The name of the Bretons is a French version of the name Britons. It was given in the early medieval period to Britons, in particular the Cornish, who migrated from southwestern Britain in the fifth and sixth centuries C. E. to the northwestern peninsula of France, now called in French La Bretagne and in English Brittany. The region, called Armorica by the Romans, was already inhabited by Celts who were part of Roman Gaul (see Gauls). The peninsula that forms Brittany, jutting far out into the Atlantic, with its natural harbors, fostered the skills of fishing, seafaring, and navigation among its inhabitants. The peninsula further brought its people into contact with the wider world from early times, as did the presence there of tin and rich iron deposits.
ORIGINS
Atlantic Coastal Zone
At least since the Bronze Age Armorica, the region that would later become Brittany, was part of the Atlantic coastal network along which trade goods and cultural ideas flowed from the Mediterranean to coastal Spain to Armorica and on to Britain and Ireland and from the Netherlands on to Scandinavia. Even as early as the Mesolithic Age when the earliest known boats were being made, there may have been traffic of some kind along this route, judging by cultural similarities throughout the coastal zone. It is probable that farming peoples as well as knowledge about the practice of agriculture spread from the Mediterranean to regions along the zone from about 4500 b. c.e. The remarkable similarity of the megalith building tradition throughout the Atlantic zone provides further evidence of cultural commonality among Atlantic peoples living thousands of miles from one another. There is evidence that this tradition may have originated in Armorica. The passage graves of the Tagus region, Armorica, Ireland, and Orkney in northern Britain arose out of a knowledge system that included beliefs and rituals, technical skills of construction, and common decorative motifs. The peoples of this zone probably engaged in cycles of gift exchange, the precursor of trade.
Iron Age
In the Iron Age evidence indicates that Armorica continued its long-distance trading contacts. cultural traits recognizable as being from the Celtic late Hallstatt and early La Tene periods in decoration and styles of weapons, jewelry, and pottery document Armorican contacts with Celtic interior Europe, including the Rhine area and eastern Celtic areas.
As Armorica was to receive emigrants from Cornwall in England in the fifth and sixth centuries C. E., it is possible that people from Iron Age Celtic regions may have moved there as well during the first millennium b. c.e. Aside from Greco-Roman sources, which have no information on this subject for Armorica, the only substantial body of contemporary historical information on Iron Age Celts is found in ancient Irish annals (see Irish), which are thought to outline a sociohistorical pattern analogous to that throughout Celtic Europe. The annals tell of a series of invasions of Ireland; if these are true, Armorica probably experienced the same conditions. Many of these invasions, which often involved lineages (such as the sons of King Milesius), may not have been of whole tribes but of elites or family groups. The picture is not necessarily one of wholesale displacement but of meeting and mingling. This tendency may have been true of Armorica as well.
LANGUAGE
The Breton language, in Breton Breiz or Brezhoneg, evolved from Cornish, a western dialect of the Brythonic branch of the insular Celtic language group spoken in the British Isles. Many Bretons still speak Breton, which evolved from Cornish and probably also from the Continental Celtic language spoken by the indigenous Celtic tribes.
HISTORY
Bretons and Romans
Roman interest in Gaul in general and in the overland tin trade route to and from Cornwall and Brittany (which they called Armorica, country by the sea), in particular is illustrated by their establishment of a citizen colony in 118 B. C.E. at Narbo Martius (Narbonne) near the mouth of the River Aude, where the route began. Evidently they intended to gain control of the tin trade, a motive borne out as their armies in subsequent decades followed and secured the route all the way to the Atlantic by seizing control of Tolosa (Toulouse), a key strongpoint. Meanwhile during the late second and first centuries b. c.e. large quantities of Roman wine were being traded to Armorica, attested by numerous finds of Italian wine amphorae there. The Veneti from Quiberon Bay and the Coriosolites from the north coast at Alet transshipped Roman wine to Hengistbury Head in central-southern Britain, the main port there before the Roman invasion, in return for metals, grain, cattle, and hides.
The Coriosolites, Esuvii, Osismi, Lexovii, Rhedones, Unelli, and Venetii were the main tribes of Armorica at the time of the Roman invasion led by Julius Caesar in 55 b. c.e. Despite mustering large armies against the Romans, and managing to forge an alliance among the Unelli, Coriosolites, and Lexovii under the command of Viridovix of the Unelli, the Armoricans were subdued by the Romans fairly quickly. The Romans met and defeated the Veneti in a sea battle. Armorica became part of the province of Lugdunensis.
