Brittany—medieval Brittany—continues to be a fascinating region for researchers. Straddling the Frankish and British worlds, but also the “Germanic” and “Celtic” cultural spheres, the Armorican peninsula has always been an area on the edge: the edge of religious, political and social practices, but also on the edge of conflict, and, quite littorally, the edge of the continent. This, as the editors also point out in their introduction, makes the region a perennial “case study” for trying to identify elements on either side of these boundaries; its very connectedness makes it the perfect target for comparative history. However, the chosen subtitle “emphasizes ‘disconnections’ as well...to indicate the need to move beyond such assumptions, to be prepared to discard our models, and to return regularly to what the sources...can actually tell us” (1). This volume, then, sets out to do exactly that. In the course of eleven chapters, with subjects ranging from onomastics to archaeology, each author puts Brittany centre stage, treating the surrounding areas as the peripheries for a change. The result is a challenging, but ultimately refreshing, collection of articles that will surely have something for everyone.
After a short introduction, Patrick Gaillou starts the proceedings by tackling the “historiographical myth” that the settlement of Brittany was essentially a Roman military measure (9-26). By taking into account the latest archaeological data, he concludes that, rather than a period of massive migrations from Britain to Armorica, we are instead looking at a time when people on both sides of the Channel were “falling out of love with what Rome had brought” (19). This, combined with a very tendentious historiographical record, gives us an image of migration where in reality we simply have networks and contacts between regions. John Hines’s chapter essentially follows in the same track (27-55). In a short and snappy argument, Hines draws upon similar sources to Gaillou—in particular the Quoit Brooch Style metalwork found in both sides of the Channel—to show that the advent of a distinctly Breton/British identity was not solely the result of population movements, but that it “served a purpose” (48) for the people in the area, faced with a declining Roman presence and the appearance of new local powers on the horizon. Rounding out the archaeological trilogy presented here, Isabelle Catteddu and Joseph Le Gall give a broad(er) overview of the many possibilities offered by new methodologies to deepen our understanding of the archaeological data unearthed over the past decades (57-80). The title may be promising a bit too much (an interdisciplinary view of “Settlements, Landscapes, Legacies, and New Influences”) but their points about the state of (French) archaeology are well taken indeed. That the three chapters do not seem to be wholly in agreement with each other mostly serves to show the wealth of the available material, but also enhances the argument by Catteddu and Le Gall that archaeologists should never rest on their laurels, but use the new methods available nowadays to push the discipline ever forward.
The volume then moves on to questions of power, place, and memory, starting with Magali Coumert’s overview of Breton settlements and identity formation between the sixth and the ninth centuries. Written in French, her chapter is something of a spiritual prequel to Julia Smith’s Province and Empire (1992)—which is, interestingly, not cited. Smith argued that Breton identity was, to a large extent, a product of their opposition to Carolingian attempts at empire-building. Coumert shows that, while the names Brittania and Brittani were well-established already in the sixth century (and not only on the Armorican peninsula), they reflected a social/geographic rather than a political/ethnic reality for the longest time. The consolidation of the name from around 800 onwards might be seen as a form of Realpolitik as well: an appropriation of institutional terms to designate a political unit. Joelle Quaghebeur next tackles another aspect of Breton Realpolitik when she analyses the circumstances under which Alain de Bretagne and his father exiled themselves at the English court under Edward the Elder (109-140). It was, in short, a world that was closer to home than many of the alternatives, and as such might provide more of a springboard for an eventual return. If this argumentation appears speculative, it is mostly because Quaghebeur does a convincing job reconstructing Alain’s possible mindset—essentially making it seem as if her speculations are indeed the exiled prince’s hopes. Finally, Katharine Keats-Rohan highlights the way past and future intertwined at Mont-Saint-Michel, one of Brittany’s most recognizable places of power (141-177). While her assessment of the monastic and canonical reforms of the ninth-eleventh centuries could have benefited from more extensive engagement with recent literature on the topic (a possible reason for this apparent lacuna is explained below, however), the way she shows how these large-scale developments left an imprint on memorial liturgical and practices within the community are nothing short of inspiring. It is in necrologies, not in narratives, she concludes, that we may find ‘any hope of a true understanding of’ community formation and consolidation (171). Her upcoming edition of the source at the core of this chapter, the manuscript Avranches Bib. pat. 214 (announced in this chapter, but confirmed as “essentially complete” in a highly enlightening follow-up article from last year, https://journals.openedition.org/tabularia/6029), is sure to convince more readers of the veracity of this seemingly bold statement.
