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October 9, 2017. The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that warriors in the epic poem
Beowulf wear helmets like the boar-crested
Benty Grange helmet (pictured)? | ||||||||||||
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Made a number of substantive changes to improve detail in the article and added images (these could be improved if anyone has anything appropriate) Nathandbeal ( talk) 04:05, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
Hi Denisgotprobs ( talk) 01:21, 26 April 2019 (UTC)
Is there a reason the article capitalizes the "h" in helmet? Bruce-Mitford 1974 and 1978 have it as "helmet," as does the museum's website (at the bottom left of the page). Changing the title to "Benty Grange helmet" seems appropriate. Pinging some of the people who have added the most to this page: @ Nathandbeal, AdamFunk, Walgamanus, and Ser Amantio di Nicolao: -- Usernameunique ( talk) 03:40, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
I cropped out the background of the main image and made versions with several different plain backgrounds as part of a WP:DYK discussion. Since the original image is a jpg, the png is lower-resolutions. I did not properly remove the background from the transparent museum stand supporting the helmet, so the stand looks as if it is part of the helmet unless the background is black background. The DYK discussion therefore agreed that the black background was best. Kintetsubuffalo, would it be OK with you if I replaced the png currently leading the article with the higher-res black jpg? HLHJ ( talk) 22:46, 11 November 2017 (UTC)
" ... plates of horn, probably softened and bent and suggested to be from bos longifrons"; the bos longifrons is linked to the genus Bos but longifrons does not appear on that page so it needs some explanation (early extinct domesticated cattle or some such)? Nedrutland ( talk) 08:33, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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Reviewer: Iazyges ( talk · contribs) 13:47, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
Will start soon. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 13:47, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
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Scholars have suggested that the Benty Grange grave may have belonged to a prince of the otherwise obscure Pecsaetan, the 'dwellers of the Peak'. Maybe this could be added somewhere in the article. I have found these two references, there may be other, more specialised ones:
– Swa cwæð Ælfgar ( talk) 08:40, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
Hello, all. I just wanted to say that I felt that you've done an excellent job with this article. I'm personally impressed. :bloodofox: ( talk) 00:17, 29 December 2018 (UTC)
Usernameunique I am sorry that I missed this article at FAC and only came across it when it was a TFA. It is an interesting article and – so far as I know - good on the artistic aspects, but the treatment of the historical and religious background seems to me unsatisfactory.
The political background is dealt with cursorily in one sentence in the middle of the discovery section: "According to the 7th- to 9th-century Tribal Hidage, the region was governed by the Pecsæte, and so the Benty Grange barrow may memorialise a member of this Anglo-Saxon tribe, or one of its ancestors " It was occupied not governed by the Pecsæte and the qualification "or one of its ancestors" is based on a dated source which does not reflect historians' views (eg Yorke who you cite). The people in the area in the seventh century were the Pecsæte, not their ancestors.
Stenton in his classic Anglo-Saxon England regarded the Pecsæte territory as a Mercian subject province (pp. 296-97), but historians now see the territory as independent in the seventh century. Yorke describes the land of the Pecsæte in the seventh century as one of several small territories which provided a buffer between Mercia and Northumbria, and she sees Benty Grange and other rich burials as evidence for a separate Pecsæte dynasty, although possibly paying tribute to Mercia (Kings and Kingdoms, pp. 10-12, 102, 106, 108). An authoritative recent source, Simon Keynes in the 2014 edition of the Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Anglo-Saxon England, p. 312, regards Pecsæte as one of the peoples who came under Mercian supremacy in the eighth century (not the seventh). These points, particularly the suggestion that the helmet is evidence for a Pecsæte dynasty, are important context for the helmet.
"The boar invokes a pagan tradition at the time a thousand years old" The source does not say this but discusses the tradition over millennia. You quote the source correctly in the first sentence of the boar section. (I assume this is an incorrect reference rather than a wrong statement.)
The main problem with the article in my view is the discussion of religion.
The reference to the Catholic Church is anachronistic. The separate Catholic church dates to the split with Orthodoxy in the eleventh century.
You say that after the Romans left "Christianity in Britain diverged into distinct and unrecognisable forms, or met the influx of Anglo-Saxons from continental Europe and was replaced with Germanic traditions that had been repressed for the last 400 years". "distinct and unrecognisable forms" is linked to Celtic Christianity: this is not in the sources or any source I am aware of and is prejudiced POV. The reference to "Germanic traditions that had been repressed for the last 400 years" appears to be a misunderstanding of the source you cite, Foster p. 27, which states that the boar figurine is Germanic, rather than a Celtic tradition which had survived 400 years of Roman rule.
