Treasures of the Anglo Saxons

BELLS CHIME

For almost 1,000 years,

Norman cathedrals and castles have dominated the British landscape.

But this Norman legacy has eclipsed another culture.

A golden treasure trove of their art remained buried in the countryside.

The lost art of a people the Normans conquered.

The art of the Anglo-Saxons.

The discovery of these golden hoards

would radically alter our interpretation of the Anglo-Saxons.

They used materials and techniques that brought together

the ideas and beliefs of Scandinavia,

mainland Europe and the Middle East.

The Anglo-Saxons developed a complex artistic language

which combined both their pagan past and their Christian future.

They created a world of codes and messages

that revealed the inner workings of the Anglo-Saxon mind, much of which

has remained hidden until now.

Surprisingly, much of the Anglo-Saxon art in British museums

was actually discovered less than a century ago.

In the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, among its array

of priceless artefacts,

is one of the most comprehensive collections

of Anglo-Saxon gold work.

When I used to come here as a student, I was mesmerised

by the beauty and intricacy of these glittering artworks.

The craftsmanship and the detail of each one captivated me.

Over the years, many archaeologists and historians

have studied virtually every aspect of these Anglo-Saxon hoards.

But I'm the first art historian to try and take a fresh look at them.

The early Anglo-Saxons were violent warriors

who carried with them an amazing wealth of personal art.

Jewellery they would wear into battle.

When I look at them, it's amazing to think that

these are all over 1,000 years old and each one tells their own story.

The story of the Anglo-Saxons begins at the start of the 4th century.

They were not a single tribe,

they were a combination of different tribes.

They came from what is now the Netherlands,

northern Germany and Denmark.

Their art is full of symbols and messages

that refer to Norse myth and legend.

Images of Odin with his horned helmet,

and other animals

like these serpents that slither over the artwork.

But by the end of the Anglo-Saxon period, in the 11th century,

they developed one of the most complex visual languages on earth.

This Dark Age artistic movement was stopped pretty much dead

in its tracks by the Normans,

and their artistic goals could not have been more different.

One of the first things the Normans did, after defeating

the Anglo-Saxons in 1066, was to build the mighty Durham Cathedral.

The architecture is one of occupation.

The Normans were all about building

permanent, public art, unlike the early Anglo-Saxons

whose warrior culture demanded smaller, portable, personal art.

When the Normans took over,

they set about remaking much of Anglo-Saxon culture into their own.

However, some remnants of the old Anglo-Saxon world would endure

this Norman cultural onslaught.

In ancient libraries like this,

a few precious Anglo-Saxon stories and poems did survive.

They have enthralled me ever since I was a schoolgirl.

The world of the early Anglo-Saxons is mainly one of the spoken word.

There are virtually no written records, but we catch glimpses

of their vivid culture from the poetry and riddles written down

by monks in later centuries.

For example, the epic poem The Wanderer

tells of a warrior far from the life of the hall.

SHE READS IN OLD ENGLISH

Although the Normans brought their own language with them,

some words spoken by the Anglo-Saxons still survive today.

Mother and father, Monday and Tuesday, he and she, all these words

come from the Anglo-Saxons, but aside from these words and poems,

there's a lack of written evidence.

As a result, the popular conception

for centuries was that the Dark Ages were precisely that, dark.

With it comes to the very early Anglo-Saxon treasures,

these only survived because

they were buried in the ground long before the Normans came.

We are still finding more of this golden art today.

The biggest haul of Anglo-Saxon gold ever discovered

has been found in a field in Staffordshire.

It is astonishing. I never in my career thought I'd be holding

this kind of treasure.

The footage of the dig is extraordinary.

It just didn't seem to stop.

-Unbelievable.

-It's the sort of thing you dream of.

This has lain underground for more than 1,300 years.

At a cost of some £3.5 million, the Staffordshire hoard

has now been bought for the nation.

-Hello, Dave.

-Hello. Welcome to Birmingham.

