The Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons, c. 597-700: Discourses of Life, Death and Afterlife

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THE CHRISTIANIZATION OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS C.597–C.700

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The Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons c.597–c.700 Discourses of Life, Death and Afterlife

Marilyn Dunn

Continuum UK, The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX Continuum US, 80 Maiden Lane, Suite 704, New York, NY 10038 www.continuumbooks.com Copyright © Marilyn Dunn 2009

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission from the publishers. First published 2009 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978 1 84725 189 3

Typeset by Pindar NZ, Auckland, New Zealand Printed and bound by MPG Books Ltd, Cornwall

Contents

List of Abbreviations

vii

1 Approaches to the Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons

1

2 Discourses of the Dead: Popular Intuitions, Christian Doctrines and Epidemic Disease

7

3 Gregory the Great and the English Mission

43

4 Anglo-Saxon Paganism and the Living

57

5 Anglo-Saxon Paganism and the Dead

85

6 The Diffusion Of Christianity and the Establishment of the Anglo-Saxon Church

101

7 Christianization: Problems and Responses

135

8 How Christian Was Anglo-Saxon England c.700?

187

Notes

195

Bibliography

249

Index

269

For MB

List of Abbreviations

AHR ANF ASSAH BAR CBA CCSL HE Jesuit Relations NPNF 1st ser. NPNF 2nd ser. PL RHE SC

American Historical Review Ante-Nicene Fathers Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History British Archaeological Reports Council for British Archaeology Corpus Christianorum Series Latina B. Colgrave and R. Mynors (eds and trans.), Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People R. G. Thwaites (ed.), Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers First Series Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers Second Series J-P. Migne (ed.), Patrologia Cursus Completus Series Latina Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique Sources Chrétiennes

Cly

de

Antonine Wall

Ba Melrose

H

Farne Islands Yeavering

be rni cia G

‘He a

a venfi teshe eld’ ad

Jarrow Monkwearmouth

nor

Hexham Ty ne

r

We a

’s an l ri al ad W

Carlisle

mb Coldingham ur gh Lindisfarne

d ee Tw Gl en

Hartlepool

thu

rheged

Whitby

Gilling

k eric C at t Ripon

d

York

ia

Leeds Campodonum

en t

Ni d

Lastingham

de ir a

mbr

man

D er w

le

elmet Hatfield

Goodmanham Beverley

Tre n t

Sw a

anglesey

gw

yn

ed

Hu

mb

lindsey

er

Lincoln Bardney

d

Bangor Oswestry

North Elmham Peterborough Burgh Castle

Lichfield

gyrwe east middle angles Ely Dunwich

mercia

anglia

Rendlesham

He rtf

Worcester

or

h wi c ce

d St Albans

Hatfield London Barking

Dorchester Malmesbury

Sutton Hoo Bradwell

Th a m

es

we st saxons dumnonia

east saxons

Rochester Canterbury

Winchester Apple Down south Bosham So

isle of wight

len

t

Selsey

Principal places mentioned in the text

kent

saxons

Thanet

Reculver

Finglesham

1

Approaches to the Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons The difficulties of studying the religions of the Anglo-Saxons in the conversion period are well known. Historians have agonized over the basic and ‘fearsome question of how religious activity is to be identified in the surviving record’.1 Such are the problems associated with both the quantity and the quality of the written and material record that, despite the existence of several studies of Anglo-Saxon paganism, one commentator has been driven to conclude that . . . the essential known is the historical and that the historical, in terms of Anglo-Saxon religion, means Christian culture.2

A judgement of this nature implies that any view of the process of Christianization itself is always going to be written predominantly from the Christian side: and indeed several existing works on the topic have been written largely – though not always entirely – from this perspective.3 But should we necessarily be content with such a restrictive approach? While the problems confronting the historian are extensive, we might look at the issue from another angle, attempt ‘to make contact with otherness in other cultures’, and establish a more anthropological approach to the history of the Anglo-Saxon ‘conversion period’.4 What sort of religion was Anglo-Saxon paganism? What type of belief-system is Christianity? If we can achieve some understanding of the differences and also of the similarities which existed between them, a fresh understanding of the nature and extent of Christianization might be possible. The following study sets out to examine paganism, Christianity and the encounter between them in Anglo-Saxon England in the period c.597 to c.700 by analysing them as different types of religion. The study of religions as religions is hardly new. One of the best-known influences on the creation of a typology or typologies of religion is Max Weber (1864–1920), some of whose work explored religious rejections of the world and their different ‘directions’.5 Weber suggested that, because of their overriding goal of salvation, ‘world rejecting’ religions (which are also ‘rationalized’ religions, providing answers to profound questions of meaning) exist in a state of tension with the political, economic, familial, sexual, aesthetic, scientific and intellectual aspects of society. Religions of this type produce a highly negative valuation of human civilization along with the goals of detachment from society and the

