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How did the Anglo Saxons convert to Christianity?

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  Posted by beethovenspiano (U5093596) on Wednesday, 3rd November 2010

  I know that missionaries arrived and got to work on the elite and nobility. But what exactly persuaded them to give up what must have been incredibly ancient and ingrained traditions and beliefs? Also, how did this affect the rest of the population, was it simply a case of them following what the Kings/leaders believed. How long before those beliefs largely vanished?

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  Posted by TwinProbe (U4077936) on Wednesday, 3rd November 2010

  Hi bp
  
  This is quite a complex question and there may not be simple answers to any part of it. I think that it is unsafe to assume that the first exposure of the 'Anglo-Saxons' within Britain to Christianity came with the arrival of Augustine. As you will know, I am sure, Ireland and western Britain were Christian and had been since the early post-Imperial period.
  
  Bede insists that Britons did not preach to the Anglo-Saxons but perhaps the reality was not quite so definite as this. It is hard also to believe that Anglo-Saxon rulers were out of touch with events on the Continent. Merovingian coins reached the Sutton Hoo ship burial for example (AD 625) and the Merovinginians were Christian. When Augustine arrived in Kent in 597 the local king, Aethelbert, was already married to a Christian, Bertha, daughter of a Merovingian. She famously restored a Christian church in Canterbury and are we quite sure that the church hadn't functioned since the Roman era?
  
  The type of discussions over religious conversion that might have occurred in a regal hall are contained within Bede. He gives a famous account of the conversion of King Edwin of Northumbria in AD 627 which contains the image of the sparrow flying through the hall on a dark winter's night. Once the elite had decided the question the populace were expected to follow I imagine. In the case of Edwin's court the pagan priest was the first to profane the sacred places.
  
  Are you sure that Anglo-Saxon pagan practices were all that ancient and ingrained? There are few sources that shed light on this. In any event once the rulers considered that Christianity provided more believable and satisfactory answers to the problems of life Anglo-Saxon paganism was doomed. Penda was famously pagan still in 655 although not seemingly intolerant of those of his subjects who were Christian. Wilfrid was still preaching to the notoriously stubborn people of Sussex not quite a century after Augustine's arrival.
  
  TP
  

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  Posted by Idamante (U1894562) on Thursday, 4th November 2010

  Another factor was that the natives were allowed to carry on with many of their ancient festivals but re-branded with Christian symbolism
  
  From the rulers' point of view converting to Christianity was a kind of passport to the wider 'club' of European society - just as nowadays countries wanting to join the EU or otherwise get on good terms with the 'West' have to take certain 'Western' values like parliamentary democracy on board.
  
  
  
  
  

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  Posted by Herewordless (U14549396) on Thursday, 4th November 2010

  Gradual exposure, as has been already said. Even in the densely-populus (of Angles and Saxons) south-east, Christian Britons co-existed peacefully with incoming pagan AS settlers- if we take into account that at Dorchester, where Christian burials were still being conducted throughout the 5th and 6th C, Saxon King Cynegils allowed a Christian missionary St.Birinus from Italy to found a monastery there.
  
  British communities survived even in regions where AS pagans conquered the region in the 5thC.
  
  When the AS St.Guthlac travelled through E.Anglia’s Fenlands in the early 700’s he noticed that the area was still populated by Celtic speakers.
  
  

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  Posted by Pete- Weatherman (U14670985) on Thursday, 4th November 2010

  We must also remember that the Romans had alredy tryed to convert us Brits, but when they left we driffted back to our barberus way, but some of it might of lingerd on.
  One good place to find out more is Winchester, Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ of King Alfred. It was he who converted the Vikings and the Museum at Winchester has a lot about the how, why and were when it comes to Alfreds convertion.

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  Posted by Haesten (U4770256) on Tuesday, 9th November 2010

  
  When the AS St.Guthlac travelled through E.Anglia’s Fenlands in the early 700’s he noticed that the area was still populated by Celtic speakers.
  
  Μύ
  
  Man_Upstairs:
  
  Felix says Guthlac could understand the Celtic speaking demons who haunted him in the Fens.
  Guthlac was a Mercian and had spent some time in exile among British-speaking people, (most likely among the Welsh)
  Guthlac became a hermit at Croyland in the Fens, inside a plundered barrow.

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  Posted by LairigGhru (U14051689) on Wednesday, 10th November 2010

  The possibility that you might obtain eternal life by adopting the new religion would have been persuasive, I guess.

