
King Alfred and India - agronaut
https://www.caitlingreen.org/2019/04/king-alfred-and-india.html
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Cherian
I come from Kerala, the southernmost state in India referenced in the article.
My last name is Thomas and every now and then people in the US look at me
bewildered when I tell them my name – “But you don’t look Spanish”. I take it
as an opportunity to give them a bit of a history lesson – “Do you know
Christianity came to India 14 centuries before the US? And Columbus was
looking for these Indians selling black pepper?”

Surprises people so much to know that Christianity exists in India, let alone
that St. Thomas died in India [1].

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_the_Apostle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_the_Apostle)

~~~
tronko
Please, could you also educate them and tell them that Spain is a country in
Europe? It seems that many US-americans believe Spanish is a race (whatever
they think a "race" is) instead a nationality.

~~~
masonic
Nobody in the US think Spanish is a race rather than a nationality. There's an
artificial "Hispanic" term politicians invented to encompass all Spanish
speakers.

Ignorant Americans may conflate all from Central America as "Mexicans", but
that's about it.

Most Americans who never studied the Spanish language are probably ignorant of
the differences between Castilian Spanish and Spanish as used in the Americas.

~~~
tronko
Differences between "Castillian Spanish" (I don't like that term at all, more
on that on [1]) and Latin-American Spanish are only on pronunciation of some
consonants. The Royal Spanish Academy (Real Academia Española) accepts allow
all of those dialects as rightful variants of Spanish language.

[1] What some politicians call "Castillian Spanish" is the Spanish language
spoken in all parts of Spain. It is idiotic to call "Castillian" to a language
were some dialects of Spanish (West/East-Andalusian and Canarian [from Canary
Islands]) are very similar to Latin-American Spanish.

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jillesvangurp
The Last Kingdom on Netflix is a pretty decent series about this time. Sort of
a non fantasy version of Game of Thrones. I think there are probably a fair
bit of historical inaccuracies in there but nevertheless a fascinating time
and decent series. I ended up reading up on wikipedia about several of the
characters (at least the non fictional ones).

~~~
sbmthakur
Thanks for mentioning. I was looking for such a series. As per Wikipedia, it's
historical fiction. So, wouldn't it be somewhat different than real history?

~~~
jillesvangurp
It's a romanticized version of several events that actually took place
featuring e.g. King Alfred and other historical characters. While there are
some written records from that era, there's not much to go on. It was called
the dark middle ages for a reason.

So, the script writers probably took quite a bit of liberties as did the
author of the books this series is based on:
[http://www.bernardcornwell.net/series/the-last-kingdom-
serie...](http://www.bernardcornwell.net/series/the-last-kingdom-series/).

I haven't actually read the books; so I can't vouch for those. But if you are
interested, I can recommend Hild by Nicola Grifith which is a good read about
roughly the same era.

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lkramer
This is interesting, but I don't believe it's all that surprising. Medieval
Europe was very well connected. Alfred himself went to Rome when he was a
child and had an extensive cultural exchange with mainland Europe. It is also
well known, as the article points out, that interactions with Asia was much
more widespread than what is perhaps understood by most people today (who
still sees it as a dark age).

This can also be seen by the fact that Christian communities existed, not only
in India, but also in China as early as the 7th Century:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_China#Earliest...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_China#Earliest_documented_period)

~~~
paganel
> Alfred himself went to Rome when he was a child and had an extensive
> cultural exchange with mainland Europe.

There’s also a depiction of King Arthur (Rex Arturus) in a famous mosaic
located inside the Otranto cathedral, located in Puglia, Italy [1]. Presumably
the mosaic was put in place in the 1160s, give or take a few decades.

A bit OT but not by that much, the same Italian city of Otranto was under
direct Ottoman control for a year, sometimes in the early 1470s. Most of its
Christian residents who had dare resisting were killed, and presumably the
final step of the Ottomans’ journey was Rome (I have a quote about this made
by Mehmed II somewhere in my books, I’m too lazy to search for it on my
phone). Fortunately for Western Christianity Mehmed got caught up in some
fierce fights in present day Albania and also in a region of present day
Romania (Moldova, to be more exact) so that he had to recall his troups from
the Italian peninsula.

Which is to say that yes, the East and West have been a lot more involved with
each other compared to what most of today’s people assume.