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attainment of another sphere of reality, which generally takes the form of an afterlife. Christianity and Islam provide, along with Indian Buddhism, classic examples of ‘world rejecting’ religion. Both Christ’s injunction to ‘take no thought for the morrow’ but to seek the kingdom of Heaven, and the Buddha’s image of the world as a burning house from which humankind needs to escape, are characteristic of the teachings of such faiths. Religions which we might describe by contrast as ‘world accepting’ are concerned with the here and now – matters of health, prosperity and security in this world, the welfare of the family, avoidance of drought or flood, and the safe gathering-in of the harvest. Anglo-Saxon paganism is one of the many religions falling into this category. A closely related typology of religion was produced in the 1930s by Gustav Mensching, who contrasted ‘folk religions’, which follow the latter pattern, with the ‘world religions’ of Buddhism, Christianity and Islam. In his definition of ‘folk religion’, there is also a concentration on survival and prosperity in this world, while the welfare of the sib, tribe or people is the ethical standard against which actions are measured.6 And whether we think in terms of ‘world accepting’ or ‘folk’ religions, it follows from their focus on outcomes in this world that this category of religion, into which Anglo-Saxon paganism also falls, is not concerned with the idea of another sphere of reality – unlike the ‘world rejecting’ belief systems. The former do not focus on attaining salvation through reaching a different world or state. Since the nineteenth century, ethnographers and anthropologists have not only studied various religions in situ, but have also been able to see the progress of Christianization for themselves in various locales and societies where ‘world accepting’ or ‘folk’ religions were formerly the norm. One of the most useful studies of this kind is Rank and Religion in Tikopia by the anthropologist Raymond Firth, who charted the progress of Christianization between the late 1920s and the early 1950s in a tiny Polynesian outlier in what was then the British Solomon Islands Protectorate.7 Firth described the gradual progress of Christianity, tracing the encounter of the local religion, which had as its primary objective the preservation of the health and welfare of the Tikopia themselves, with Christianity, a belief system predicated on salvation and focused on the life to come. Another important approach is provided by the Africanist Robin Horton, who has reflected on the encounter between traditional religions and the ‘world religions’ of Islam and Christianity in western Africa.8 Horton to some extent worked within a framework that distinguished ‘this-worldly’ from ‘other-worldly’ religions, although he also belonged to an Intellectualist tradition that saw religions as providing answers to the question of how the cosmos works. He highlighted the existence of belief in a supreme being or creator god amongst some African peoples, and suggested that this may have enabled an understanding or acceptance of both Christianity and Islam; his emphasis on

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the importance of a supreme being proved controversial, although in fact this is a useful and relevant point when examining responses to the Christian idea of the Trinity.9 Horton also drew attention to the pivotal position of rulers and religious leaders, whom he conceived of as occupying a crucial position between the macrocosm of the great world religions and the microcosm of local religions, cults and traditions. This is a valuable framework in which to examine the decisions made by individual Anglo-Saxon rulers when faced with the prospect of accepting baptism. As Robert Bellah has remarked, we could attempt to account for the presence and absence of ‘world rejection’ as a dominant theme in religion without ever raising the issue of what he calls religious evolution. He himself argues that religions did evolve, and proposes a sequence of types of religion – ‘primitive’, ‘archaic’, ‘historic’, ‘early modern’ and ‘modern’.10 All of these classifications are based, as Bellah admits, on a general theory of social evolution – in other words a partly functionalist approach, which sees religion as an expression of society – and they also seem to involve the idea of progress towards a greater ‘rationalization’ in the Weberian sense. At the same time, he appears still to be operating partly within the explanatory framework which distinguishes between ‘world accepting’ and ‘world rejecting’ religions, interpreting both ‘primitive’ and ‘archaic’ belief systems as falling into the former category and the ‘historic’ and other groupings (which include Buddhism, Christianity and Islam) as representing a major advance in what an earlier commentator called ‘the differentiation between experience of the self and of the world which acts upon it’.11 The concepts of ‘world accepting’ or ‘folk’ and ‘world rejecting’ religions can be helpful when considering the processes of conversion and Christianization, and both descriptions will appear from time to time in this study. However, categorizations of this type can also suggest meta-narratives of ‘progress’ from localized polytheisms to ‘world’ or ‘universal’ religions, and thus have potential limitations when it comes to helping us make contact with the ‘otherness’ in other cultures. More fruitful in assisting us towards what anthropologists would think of as an emic approach to the religious cultures of the Anglo-Saxons in the period of Christianization is the emerging field of cognitive anthropology. Through reference both to the ethnographic record and also to advances in cognitive science, this discipline seeks to establish the common mental structures of human cognition and to explain culture in terms of cognitive causes, and even of the evolution of cognition.12 In one of the best-known works on this subject, Religion Explained, Pascal Boyer has set out to elucidate what he calls the human instincts creating gods, spirits and ancestors.13 He is particularly interested in the human capacity for generating inferences and suggests that the ‘social mind’ consists of a collection of specialized inference systems for sex, parenting, social exchange, trust, friendship and coalition building. The evolution of these systems has also