'The archaeologist who oversaw the initial find, Dave Simmons,

'has been busy cataloguing some of the 3,500 pieces found in the hoard.

'I'm most keen to see the processional cross which remains

'twisted from the day it was grabbed by an Anglo-Saxon warrior.'

This is actually the largest

single piece in the hoard.

It's about 140 grams of gold staring you in the face there.

Gosh! Can we look at it close up?

Yes, we can.

What we have here is probably a processional cross of some kind.

It's amazing to see it like this.

It's a pretty remarkable piece.

If you look at the reconstruction,

you can see there are these three little holes.

This thing would originally have been fastened to

the top of a pole and carried as a processional cross.

Probably to make it fit in the hoard, it's been folded up.

If I turn it over, you can see

the arms have just been folded in on itself

and that's actually the bottom.

You can see the three little holes.

In the 7th century, this could have been a military weapon.

This is your secret weapon, your religion into battle on your side.

So I presume you think it's war booty, then?

I find it hard to understand how you acquire the bits from 90 plus swords

without it being something connected with war.

This is warrior bling.

This is people wearing really dramatic, really elaborate

gold decoration to their swords, to their equipment.

Everything about the way these things are cut and designed is about

the effect on a battlefield.

The phrase that I like is the idea of the psychopathic peacock.

This is a man who will chop you in half with his sword,

without thinking twice about it

and because he's that kind of person, he's valued by the king.

People have looked at a lot of the things here

and said, surely they're made for parade, they're not for real battle.

Yes, they are. You're in that battle looking as magnificent

as you can because that tells everybody how important you are.

The Staffordshire hoard is one of the most significant discoveries

of Anglo-Saxon art ever made.

It's staggering to think

that this is all war booty, taken from the bodies of fallen warriors

after a battle that ended more than 1,200 years ago.

Looking at the intricate design and beautiful craftsmanship,

it's a sobering thought that in order to see this detail clearly,

you'd have to get very close indeed to the man wearing it.

It would probably be the last thing

you ever saw, given their fearsome reputation for chopping people up.

But why did these beautifully jewelled pagan warriors

come to Britain in the first place?

The simple answer is there were no Roman soldiers here to stop them.

The Romans quite liked building walls.

In fact, they built one right across the entire country

to stop the barbaric Picts and Scots from attacking Roman Britain.

They did a good job of keeping out not just the Picts and Scots,

but also invaders from Northern Europe, ancestors of Anglo-Saxons.

By the start of the 4th century, the Roman Empire was in decline.

And the provinces first to go

would be the ones furthest from Rome.

In 410, the Emperor Honorius wrote to

the local authorities in Britain with news they must have dreaded.

Rome would no longer be able to send reinforcements to help defend them

against barbarian attacks.

The British monk Gildas, writing some 150 years after this event,

imaginatively described it as the groan of the Britons.

According to Gildas, initially three boatloads

of Saxon warriors arrived to defend against the Picts in the North.

They might have been mercenaries,

invited over by Vortigern, a legendary Ancient British warlord.

However, they soon rebelled,

and as more of their fellow tribesmen arrived,

they began to take over.

With no way of knowing how much of this is true, the Romano-British

certainly defended themselves, but the Anglo-Saxons were here to stay.

By the 5th century, the Anglo-Saxons had taken over

most of the eastern half of England.

This is Finglesham in Kent,

and here on the village sign, you can see a little figure.

Odin, the Norse God.

A central character in all the early Anglo-Saxon pagan beliefs.

And they've put him on the village sign, not because the inhabitants are pagan - well, they might be -

but because near here, an archaeological dig

unearthed a golden belt buckle with a depiction of Odin.

It's now known as the Finglesham buckle

and it's one of the most famous Anglo-Saxon artworks found in Kent.

The Finglesham buckle was unearthed in 1934 on the Northbourne estate.

At the time, Lord Northbourne was a small boy.

He remembers the discovery of an Anglo-Saxon grave

that aroused the interest of some local archaeologists.