[1] [http://sites.duke.edu/danteslibrary/files/2016/02/otranto-
mo...](http://sites.duke.edu/danteslibrary/files/2016/02/otranto-
mosaic-4-king-arthur-1024x796.jpg)

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danans
There were networks of trade far older than even this between Europe and
India.

Pompeii Lakshmi (1CE):

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pompeii_Lakshmi](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pompeii_Lakshmi)

1st century Roman coins found in Southern India:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-
Roman_trade_relations](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-
Roman_trade_relations)

Really, all these guys had to do was get to the vicinity of Rome or
Constantinople, and catch a connection, and they were there.

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benj111
So I take it that island at the far east of the map is Japan?

Its interesting how they thought the Nile came from Asia. And what's with
Scandinavia missing?

~~~
valarauko
The large labelled island at the very top is Taprobane, the name by which the
ancient Greeks knew Sri Lanka. It was believed to be as large as Great
Britain.

The text reads: "Tabrobanen habet x ciuitates, bis in anno merita [corruption
of metit?] fruges", which translates as "Taprobane has ten cities, [and] twice
a year reaps crops/fruits."

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heraclius
Green notes that England is rather remote. This may be one reason for the
conversion of the Anglo-Saxons.

> “The utter remoteness of the islands at the north-westerly limits of the
> Ocean and the barbarian nature of their inhabitants was a commonplace or
> topos in the work of Roman poets and historians. ….Christian commentators
> living in the Empire, however, adapted this secular image of the centrality
> of Rome in the light of a very different biblical tradition that Jerusalem
> was the centre of the earth. Old Testament prophecies had announced that the
> glory the God of Israel would one day be revealed to all peoples, even to
> idolatrous gentiles throughout the ‘multitude of isles’…”¹

But the theme was not exclusively eschatologic. “Bede made sophisticated use
of the Roman, biblical, and patristic strands of the topos in his account of
the various conversions and reconversions of peoples and regions within ‘the
multitude of isles’.”

Awareness of the remoteness of Britain was likely therefore closely related to
British Christian identity.

Interestingly, however, the scholarly basis of that identity was increasingly
undermined. Of Charlemagne’s time, Pirenne wrote

> Among these purely Germanic Anglo-Saxons the Latin culture was introduced
> suddenly, together with the Latin religion, and it profited by the
> enthusiasm felt for the latter. No sooner were they converted, under the
> influence and guidance of Rome, than the Anglo-Saxons turned their gaze
> toward the Sacred City. They visited it continually, bringing back relics
> and manuscripts. They submitted themselves to its suggestive influence, and
> learned its language, which for them was no vulgar tongue, but a sacred
> language, invested with an incomparable prestige. As early as the 7th
> century there were men among the Anglo-Saxons, like the Venerable Bede and
> the poet Aldhelm, whose learning was truly astonishing as measured by the
> standards of Western Europe.

> The intellectual reawakening which took place under Charlemagne must be
> attributed to the Anglo-Saxon missionaries.³

And Alcuin, an Anglo-Saxon, was of course in charge of the Palace School.
Pirenne continues:

> It was the North that now proceeded to diffuse the culture which it had
> received from the Mediterranean. …In this way the Anglo-Saxons became
> simultaneously the reformers of the language and also the reformers of the
> church.⁴

By Alfred’s time, however, the English were in dire need of scholarship from
the continent. I haven’t a copy of _English Historical Documents_ on me, but
Fulk, to whom Alfred wrote in supplication that scholars from Rheims might be
sent to revive learning in England, replied most condescendingly (whilst
granting his request): he informed Alfred, as if he were some ignoramus, of
the existence of church councils (as if any Christian at the time would have
been unaware of their existence), rambled on about his part in the apostolic
succession (as if England was not also home to bishops validly part of the
episcopal succession too), and emphasised the propriety of customs in his part
of the world. Alfred could do nothing but accept the onerous conditions
imposed upon him near the end of the letter, such was the state of
degeneration of the church.

1\. Jennifer O’Reilly, “The art of authority”, in _After Rome_ , Thomas
Charles-Edwards ed., p. 141 2\. Ibid, p. 142 3\. Henri Pirenne, “From Mohammed
and Charlemagne”, in _The Pirenne Thesis: Analysis Criticism And Revision_ ,
A.F. Havighurst ed., Boston 1958, 109pp., p. 38 4\. Ibid, p. 39