4


facilitated the development of inferences about supernatural beings, leading people everywhere in the world to entertain concepts of supernatural beings with special qualities and powers – in other words, gods.14 Cognitive anthropology has not only attempted to explain certain universals, such as gods; it has also produced specific explanatory theories of how religious actors conserve, recall and transmit information on which it is possible to construct a typology of religions.15 The most-discussed ideas in this field are those of Harvey Whitehouse, who has recently suggested that religious data can be described in terms of two very different sets of dynamics, which he characterizes as ‘imagistic’ and ‘doctrinal’ modes of religiosity.16 He describes these as tendencies towards particular patterns of codification, transmission, cognitive processing and political association. The imagistic mode consists of the tendency for religious revelations to be transmitted ‘through sporadic collective action, evoking multivocal imagery, encoded in memory as distinct episodes and producing highly cohesive and particularistic social ties’.17 The imagistic mode is non-verbal, iconic and based on affective rather than semantic memory: its most important rituals are performed infrequently. By contrast, the doctrinal mode of religion encompasses the tendency for revelations to be codified as a body of verbalized doctrine, transmitted through routinized forms of worship. It is committed to memory as ‘general knowledge’ and produces large communities of anonymous believers. As Whitehouse himself points out, the first mode is commonly found in small-scale or regionally fragmented ritual traditions and cults; the latter in many regional or ‘world’ religions. Whitehouse’s theories, set out across a number of volumes and papers, have been much discussed, criticized and refined further both by himself and by other scholars including cognitive anthropologists, anthropologists, ethnographers and archaeologists.18 Historians of religion have also commented on them. Anne L. Clark, the author of an authoritative study of the twelfth-century visionary Elizabeth of Schönau, suggests that Whitehouse underrates the role of imagistic, visionary experience in monastic communities as well as amongst illiterate laypeople in the late middle ages.19 She argues that the repetitive verbalized ritual of monastic life could trigger off ecstatic, visionary and emotional experiences, while representational images, intended to ‘teach’ doctrine to the laity, might also be the medium of direct personal communication with supernatural power. She sees this neither as independent co-existence of the two modes nor as fusion of the two, nor even as evidence that the unlearned resorted to imagistic practices out of tedium. Clark also argues that gender is very important in the structuring of medieval religious identity, a suggestion explored in this book in the context of the initial reception of Christianity. Theodore Vial has examined the applicability of modes theory to the history of the Reformation period.20 On the basis of Whitehouse’s own comments,

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Vial suggests that the Reformation may in part be the historical source of his understanding of the doctrinal mode of religiosity – and can also be used to test the applicability of his theory as a whole. He proposes both that the term doctrinal – while defined neutrally by Whitehouse – actually carries with it a lot of baggage, some of it suggesting Calvinist dogma, and that medieval popular religion may actually fit the doctrinal mode very easily. He is also uneasy about the term ‘imagistic’. Yet while one of Vial’s main concerns is Whitehouse’s theory of the interaction between the two modes, in a slightly later piece he has suggested that the establishment of possible patterns of interaction, as well as the trajectories of these patterns, will be of great use to historians.21 Since these comments were made, additional and perhaps more productive ways of looking at the relationship between the two modes have been proposed. Todd Tremlin suggests that patterns of historical transformation in religious systems are influenced not only by modes dynamics but also by the tendency of cognitively optimal concepts or positions to emerge, in which both kinds of thinking, and the patterns they generate, are present simultaneously. Jasper Sørensen has contrasted assessments of ritual acts that appear to involve magical efficacy with those which focus on exegetical meaning. While his analysis would seem to suggest that rituals understood as magically effective represent the cognitively optimal position, he also indicates the way in which these rituals or their outcome can lead to exegetical explanation culminating in the formulation of doctrine. Jason Slone posits interaction between the intuitions of the imagistic mode on one hand, and the explicit reasoning of abstract doctrinal theology on the other. And Ikka Pyysiäinen has suggested that in a conversion situation the attractor position lies between imagistic and doctrinal modes.22 The concept of interaction between imagistic and doctrinal modes of religiosity provides an extremely useful heuristic device for the study of the Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons. Anglo-Saxon paganism not only falls into the categories of ‘world accepting’ or ‘folk’ religion but can also be studied as an example of the imagistic mode, an approach that has the potential to bring new dimensions to our understanding of how it functioned. This book places Anglo-Saxon paganism within the frame of the imagistic mode, and also examines aspects of the interaction between doctrinal and imagistic elements within Christianity itself. It suggests that while Christianity is quintessentially doctrinal, over the centuries preceding its arrival among the Anglo-Saxons it had developed or absorbed an imagistic element, in the shape of the cult of saints and relics. The incorporation of such cognitively optimal features into Christianity would create a useful point of contact with new converts from an imagistic religion and provide one of the most powerful tools the Anglo-Saxon Church had at its disposal in its efforts to bring about the acceptance of the new religion by the people. Part of the book is also devoted to an exploration of the way in which the Christianization of the

