William Tyler
Roman France
Summary
An eye-opening look at Roman France (c. 125 BC to 486 AD) and its transformation into what became known as Gallo-Roman culture. Many architectural marvels from the period still survive today, including the great amphitheater in Arles.
William Tyler
William Tyler has spent his entire professional life in adult education, beginning at Kingsgate College in 1969. He has lectured widely for many public bodies, including the University of Cambridge and the WEA, in addition to speaking to many clubs and societies. In 2009, William was awarded the MBE for services to adult education, and he has previously been a scholar in residence at the London Jewish Cultural Centre.
That’s a very difficult question to answer, and I’m not sure I can answer that at all. There were lots of people that don’t have a written language. Why? Because they didn’t feel the need for it, I suppose.
I think the answer is we don’t know, but I stand to be corrected on that. I think the answer is we don’t know. The usual explanation is that Jews arrived in England with the Norman French. Evidence of that is that many of the moniers, that’s the people who actually made the coins, a number of them have Jewish names and why? Because the Jews were financing William, and so when William takes England, they say, look, we’ve financed you, we can we mint the coins, which they then did, which led later in the 13th century, in charges, in anti-Semitic charges, that the Jews were the ones who were making, clipping the coins for their own benefit or making coins and not declaring they’d made them. And so dreadful, dreadful story, shortly before Jews were thrown out of England, the dreadful story of how 300 were executed, mostly falsely, for doing the coinage. But that doesn’t answer the question, but I think the answer is no, we don’t know. And as usual, it’s with the Norman French that the Jews arrive.
No, Marseilles was Massilia and is separate. On the map, you can see Narbonne is shown as Narbo and to the east of it, Massilia, which is Marseilles. So not the same.