|
Conan Meriadoc
Conan Meriadoc (; ; ) is a legendary British Celtic leader credited with founding Brittany. Versions of his story circulated in both Brittany and Great Britain from at least the early 12th century, and supplanted earlier legends of Brittany's foundation. His story is known in two major versions, which appear in the Welsh text known as '' The Dream of Macsen Wledig'', and in Geoffrey of Monmouth's ''Historia Regum Britanniae''. Both texts associate him with Magnus Maximus (''Macsen Wledic'', reigned 383–388), a Roman usurper against the Valentinianic dynasty who was widely regarded as having deprived Britain of its defences when he took its legions to claim the imperial throne. Conan's cousin or sister, Saint Elen, is said to have been Macsen Wledic's wife. Early evidence The earliest undisputed evidence connecting Conan to the foundation of Brittany appears in the ''Life of Saint Gurthiern'', included in the Kemperle Cartulary compiled between 1118 and 1127.Koch, p. 474. T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lisbon
Lisbon ( ; ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 567,131, as of 2023, within its administrative limits and 3,028,000 within the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, metropolis, as of 2025. Lisbon is mainland Europe's westernmost capital city (second overall after ReykjavÃk, Reykjavik), and the only one along the Atlantic coast, the others (Reykjavik and Dublin) being on islands. The city lies in the western portion of the Iberian Peninsula, on the northern shore of the River Tagus. The western portion of its metro area, the Portuguese Riviera, hosts the westernmost point of Continental Europe, culminating at Cabo da Roca. Lisbon is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world and the second-oldest European capital city (after Athens), predating other modern European capitals by centuries. Settled by pre-Celtic tribes and later founded and civilized by the Phoenicians, Julius Caesar made it a municipium ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Latin
Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area around Rome, Italy. Through the expansion of the Roman Republic, it became the dominant language in the Italian Peninsula and subsequently throughout the Roman Empire. It has greatly influenced many languages, Latin influence in English, including English, having contributed List of Latin words with English derivatives, many words to the English lexicon, particularly after the Christianity in Anglo-Saxon England, Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons and the Norman Conquest. Latin Root (linguistics), roots appear frequently in the technical vocabulary used by fields such as theology, List of Latin and Greek words commonly used in systematic names, the sciences, List of medical roots, suffixes and prefixes, medicine, and List of Latin legal terms ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hywel Dda
Hywel ap Cadell, commonly known as Hywel Dda, which translates to Howel the Good in English, was a Welsh king who ruled the southern Welsh kingdom of Deheubarth and eventually came to rule most of Wales. He became the sole king of Seisyllwg in 920 and shortly thereafter established Deheubarth, and proceeded to gain control over the entire country from Prestatyn to Pembroke. As a grandson of Rhodri Mawr through his father Cadell, Hywel was a member of the Dinefwr branch of the dynasty. He was recorded as King of the Britons in the '' Annales Cambriæ'' and the ''Annals of Ulster''. Hywel is highly esteemed among other medieval Welsh rulers. His name is particularly linked with the codification of traditional Welsh law, which were thenceforth known as the Laws of Hywel Dda. The latter part of his name (''Dda'', lit. "Good") refers to the fact that his laws were just and good. The historian Dafydd Jenkins sees in them compassion rather than punishment, plenty of common ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vikings
Vikings were seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway, and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded, and settled throughout parts of Europe.Roesdahl, pp. 9–22. They also voyaged as far as the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean, North Africa, the Middle East, Greenland, and Vinland (present-day Newfoundland in Canada, North America). In their countries of origin, and some of the countries they raided and settled in, this period is popularly known as the Viking Age, and the term "Viking" also commonly includes the inhabitants of the Scandinavian homelands as a whole. The Vikings had a profound impact on the Early Middle Ages, early medieval history of Northern Europe, northern and Eastern Europe, including the political and social development of England (and the English language) and parts of France, and established the embryo of Russia in Kievan Rus'. Expert sailors and navigators of their cha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
List Of English Monarchs
This list of kings and reigning queens of the Kingdom of England begins with Alfred the Great, who initially ruled Wessex, one of the heptarchy, seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms which later made up modern England. Alfred styled himself king of the Anglo-Saxons from about 886, and while he was not the first king to claim to rule all of the English people, English, his rule represents the start of the first unbroken line of kings to rule the whole of England, the House of Wessex. Arguments are made for a few different kings thought to have controlled enough Anglo-Saxon kingdoms to be deemed the first king of England. For example, Offa of Mercia and Egbert of Wessex are sometimes described as kings of England by popular writers, but it is no longer the majority view of historians that their wide dominions were part of a process leading to a unified England. The historian Simon Keynes states, for example, "Offa was driven by a lust for power, not a vision of English unity; and what he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Æthelstan
