue for continuity rather than catastrophe.
It should be recalled that the appalling paucity of manuscipt evidence from the early middle ages for Scotland is not due to it not having been created, but rather, two periods of destruction of manuscipt evidence:
1) The Wars of Independence; when the English were not deliberately trying to eradicate any traces of a distinct Scottish identity by their vandalism, they destroyed our manuscipt record by accident. For example, 3/4 of the Scottish rolls of the exchequer were destroyed when 3 of the 4 English ships removing them to London from Edinburgh sank in the north sea in 1296. Note that the volume of this resource now sadly lost to us required 4 ships to move it.
2) The Reformation, which was pursued with particular zeal in Scotland, resulted in the destruction of many records held in churches in the 16th century.
I suspect that, the conventional belief that the Picts had no written records notwithstanding, they did in fact produce a great deal, most if not all of which has been lost. I cannot believe that the culture that produced the finest sculpture of the dark ages, such as the symbol stones and the St Andrews sarcophagus, and that successfully opposed the Romans, the Anglo-Saxons and the Danes, and was Christianised at an early stage (long before Columba - e.g. Ninnian's mission to the southern Picts) boasting many monastic and contemplative foundations, was not a literate culture.