England Paper II

Anonymous
[My professor's name]
[The class this was for]
11 December 2013

                                        St. Bede and The Triumph of Christianity in England

    Starting with the Gregorian mission in the late sixth century AD, the people of England began to come into the fold of Christianity. Through the efforts of determined missionaries, stern bishops, and newly-converted kings, the old nature deities of the Anglo-Saxons were gradually phased out in favor of the Abrahamic God. Nearly all of England had become at least nominally Christian by the turn of the eighth century AD. One might look at this and ponder how Christianity, a foreign religion, was able to take hold so effectively over the span of a mere hundred years. Indeed, what was it that Christianity possessed that the native pagan faiths lacked? Through the careful examination of primary sources from the era, namely the writings of St. Bede, we can conclude that Christianity had a number of advantages over the native religions that aided in its spread. Christianity had effective missionaries, connections with the rest of Europe, an efficient church network supporting it all, and an adversarial religion with inferior attributes.

    The most important of all the texts I’ve gathered as well as the one that this paper primarily concerns is St. Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Authored in 731 AD by the Northumbrian monk Bede, the book is a broad historical text that covers the history of England up until the eighth century. Besides history, it also discusses the church politics of the time and the changing religious landscape in England. Bede wrote the text not long after the period of Christianization during the seventh century. As a result, much of the text is devoted to this process and the people involved in it, such as the pagan king Penda and the prolific bishop Wilfrid. The book is well-researched for it’s time, having been based extensively off of the writings of past monks, letters from the late pope Gregory I (who initiated the Gregorian mission) and subsequent popes, and accounts of Christianization from churchmen in other parts of England (Bede 42). Bede seems to have been genuinely devoted to writing a historical text, although there may be a political undertone to the book, as suggested by it being dedicated to the Northumbrian king Ceolwulf (Bede 41). Indeed, the rival southern kingdom of Mercia is portrayed in a negative light at certain points, although the occasional political smearing doesn’t notably detract from the rest of History.

    The other key primary source is the Vita Columbae, a hagiographic text that concerns the life of St. Columba. Columba was a Gaelic monk who preached among the Picts of sixth-century Scotland, gathering many converts while leaving a legacy of behind him. The text’s principal author, Adamnan, was a ninth-century monk who resided in the abbey of Iona in Scotland, which Columba happened to have founded during his missionary trip in the area. Similar to History, the text is based off of the writings of past monks and talks a great deal about the Christianization process, although in another part of the British isles. While the text is limited to focusing on Columba’s lifetime, it also illustrates how the missionaries in the British isles went about their proselytizing.
Starting in the sixth century AD, Christian missionaries began to make concerted efforts to convert the polytheists of England. The most notable of these attempts were the Hiberno-Scottish mission of St. Columba, the Irish mission of St. Patrick, and the Gregorian mission of St. Augustine of Canterbury, all of which were widely successful in gaining converts in Scotland, Ireland, and England respectively.

    With missionaries like Columba, Patrick, and Augustine of Canterbury, we are able to see the first way in which Christianity was able to spread so effectively. Beyond being articulate and determined proselytizers who didn’t falter in the face of danger, they were pragmatic in how they approached gaining converts. A prime example of this pragmatism lies in the mention of miracles in many accounts. Miracles figure prominently into the aforementioned sources. With the power of God, Columba is said to have driven away a river monster that was attacking the Picts (Adamnan 88) among other wondrous feats, such as healing crowds of sick men (Adamnan 57) and dispelling inclement weather (Adamnan 76). In a similar vein, Augustine is said to have invoked the restoration of a blind man’s sight through prayer (Bede 105). Many of these miracles were likely embellished with fantastical details after the fact, as is certainly the case with all of the legendary deeds attributed to St. Patrick posthumously, the most unambiguously fictitious one being his removal of the snakes from Ireland, a place snakes never inhabited according to archaeological records.

    The pragmatism lies in that these miracles were meant to win over converts. Pagan priests and shamans, such as the druids that jeered at Columba’s converts over the superiority of the old ways (Adamnan 92), were allegedly able to channel the power of their heathen Gods through ritualistic magic. In order to show that God was a more credible divine authority than any of the pagan deities, missionaries performed miracles to demonstrate His power to would-be converts. While it’s dubious whether these miracles actually occurred in precisely the same way that they’re described, they still served another purpose of reassuring later Christians that their faith was superior to the ones their forebearers had abandoned. These descriptions also helped show converts that going from the magic of paganism to the divine miracles of Christianity wasn’t that significant of a leap other than that the Christian God was mightier than Woden, the Anglo-Saxon paternal deity (Mayr-Harting 25). Many formerly pagan rituals were superficially re-tooled to be Abrahamic, with Germanic runes being exchanged for Latin invocations of Christian saints in many cases (Mayr-Harting 35).