Æthelstan or Athelstan (; ; ; ; – 27 October 939) was King of the Anglo-Saxons from 924 to 927 and King of the English from 927 to his death in 939. He was the son of King Edward the Elder and his first wife, Ecgwynn. Modern historians regard him as the first King of England and one of the "greatest Anglo-Saxon kings". He never married and had no children; he was succeeded by his half-brother, Edmund I. When Edward died in July 924, Æthelstan was accepted by the Mercians as king. His half-brother Ælfweard may have been recognised as king in Wessex, but died within three weeks of their father's death. Æthelstan encountered resistance in Wessex for several months, and was not crowned until September 925. In 927, he conquered the last remaining Viking kingdom, York, making him the first Anglo-Saxon ruler of the whole of England. In 934, he invaded Scotland and forced Constantine II to submit to him. Æthelstan's rule was resented by the Scots and Vikings, and in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alan II, Duke Of Brittany
Alan II (c. 900–952), nicknamed Wrybeard or Twistedbeard, Alan Varvek in Breton, was Count of Vannes, Poher and Nantes, and Duke of Brittany from 938 to his death. He was the grandson of King Alan the Great by Alan's daughter and her husband Mathuedoï I, Count of Poher. He expelled the Vikings/Norsemen from Brittany after an occupation that lasted from 907 to about 939. 205px, Statue of Alan Twistedbeard, work of Amédée Ménard, in the courtyard of the castle of the Dukes of Brittany in Nantes (1976) The Vikings Refuge in Britain Alan had to take refuge, along with his father Mathuedoi I, with King Æthelstan of England because the Norsemen had invaded Armorica. The '' Chronicle of Nantes'' reports: : Alan became ruler of Brittany at the end of a 33-year interregnum after the death of his maternal grandfather, Duke Alan the Great. Return to Brittany Alan landed at Dol in 936, at the invitation of a monk, Jean de Landévennec, and with the aid of Æthelstan. By ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rachel Bromwich
Rachel Bromwich (30 July 1915 – 15 December 2010), born Rachel Sheldon Amos, was a British scholar. Her focus was on medieval Welsh literature, and she taught Celtic Languages and Literature in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at the University of Cambridge, from 1945 to 1976. Among her most important contributions to the study of Welsh literature is ''Trioedd Ynys Prydein'', her edition of the Welsh Triads. Early life and education Bromwich was born Rachel Sheldon Amos in Hove, Sussex (some obituaries said Brighton), in 1915, and spent her early childhood in Egypt. Her father, Maurice Amos, was an English legal expert who served as international law adviser to the Egyptian government; her mother, Lucy Scott-Moncrieff Amos, was Scottish. The Amos family were Quakers. The family moved frequently before settling in Cumbria in 1925. In 1934 Rachel Amos attended Newnham College, Cambridge, where she studied the Anglo-Saxon language before shifting departments ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vita Merlini
, or ''The Life of Merlin'', is a Latin poem in 1,529 hexameter lines written around the year 1150. Though doubts have in the past been raised about its authorship it is now widely believed to be by Geoffrey of Monmouth. It tells the story of Merlin's madness, his life as a wild man of the woods, and his prophecies and conversations with his sister, Ganieda, and the poet Taliesin. Its plot derives from previous Celtic legends of early Middle Welsh origin, traditions of the bard Myrddin Wyllt and the wild man Lailoken, and it includes an important early account of King Arthur's final journey to Avalon, but it also displays much pseudo-scientific learning drawn from earlier scholarly Latin authors. Though its popularity was never remotely comparable to that of Geoffrey's , it did have a noticeable influence on medieval Arthurian romance, and has been drawn on by modern writers such as Laurence Binyon and Mary Stewart. Synopsis The author briefly addresses the dedicatee of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cadwaladr
Cadwaladr ap Cadwallon (also spelled Cadwalader or Cadwallader in English) was king of Gwynedd in Wales from around 655 to 664 or 682. He died in one of two devastating plagues that happened in 664 and in 682. Little else is known of his reign. The red dragon (), long known as a Welsh symbol, appearing in the ''Mabinogion'', the ''Historia Brittonum'', and the stories of Geoffrey of Monmouth, has, since the accession of Henry VII to the English throne, often been referred to as "The Red Dragon of Cadwaladr". The association with Cadwaladr is a traditional one without any historical basis. Though little is known about the historical Cadwaladr, he became a mythical redeemer figure in Welsh culture. He is a prominent character in the romantic stories of Geoffrey of Monmouth, where he is portrayed as the last in an ancient line to hold the title King of Britain. In Geoffrey's account, he does not die of plague. He renounces his throne in 688 to become a pilgrim, in respons ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Armes Prydein
''Armes Prydein'' (, ''The Prophecy of Britain'') is an early 10th-century Welsh prophetic poem from the ''Book of Taliesin''. In a rousing style characteristic of Welsh heroic poetry, it describes a future where all of Brythonic peoples are allied with the Scots, the Irish, and the Vikings of Dublin under Welsh leadership, and together succeed in driving the Anglo-Saxons from Britain forever. Two famous leaders from the distant past are invoked, Conan, the legendary founder of Brittany, and Cadwaladr, a seventh century king of Gwynedd. The poem is commonly described as an expression of Welsh frustration with the pragmatic, peaceful policies of Hywel Dda towards the then-ascendant Kingdom of Wessex. Edward the Elder (reigned 899–924) had gained acknowledged pre-eminence over almost all of the peoples south of the Firths of Clyde and Forth, including the Gaels, Vikings, English, Cornish, Welsh, and the Cumbrians. After he died and his son Æthelstan had become king (re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
