Brittany, France

Family Rumor-Brittany France

Sections in the Chapter:

1. General Description………………………………………………..…………p. 1

2 .One of Six Celtic Nations………………………………..…………..…….. p. 2

3. Part of the Roman Empire…………………………………..……………..p. 5

4. Sixth Century Brittany………………………………………….….……….p. 6

5. Charlemagne’s influence……………………………………………….….p. 6

6. Ninth Century Consolidation under Nominoe………………………p. 8

7. Viking Attacks in the Ninth and Tenth Century………..…..…... p. 10

 8. Conclusions………………………………………….………………....……p. 11

Section 1. General Description

The family rumor is that we are descendant for a 10th Century Breton-Norman family from Brittany France.  We spend some time in the years 900-1100 to ensure we have given a complete review.  Again, this is a genealogical search not a historical search.  Many texts are available for that type of effort. Again, this is not a history of Brittany but it is done in an effort to investigate our genealogy.  We stop at the 10th century because that is what the family rumor says.

 The picture shown to the right is Nominoe or Nomenoe. He was the first Duke of Brittany from 846 to his death. Nominoe Triumphant: Tad ar Vro (Jeanne Malivel, 1922), Breton nationalist engraving of Nominoe.

Brittany is a peninsula, historical country and cultural area in the west of modern France, covering the western part of what was known as Armorica during the period of Roman occupation. It became an independent kingdom and then a duchy before being united with the Kingdom of France in 1532 as a province governed as a separate nation under the crown.



Brittany has also been referred to as Little Britain (as opposed to Great Britain, with which it shares many place names-called etymology). It is bordered by the English Channel to the north, Normandy to the northeast, eastern Pays de la Loire to the southeast, the Bay of Biscay to the south, and the Celtic Sea and the Atlantic Ocean to the west. Its land area is 13,136 square miles.



Section 2. One of Six Celtic Nations

Brittany is the traditional homeland of the Breton people and is one of the six Celtic nations, retaining a distinct cultural identity that reflects its history.  The six Celtic Nations are: Ireland, Cornwall, Isle of Mann, Brittany, Scotland and Wales. However for centuries Celts spread beyond Northern Europe, with many countries today claiming some Celtic influence. Yet only one place truly considers themselves ‘one’ with their Celtic heritage: Galicia, Spain.

The word Brittany derive from the Latin Britannia, which means "land of the Britons". This word had been used by the Romans since the 1st century to refer to Great Britain, and more specifically the Roman province of Britain. This word derives from a Greek word, Πρεττανικη (Prettanike) or Βρεττανίαι (Brettaniai), used by Pytheas, an explorer from Massalia who visited the British Isles around 320 BC. The Greek word itself comes from the common Brythonic ethnonym reconstructed as *Pritanī, itself from Proto-Celtic *kʷritanoi (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *kʷer- 'to cut, make').

The Romans called Brittany Armorica. It was a quite indefinite region that extended along the English Channel coast from the Seine estuary, then along the Atlantic coast to the Loire estuary and, according to several sources, maybe to the Garonne estuary. This term probably comes from a Gallic word, aremorica, which means "close to the sea". Another name, Letauia (in English "Litavis"), was used until the 12th century. It possibly means "wide and flat" or "to expand" and it gave the Welsh name for Brittany: Llydaw.

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 480 AD, many Britons settled in western Armorica, and the region started to be called Britannia, although this name only replaced Armorica in the sixth century or perhaps by the end of the fifth.

Brittany has been inhabited by humans since the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age (2.6 million years ago).  Population was scarce and very similar to the other Neanderthals found in the whole of Western Europe.  Homo sapiens settled in Brittany around 35,000 years ago. They replaced or absorbed the Neanderthals and developed local industries. After the last glacial period, the warmer climate allowed the area to become heavily wooded. At that time, Brittany was populated by relatively large communities who started to change their lifestyles from a life of hunting and gathering, to become settled farmers. Agriculture was introduced during the 5th millennium BC by migrants from the south and east. However, the Neolithic Revolution (New Stone Age) in Brittany did not happen due to a radical change of population, but by slow immigration and exchange of skills. 


Neolithic Brittany (10, 200 BC to 9500 BC) is characterized by important megalithic production and sites such as Quelfénnec, it is sometimes designated as the "core area" of megalithic culture. The oldest monuments, cairns, were followed by princely tombs and stone rows. The southern coast comprises a large share of these structures, including the Carnac stones and the Broken Menhir of Er Grah in the Locmariaquer megaliths, the largest single stone erected by Neolithic people.


The Gallic era occurred in the 5th century BC to the 5th Century AD spanning the Bronze and Iron ages.   During this period Brittany was inhabited by five Celtic tribes:

·         The Curiosolitae, who lived around the present town of Corseul. Their territory encompassed parts of Côtes-d'Armor, Ille-et-Vilaine and Morbihan départements.

·         The Namnetes, who lived in the current Loire-Atlantique département (in today's administrative région of Pays de la Loire), north of the Loire. They gave their name to the city of Nantes. The south bank of the river was occupied by an allied tribe, the Ambilatres,[21] whose existence and territory remain unsure.[20]

·         The Osismii, who lived in the western part of Brittany. Their territory comprised the Finistère département and the western extremity of Côtes-d'Armor and Morbihan.

·         The Redones (or Rhedones), who lived in the eastern part of the Ille-et-Vilaine département. They gave their name to the city of Rennes (Roazhon in Breton language, in the center of the département) and to the town of Redon (in the south of the département, bordering the département of Loire-Atlantique in the administrative région of Pays de la Loire, where its suburb town of Saint-Nicolas-de-Redon is located; however the city of Redon was founded around AD 832 under the initial name of Riedones, long after the Redones people were assimilated to Bretons; the cultural link between Riedones and the former Redones people is highly probable but difficult to recover and the name of Riedones may have been written from a local usage preserving the name of the former people in the vernacular oral language from a reading of an ancient Greek orthography).

·         The Veneti, who lived in the present Morbihan département and gave their name to the city of Vannes. Despite confusion by the classical scholar Strabo, they were unrelated to the Adriatic Veneti.

 

Those people had strong economic ties to the Insular Celts (likely in the British Isles), especially for the tin trade. Several tribes also belonged to an "Armorican confederation" which, according to Julius Caesar, gathered the Curiosolitae, the Redones, the Osismii, the Unelli, the Caletes, the Lemovices and the Ambibarii. The last four peoples mentioned by Caesar were respectively located in Cotentin (Lower-Normandy), pays de Caux (Upper-Normandy), Limousin (Aquitany) and the location of the Ambibarii is unknown. The Caletes are sometimes also considered as Belgians and ″Lemovices″ is probably a mistake for ″Lexovii″ (Lower-Normandy).

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