BRETONS
Location:
Western France
Time period:
Fifth century C. E. to present
Ancestry:
Celtic
Language:
Breton (from the Brythonic branch of Insular Celtic)
C. E.
55 Julius Caesar invades Armorica (Brittany).
388 Magnus Maximus lands at Armorica and uses region as staging area for his attempt to win emperorship of Rome by conquering Roman Gaul; he cedes Armorica to Conan Meriadoc, a Welsh ally.
Fifth and sixth centuries Britons from Cornwall and elsewhere in western Britain migrate to Armorica.
10th century Brittany is made a duchy under Frankish rule.
1196 Arthur I, member of French house of Anjou, is made duke of Brittany.
1341-65 War of the Breton Succession between France and England.
1532 French king Francis I formally incorporates duchy of Brittany into France.
1796 French royalist emigres land at Quiberon in Brittany but are routed by government forces; Breton sympathizers suffer fierce reprisals.
19th century Breton nationalism grows.
1970s Breton nationalism becomes violent.
1978 Breton militants explode bomb in palace of Versailles.
Bretons time line
Migrations of the Britons
After the collapse of the Roman Empire in about 500 C. E. Britons from Cornwall in southwestern Britain, who had had close trading and other contacts with Armoricans since at least the Early Bronze Age, began migrating to Armorica. They may have been seeking refuge from the Anglo-Saxons, who were beginning to wrest territory from native Britons in southern Britain during the sixth century. However, the main Cornish tribe, the Dumnonii, held off the Anglo-Saxons for centuries, and Cornwall was not fully under their control until the eighth century. A more probable reason for Cornish and other Britons’ emigration to Armorica was that in the 380s, the Roman general Magnus Maximus, leading troops from Britain, used Armorica as a staging area for his attempted conquest of Roman Gaul. According to the semilegendary historical accounts by early medieval writers of Britain, Maximus was accompanied by a Welsh leader called Conan Meriadoc. After securing Armorica, Maximus bestowed it on Conan as a reward for his aid. Conan’s soldiers settled in their new lands but lacked wives. Because Conan had an ally in Donaut, the king of the Cornish tribe, the Dumnonii, he sent to him for wives for his men rather than to his native Wales. A storm prevented the Cornish ladies from reaching Armorica, however, so Conan’s men took wives from among the local inhabitants.
Meanwhile so many Britons arrived in Armorica in the fifth and sixth centuries that they and their language became dominant there. Yet it is probable that the Celtic language spoken by native Armoricans was little different from that of tribes across the English Channel, an immemorial sea lane that, far from separating the peoples on each side, had fostered close contacts between them for millennia. The Breton place-names Cornouaille and Domnonee attest to the Cornish/Dumnonian presence in Brittany.
Although the specifics of persons and happenings in Arthurian legend may be mostly mythical, the stories reflect the close connection between Brittany and Britain, particularly in the person of Lancelot, son of King Ban of Brittany, who traveled to Camelot to serve King Arthur, the legendary king, the earliest known mention of whom is by the Welsh.
Competing Powers
In succeeding centuries as Conan’s descendants split into different dynasties and other leaders rose to power, Brittany saw a series of struggles and wars for dominance, similar to those in contemporary Ireland and Britain. Leaders of the Franks as well as British kings sometimes took part in these wars as allies of one side or another, and Frankish power and influence increased in the region. In about the 10th century the kingdom of Brittany was reduced to a duchy, and in 1196 Arthur I, a member of the powerful French dynasty the Angevins, became duke, thus embroiling Brittany in the rivalry between France and England. The War of the Breton Succession (1341-65), part of the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453), erupted as England and France vied to replace Arthur’s now-extinct line. After the dukedom was won by the house of Montfort, the dukes of Montfort tried to remain neutral during the remainder of the Hundred Years’ War. The powerful French king Francis I formally incorporated the duchy into France in 1532. Brittany had its own parlement, the French form of local judicial body, which met at Rennes and was important until the French Revolution.
Bretons in the French Revolution
Perceiving themselves as essentially different from the rest of the French and the French monarchy, Bretons at first enthusiastically supported the outbreak of revolution in 1789, but for different reasons from those of revolutionaries elsewhere. For them, it was not a war for liberty, equality, and fraternity among all men fought under the aegis of the Enlightenment ideal of reason instead of revealed truth. Rather, for the Bretons it was a war of national independence. But staunchly and conservatively Catholic, Bretons came to resent the anticlericalism of the French Revolutionary government, and Brittany became an antiRevolutionary stronghold. In 1796 French royalist emigres, backed by Great Britain, tried to land at Quiberon in Brittany, but they were routed by government forces, and Breton sympathizers suffered fierce reprisals.