If you look at this mess out here, which was a chalk quarry,

somebody noticed that there was what was obviously a grave in it.

And Mr Stebbing, who was the Mayor of Sandwich,

and a friend of his who was also an archaeologist, came out here,

had a look at it, decided there must be something interesting behind this

and they excavated the first 10 or 15 graves, I think, up here.

These lovely finds that were coming out of your land

ended up in your possession?

Well, that was the law in those days,

and actually what happened was about half of them went to local museums.

And the other half, my father retained.

The family still have the treasures and Lord Northbourne took me

to his son's house to see them.

This is my son, Charles.

-Lovely to meet you.

-Pleased to meet you.

You're going to show me the treasures?

-I have the treasures here.

-Wonderful.

-My goodness.

-So I'm going to show you the buckle here.

This is the famous Finglesham buckle,

which I'll put down for you here.

Oh, my gosh.

-My goodness, can I pick it up?

-Yes, absolutely.

Wow.

It's a solid piece of metal, isn't it?

So it's gilded

with a silver back plate.

I mean, everything about it,

it's so golden and bright,

it would have looked so amazing on a military attire.

If we have a look at the figure, we know it's Odin, of course,

because of this teardrop-shaped head

and these hook-beaked birds coming out from the prow of the helmet.

And then he's wearing his own version of the buckle

around his middle.

I'm very excited, sorry, I'm getting a bit hot and excited at this!

It's interesting that he's naked, because this was one of the things

that set apart the early so-called barbarian warriors,

that they would run into battle naked, wielding their weapons.

I get an overwhelming

sense of excitement holding such an amazing piece of art like this.

It is a national treasure,

something hugely important to our art history.

All of these finds from Finglesham really give us

a vivid picture of 5th-century Anglo-Saxon England.

These are Germanic pieces, pagan pieces,

full of imagery that's coming out of the pagan belief system.

Birds, Odin with his spears.

So what do we know about Odin

and the pagan beliefs of the Anglo-Saxons?

Well, Odin was the chief god in Norse mythology.

Ruler of Asgard, the location of Valhalla, which was the great hall

where dead warriors believed they would go to in the afterlife

to feast and drink for all eternity.

Snakes, boars, bears, wolves and ravens, all these animals

appear in Anglo-Saxon art and each is tied to a specific Norse legend.

Warriors believed they could transform into these animals.

It was these pagan beliefs that fostered the idea

that the Anglo-Saxons were primitive.

For a long time, historians thought that very early Anglo-Saxon kings

were barbarians, not nearly as sophisticated as the Christian

Romano-Britons they'd conquered.

And the archaeological evidence seemed to support this,

suggesting they lived in simple wooden structures like this hovel.

However, the truth was very different.

And it wasn't until Britain was faced with another Germanic invasion

that an archaeological discovery was made that would

transform our understanding of the Anglo-Saxon world forever.

In 1939, as Britain prepared for war, a team of archaeologists

were preparing to excavate an Anglo-Saxon burial site

at Sutton Hoo in East Anglia.

What they found astonished them.

It was a longboat, 18 metres from stem to stern.

And inside, it was full of precious artefacts,

the like of which no-one had seen before.

There was so much treasure,

a man with this wealth couldn't have lived in a hovel.

The archaeologist concluded that this had to be the grave of a king.

'This is easily the most magnificent collection

'of Saxon jewellery ever found.

'Probably the finest piece artistically

'is the great gold buckle, over 14 ounces of solid gold.

'Sliding latches on the back plate

'allow it to open and show how it was attached to the leather belt.'

Today, the Sutton Hoo treasures

have pride of place in the British Museum's Anglo-Saxon collection.

The finds from Sutton Hoo would literally rewrite the history books.

If you look at some of the details, it's clear these objects are coming

straight out of Scandinavia.

Here is the raven of Odin, the beast of battle, its beak curling round.

And these amazing long claws curving in on themselves.

