太田述正コラム#15332（2025.11.24）
＜Morris, Marc『The Anglo-Saxons: A History of the Beginnings of England』を読む（その24）＞（2026.2.18公開）

　「・・・the peace of Edgar’s reign had brought great prosperity.

⇒ここでも、エドガーの時のイギリスの繁栄をもたらしたものが何であったのかをMorrisは全く語ってくれていません。（太田）

　This was most obvious in the case of the splendid new stone churches built by the reformers themselves at re-founded monasteries, but it was also apparent in many other ways besides. Consider, for instance, what was happening in the burhs. When they had been laid out by King Alfred and his children, Edward the Elder and Æthelflæd, they had been intended to function as fortresses, and for the first half of the tenth century they had retained that aspect, with interiors divided into large military compounds belonging to a handful of different aristocratic commanders, within which the buildings were widely dispersed. But from the middle of the century, the appearance of the burhs began to alter, as merchants and manufacturers moved in from the countryside.

⇒どうして商工業者達がブルフに定住するようになったのかについても、Morrisは何も語ってくれていません。（太田）

　In a written survey of Winchester produced in Æthelred’s reign, we see Tanner Street, Shieldmaker Street and Fleshmonger (i.e. Butcher) Street. In archaeology, too, we see evidence in Winchester and elsewhere of the large aristocratic enclosures fragmenting, and the creation of regularly spaced plots that fronted onto the street, which were obviously the shops of merchants and artisans. York had such plots before the mid-tenth century; in Oxford they were in existence before the century’s end. In many cases, suburbs were created outside the walls to accommodate the more noisy and noisome industries, or to facilitate the holding of regular markets. These burhs and cities still had a long way to go before they would become fully urban, but the late tenth century was the moment of urban take-off.
　An illustration, based on excavations, of a corner of Winchester in the late tenth century, showing how the burh was being divided up into regular commercial plots.

⇒イギリスでは10世紀から都会化（urbanization）が起こったというわけですが、それが、大ブリテン島のローマ時代おけるローマ領地域のそれとどう違うのかについても、Morrisは何も語ってくれていません。
　想像するに、個人主義者で分散居住を好むアングロサクソン人が集中居住を始めたこと自体が画期的なことであって、それを都会化と呼んだ、ということかもしれませんね。（太田）

　Similar transformations were occurring in the countryside. For centuries the rural economy had remained essentially unchanged. Great lords – kings, ealdormen, bishops and abbots – held vast estates, extending over dozens or even hundreds of square miles. Within these wide areas, people lived in settlements that were spread out and scattered – isolated hamlets, or clusters consisting of a few adjacent farmsteads. The farmers owed renders of produce to their overlord, or sometimes rent, but beyond that their existence was essentially free and independent. But by Æthelred’s day, a new form of lordship was on the rise, and with it a new type of settlement. The great lords were splitting up their huge estates and granting much smaller ones to their dependants – compact lordships that might consist of only two or three square miles of land. As a result, farmers were persuaded or compelled to move closer together, forming communities that can reasonably be considered as villages.

⇒そして、都会化と同時に村の生誕も見られたというのですから、この時期に大きな意識の変化、というか、文化の変化、が、アングロサクソン人の間で起こったということのようです。
　ひょっとすると、ローマ時代以前のブリトン人・・ある程度はローマ時代のブリトン人の間でも残っていた・・の意識、文化、に、この点でもアングロサクソン人が影響を受けたのかもしれません。
　なお、ローマ時代以前のブリトン人の村や町についての情報は、すぐにはネット上で得られませんでした。（太田）

　This offered greater opportunities for co-operation – closer-knit communities could club together to purchase plough-beasts, and lords might tempt them with new technology in the form of a watermill, so that corn did not have to be laboriously ground by hand. In many cases these new villages were named after the individual who had created them. Woolstone in Berkshire, for example, is a contraction of Wulfric’s Tun (‘the estate of Wulfric’).」（321～322）

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