19th and 20th Centuries
Parallel to that of the Irish, Breton nationalism grew during the 19th century, fueled by the continuing anti-Catholicism in France. During the 1970s Breton nationalists were again active. Groups such as the Breton Revolutionary army and the Movement of National Liberation by Socialism, as did the Irish Republican Army, adopted violence, such as exploding a bomb in the palace of Versailles in June 1978, as a tactic.
CULTURE (see also
Britons; Celts; Cornish)
Economy
Farming Despite the important trade system centered on Brittany, Cornwall, Wales, and Ireland in the Iron Age, the economic basis of the majority of the population was one of simple farming and herding. Few luxury goods have been found in these regions.
Trade With the advent of knowledge about metalworking during the third millennium B. C.E., trade in the coastal Atlantic zone of Europe, which had existed for centuries, greatly accelerated, because a number of its regions, including Armorica, were rich in highly sought ores. At this time the Atlantic zone fostered the rapid spread of the Bell Beaker warrior ideology. Whether it was spread by actual invasion and migration is difficult to determine. By the end of the third millennium B. C.E. influences from the Unetice bronze-hording culture of central Germany and Czechoslovakia, following the old Beaker routes, had reached Brittany. Weapons, weapon designs, tin and other materials, as well as, we may surmise, elements of living culture such as myths and heroic poetry, flowed back and forth through this network, a precursor of the Celtic world to come.
Copper and gold were being extracted in considerable quantities and distributed through existing networks as well as along new routes extending deep into mainland Europe along the major river valleys. Daggers made from honey-colored “Grand Pressigny” flint from the Loire valley and amber from the North Sea coast of Jutland were also entering the exchange networks. Following new trade routes pioneered in the early second millennium b. c.e. by traders from new flourishing bronze industries in the Carpathian Mountains, the predominantly east-west Unetice trade expanded to include north-south connections, and Carpathian weapons, most notably swords, reached Atlantic areas.
By the sixth century B. C.E. the competition of the Greeks with the Carthaginians for tin from Brittany and Cornwall, as well as high-quality bronze made from arsenical copper found in Ireland and Wales, led the Greeks to pioneer an overland route, which bypassed the sea route along the Iberian coast controlled by the Carthaginians. From the Greek trading town of Massalia on the Rhone, the route crossed France and ended in Brittany, whence ships crossed the English Channel to Britain. Great quantities of high-lead bronze were turned into ax-shaped ingots in Brittany for distribution elsewhere in France and to southcentral Britain as well as back to Greece. The Greek trader Pytheas of Massilia embarked from Brittany in about 330 b. c.e. to explore the northern waters around Britain.
The Coriosolite tribe seems to have been particularly enriched by this trade, judging by the huge number of their coins that have been found (more than 20,000), exceeding those of all other Celtic tribes. Hoards of these coins have been found in Brittany, as well as on the island of Jersey and in present-day Normandy.
In the Roman era the pax Romana imposed in Gaul and the improved Roman roads made overland travel more viable than ever, and transport by land became more prevalent. These circumstances did not lessen Armorica’s role in trade with Britain, however, as evidence of a number of shipwrecks bears witness.
The dangerous conditions for overland travel after the Roman Empire collapsed, as raiding and warfare became endemic again and the Roman roads fell into disrepair, restored the Atlantic seaways to their old importance. The period from 500 to 1500 C. E. saw the communities of the Atlantic facade reestablish themselves as a dominant force in European development. By the end of the Middle Ages the volume and range of goods moved by sea were enormous, including wine, wool, linen, salt fish, dried fruits, and pilgrims.
Two Breton women walk along a road in Brittany in this painting from the early 20th century. (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [LC-USZ62-105293])
A warrior society emerged in Armorica in the Bronze Age with the advent of the Beaker culture, which spread throughout the Atlantic zone. Artifacts from this time show that circular shields, long daggers, and spears were the normal equipment of the warrior. Other artifacts suggest that feasting was also important in this society: cauldrons, hooks probably used for clawing hunks of meat out of stews, and spits for roasting meat. The distribution of artifacts shows that these same social values were adopted throughout the Atlantic zone.