This is Odin's bird,

ready to crawl over the bodies of the deceased on the battlefield.

And the helmet, very Scandinavian.

It must have made quite an impression on the battlefield.

Here coming up the front we have two dragons,

big snarling teeth meeting in the middle and protecting the crown.

And then over the eyebrows, two boars, their eyes

picked out in glistening garnets.

Boars were very potent symbols to Anglo-Saxon warriors.

Let me explain why.

In the pagan beliefs of the early Anglo-Saxons,

the boar symbolised fertility.

The goddess Freya rode one called Hildesvini into battle,

that is when she wasn't riding her cat-drawn chariot.

This was one of the few times when saying someone is a BOAR in bed

was actually a compliment.

But birds and boars weren't the only animal symbols depicted

on the Sutton Hoo treasures.

There are also snakes, lots of snakes.

You can see them writhing over the surface of the golden belt buckle.

Here, two intertwine around one another

in this beautiful, interlaced pattern.

But why the fascination with snakes?

The snakes are in fact Jormungandr,

or the world serpent from Norse mythology.

Legend has it that he was the son of another god that Odin tossed

into the sea, where he grew into a serpent.

A serpent large enough to surround the entire world

and grab his own tail.

It was literally the worm that turned the world.

And the Anglo-Saxons believed that

if the snake or worm ever let go of its tail, then the world would end.

And this is my absolute favourite piece.

The Sutton Hoo shoulder clasps. And you can see that serpents

writhe all over it.

They interlace down the sides here, along the bottom and winding up here

in this intricate pattern.

And then there are the boars.

There's two of them at each end of the shoulder clasp.

They're quite difficult to make out.

If I isolate just one, you can see the snout with the tusk here

and you follow the shape of the head up to the ear

and round below the face with the spine coming all the way down here.

And then the little trotter at the back.

These pieces show us just how sophisticated and international

the Anglo-Saxons were.

Glass from Italy, garnet from India,

and these delicate chequerboard patterns.

Some of them are only a millimetre wide.

It's amazing craftsmanship

and something only a few elite jewellers could reproduce today.

Garrard's are one of the most famous jewellers in the world.

The craftsmen create some of the most exclusive jewellery.

With pieces ranging upwards of a quarter of a million pounds,

their jewellery adorns billionaires, pop stars and royalty.

The way we're looking at it there, and then we see the side...

'Designer Stephen Webster, the man in charge, believes

'the techniques the Anglo-Saxon smiths used to make shoulder clasps

'are the same ones still in use today.'

This is where the jewellery manufacturing process

has really not moved on the way that

you might have thought over 1,600 years, 1,500 years or something.

There's a lot of small hand tools

and even though they would have been cruder, these are very, very similar.

So we've got a ring here that's for a customer in Las Vegas.

-So the best way to go about that is to carve this in wax.

-Right.

So this is the first technique that's the same.

He's carving in wax and...

Do you want to show us some of the tools that you use for carving?

Yeah, I'm just using sculpers and a scraper.

So these are just sharp steel tools.

-Again, they don't look particularly modern.

-They're not!

There's nothing modern on his bench, not even his lunch!

To make the hundreds of garnet inserts, the Anglo-Saxons

would have glued them to sticks like this

and cut them to size on a grinding stone.

I couldn't resist the opportunity to have a go myself.

-Oh, my God.

-Are you nervous?

Yes, I'm really nervous.

-I don't want to...

-The thing to do is to hold it firm but go in

and feel it so you feel it bite.

-That's it and then you just keep it like that.

-Oh, wow. OK.

Wow.

Oh, I can see it's wearing down.

We have lift-off.

-Wow.

-Well, anyway, you get the gist of it.

The rest is just time.

Well, I've certainly worn a little bit down.

But that must take ages to cut that whole shape out.

It gives you an idea. We've got a modern tool, we've got electricity

so they're just going to work it

-with whatever they had.

-It puts it into perspective.