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Anglo-Saxons itself brought about further interaction with, and absorption of, imagistic practices and concepts into a doctrinal religion – particularly where the Church’s view of death and the afterlife was concerned. This book argues that intuitions and doctrines about the dead are of central importance to our understanding of the Christianization of the Anglo-Saxon peoples. Cognitive anthropology emphasizes the importance of death in all religions: to quote Pascal Boyer, ‘the souls of the dead, or their “shadows” or “presence”, are the most widespread kind of supernatural agent the world over’.23 One of the greatest gulfs between official Christian doctrine on one hand and pagan and popular belief on the other lies in their contrasting concepts of the soul and the afterlife. Christianity teaches that the individual possesses a single soul, which leaves the body at the moment of death. In many cultures, however, the body is believed to house two or more spirits or souls, while death is frequently seen as a liminal process in which one of the souls can only arrive safely in the afterlife after the performance of the correct rituals or the decay of the flesh – or both.24 If neither takes place, the soul may linger in the world of the living and can even re-enter and re-animate the body, causing it to leave the grave and terrorize the living as a malevolent and murderous vampire.25 The gulf between pagan and Christian belief in these areas could have proved a major threat to the effective establishment of Christianity in seventh-century England, especially after the arrival of the Justinianic Plague, which swept the country between 664 and 687.26 As the first to die in an epidemic is popularly believed in many cultures to return to carry others off, the Christian Church, which had never taken a particularly interventionist line where the performance of some traditional funerary rituals was concerned, had to cope with the possible reinforcement or revival of popular beliefs which did not accord with strict Christian doctrine. Part of the purpose of this book is to suggest that, in the wake of the arrival of the pandemic elsewhere in Europe from the 540s onwards, the Church had already begun to make some changes in its teachings relating to the world to come and that, after a major outbreak of plague in seventh-century England, it further evolved its thinking; in doing so, it generated a view of the afterlife which now contained a more liminal element that would slowly evolve over the following centuries into the area of the Christian afterlife which became known as Purgatory. The following chapter introduces some of these concepts, discussing the tensions between ‘doctrinal’ Christianity and popular beliefs about death and the afterlife, and examining the way in which some popular beliefs and imagistic practices relating to the dead were absorbed into Christianity from the fourth century onwards. It also looks at the arrival of the first waves of plague in Western Europe in the mid-sixth century and at popular intuitions about the causes of epidemic disease, before going on to trace the beginnings of a Christian response to this intensive encounter with death in the sixth and early seventh centuries.

2

Discourses of the Dead: Popular Intuitions, Christian Doctrines and Epidemic Disease

NON-CHRISTIAN MULTIPLE SOULS AND THE SINGLE CHRISTIAN SOUL One of the most fundamental differences between Christianity and many other religions lies in the area of soul belief. Amongst the Native American peoples, in Oceanic cultures, in Archaic Greece and surviving in a number of European folk tales, we can find many variations on the same basic affirmation of soul dualism: this postulates the existence of a free soul, which represents the personality on one hand, and on the other, one or more body souls, which endow the body with life and consciousness.1 Such beliefs are undoubtedly based on attempts to infer from observation and experience how the person is constituted, how life exists in the body, and the natures of consciousness and personality. There can be considerable variants in these beliefs, but certain fundamental patterns are discernible. Generally, the free soul is considered to be active during unconsciousness, when it leaves the body, while the body souls are active when the individual is awake; it is not entirely clear where in the body the free soul resides during wakeful consciousness. When the free soul leaves the body temporarily during life, it is usually conceived of as doing so, as demonstrated in many European folk tales, in the shape of a bee, wasp, fly or other insect. Later this category seems to have been expanded to include small animals formerly associated exclusively with the body soul, such as the mouse (musculus or little mouse = muscle). The body soul or souls are often divided into several parts and usually consist of life or breath soul and ego soul. The life soul or body motor may be associated with the lungs, gall bladder, heart or kidneys (though it is not necessarily identical with the organ it controls). The Archaic Greeks had a particularly rich concept of the ego soul, incorporating the thymos or source of emotions housed in the chest or limbs; the more intellectual noos (later nous) located in the chest; and the furious menos, located in the chest or phren (mind) or even in the thymos. But by the end of the fifth century bc, the psyche (originally associated with the breath), closely corresponding to our idea of the free soul, absorbed the body soul concepts to

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produce the idea of a single unitary soul which was incorporated by Christianity and with which we are familiar. Some traces of multiple soul belief survived: for early Christian theologians such as Origen, working partly in the intellectual tradition of Platonism, the soul was made up of a number of areas or parts – including, for example, the nous. However, it was still a single soul which left the body at death. Multiple soul belief also teaches that the souls leave the body on death. The body souls either disappear or turn into a sort of spook, which does not represent the personality of the dead. The free soul, on the other hand, will eventually pass into whatever afterlife is envisaged by the society in which it has previously resided while dwelling in a body.

NON-CHRISTIAN AFTERLIVES AND FUNERARY RITUAL: TRANSITION AND INCORPORATION Another very important difference between Christianity and many other religions lies in its conception of the nature of the afterlife. Christianity teaches that moral conduct governs the fate of the soul after death. It visualizes an afterlife containing places of ultimate reward – Heaven – for the virtuous, and punishment – Hell – for the wicked. This is a very different eschatology – both in the precise and also in the more general sense of the word – from that envisaged by many ‘world accepting’ and imagistic religions. In these, the afterlife may be relatively lightly conceptualized and is often virtually an extension of the present life. For example, according to seventeenth-century Jesuit missionaries, the Huron people of North America believed in a village of souls . . . in no respect unlike the village of the living – they go hunting, fishing, and to the woods; axes, robes, and collars are as much esteemed [there] as among the living. In a word, everything is the same; there is only this difference, that day and night they do nothing but groan and complain.2

