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The Bodmin manumissions are records included in a manuscript Gospel book, the Bodmin Gospels or St Petroc Gospels, British Library, Add MS 9381. [1] The manuscript is mostly in Latin, but with elements in Old English and the earliest written examples of the Cornish language, which is thus of particular interest to language scholars and early Cornish historians. The manuscript was discovered by Thomas Rodd (1796–1849), a London bookseller, and sold by him to the British Museum in May 1833 being now part of the British Library's collection. [1] It is thought to have been made in Brittany - now part of France - and dates from the last quarter of the 9th century to 1st quarter of the 11th century.
Recorded in the Old Cornish language, in the margins of a Gospel book, [2] are the names and details of slaves freed in Bodmin (the then principal town of Cornwall, an important religious centre) during the 9th or 10th centuries. [2] There is also an Old Cornish Vocabulary, an English – Latin vocabulary from around AD 1000 to which was added about a century later a Cornish translation. Some 961 Cornish words are recorded, ranging from celestial bodies, through church and craft occupations, to plants and animals. [3]
This, it is believed, is the only original record relating to Cornwall, or its Bishopric, which predates the Norman Conquest. The volume is in quarto, of rather an oblong form, and is very neatly written, though evidently by a scribe not well informed, or of great learning, even for those times. The entries seem to be contemporaneous with the manumissions which they record. The practice of manumitting slaves in the church, as recorded in the entries, appears to have existed from the early 4th century. [4]
Bodmin is a town and civil parish in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is situated south-west of Bodmin Moor.
Cornwall is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is recognised by Cornish and Celtic political groups as one of the Celtic nations, and is the homeland of the Cornish people. The county is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, Devon to the east, and the English Channel to the south. The largest settlement is Falmouth, and the county town is the city of Truro.
Cornish is a Southwestern Brittonic language of the Celtic language family. Along with Welsh and Breton, Cornish is descended from the Common Brittonic language spoken throughout much of Great Britain before the English language came to dominate. For centuries, until it was pushed westwards by English, it was the main language of Cornwall, maintaining close links with its sister language Breton, with which it was mutually intelligible, perhaps even as long as Cornish continued to be spoken as a vernacular. Cornish continued to function as a common community language in parts of Cornwall until the mid 18th century, and there is some evidence for traditional speakers of the language persisting into the 19th century.
Padstow is a town, civil parish and fishing port on the north coast of Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The town is situated on the west bank of the River Camel estuary, approximately 5 miles (8.0 km) northwest of Wadebridge, 10 miles (16 km) northwest of Bodmin and 10 miles (16 km) northeast of Newquay. The population of Padstow civil parish was 3,162 in the 2001 census, reducing to 2,993 at the 2011 census. In addition an electoral ward with the same name exists but extends as far as Trevose Head. The population for this ward is 4,434.
Piran or Pyran, died c. 480, was a 5th-century Cornish abbot and saint, possibly of Irish origin. He is the patron saint of tin-miners, and is also generally regarded as the patron saint of Cornwall, although Michael and Petroc also have some claim to this title.
Camelford is a town and civil parish in north Cornwall, England, United Kingdom, situated in the River Camel valley northwest of Bodmin Moor. The town is approximately ten miles (16 km) north of Bodmin and is governed by Camelford Town Council. Lanteglos-by-Camelford is the ecclesiastical parish in which the town is situated. The ward population at the 2011 Census was 4,001. The town population at the same census was 865.
Petroc or Petrock was a British prince and Christian saint.
"The First Nowell", modernised as "The First Noel" ", is a traditional English Christmas carol with Cornish origins most likely from the early modern period, although possibly earlier. It is listed as number 682 in the Roud Folk Song Index.