A minute of doing that and it's barely scratched the gem

and yet they'd have to do that over and over...

-All of them. A lot of work.

-Have I done it well?

-You did it well.

-Fantastic.

So I guess the million-dollar question is,

to make that pair of Sutton Hoo shoulder clasps, how much?

-We think it would be just shy of £200,000.

-Right.

And it would take how long, do you think?

Well, we figured on something close to four weeks each.

You know, there's not that many short cuts. We've got better tools

and better things available but it's still a lot of handwork.

200 grand and two months, you'd end up with shoulder clasps.

-Absolutely.

-Thank you.

To the Anglo-Saxons, the smiths who created their jewellery

must have seemed like magicians.

In fact, they even made one smith a god.

And his story is an epic tale of enchanting jewels, rape and murder.

The tale of Weyland is one of my favourite Norse legends.

Weyland the smith was a happily married man

who made fantastic swords and jewellery.

One night in his sleep

he was captured by the cruel King Nidud.

The king imprisoned Weyland on an island and forced him

to make jewellery for him.

To make sure he couldn't escape, the king ordered him to be hamstrung.

Crippled, knowing he wouldn't see his wife again,

Weyland exacted a terrible revenge.

He murdered the king's sons, fashioned goblets from their skulls,

jewels from their eyes and a brooch from their teeth.

Weyland then took back his wedding ring from the king's daughter

before raping her, fathering a son and escaping on a pair of wings.

A truly grim fairy-tale, but one that might actually

contain a grain of truth.

Many of the Anglo-Saxon smiths may well have been slaves like Weyland.

The golden treasures found at Sutton Hoo had made historians question

whether Anglo-Saxon kings really had lived in small, wooden hovels.

It couldn't have been in places like this.

After the Second World War, archaeologists discovered evidence

that Anglo-Saxon kings lived in giant wooden palaces.

We now think that Anglo-Saxon kings lived in huge halls like this.

Digs at Yavering in Northumbria unearthed a hall

twice the size of this one with an auditorium that seated over 300 people.

These halls feature in Old English poems like the epic Beowulf

which, for me, gives the most evocative idea of life in the hall.

Indeed, the poem opens with the command "Hwaet!",

"Listen!", which you can imagine being shouted across a crowded hall

of drunken warriors.

SHE READS IN OLD ENGLISH

This replica hall was built by the Regia Anglorum society.

The 700 members devote their weekends

to recreating Anglo-Saxon life in Kent.

We wanted somewhere where we could do practical archaeology

and to recreate things which we know exist in the archaeological record

in the environment in which they had originally been used.

-So it's like living research.

-That's right.

It is somewhere where we can trace the footprints of our ancestors.

We feel very strongly that

if we can trace their footprints in time, we can see what they saw.

You think the interior of these halls would have been brightly decorated and coloured?

Very much so.

We know our Anglo-Saxon ancestors enjoyed bright colours

because they lived in a fairly drab world.

The apex of our porch has some very pretty colours on there.

Yes, because it's a very bright use of blues and reds and golds.

-Absolutely.

-And very regal as well.

Yeah, you might even say it looked like a Chinese restaurant!

In 597, a man came across the sea with an idea that would transform

the art of the Anglo-Saxons.

St Augustine was on a mission from God and Pope Gregory.

He stepped off his boat right here.

Well, just over there, close to what is now St Augustine's golf course.

Legend has it that Pope Gregory's decision

to convert the pagan Anglo-Saxons came about thanks to a papal pun.

On seeing some Angles in a Roman slave market, he asked,

"Where are they from?"

Hearing that they are Angles,

he said, "They are not Angles, but Angels."

So the Pope decided the Angle-Angels were so beautiful,

they had to be Christian.

He dispatched St Augustine to ensure that all the British Isles

would now follow him and God, not Odin and lots of pagan gods.

So what was life like in these newly converted kingdoms?

It was quite nice, actually.