The Montagnais, by contrast, believed the souls of their dead lived in a large village in the direction of the setting sun, where they spent their time contentedly: They hunt for the souls of beavers, porcupine, moose and other animals, using the soul of the snowshoes to walk on the soul of the snow, which is in yonder country: in short they make use of the souls of all things as we here use the things themselves.3

While their picture of the other world was basically a prolongation of life on earth, it was upside-down, with day and night changing places – a concept common in both North and South America and Eurasia.4 The idea of the dead as the opposite of the living is also found in Greek mythology.5 This is not to say that all non-Christian afterlife topographies are completely

DISCOURSES OF THE DEAD

9

undifferentiated. Later Scandinavian mythology as preserved and developed in literary sources visualized an underworld realm of the dead in which warriors were received into Valhalla.6 Greek and Roman mythology elaborated the ideas of Limbo, home to the souls of those who had died before their time; Hades, where the wicked are punished; and the Elysian Fields, which received the souls of heroes. The mystery or saviour cults flourishing in the later Roman Republic and Roman Empire promised afterlife happiness for the souls of their followers in intensely idyllic landscapes. But Roman epitaphs and funerary art suggest, along with funerary rites, that most people intuited the world of the dead in terms of a world not unlike the present existence. It might be found in the tomb itself, in Mother Earth, in the Blessed Isles across the ocean, or in the sky.7 In Irish tradition, humans might enter the world of the dead via the burial mound (especially at the festival of Samain, November 1). The legends of the Celts contain elements such as the Island of Women, or Annwyn (the Welsh ‘not-world’), suggesting a similar basic conceptualization of the afterlife – although there is also evidence of belief in an afterlife which depended on rank in this world.8 For the soul to secure admission to the world of the dead, it is necessary for the correct funerary rites to be performed. In the Iliad, when the dead Patroclus appears in a dream to Achilles, he asks for his funeral rites – cremation followed by burial of his ashes – to be performed as he cannot cross the river to Hades unless this is done.9 In his famous study of The Rites of Passage, first published in 1909, the folklorist and anthropologist Arnold van Gennep observed that while we might expect funeral ritual to consist predominantly of rites of separation – and this is undoubtedly true of the earliest Christian rituals, as we will see below – in many societies worldwide, transition rites are of considerable duration and complexity, while those funerary rites which incorporate the deceased into the world of the dead are the most extensively elaborated and considered to be of the greatest importance.10 One of the most important insights of Robert Hertz’s seminal essay ‘A Contribution to the Study of the Collective Representation of Death’, published two years earlier than van Gennep’s work, was his realization that in many societies the liminal period during which the soul or spirit of the dead person had not finally reached the afterlife was believed to correspond to the period it took for the flesh to decay: . . . the period of waiting coincides in a great many cases with the real or presumed duration of the decomposition . . .11

Hertz examined the measures taken to ensure the safe and permanent transition of the soul to the afterlife, and to avoid its return to haunt or harm the living when the corpse is in the polluting and dangerous state of decay. A first burial followed by a secondary burial, or exposure and burial, are classic

10


funerary rites of transition, known all over the world. The practice of secondary burial is found in many religions and societies.12 The body is sometimes exposed in a shelter, which can take the form either of a miniature wooden house raised on piles or of a platform covered by a roof, until the flesh decays from the bones. Hertz thought that such customs amongst Malay peoples might have derived from an earlier custom of exposing the corpse, wrapped in bark, in the branches of a tree.13 A well-known example of this latter practice and its accompanying rituals is that of the Huron people of North America, who buried their dead only to re-bury them at more or less regular intervals.14 Seventeenth-century Jesuit missionaries to Canada reported: As to what is the state of the soul after death, they hold that it separates in such a way from the body that it does not abandon it immediately.15

An extensive account of the ceremonies has been left to us by the Jesuits: it describes an initial burial which was similar to that of the Malay peoples, but rather than being suspended in the trees, the bark-wrapped bodies were hung from four poles in a village ‘cemetery’. Every twelve years or so, the bodies of those who had died since the last feast were taken from their bark coffins and any flesh remaining on them was removed from the body, before they were transported to a central place for burial in a communal pit: The flesh of some is quite gone and there is only parchment on their bones; in other cases the bodies look as if they had been dried and smoked, and show scarcely any signs of putrefaction; and in other cases they are still swarming with worms. When the friends have gazed upon the bodies to their satisfaction, they cover them with handsome beaver robes, quite new; finally, after some time, they strip them of their flesh, taking off the skin and flesh which they then throw into the fire along with the robes and mats in which the bodies were wrapped. As regards the bodies of those recently dead, they leave these in the state in which they are and content themselves by simply covering them in new robes. Of the latter they handled only one old man, of whom I have spoken before who died this autumn . . . this swollen corpse had begun to decay during the last month on the occasion of the first heat of the spring; the worms were swarming all over it and the corruption that oozed out of it gave off an almost intolerable stench; and yet they had the courage to take away the robe in which it was enveloped, cleaned it as well as they could, taking the matter off by handfuls and put the body into a fresh mat and robe, and all this without showing any horror at the corruption.16

The anthropologist Peter Metcalf has described the double funeral rituals of the Berawan people of Borneo, which begin with the exposure of the dead person on a special seat in front of his or her house, while several days of festivities take place around it and the participants communicate with the dead person, offering food or tobacco. A first burial follows, or perhaps the storage of the body in a jar