Comparison of mineral-rich areas of Brittany with those in the east-central region not so endowed may show how resources shaped the society of the time. Later Beaker burials in western Brittany were no longer placed near Neolithic sites as they had been in the past. Rather, after some amount of time they were located near mineral deposits and trade centers, suggesting a shifting of focus away from the land and agriculture, on which Neolithic ceremony had been centered, to this new form of wealth. In contrast, in east-central Brittany, where farming still predominated, the allies couvertes continued in use.
In the Iron Age the settlement pattern in Brittany consisted of small defended homesteads surrounded by circular ditch and bank constructions, similar to the rounds of Cornwall and the raths of Wales and Ireland.
Dwellings and Architecture Allies couvertes Allies couvertes, or passage graves, monumental stone mortuary houses covered with long earthen mounds, began to be
Built in Brittany in the fifth millennium B. C.E., around the same time that farming began. Such mounds became the focus of community life, symbols of connection to the land through the intercession of the ancestors whose bones they held. Domestic sites, in contrast, were insubstantial. The passage graves were built at first of drystone walling built up into corbelled vaults; later, large uprights were propped up against one another for strength so that they could bear even larger vertical dolmens. Islands in the Gulf of Morbihan, off southern Brittany, have some of the most impressive examples of such constructions. In about 3800 B. C.E., possibly in response to the advent of the Corded Ware culture, remarkable efforts at reconstruction were made, in which great stones were broken and used as capstones for new, even larger passage graves. One of these, the tomb on Gavrinis Island, has 28 massive granite wall slabs profusely covered with enigmatic ornamentation, a remarkable achievement given the hardness of granite.
Somewhat later long stone-lined cists, called gallery graves, were made in areas away from the older megalithic centers on the coast. They contained successive and layered interments of several hundreds of individuals. Such tombs served settlements patterned differently from the earlier single villages. Instead, in these “expanded villages,” small hamlets were scattered evenly across an area but centered on the local gallery grave. This compromise between aggregation and isolation of settlement is thought to have resulted from the final absorption of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers into the Neolithic way of life.
Breton Bell Beaker Culture and Stonehenge The builders of the final phase of Stonehenge may have been influenced by their Beaker counterparts in Brittany. The shape and alignment of parts of the monument—including the horseshoe of trilithons—and the carvings on some of the stones have no parallels in Britain but echo numerous sites in Brittany.
Fogous Another example of the close connection of Brittany with Britain is the construction near their dwellings of stone-lined, elongated underground chambers called fogous, which are found nowhere else in France but are common in Britain. The purpose of these chambers is obscure. There is evidence for their use for grain storage but also in ritual and as hiding places in times of danger.
By at least the Middle Bronze Age plank boats definitely capable of sea journeys were being made in the Atlantic coastal region of which Brittany was a part. Because evidence of wooden boats is rare, as a result of the deterioration of wood over time, they may have been made in much earlier times. The same is true for skin boats, of which the earliest evidence dates to the first century b. c.e.
Julius Caesar described the sturdy oceangoing ships of the Veneti of Armorica—mas-sively constructed with thick nailed planks, high prowed and square rigged with sails of rawhide to withstand the Atlantic gales.
La Tene Influences in the Iron Age The influence in Iron Age Brittany of the Celtic La Tene style is seen most clearly in pottery, on which La Tene motifs, arcs, palmettes, spirals, and other curvilinear features, but seldom the animal shapes common in other Celtic lands. Derived from metalwork, these motifs were incised and stamped. Pottery was decorated with graphite, giving it a metallic gray color.
Stone was another important medium at this time: stelae engraved with the same La Tene elements used for pottery and friezes with repeated S shapes, triangles, swastikas, or Greek key patterns. Some stelae are nearly of human height with longitudinal grooves resembling those of Greco-Roman columns; others had flat surfaces affording space for decoration. Such stelae are found only in Armorica, and many of them are reworked menhirs first erected in the Neolithic and Early Bronze Ages.
Breton Song Tradition The Breton language is kept alive in part by the rich tradition of sung poetry. Breton singers continue to write lyrical songs about love, both that of men and women and of the Breton countryside. The fest-noz (night festival) tradition calls singers, players of traditional instruments, including a form of Breton bagpipe; and dancers together.
The canticle-singing tradition of Brittany is embodied in one of the richest collections of traditional canticles in Europe, still sung in the many concerts and recitals in the churches and chapels across the region.
The earliest known examples of written Breton, from the seventh century C. E., consist of explanatory glosses in Latin manuscripts; only by the 14th century were extended compositions in Breton first written down. Thereafter until about the 17th century a fairly sizable corpus of religious mystery and miracle plays was written, among the best known Mellezour an maru (Mirror of Death). An important prose work was a Life of Saint Catherine, Buhez Sante Cathell, a translation of a Latin text written in 1576.
