Megalithic shipping and trade routes

[hvered]

The church of Our Lady of the Deliverance, consecrated in 1203, was built over the castle. The castle was supposedly erected by unnamed pirates and was known both as Le Grand Sarrazin (Saracen in English) and Le Chateau du grand Geoffroi/ Castle of Geoffrey. 'Geoffrey' could have been the pirate leader but sounds completely Norman so presumably was the deliverer and re-named the chateau accordingly.

According to the nineteenth-century historian, William Berry, Guernsey, in 1061, was attacked by 'a new race of pirates' who

issued from the southern ports of France bordering on the Bay of Biscay. Duke William was at Valognes when he received information of this attack, and he immediately sent troops under the command of his squire, Sampson d’Anville, who landed at the harbour of St. Samson. Being joined by the islanders who had sought refuge at the Castle of the Vale and other retreats, he defeated the invaders with much slaughter. Duke William is also said to have made large concessions of land in Guernsey to d’Anville”

The reference to the pirates issuing from French ports bordering Biscay has no supporting evidence whatsoever. Perhaps someone remembered there's a village in Aquitaine called Castel-Sarrazin whose inhabitants are called Sarrazins and voilà.

[Mick Harper]

The church is said to be built over the castle. As we know there's no guarantee it's actually there. Let us investigate.

The Catel/Castle of Geoffrey was also called The Grand Sarrazin, sited on ‘an eminence nearly in the centre of the island, which commanded from its summit an extensive view of the ocean and all the bays and principal landing places on the coast.

Actually that's not where castles are usually sited since it means anybody can invade anywhere they choose. However it is exactly where a navigational sighting point would be positioned.

It is the site of the modern church Sainte Marie de Castro,

which is, uniquely in Guernsey, on the parish boundary rather than well within it. Suggesting that the siting of the church is significant for some reason. Castro by the way has a much more important meaning than 'castle', something being discussed over on the other site.

which seems to have been partly built on the ruins of the ancient structure, for all the north and north-east walls appear to be older than the others’

Can't work out the significance of this. Any ideas?

[Mick Harper]

Why the church is where it is may be indicated by these illuminating details

Outside the main door can be seen the Neolithic statue menhir found under the floor of the church during the 19th century, similar to La Gran'mere du Chimquiere in St Martins.

'Found under the floor' would seem to imply 'there before the church'. The Gran'mere du Chimquiere has always been assumed by everyone including academics to be really old, Neolithic even. If so it would it would set the whole business back vastly.

At its foot lie the stone seats for the official of the medieval court of Fief St Michel.

This is peculiarly significant if taken at face value since it would link the St Michael cult directly with the Megalithics, but it may just be that the Gran'mere has been put next to the seats in modern times. I'll have to send someone to check. I can't do it myself because my own birth was dictated by my mother interceding with the St Martin Gran'mere and the Catel one might pick up the vibes and lash out.

[TisILeclerc]

'Our Lady of Deliverance' From whom?

Perhaps this is connected with the word Sarrazin?

At what point did the Barbary pirates and slave traders break out of the Med? They were very active in that region from the ninth century.

Piratical activity by Muslim populations had been known in the Mediterranean since at least the 9th century and the short-lived Emirate of Crete. The Provence was plagued by Saracen slave raids in the Carolingian era; in 869, archbishop Rotlandus of Arles was captured, and died before he could be released after the payment of a ransom in weapons, treasure and slaves. The level of Muslim pirate activity was relatively low[citation needed], but in the 13th and 14th centuries pirates from Christian states, particularly Catalonia, were a constant threat to merchants who traded by sea.[citation needed]

In 1198 the problem of Berber piracy and slave-taking was so great that a religious order, the Trinitarians were founded to collect ransoms and even to exchange themselves as ransom for those captured and pressed into slavery in North Africa. In the 14th century Tunisian corsairs became enough of a threat to provoke a Franco-Genoese attack on Mahdia in 1390, also known as the "Barbary Crusade". Morisco exiles of the Reconquista and Maghreb pirates added to the numbers, but it was not until the expansion of the Ottoman Empire and the arrival of the privateer and admiral Kemal Reis in 1487 that the Barbary corsairs became a true menace to shipping from European Christian nations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_pirates

Perhaps these pirates made an early start on Guernsey. They certainly raided Jersey and the British Isles in the sixteenth century and with Spain lost to islam it's possible that Spain may have been an early base for piratical ventures into the Atlantic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umayyad_c ... f_Hispania

[Mick Harper]

Most valuable, Tissie. However if the Catel was called Le Grand Sarrazin it would imply that the Barbary pirates actually set up a territorial state in Guernsey. Perhaps it was an exchange point for negotiations with the Trinitarians -- an order we will clearly have to investigate.