	Christianity’s appeal went beyond the spiritual. A more grounded attribute that made the religion attractive, specifically to those who held power in England, were the political advantages that conversion granted. During the 600’s AD, the wealth, learning, and power in Europe laid in the Western quarter of the continent where Christianity was predominant, namely Merovingian Francia and the Roman papacy (Hutton 248). Conversion to Christianity offered a new window of political opportunities for previously pagan rulers. In addition to being connected to the Christian centers of power in Europe, Anglo-Saxon rulers who accepted Christianity were occasionally awarded with land for their piety by the pope (Bede 141) and were able to forcefully take land from pagan rulers in interest of championing the faith (Bede 230-231).

    The major internal advantage that Christianity had over paganism was it’s extensive and well-organized clerical structure. Latin Christianity had a hierarchical church network supporting it. Augustine wasn’t alone in his mission efforts. Besides being accompanied by a team of like-minded monks, he had the personal authorization and backing of pope Gregory I (Bede 74), the de jure spiritual leader of Christendom in western Europe. After Augustine died in 604 AD, churchmen all over England continued the conversion efforts he had helped initiate. Subsequent popes wrote letters urging Anglo-Saxon rulers to convert (Bede 120-123,123-125), converted kings championed Christianity in their realms with the support of the church (Bede 153-155, 171), and monasteries and bishoprics were founded all across England (Bede 172, 181, 184-185).

    This combination of factors illustrates why Latin Christianity’s organization was such a significant boon. Although there were multiple resurgences of the pagan beliefs (Bede 111, 178, 200), occasional armed resistance from pagan holdouts such as Penda of Mercia (Bede 183), and internal disagreements between monks (Bede 186), these were always temporary obstacles to Christianization at best. The infrastructural network of Latin Christianity allowed it to gradually overcome all resistance and spread among the people of England. If the common folk had taken up idolatry again in a province, the church would send a bishop to bring them back into the fold (Bede 178-180, 200-201). If pagan rulers refused conversion one too many times, than the Christian rulers in the area would raise their armies against them (Bede 184, 230). If there were controversies over points of theology or politics within the church (Bede 104, 138), the network of Latin Christianity was too vast for one disagreement to seriously disrupt the state of affairs.

    Although Latin Christianity’s success is due in part to it being well-ordered, the next most pivotal advantage it had was the inherent weakness of the folk religion it was replacing. The pagan faith simply lacked any effective means of resisting Christianity’s influence. Whereas Christianity benefited from the zeal of their missionaries, political bonuses, and being organized, Anglo-Saxon paganism had comparatively little to stand on. Being a native polytheistic religion, there was no structure beyond priests at the local level (Bede 129-130). The Anglo-Saxons relied on oral tradition and had no formal written records prior to 598 AD (Mayr-Harting 22-23), which would have meant that their religious beliefs were probably not universally agreed upon among the pagans. This in turn meant greater spiritual and political disunity, which meant that they had no means of banding together against outside religions such as Christianity. The missionaries, monks, and bishops who worked diligently to convert England exploited this susceptibility to great effect. Combined with the fact that Christianity had codified beliefs and clearly-established rules among other attributes, the pagan faith simply couldn’t compare and slowly faded away.

    All of England had been brought into the fold of Christendom by the turn of the eighth century, and that can be owed to the various strengths Christianity had over Anglo-Saxon paganism. The missionaries who spread the faith were effective in convincing the common folk to accept Jesus, using miracles to demonstrate the power of the lord.  Christianity opened up connections with the rest of Europe, incentivizing rulers to convert in the interest of political benefits. The efficient and wide-reaching structure of the church made sure that the conversion of England was always a multipronged approach. With Christianity’s many strengths and Anglo-Saxon paganism’s comparative weaknesses, it’s not surprising that the old beliefs of the English people were relegated to folklore and mythology.








Works Cited
>Bede. Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Trans. Leo Sherley-Price. London: Penguin, 1990. Print.
>Adamnan. Adamnani Vita S. Columbae. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1895. Print.
>Mayr-Harting, Henry. The Coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1991. Print.
>Hutton, Ronald. The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991. Print.