The paragraph on conversion treats it as purely Gregorian, but the north was converted by Irish missionaries who followed the Celtic tradition. See for example Mayr-Harting pp. 99-100, which states the death of the pagan king of Mercia, Penda, in 656 was followed by the despatch of Irish missionaries from Northumbria to the Middle Angles, south of Pecsæte territory. It is unlikely that any missionaries reached Pecsæte territory in the earlier seventh century, but any who did would have been Celtic Christians. Your discussion is misleading and gives the impression of being prejudiced against Celtic Christianity. Dudley Miles ( talk) 20:53, 29 April 2019 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Benty Grange helmet article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
![]() | Benty Grange helmet is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so. | ||||||||||||
![]() | This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on April 26, 2019. | ||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
![]() | A
fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's
Main Page in the "
Did you know?" column on
October 9, 2017. The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that warriors in the epic poem
Beowulf wear helmets like the boar-crested
Benty Grange helmet (pictured)? | ||||||||||||
![]() | Facts from this article were featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the " On this day..." column on May 3, 2018, May 3, 2021, May 3, 2023, and May 3, 2024. | ||||||||||||
Current status: Featured article |
![]() | This article is rated FA-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Made a number of substantive changes to improve detail in the article and added images (these could be improved if anyone has anything appropriate) Nathandbeal ( talk) 04:05, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
Hi Denisgotprobs ( talk) 01:21, 26 April 2019 (UTC)
Is there a reason the article capitalizes the "h" in helmet? Bruce-Mitford 1974 and 1978 have it as "helmet," as does the museum's website (at the bottom left of the page). Changing the title to "Benty Grange helmet" seems appropriate. Pinging some of the people who have added the most to this page: @ Nathandbeal, AdamFunk, Walgamanus, and Ser Amantio di Nicolao: -- Usernameunique ( talk) 03:40, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
I cropped out the background of the main image and made versions with several different plain backgrounds as part of a WP:DYK discussion. Since the original image is a jpg, the png is lower-resolutions. I did not properly remove the background from the transparent museum stand supporting the helmet, so the stand looks as if it is part of the helmet unless the background is black background. The DYK discussion therefore agreed that the black background was best. Kintetsubuffalo, would it be OK with you if I replaced the png currently leading the article with the higher-res black jpg? HLHJ ( talk) 22:46, 11 November 2017 (UTC)
" ... plates of horn, probably softened and bent and suggested to be from bos longifrons"; the bos longifrons is linked to the genus Bos but longifrons does not appear on that page so it needs some explanation (early extinct domesticated cattle or some such)? Nedrutland ( talk) 08:33, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
GA toolbox |
---|
Reviewing |
Reviewer: Iazyges ( talk · contribs) 13:47, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
Will start soon. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 13:47, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
GA Criteria
|
---|
GA Criteria:
|
Scholars have suggested that the Benty Grange grave may have belonged to a prince of the otherwise obscure Pecsaetan, the 'dwellers of the Peak'. Maybe this could be added somewhere in the article. I have found these two references, there may be other, more specialised ones:
– Swa cwæð Ælfgar ( talk) 08:40, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
Hello, all. I just wanted to say that I felt that you've done an excellent job with this article. I'm personally impressed. :bloodofox: ( talk) 00:17, 29 December 2018 (UTC)
Usernameunique I am sorry that I missed this article at FAC and only came across it when it was a TFA. It is an interesting article and – so far as I know - good on the artistic aspects, but the treatment of the historical and religious background seems to me unsatisfactory.
The political background is dealt with cursorily in one sentence in the middle of the discovery section: "According to the 7th- to 9th-century Tribal Hidage, the region was governed by the Pecsæte, and so the Benty Grange barrow may memorialise a member of this Anglo-Saxon tribe, or one of its ancestors " It was occupied not governed by the Pecsæte and the qualification "or one of its ancestors" is based on a dated source which does not reflect historians' views (eg Yorke who you cite). The people in the area in the seventh century were the Pecsæte, not their ancestors.
Stenton in his classic Anglo-Saxon England regarded the Pecsæte territory as a Mercian subject province (pp. 296-97), but historians now see the territory as independent in the seventh century. Yorke describes the land of the Pecsæte in the seventh century as one of several small territories which provided a buffer between Mercia and Northumbria, and she sees Benty Grange and other rich burials as evidence for a separate Pecsæte dynasty, although possibly paying tribute to Mercia (Kings and Kingdoms, pp. 10-12, 102, 106, 108). An authoritative recent source, Simon Keynes in the 2014 edition of the Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Anglo-Saxon England, p. 312, regards Pecsæte as one of the peoples who came under Mercian supremacy in the eighth century (not the seventh). These points, particularly the suggestion that the helmet is evidence for a Pecsæte dynasty, are important context for the helmet.
"The boar invokes a pagan tradition at the time a thousand years old" The source does not say this but discusses the tradition over millennia. You quote the source correctly in the first sentence of the boar section. (I assume this is an incorrect reference rather than a wrong statement.)
The main problem with the article in my view is the discussion of religion.
The reference to the Catholic Church is anachronistic. The separate Catholic church dates to the split with Orthodoxy in the eleventh century.
You say that after the Romans left "Christianity in Britain diverged into distinct and unrecognisable forms, or met the influx of Anglo-Saxons from continental Europe and was replaced with Germanic traditions that had been repressed for the last 400 years". "distinct and unrecognisable forms" is linked to Celtic Christianity: this is not in the sources or any source I am aware of and is prejudiced POV. The reference to "Germanic traditions that had been repressed for the last 400 years" appears to be a misunderstanding of the source you cite, Foster p. 27, which states that the boar figurine is Germanic, rather than a Celtic tradition which had survived 400 years of Roman rule.
The paragraph on conversion treats it as purely Gregorian, but the north was converted by Irish missionaries who followed the Celtic tradition. See for example Mayr-Harting pp. 99-100, which states the death of the pagan king of Mercia, Penda, in 656 was followed by the despatch of Irish missionaries from Northumbria to the Middle Angles, south of Pecsæte territory. It is unlikely that any missionaries reached Pecsæte territory in the earlier seventh century, but any who did would have been Celtic Christians. Your discussion is misleading and gives the impression of being prejudiced against Celtic Christianity. Dudley Miles ( talk) 20:53, 29 April 2019 (UTC)