11

where it decomposes and the fluids are drained off. Once flesh has separated from the bones, the latter are reburied or placed in a wooden sepulchre.17 Robert Hertz also identified cremation – for which the spirit of the dead Patroclus begs in the Iliad – as a funerary rite of transition: . . . far from destroying the body of the deceased, it recreates it and makes it capable of entering a new life . . . The violent action of the fire spares the dead and the living the sorrows and dangers involved in the transformation of the corpse . . .18

Paradoxically – or so it might appear at first – embalming or mummification are also in harmony with the beliefs behind the exposure of bodies, their deliberate excarnation or cremation, as they too achieve a state of stability for the body, and avoid the polluting and dangerous process of decay.19 From a religious point of view, the importance of funerary rites of transition and incorporation lies in the belief that until they are performed the soul is not admitted to the village, land or realm of the dead. The soul does not suddenly sever all ties with the living – as long as the temporary burial or decomposition of the body lasts, it is still associated with their world. At this stage, it is a potentially malevolent or unwelcome ghost, which might try to take the living into its shadow existence or at least pilfer subsistence from them – so food offerings are often made to the dead, even before the final ceremonies marking the soul’s full incorporation into the world of the dead.20 The reasons behind such practices and beliefs have been examined by cognitive anthropologists, who point out that although we know a person is dead, we cannot or do not immediately cut off all our mental interaction with them. We go on thinking about them and mentally revisiting the picture we had of them while they were alive, or pondering our former relations with them as living persons. In this sense the recently dead are very close to us and their presence can be felt very vividly, or even ‘seen’. Anthropologists also note that while it is quite common for peoples they have studied to have vague notions about death or ‘the dead’ in general, they often cherish much more detailed representations of the recently dead, which may well revolve around the transitional period between death and some further state. Consciousness of the polluting nature of the corpse focuses attention on the period of decay as the transitional or liminal period. It is also a common feeling that the presence of the recently dead is dangerous rather than reassuring.21 This idea may be intensified if they have been buried – especially if they have been given shallow burial, as anyone visiting the cemetery or grave may hear the noises that accompany decomposition, prompting the idea of activity within the grave.22 In addition, certain types of person are believed to be particularly predisposed to haunt the living. The souls of those who have ‘died before their time’ or not been given full funerary rites – murder victims, victims of lightning strikes or suicides (who are often denied customary rituals),

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for instance – are commonly considered to have the potential to return as ghosts or to re-animate the body as a dangerous revenant. This category is frequently extended to include murderers or anyone who was particularly unpleasant or difficult to deal with in life.23 Thus in many cultures, afterlife belief is not predicated entirely on moral conduct while the individual is alive, but focuses in the first place on the presence of the souls of the recently dead, on the dangers of pollution presented by the decaying body, and on the performance of the correct rituals in order to ensure they reach that afterlife and do not linger inappropriately or even menacingly in the world of the living.

CHRISTIAN AFTERLIFE AND OFFICIAL FUNERARY RITUAL: SEPARATION When the Son of Man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world . . . Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels . . . And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal. (Matthew 25:31–34, 41, 46)

By contrast with the beliefs just described, early Christianity proposed a differentiated afterlife, depending on the life a person had led. Initially it postulated a process of judgement and admission to its afterlife after the arrival of Christ on earth for the second time. Perhaps the early lack of focus on the period before Christ’s second coming was partly a consequence of the popular assumption by the first Christians that this parousia would happen at any moment.24 It took several centuries for the realization to dawn that it was not imminent: as late as the fourth century the Pachomian monasteries of Egypt anticipated the second coming of Christ, while the Western ascetics Melania and Rufinus settled and founded religious communities on the Mount of Olives, where it was popularly believed the second coming would take place.


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The gradual realization that the parousia was not at hand after all threw into ever-sharper relief the fact that not all Christians were equally virtuous. How were the churches to maintain morals and discipline if the ultimate judgement of the good and bad seemed to be receding into a distant future? There were points when that judgement seemed to be much nearer. During a pandemic raging between 251 and 266 ce, the North African Bishop Cyprian of Carthage not only believed that pestilence indicated that the last times were at hand, but also assured his flock that those who perished were not lost but gone before. A Christian, he affirmed, should regard Heaven as his own country where a dense crowd of his family and friends eagerly awaited his embrace. Contained in this treatise on the plague, therefore, there seems to be more than a suggestion that Heaven would swiftly open its gates to the souls of ordinary believers. However, this was a view that emerged from the horrors of the third-century pandemic. The theological view that prevailed in the longer term was that the souls of the martyrs and eventually those regarded as saints would be instantly admitted to, or have some sort of foretaste of, Heaven on their deaths, while those of the irredeemably bad would likewise have a foretaste of Hell.25 For the soul of the average person, however, there was no immediate outcome simply to be confirmed at the Last Judgement. The soul of the individual whose sins had been less gross would await this event in locations identified variously as the biblical ‘bosom of Abraham’, refrigeria – literally, ‘places of refreshment’ – or receptacula, ‘receptacles’. There, according to St Augustine of Hippo, writing in the fifth century, it would experience rest or affliction, depending on the merits of its earthly life, possibly undergoing purification by fire before re-union with the resurrected body. Then, finally, it would appear before God’s judgement seat.26 Thus the earliest surviving Christian funerary liturgies essentially seem to function as rituals of separation – rather than, as in other cultures, rites of transition or incorporation.27 One of the earliest testimonies to Christian practice is the prayer noted down by Bishop Serapion of Thmuis in Egypt in the mid-fourth century, which refers to the core Christian doctrines of the repose of the soul, the Last Judgement, and also the resurrection of the body at the end of time: . . . we beseech thee for the repose and the rest of this thy servant: give rest to his soul, his spirit in green places in chambers of rest with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all thy saints; and raise up this body in the day which thou hast ordained . . .28