According to Bede, a monk writing some time later,

in Edwin's Northumbria, it was completely safe

for a woman and child to walk from one end of his lands to the other.

And when times were tough

and peasants turned up at Edwin's Great Hall in search of food,

he not only gave them his dinner but the silver plate it was on, too.

What a nice man!

It sounds like a peaceful time.

It wasn't always quite like that

but it was a time when pagan and Christian beliefs did co-exist,

and this was reflected in the art.

Mama.

CLOCK CHIMES

Here, in the British Museum,

is one of the best examples that shows how readily the Anglo-Saxons

were prepared to follow both Christ and Odin.

This is one of my favourite pieces -

the silver and gilt belt buckle from Crundale, in Kent.

This is a serious piece of double-edged art...literally.

Look at how these symbols sit alongside each other.

Knotted pagan snakes and a Christian fish.

This piece clearly shows it was made at a time when the Anglo-Saxons

were hedging their bets,

embracing Christianity and keeping hold of their pagan heritage.

Looking at it now, you can imagine the sort of man who commissioned it.

One week he's fasting for Easter,

the next he's feasting for the goddess Aostra.

For about a century,

the Anglo-Saxons continued to flip between paganism and Christianity.

And some time in the 7th century, one piece of art was created

that perfectly encapsulated this eclectic view of the world.

In 1857, Victorian collector Sir Augustus Wollaston Franks

was on a shopping trip to Paris

in pursuit of his famous pastime - buying antiques.

He heard about a rather unusual item a dealer had for sale.

It had lain hidden for nearly 1,000 years.

And eventually, it wound up in a Parisian antique shop.

When Wollaston Franks saw it, he couldn't resist.

Today, it's known as the Franks casket.

Carved out of whalebone, it's an amazing visual representation

of the early Anglo-Saxons' view of the history of the world.

It's well over 1,200 years old now

and it has to be kept in a climate-controlled case.

It's far too delicate to be handled.

So the British Museum had this replica made, which I can hold.

And this means I can show you that the Franks casket is a truly

three-dimensional art object. It's like an Anglo-Saxon Rubik's Cube.

If we start at the front, where the key would enter the lock, missing...

We've got two very enigmatic scenes.

We've the legendary Germanic story of Weyland the smith.

Weyland has killed the king's son and is offering a drugged goblet

made from his skull to the daughter.

And to the side of this are three figures,

the Three Magi, approaching two figures here.

Mary and Jesus have been abbreviated to teardrop-shaped heads.

A scene from Germanic myth alongside a Christian image.

But if we turn it round to the left, something else enters the equation.

A scene from Roman legend.

Here we've got a very unusual version

of Romulus and Remus

being nursed by the wolf.

Typically,

they are shown as children underneath the wolf,

but the Anglo-Saxons

have shown them as full-grown adults lying out prostate on the ground.

With this upside-down wolf here.

But I love this object because it captures that moment

when the Anglo-Saxons are moving from paganism to Christianity.

And in this one piece we've got so many of the legends and so much

of the imagery that had previously dominated Anglo-Saxon art.

A century after St Augustine had landed,

stone symbols of the Christian faith

began to dominate the British landscape.

In the wooden world of the Anglo-Saxons,

stone crosses made a big impact.

This proved to be an effective advertising campaign,

one that definitely said

paganism was fading away and Christianity was here to stay.

New churches and abbeys sprung up throughout the Anglo-Saxon lands.

In 674, Abbot Benedict Biscop founded a monastery here.

Very few Anglo-Saxon buildings survive,

but inside, the entire chancel is original.

In its day, this place was an island of Mediterranean culture

in a sea of barbarism.

The abbot, Biscop, was a well-travelled man.

In his lifetime, he made many trips to Rome, and I think

he fell in love with the place.

So much so that he decided to create a little bit of Rome

here in the Northeast of England.

The chancery he built is now one of the oldest buildings in Britain.

But working in stone wasn't the only idea Biscop brought back

from his travels.

