We know from Venerable Bede that Christianity existed in late Roman Britain so I just wanted to fact-check what this professor has to say about the Christianization of the Saxons occurring "at the end of the sixth century by St. Augustine 's mission sent directly from Rome .
I look forward to your feedback.
davidmich
Whereas in France , the original Romanized inhabitants vastly outnumbered the invading Franks, in England the Germanic invaders, the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes from northern Germany and Denmark , drove most of the original Celtic inhabitants to Cornwall , Wales , and Scotland in the far western regions of the British Isles . The invaders, whom for convenience we call the Anglo-Saxons, ignored most of the Roman achievements they found. They disliked the land already being farmed, which was mostly light chalky soil on the hilltops, and preferred the clay lands of the river valleys. They paid no attention to Roman law, but introduced a wholly Germanic tribal system of government. They arrived as pagans, and were converted only at the end of the sixth century by St. Augustine 's mission sent directly from Rome . The Anglo-Saxons thus received what Romanization they had from the Catholic Church. From the Roman Empire itself, they acquired only the roads. By contrast even with Clovis 's Paris , life in Anglo-Saxon England was rough, drab, and dangerous.
The invasions of the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Danes, and whomever, pushed (Celtic) Christianity out toward Wales and to the North. There was probably some lingering of Christianity in the conquered lands, but it was not coherent enough to try to convert the invaders.
The efforts to actually convert the invaders did begin with the mission in which Pope Gregory sent Augustine to Kent in 597.
(Interestingly, several of the kings converted in the next 30 years had Christian wives before their conversion. Bertha of Kent, a Frank, was a in political marriage uniting Aethelbert of Kent with the Frankish kings, and in the next generation, her daughter Ethelburgh, married the Edwin, king of Northumbria, who later converted to Christianity).
It didn’t push Christianity anywhere: that implies that Christians were moving out of England and into un-Christian areas. All of Roman Britain seems to have been Christianized, and the British kingdoms in the west and north remained Christian.
As for the conquered Britons, it seems unlikely that they took up Anglo-Saxon paganism, so I would think that they maintained Christianity in a relatively coherent fashion. There’s no evidence, so speculate at will, but unless you believe the Anglo-Saxons expelled the British wholesale, it seems logical that the newly created English kingdoms were multi-faith statelets. Early medieval kings weren’t terribly concerned about cultural homogeneity in their domains.
Not sure I understand? There was ample evidence that insular Christianity survived the Anglo-Saxon invasions, and eventually, after the conversion of Anglo-Saxon kings to Roman rite Christianity, of various decisions by the kings to require uniformity of Roman customs over the customs of the insular churches.
And see the wiki article on the Synod of Whitby, where King Oswiu of Northumbria convened a synod to determine if his people should follow Roman customs or insular church customs, notably the calculation of the date of Easter. After hearing from representatives from both sides, he ruled in favour of Roman customs.
I thought the recent consensus was that the Anglo-Saxon “invasion” was more of a gradual assimilation, no? Many native Brits switched to the new language; some manufactured Saxon pedigrees and invasion myths.
Yes, outside of the English kingdoms. I’m talking about the specific areas under the control of the Anglo-Saxon kings before their (the kings’) conversion. In other words, the institution certainly survived, but all of our evidence is via the British kingdoms.
It was actually Aethelbert, at the urging of his wife, who wrote the pope asking him to send missionaries, which led to the coming of Augustine of Canterbury.
This is a common historical legend: pagan king married Christian queen and converts at her urging. Either it happened a lot, or it’s a weird sort of stealth brag. In any case, I wouldn’t put too much weight on Mrs. Æthelbert.
No. It notes that when a major power shift occurs in an invasion, the majority of people, having merely a day-to-day acceptance of their religion and not a deeply felt attachment to it, tend to switch to the religion of the dominant force. This is clearly seen in the Muslim conquest of North Africa and Asia Minor, but it also has echoes in the Reconquista of Iberia (prior to 1492 and the laws of expulsion), the advance of Christianity through Africa in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and even the rise/r-emergence of Canaanite religions in Judea that Ezra and Nehemiah encountered following the Babylonian Captivity.
The Christian people of England were not pushed to the West, but the adherence to Christianity waned where the pagan invaders displayed their power, while it tended to hold on in areas where they failed to conquer.
I’d agree with your second paragraph, but quibble about the first. That is true of faith-based religions, but religions like Germanic pre-Christian paganism are ethnic religions (like Judaism in Roman times), where the practice of the religion is so tightly interwoven with linguistic and cultural life that it’s not really possible to convert to it in the same way that a North African Christian could have taken up Islam in the 8th century. It’s not that worshippers of Woden wouldn’t accept newcomers, and it’s true that people tend to switch to the dominant system of their everyday reality, but I don’t think it’s quite as simple as you make out. For one thing, people DO have a deep attachment to their culture, including religion. Not necessarily just the faith, but the practices as well.
Well, between Constantine’s recognition of Christianity in the early 300s and the Roman withdrawal in 407, a very large percentage of the population had become Christian. By the time Augustine was landing in Kent in 597, that majority had dwindled to a tiny remnant, for whatever reason. On the other hand, Wales, not overwhelmed by Germanic invasions, had remained primarily Christian.
Whether the Germanic invaders had slaughtered all the Christian Celts, (I find that unlikely), or the Christian Celts had simply adopted the newer religions, (or reverted to pre-Roman paganism), the reality is that Augustine had plenty of opportunity to convert a land that was nearly all pagan when, 200 years previously, it had been primarily or totally Christian.