The fourth-century text known as the Apostolic Constitutions, Basil, Jerome, Chrysostom, and Augustine of Hippo – who writes about his own mother’s funeral – all provide fleeting glimpses into the Christian rites of death and burial, with their processions, singing and chanting, and their attempts to suggest simple dignity and a restrained but supposedly joyful triumph over death.29 The earliest surviving complete rite for the dying and dead from the Western Church – from

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the fourth or fifth century – reveals that it involved the administration of the Eucharist to the dying person (even to penitents); prayers and psalms immediately after death; the washing of the body and its conveyance to the church accompanied by psalms and antiphons; a church service which included lessons from the Book of Job, psalms, prayers and responses; and finally inhumation, again accompanied by a psalm and an antiphon.30 These rituals were intended to suggest the repose of the soul until the Last Judgement, the resurrection of the body, and an optimistic anticipation of a good outcome for the individual on the day of judgement. The exact nature of the resurrected body itself – the ‘spiritual’ and ‘incorruptible body’ promised in the New Testament31 – was the subject of much discussion and conjecture amongst early Christian thinkers. Would it consist of a dynamically transformed human body – the buried and decaying body being seen in terms of a seed that would grow into something new – or would it be in effect a re-assemblage of dust and particles? The latter view seemed to win the day.32 But whichever view was championed, Christian writers agreed that Christ’s own resurrection guaranteed to the ordinary believer that his or her body would be made whole or transformed by God before the Last Judgement and that it would rejoin the soul, from which it had been separated at the instant of death. As well as campaigning against ritual lamentations which they associated with non-Christian beliefs about the impurity of the dead body and also with professional mourners, many early Christian writers sought to present the funeral as an occasion of joy and triumph over death.33 But where joy was concerned, as one authority has observed, the Church eventually lost the battle.34 Augustine himself described how he failed to overcome his own despair and sorrow during his mother’s funeral.35 Despite their suggestion of hope for the individual at the Last Judgement, Christian funerary rites served to emphasize the separation of the living from the dead until the end of time. Both the Church’s doctrine and also the rituals themselves contradicted traditional assumptions about the dead and what should be done with them. The idea that the dead body was impure was rejected by the Church.36 Christian funerary ceremonies laid less emphasis on rites of transition which maintained the relationship between the living and recently dead, or rites of incorporation which turned the soul of the dead person from a potentially threatening ghost into a benevolent ancestor.37 Instead, both doctrine and ritual principally stressed a final leave-taking in which the soul of the dead person was secluded from the living, becoming part of anonymous and hidden groups of waiting souls, not to be released for judgement until the end of time.


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POPULAR CHRISTIAN RITUALS FOR THE DEAD In practice, many Christians supplemented the basic Christian burial rite either by constructing their own understanding of certain parts of it or by assimilating traditional customs to Christian ones, thus satisfying the intuitive need to maintain a relationship with the recently dead. Augustine refers to the offering of the Eucharist at his mother’s grave, and what was originally seen as a thanksgiving came to take on the nuance of intercession for the removal of sin in the afterlife.38 Relations with the dead did not stop with official Church rites of inhumation: the popular customs of graveside funeral feasts and days of commemoration continued in Christianized form. Just as their pagan contemporaries did, Christians, especially in Italy and North Africa, gathered for a meal at a mensa, a stone table placed over the grave, which might even have holes pierced in it for pouring libations into the tomb.39 Some Roman extra-mural cemeteries were roofed over to facilitate funeral ceremonies.40 Funeral feasts continued in this pagan tradition, much to Augustine’s embarrassment, as non-Christians were able to accuse those who feasted at tombs of ‘appeasing the shades of the departed with wine and food’ in traditional fashion.41 But however much the Church felt unease about this ritual, the refrigerium, which not only seemed to imply that the soul of the departed was still close at hand but was also frequently the occasion of drunkenness, it was unable to interfere in such occasions as they were essentially family affairs. It was possibly as late as the sixth century that Mass or communion became a part of private funerary rites in some areas, while many cemeteries were under the control of a private burial society rather than the Church.42 Synods ‘rarely’ dealt with funerary customs:43 the Church could only attempt to control clerical participation and behaviour at refrigeria, as demonstrated by the Apostolic Constitutions: . . . when you are invited to their memorials, do you feast with good order and the fear of God, as disposed to intercede for those who are departed. For since you are presbyters and deacons of Christ, you ought always to be sober . . .44