Biscop introduced another new concept, one the Anglo-Saxons

had never seen before and one that we couldn't live without today...

glazed windows.

This is it, one of the earliest stained-glass windows in Britain.

But Jarrow wasn't to be remembered for its stonework and glass.

There was another art form that it was to become world famous for.

Manuscripts.

Although the whole country was now Christian, the Church

was effectively split in two.

On the one side were the newly converted Anglo-Saxons in England.

On the other were the Celtic churches in the rest of the country.

The easiest way to understand their artistic and spiritual differences

is to look at how they both drew people.

This is the Mac Durnan Gospel.

It's typical of the style of manuscript produced

by the very early Christians in the Celtic parts of Britain and Ireland.

It's small because it was designed to be carried by the clergymen

as they travelled around the land preaching.

The depiction of the figure is very stylised.

It's almost a cartoon.

If you look at the feet, they're cloven, not at all realistic.

Some scholars have speculated

it comes from a belief that only God can create the true image of man.

The Anglo-Saxons, who took their ideas directly from St Augustine

and Rome, had no problem drawing man, and his feet, naturalistically.

This is the Durham Cassiodorus. A fantastic Anglo-Saxon manuscript.

Take a look at the figure here.

It's far more naturalistic and realistic.

And the treatment of the feet, no cloven hooves here.

The artist has even included tiny little toenails.

It's far more in keeping with the classical tradition of art

that's coming out of Rome.

The Celtic and Anglo-Saxon Christians couldn't agree

when to celebrate Easter.

And although these different approaches to drawing feet

may seem trivial to us now, at the time they represented

a real fundamental difference between the two Christian camps.

These two artistic styles may seem irreconcilable, but one man's life

was to inspire an artwork that would bring the two together.

His name was St Cuthbert and he spent most of his life

on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne.

St Cuthbert was one of Lindisfarne's earliest bishops.

The most remarkable thing about Cuthbert

was he was all things to all men.

He was a nobleman, a hermit, a monk and a bishop.

And in death, he was to become

one of the Anglo-Saxons' most treasured saints.

In 687, Cuthbert died and was buried here.

11 years later, the monks of Lindisfarne opened his coffin

and made an amazing discovery.

Cuthbert didn't rot.

Because of this, he was declared a saint

and a cult would grow up around him.

In death, Cuthbert managed one final miraculous act,

and it would reconcile the artistic differences between the Anglo-Saxon

and Celtic churches.

He inspired another bishop of Lindisfarne, Eadfrith,

to create a manuscript of such beauty

it would become one of the pinnacles of Anglo-Saxon artistic achievement.

This is it. This is the Lindisfarne Gospels,

the finest piece of art from the Dark Ages, and a national treasure.

Well, this isn't actually it. The original is in the British Library.

But this one manuscript

is the culmination of centuries of Anglo-Saxon artistic endeavour.

Not only that, it manages to resolve the stylistic differences

of the two Christian factions.

Let's look at it in a little more detail.

Here we have an image

of Matthew the Evangelist, writing in his gospel book.

And if you look at details like the feet,

you can see the same sort of imagery

that we saw in the Durham Cassiodorus.

That naturalistic treatment of the figure

that's coming directly from Rome with St Augustine.

And alongside this, we get these full-page illuminations

called carpet pages,

where the swirls move the eye from image into text.

But look at this carpet page in detail.

Here we've got Celtic whorls and spirals,

just like we saw in the Mac Durnan Gospels, here in the borders.

They knot along the edges, here.

And then we've also got Anglo-Saxon animal interlace,

just like we saw on the Sutton Hoo belt buckle,

where the serpents and beasts wound into one another.

And if you look at this carpet page,

it's the same imagery we've seen on the Sutton Hoo shoulder clasps.

Look at the centre, the exact same geometric patterning.

It's no accident that they're called carpet pages.

They certainly resemble Islamic prayer rugs,

and it's possible that Eadfrith had seen a Middle Eastern carpet.

