Everything about Armorica totally explained
Armorica or
Aremorica is the name given in ancient times to the part of
Gaul that includes the
Brittany peninsula and the territory between the
Seine and
Loire rivers, extending inland to an indeterminate point and down the Atlantic coast. The
toponym is based on the Gaulish phrase
are mori "on/at [the] sea", made into the Gaulish place name
Aremorica 'Place by the Sea'. In
Breton (which with
Welsh and
Cornish are the living related languages of Gaulish), 'on [the] sea' is
war vor (Welsh
ar for), though the older form
arvor is used to refer to the coastal regions of Brittany, in contrast to
argoad (ar 'on/at', coad 'forest' [Welsh
ar goed ('coed' forest)] for the inland regions. These cognate modern usages suggest that the Romans first contacted coastal people in the inlands region and assumed that the regional name
Aremorica referred to the whole area, both coastal and inland.
Ancient Armorica
Pliny the Elder, in his
Natural History (2.17.105), claims that Armorica was the older name for
Aquitania, stating Armorica's southern boundary extended to the
Pyrenees. Taking into account the Gaulish origin of the name, this is perfectly correct and logical, as Aremorica isn't a 'country name', but a word that describes a type of geographical region - a region that's by the sea. Pliny lists the following
Celtic tribes as living in the peninsula: the
Aedui and
Carnuteni as having treaties with
Rome; the
Neldi and
Secusiani as having some measure of independence; and the
Boii,
Senones,
Aulerci (both the
Eburovices and
Cenomani), the
Parisii,
Tricases,
Andicavi,
Viducasses,
Bodiocasses,
Venelli,
Coriosvelites,
Diablinti,
Rhedones,
Turones, and the
Atseui.
Trade between Armorica and Britain, described by
Diodorus Siculus and implied by Pliny was long-established. Because, even after the campaign of Crassus in
57 BC, continued resistance to Roman rule in Armorica was still being supported by Celtic aristocrats in
Britain,
Julius Caesar led two invasions of Britain in
55 and
54 in response. Some hint of the complicated cultural web that bound Armorica and the Britanniae (the "Britains" of Pliny) is given by Caesar when he describes
Diviciacus of the Suessiones, as "the most powerful ruler in the whole of Gaul, who had control not only over a large area of this region but also of Britain (
De Bello Gallico ii.4). Archaeological sites along the south coast of England, notably at
Hengistbury Head, show connections with Armorica as far east as the
Solent. This 'prehistoric' connection of Cornwall and Brittany remained very close as long as Cornish (a dialect of Breton) was spoken. Still farther East, however, the typical Continental connections of the Britannic coast were with the lower Seine valley instead.
Archeology hasn't yet been as enlightening in Iron-Age Armorica as the coinage, which has been surveyed by Philip de Jersey..
Under the
Roman Empire, Armorica was administered as part of the province of
Gallia Lugdunensis, which had its capital in
Lugdunum, (modern day
Lyons). When the
Roman provinces were reorganized in the
4th century, Armorica was placed under the second and third divisions of Lugdunensis. After the legions retreated from Britannia (407) the local elite there expelled the civilian magistrates in the following year; Armorica too rebelled in the
430s and again in the
440s, throwing out the ruling officials, as the Romano-Britons had done. At the
Battle of Chalons in 451 (also called the
Battle of the Catalaunian Fields or the Battle of the Catalun) a Roman coalition led by General Flavius Aëtius and the Visigothic King
Theodoric I clashed violently with the Hunnic alliance commanded by King Attila.
Jordanes lists Aëtius' allies as including Armoricans and other Celtic or German tribes (Getica 36.191).
The "Brittany" peninsula came to be settled with
Britons from Britain during the poorly documented period of the 5th-7th centuries. These settlers, whether refugees or not, made their presence felt in the naming of the westernmost, Atlantic-facing provinces of Armorica, Cornouaille ("
Cornwall") and Domnonea ("
Devon"). These settlements are associated with leaders like Saints
Samson of Dol and
Pol Aurelian, among the "founder saints" of Brittany.
Questions of the relations between the Celtic languages of Britain—
Cornish and
Welsh— and Celtic
Breton are far from settled. Martin Henig (review, 2003) suggests that in Armorica as in
sub-Roman Britain, "there was a fair amount of creation of identity in the
migration period. We know that the mixed, but largely British and Frankish population of Kent repackaged themselves as '
Jutes', and the largely British populations in the lands east of Dumnonia (Devon and Cornwall) seem to have ended up as 'West Saxons'. In western Armorica the small elite which managed to impose an identity on the population happened to be British rather than 'Gallo-Roman' in origin, so they became Bretons. The process may have been essentially the same." this flux of shifting self-identification in the Early Middle Ages, in the modern view that's supplementing traditional assertions of continuity from the Iron Age.
When
Vikings or
Northmen settled in the
Cotentin peninsula and the lower Seine around
Rouen in the ninth and early tenth centuries, and these regions came to be known as
Normandy, the name
Armorica fell out of use.
With western Armorica having already evolved into
Brittany, the east was recast from a Frankish viewpoint as the
Breton March under a Frankish
marquis.
Footnotes
Further Information
Get more info on 'Armorica'.
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