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  Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Wednesday, 10th November 2010

  I think that is very plausible. I had a similar discussion once as to why the Romans adopted Christianity and, to the best of my recollection through the alcohol fumes, the consensus was that it offered a possibility of personal salvation and a 'heaven' that was unlike the other, not very appealing, options that were around at the time. How much, I wonder, was also the idea of a god who was rather less capricious than the alternatives even if he was a bit of a tyrant.

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  Posted by Haesten (U4770256) on Wednesday, 10th November 2010

  Christianity appealed to the Germanic pagan priests, because it gave them a higher status in their society.
  
  "We know from Bede that pagan priests were affected by taboos. For example, they were not allowed to carry weapons (there are no weapons in the Yeavering burial) and could only ride mares, not stallions."

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  Posted by Pete- Weatherman (U14670985) on Wednesday, 10th November 2010

  There is evedence to suggest that early Chritanity was like a coat, people putting it on and taking it off as the situation dictated.
  And it was not unuseule for so called "Holy men" (better know as CON men) to twist thing in there favour to make a buck or two out of CONverting the odd pheasant through fear of fire and brimston.
  So its no wounder that the facts get lost or twisted. All ways a problem when change is in the air.
  Poor old Bede

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  Posted by Mr Pedant (U2464726) on Tuesday, 7th December 2010

  I guess we don’t know much about the religion of the Anglo-Saxon communities.
  
  Pre-AS religious beliefs (including Pagan and Christian) may have been competing with those of the Anglo-Saxon elite – this may have made a new faith for all seem like an attractively unifying social influence
  

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  Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Sunday, 19th December 2010

  Though it may not seem to be the case just at the moment I think that the kind of nature worship prevalent upon the continent would gradually have been found to be less relevant in England..Having been married into a French family for over 40 years, and having spent much time in France, one has to be struck by the French obsession with weather-forecasting, and with the often grim and foreboding emphasis during any other times than clear blue skies.
  
  Sometime around 1970 it was reported that a calculation had shown that "Thorsday" was generally the wettest day of the week according to weather statistics, but -and again this seems to be changing with our changing climate [coinciding with a widespread collapse in active faith in any kind of benevolent God]- wet thursdays in England are nothing like the violent tempests that can destroy the crops in France.. It is interesting to note that at the "fresh start" with "Year One" in the French Revolution they created ten months based upon the prevalent weather.
  
  From reading rather than experience the weather further north e.g. the German region tends to be often more severe, and certainly the German region was famous for its darkness increased by the deep forests. Goethe returning to Weimar after a sojourn in Italy was struck by the change in surroundings- and the "Gothic" mood of the German mind.
  
  Of course unsettled climate could easily result in unsettled human relations. Much of the death toll of the Thirty Years War seems to have been associated with the practice of travelling armies to help themselves to all the crops leaving the population to starve to death, or help themselves to someone else's food. And regions like my family's Burgundy have famously been "crossroads" traversed by invaders and conquerors.
  
  In fact it does look very much like the Peace of Augustus established around 28 AD, which set out to create a new a peace-loving Roman Empire, does seem to coincide with the period when Jesus is supposed to have been preaching his new form of Judaism that would have made it easier for Jews to "give unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and unto God that which is God's".
  
  But that Roman world did not push up into "the Dark Continent"- or rather its dark parts..Nevertheless Teutons did come into that Roman World both as slaves and as Roman soldiers and may have found their old faiths less appropriate in their new surroundings. It may depend a great deal on whether such a change of surroundings leads to success and prosperity, but one suspects that the story of the Gladstone family is not unique. In Scotland the Gladstone's had been strongly Presbyterian, but when John Gladstone moved to Liverpool and made a fortune from the Atlantic trade, and brought all his brothers down to work in the family firm, they became Anglicans, and sent William to Eton and Oxford.
  
  When in Rome! And what kind of religious environment would they have found around them in Britain. Presumably there had been attempts to revive Druidism-- as there is once again. We have Druid friends who have come from the USA to adopt England, their forebears having abandonned Scandinavia and Poland for the USA. But it is difficult to see that Druidism could have easily re-established much credibility, and, as has been pointed out Celtic Christianity clung on and sent missionaries out across not only the British Isles but Germany; and perhaps we too easily forget the degree of mobility that there was in that period, especially by sea and river- while our Druids seem to be very much people of the Sun and the Earth. The seas and oceans were to be in many ways the key to the present and the future, and Christianity had a Christ who could "rule the waves"-- perhaps Britannia might eventually do so too.
  
  Cass
  
  
  
  

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