He certainly had an encyclopaedic knowledge of Celtic, Anglo-Saxon

and Christian art of Rome.

Today, the Lindisfarne Gospels are considered

one of the world's greatest artworks,

but less than a century after they were made,

they were nearly destroyed

by a new wave of violent, bloodthirsty pagan invaders.

In 793, the Vikings sacked Lindisfarne,

slaughtering their monks and plundering their treasures.

By 871, nearly all the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms

had been defeated and ravaged by the marauding Vikings.

Only the newly-crowned King of Wessex stood against them.

His name was Alfred - Alfred the Great.

And Winchester was his capital city.

Under Alfred,

Winchester became the very model of Anglo-Saxon civilisation,

a place where art and culture would flourish.

During his reign, Alfred introduced many concepts we take for granted,

like taxes to pay for the defence of his cities.

However, he would never decisively defeat the Vikings.

But he did stop them from conquering England completely.

Winchester Cathedral was built by the people that did ultimately

conquer Anglo-Saxon England, the Normans.

But beneath it lies the remains of a great Anglo-Saxon cathedral.

During his 28 years on the throne,

Alfred made the building of new churches and monasteries a priority.

The Church, and his faith, were very important to Alfred.

He believed the reason that the Vikings had come to rape

and pillage his land was simple.

His people were not pious enough.

To atone for this lack of piety, Alfred made the production of art

dedicated to the glory of God his mission.

And this is his legacy.

It became known as the Winchester School and it shows how the artistry

and creativity of the Anglo-Saxons developed in later centuries.

There's still loads of Anglo-Saxon motifs here.

The bold use of colour, the gold, this interlacing knotwork here.

And as we move on to later works,

you see even more naturalism and movement in pieces like this.

Look at the treatment of the figure.

And the drapery here.

There's an increasing freedom of expression in pieces like this,

where the characters are filling the space

and pouring out across the illumination.

And looking at this, you can really see why Anglo-Saxon manuscripts

became such highly-prized artworks throughout Europe.

The freedom and expressiveness of the late Anglo-Saxon period

was not limited to manuscripts.

There was one piece of jewellery that when it was found,

looked so fresh and was in such good condition

the British Museum thought it was fake.

Of all the works produced in the late Anglo-Saxon period, for me,

this, the Fuller brooch, represents most clearly

both where Anglo-Saxon art has come from and where it's heading to.

It's personal, it's portable, and shiny,

just like the other early Anglo-Saxon warrior bling.

But the animals and pagan symbols have now virtually gone.

It represents the five senses

and the four stages of life around the edge.

The most important thing is the treatment of the figures.

You can see that there's very little naturalism.

Take a look at this central character. The eyes are so enlarged

and the face has been reduced just to the basic features.

Then you have these figures around the side.

Their bodies are elongated.

Their gowns are turned into abstract patterns.

And they're surrounded by these shapes and arrows.

All of this treatment of figural depiction

was to disappear for another 1,000 years.

That is, until Picasso.

But of course, the Anglo-Saxons never did get as far as Picasso.

The Bayeux Tapestry tells the story of their defeat.

At the Battle of Hastings, the Anglo-Saxons were the losers.

And history, even art history, is always written by the winners.

After their victory in 1066, this is one of the first works of art

the Normans commissioned.

For me, the Bayeux Tapestry lacks the sort of imagination

and artistic freedom that made the Anglo-Saxons so special.

As I look at this replica now, how it follows step-by-step

the story of the Norman victory, I can't help but wonder how different

the story of Anglo-Saxon art would have been were they not defeated

and so many of their treasures lost.

But maybe this is one of the beauties of Anglo-Saxon art.

The fact that so much of it

was buried for 1,000 years in the British countryside

means that today, we can see it with truly fresh eyes.

And with every new discovery, our understanding of the Anglo-Saxons

will keep changing and shine a new light on the Dark Ages.

MACHINE BEEPS

BEEPS GET FASTER

Oh. Rubbish.

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