Next up are the overlapping themes of hagiography and the cult of saints, which once again highlights the connections between Armorica and the surrounding world, while also maintaining its disconnections as well: the saints of Brittany, after all, are a special sort, as the next three authors confirm. We start with Joseph-Claude Poulin’s contribution on markers of a “Celtic” identity in Breton saints’ lives (179-206). The author uses his unsurpassed knowledge of the Breton hagiographic corpus to show that, while these narratives do demonstrate a lingering cultural memory of the erstwhile (and continuing) links between Britain and Brittany, they are structurally, narratologically, and linguistically closer to their Frankish/Carolingian neighbours than their Celtic predecessors. This conclusion is echoed, albeit from a different angle, by Karen Jankulak’s observations on “Cross-Channel Intercourse in the Earliest Breton Vitae” (207-238). Rather than analyse elements within the available texts, Jankulak tries to imaginatively reconstruct how various hagiographers actually knew what they knew. It is an argument that works together well with Poulin’s, as both authors caution against taking our own notions of identity and textuality for granted when starting work on a region as idiosyncratic as Brittany. “Our extant written texts,” the author concludes, should not be “the overriding, or even sole, evidence of what sorts of information might have been exchanged” (232). There were people involved, too. These “countless unrecorded interactions” (259), then, also form the backbone to Ben Guy’s chapter (239-262), in which he identifies the (region around the) church of Saint Cadog in Llancarfan as one of the most important places where Britons and Bretons would meet and exchange information—in this case differing views on the origin of Brittany. It is there, Guy concludes, that Geoffrey of Monmouth found the material for his influential narrative that shaped the historiography of Britain for generations.
The final two chapters of this volume are all about names and place-names. O. J. Padel starts with an overview of “generic place-name elements” in Brittany, Cornwall and Wales (263-310). Based on a thorough study of several such elements, Padel comes to the conclusion that while they show a definite overlap in language and culture, they also hint at differences in the organization of the land and the adaptations to existing structures encountered by these Brittonic-speaking newcomers. Closing the volume, Paul Russell gives a similarly erudite overview of onomastic practices in medieval Brittany. In the process, similar to Catteddu and Le Gall on archaeology earlier in the book, Russell also manages to show how the methodological way forward optimally consists of a combination of existing approaches rather than making generalizations based on a singular analysis of what little data we have.
Each chapter in this volume is accompanied by summaries in English and French, as well as an individual bibliography. Where relevant, we are treated to helpful maps, diagrams, and illustrations—some even in colour—which greatly enhance the points made by the various authors. Overall, while it is of course impossible to fully convince everybody all the time, the individual chapters present interesting arguments that are sure to push the agenda forward and help put Brittany on the map as a region unto itself rather than the Celtic exception to Frankish rule. There are some words of caution, too, however, most of which have to do with the genre of the “conference volume” as a whole. In this case, the shortcomings of that genre are quite visible, also given that there was a considerable time (five years) between the conference and the publication, with only “minimal updating of references” (2) having occurred in the meantime. Consequently, the internal coherence between the chapters is created by the common focus on medieval Brittany, but the identification of methodological or thematic overlaps is left to those readers who look beyond the individual chapters to the volume as a whole. Moreover, those who do end up reading the book as a whole may find that the multi-disciplinarity promised in the title, in practice amounts to the juxtaposition of essentially mono-disciplinary arguments across individual chapters: taken as a whole, the volume could also be said to offer one multi-disciplinary approach to the region under scrutiny. A firmer editorial hand, or indeed something akin to a co-authored conclusion, might have helped to explicate the connections and disconnections between the chapters and made them more of a coherent whole.
Although this final remark is slotted in the part of the review that is usually reserved for critiques (and indeed it might be seen as such), the book also benefited from these same editorial choices. Authors clearly felt encouraged to pursue their own methodological strengths and use their expertise to make points about their own discipline, tailor-made for fellow specialists in their particular field (be it archaeology, linguistics, hagiography, or one of the many other fields on display). There is something to be said for a volume consisting of parts that are strong on their own, but which simultaneously allows those willing to engage with multiple disciplines to look beyond their own expertise and learn to appreciate what it truly means to study a region.