[Boreades]

Lest we forget previous discussions re the similarities between Guernsey and Lundy:

Over the next few centuries, the island (Lundy) was hard to govern. Trouble followed as both English and foreign pirates and privateers – including other members of the Marisco family – took control of the island for short periods. Ships were forced to navigate close to Lundy because of the dangerous shingle banks in the fast flowing River Severn and Bristol Channel, with its tidal range of 27 feet (8.2 m), one of the greatest in the world. This made the island a profitable location from which to prey on passing Bristol-bound merchant ships bringing back valuable goods from overseas.

In 1627 Barbary Pirates from the Republic of Salé occupied Lundy for five years. The North African invaders, under the command of Dutch renegade Jan Janszoon, flew an Ottoman flag over the island. Some captured Europeans were held on Lundy before being sent to Algiers as slaves. From 1628 to 1634 the island was plagued by pirate ships of French, Basque, English and Spanish origin. These incursions were eventually ended by Sir John Penington, but in the 1660s and as late as the 1700s the island still fell prey to French privateers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lundy#Piracy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Sal%C3%A9

Some pedants might quibble that "Barbary pirates" isn't necessarily the same as Sarrazin/Saracen, but hey, I wouldn't argue the point with anyone trying to ply a bit of piracy on me.

[TisILeclerc]

To be fair Borry Sarrazin could also refer to Sarrasin which is beloved in Brittany and used to make their famous pancakes.

In English it's called buckwheat. Perhaps it was a place of nomadic pancake sellers? From north Africa perhaps?

[hvered]

Perhaps it was an exchange point for negotiations with the Trinitarians -- an order we will clearly have to investigate.

The Trinitarians began their mission in Picardy, northern France, so the Channel Islands would presumably be mutually accessible for the ransom-payers and the ransom-demanders.

The Order of the Most Holy Trinity and of the Captives (Latin: Ordo Sanctissimae Trinitatis et captivorum), often shortened to The Order of the Most Holy Trinity (Latin: Ordo Sanctissimae Trinitatis), or Trinitarians, is a Catholic religious order that was founded in the area of Cerfroid, some 80 km northeast of Paris, at the end of the twelfth century. From the very outset, a special dedication to the mystery of the Holy Trinity has been a constitutive element of the Order's life.

Between the eighth and the fifteenth centuries medieval Europe was in a state of intermittent warfare between the Christian kingdoms of southern Europe and the Muslim polities of North Africa, Southern France, Sicily and portions of Spain. .. the threat of capture, whether by pirates or coastal raiders, or during one of the region's intermittent wars, was a continuous threat to residents of Catalonia, Languedoc, and the other coastal provinces of medieval Christian Europe. Raids by militias, bands, and armies from both sides was an almost annual occurrence.

The Trinitarian flag is a tricolore of sorts.

[Mick Harper]

It is the Megalithic Cross -- red on a white background -- with the cross-beam changed to blue -- why?

[Boreades]

Have I already mentioned the strangeness of Trinitarians in Britain?

They say:

First generation Trinitarians could count some 50 foundations throughout France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Luxembourg, Scotland, England and Ireland. Ransoming captives required economic resources and the Trinitarians set aside 1/3 of all income for this purpose.

http://www.trinitarians.org/about/ourroots.html

But the place they chose as Trinitarian HQ UK is bizarre.

Robert of Knaresborough, son of the mayor of York, was the hermit living in a cave. But (it says) with servants.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_of_Knaresborough

It says:
Before his death St Robert established an order of Trinitarian Friars at Knaresborough Priory, but he warned them that when his time came the monks of Fountains abbey would try to carry his body away to their own establishment, he urged his followers to resist them, which they did and so St Robert was buried in his chapel cut from the steep rocky crags by the river, where it was said that a medicinal oil flowed from his tomb and pilgrims came from near and far to be healed by this.

Why Knaresborough? Was it a centre for slave trading in Yorkshire? Or were there slave markets nearby?

I'm not so bothered about the monks of Fountains Abbey. That was founded because of a riot of its monks elsewhere. So clearly known in their own time as a rough lot. No wonder if St Robert suspected them of being body robbers, or likely to grab his valuable saintly relics while his body was still warm.