The rise of Breton nationalism, an essential part of whose character was a conservative and devout Catholicism, brought about a revival of Breton literary endeavors, including an 1827 translation of the Bible into Breton (in itself, no doubt, an act of protest against the anti-Catholicism in French-speaking France). Orally transmitted poetry, folktales, and other folk forms such as the riddle were written down at this time.
The Breton language continued to give birth to important works in the 20th century, perhaps the most well known the novel Our Lady of the Carmelites (1942) by Youenn Drezen. There are scholarly study of Breton and a vibrant literature of poetry and drama.
Bronze Age The astronomical alignments of many megalithic constructions may reflect the reliance of the seafaring peoples of the Atlantic coastal zone on celestial phenomena for navigation.
As elsewhere in the Atlantic zone, people of the Bell Beaker warrior ideology in Brittany, after an initial period of placing their burials away from the older Neolithic ceremonial sites, began to use passage graves to deposit offerings, most usually small gold ornaments rather than weapons. Later, in an apparent withdrawal from this form of rapprochement, they
BRIGANTES
Location:
North England
Time period:
First century b. c.e. to fifth century c. e.
Ancestry:
Celtic
Language:
Brythonic (Celtic)
Cleared new areas on the edge of the Morbihan for their burials. At this time the great stone avenues of Carnac and Erdeven were built, perhaps in response to this threat. Later still Bell Beaker ideologues cleared entirely new areas for their burials near mineral deposits, perhaps signaling an end of compromise and a break with the past.
Iron Age Burial hoards containing multiple weapons, large amounts of pottery, and other offerings are found in Armorica as elsewhere in the Celtic world. Worked granite stelae mark the burials. The fact that many of these are reworked menhirs from millennia earlier shows a strong continuity of tradition embracing the newer Celtic elements. Shrines in the form of rectangular ritual enclosures have their analogues in other Celtic regions.
Christianity Many of the Britons who emigrated to Brittany in the fifth and sixth centuries were Christian, although the native Armoricans apparently were not. There is some evidence of Christian worship in Brittany by about 450; in about 520 Saint Samson, a Welsh monk who was a bishop in Cornwall, received a vision from God instructing him to evangelize in Brittany.
Many of the thousands of saints recognized in Brittany—but not officially canonized by Rome—are probably Christianized local Celtic or even older deities, judging by the fact that many of them are associated with holy healing wells and springs, the locus of worship for Iron Age Celts. Others heal specific maladies— headaches, digestive problems, and the like— while still others protect animals: Horses, cattle, and even chickens have their special saint. To the present Bretons have had an essentially pagan relationship with their saints, worshiping them for the aid they can give in this life as much as or more than their aid in the next. The seven founding saints of the Armorican bishoprics are all male: Saint Patern (Vannes), Saint Corentin (Quimper), Saint Brieuc, Saint Tugdual (Teguier), Saint Samson (Dol), Saint Malo, and Saint Pol-Aurelien (Saint-Pol-de-Leon). But the patron saint of Brittany, Saint Anne, is probably a Christian apotheosis of the great Celtic goddess Ana.
Pardons Special gatherings of pilgrims called pardons are a particularly Breton form of worship. Originating in the 15th century and still practiced today, pardons feature, aside from solemn masses, colorful processions of people wearing traditional garb—notably elaborate white headdresses worn by women—and carrying crosses and statues. In coastal towns priests board boats and bless all the vessels in the harbor or bless the waters.
As they have for millennia, the people of the Armorican peninsula share a transnational culture with links all along Atlantic coastal Europe. Breton culture continues its robust independence from that of the rest of France, and Brittany has the distinction of being the last place in mainland Europe where a Celtic language is spoken.
Further Reading
Audrey Burl. Megalithic Brittany: A Guide (London: Thames & Hudson, 1987).
Patrick Galliou and Michael Jones. The Bretons (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002).
Pierre-Roland Giot. Brittany (New York: F A. Praeger, 1960).
Giot Guigon. The British Settlement of Brittany: The First Bretons in Armorica (North Pomfret, Vt.: Trafalgar Square, 2004).
Pierre-Jakez Helias. Horse of Pride: Life in a Breton Village (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1980).
Anna Chapin Ray. The Bretons (Boston: Little, Brown, 1912).
Keith Spence. Brittany and the Bretons (London: Gollancz, 1978).
World History