The history of Cornwall goes back to the Paleolithic, but in this period Cornwall only had sporadic visits by groups of humans. Continuous occupation started around 10,000 years ago after the end of the last ice age. When recorded history started in the first century BCE, the spoken language was Common Brittonic, and that would develop into Southwestern Brittonic and then the Cornish language. Cornwall was part of the territory of the tribe of the Dumnonii that included modern-day Devon and parts of Somerset. After a period of Roman rule, Cornwall reverted to rule by independent Romano-British leaders and continued to have a close relationship with Brittany and Wales as well as southern Ireland, which neighboured across the Celtic Sea. After the collapse of Dumnonia, the remaining territory of Cornwall came into conflict with neighbouring Wessex.
The constitutional status of Cornwall has been a matter of debate and dispute. Cornwall is an administrative county of England.
Bossiney is a village in north Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is north-east of the larger village of Tintagel which it adjoins: further north-east are the Rocky Valley and Trethevy. Until 1832 the village, with its neighbour Tintagel, returned two MPs as a Rotten Borough, for the Bossiney constituency. The beach of Bossiney Haven is located nearby.
This timeline summarizes significant events in the History of Cornwall
The British Library is a research library in London that is the national library of the United Kingdom. It is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the British Library receives copies of all books produced in the United Kingdom and Ireland, including a significant proportion of overseas titles distributed in the UK. The Library is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
St Petroc's Church, Bodmin, also known as Bodmin Parish Church is an Anglican parish church in the town of Bodmin, Cornwall, England, United Kingdom.
Specimens of Middle Cornish texts are given here in Cornish and English. Both texts have been dated within the period 1370–1410 and the Charter Fragment is given in two Cornish orthographies.
Christianity in Cornwall began in the 4th or 5th century AD when Western Christianity was introduced as in the rest of Roman Britain. Over time it became the official religion, superseding previous Celtic and Roman practices. Early Christianity in Cornwall was spread largely by the saints, including Saint Piran, the patron of the county. Cornwall, like other parts of Britain, is sometimes associated with the distinct collection of practices known as Celtic Christianity but was always in communion with the wider Catholic Church. The Cornish saints are commemorated in legends, churches and placenames.
William Hals (1655–1737) was a Cornish historian who compiled a History of Cornwall, the first work of any magnitude that was printed in Cornwall. He was born at Tresawsan, in the parish of Merther in Cornwall. Much of his work was never published but was used by other Cornish historians, including Davies Gilbert, Thomas Tonkin, and John Whitaker. Some of his original work is now held by the British Library.
The Cornish dialect is a dialect of English spoken in Cornwall by Cornish people. Dialectal English spoken in Cornwall is to some extent influenced by Cornish grammar, and often includes words derived from the Cornish language. The Cornish language is a Celtic language of the Brythonic branch, as are the Welsh and Breton languages. In addition to the distinctive words and grammar, there are a variety of accents found within Cornwall from the north coast to that of the south coast and from east to west Cornwall. Typically, the accent is more divergent from Standard British English the further west through Cornwall one travels. The speech of the various parishes being to some extent different from the others was described by John T. Tregellas and Thomas Quiller Couch towards the end of the 19th century. Tregellas wrote of the differences as he understood them and Couch suggested the parliamentary constituency boundary between the East and West constituencies, from Crantock to Veryan, as roughly the border between eastern and western dialects. To this day, the towns of Bodmin and Lostwithiel as well as Bodmin Moor are considered the boundary.
De raris fabulis is a collection of 23 or 24 short Latin dialogues from 9th- or 10th-century Celtic Britain. The dialogues belong to the genre known as the colloquy. These were pedagogical texts for teaching Latin in monastic schools.
The Vocabularium Cornicum, also known as the Cottonian Vocabulary or the Old Cornish Vocabulary, is a Latin-Old Cornish glossary. It is usually interpreted as an Old Cornish translation of Ælfric of Eynsham's Latin-Old English Glossary, and it is considered to be the most substantial extant document of the Old Cornish period. The only surviving copy, part of a composite manuscript known as MS Cotton Vespasian A. XIV, is now kept in the British Library, and is thought to have been copied around 1200 AD from an earlier exemplar.