As well as actual funeral feasts, commemorative meals were held at regular intervals after death. These intervals varied from region to region, but their resemblance to periods traditionally thought to reflect the decay of the body or departure of the soul, as well as the annual anniversary of the death, is suggestive; and such ceremonies provided for the basic psychological need for continued interaction with the recently dead and the intuition of their continuing presence. The timing of the commemorations was given Christian explanations – intervals of three, seven and thirty or forty days were linked to the resurrection of Christ, the creation of the world or the period of mourning for Moses – and Masses were

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said at these intervals for the souls of the deceased. Such commemorative Masses must have gone some way towards satisfying the need of the living to keep up a relationship with the recently deceased – but there was no suggestion on the part of the Church before the seventh or eighth centuries that they had any function other than commemoration.45 So worried were some churchmen at what might be regarded as the assimilation of non-Christian customs into Christian funerary practice that they attempted to regulate the related phenomenon of feasting at the tombs of the martyrs on their anniversaries. In the 380s Monica, the mother of Augustine of Hippo, was told by the gatekeeper when she took wine and cakes to the tombs of the martyrs that Bishop Ambrose of Milan had forbidden the continuation of this practice. Ambrose objected not only to the drunkenness prevalent at such occasions, but was also concerned by the resemblance of such feasts to pagan commemorations of the dead.46 In North Africa in the 390s, Augustine himself complained of the scandalous conduct that took place at such religious celebrations in cemeteries – including the Laetitia in memory of a former bishop of Hippo – and also attempted to reform private funeral feasts or commemorations. Writing to the Metropolitan Bishop of Carthage, he expressed shock at ‘drunken revels and luxurious feasts in cemeteries’, and worried that an ‘ignorant and carnal multitude’ supposed that the offerings of food and drink customary at such occasions brought not just honour to the martyrs but solace to the dead.47 His solution was to suggest that meals at the tombs of the departed should be turned into offerings of alms for the poor, a sentiment he would later repeat in his City of God.48 Thus he attempted to re-direct commemorations of the dead into a more doctrinally acceptable form: meals for the poor – already a feature of some Christian martyr commemorations – were now to be channelled into a religious act by the living in memory of the dead.49 How far Augustine enjoyed any success in this is an open question. While he asserted, in Book VIII of his City of God, that the ‘better sort’ of Christian had given up private banquets in memory of the dead, this implies that others had not. It seems very likely that though the African Church accepted Augustine’s strictures,50 elsewhere people carried on in the same old way. Other churchmen may not have been so eager to antagonize their flocks by interfering in family funerals and commemorations, and the continuation of traditional practices can only have been encouraged by the fact that Christians were not buried in separate cemeteries from pagans, though discrete Christian sections were not uncommon.51 But as Christian cemeteries developed from pagan burial areas, the decoration and furnishing of individual tombs might contain a mixture of traditional and Christian elements: even the inscription Dies manibus sacrum is no longer automatically assumed by historians to be evidence of pagan burial.52


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As a whole, our knowledge of Christian funerary ritual reveals the way in which the Church’s liturgy was supplemented unofficially by practices reflecting intuitions and feelings about the dead that could not be eradicated easily. In the fourth century, ‘the family tomb was deeply rooted in the tradition of Roman society’ with the result that shifts in thinking and practice about the dead, especially the recently dead, were difficult to effect – even in subsequent centuries.53 Another notable feature of this was the way in which Christians were quite capable of interpreting one of the central features of the Church’s own death rites, the administration of the viaticum, as reflecting the common conceptualization of death as a journey. Thus while the giving of Eucharist to the dying was part of the Church’s ritual, and regarded by some of the Church fathers as the administration of ‘medicine of immortality’, the Councils of Hippo (393), Carthage (525), Auxerre (561–605) and in Trullo (692) all felt it necessary to forbid the placing of the host in the mouth of the corpse, as it was seen as the Christian equivalent of the coin placed under the tongue of the dead pagan as a fee to Charon in order that the soul might reach its destination after death.54 (An alternative explanation of this ancient custom is that the coin was really a charm designed to prevent evil spirits or the soul itself from entering or re-entering the body.55) The power of traditional concepts is evident in the way in which the idea of the soul’s journey after death survived to some extent, Christianized in the idea of angels leading it safely into the bosom of Abraham.56

DOCTRINAL VS POPULAR SOUL BELIEF IN THE WRITINGS OF ST AUGUSTINE The tensions between popular intuitions concerning the proximity of the recently dead and the liminal nature of death on one hand, and Christian doctrine on the other, are evident not only in the way in which Christian burial was frequently supplemented by more traditional commemorations but also in the work of St Augustine of Hippo, writing in the late fourth and early fifth centuries. There, we can the trace some of the oppositions which could exist between strict doctrine and the beliefs and feelings of ordinary Christians. In his role as a leading expounder of Christian doctrine, Augustine would find himself battling popular perceptions of death and the afterlife, and particularly the belief that the soul of a living person might temporarily leave the body and visit the world of the dead. Belief in such experiences is reported in many cultures and is rooted in psychic experiences by individuals who have regained consciousness from comas or trances, and described a journey to the other world. The seventeenth-century Jesuit missionaries working amongst the Huron observed that

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. . . some . . . having been left as dead, recover health, and talk at random of the other life . . .57

One of them reported some of these narratives at length, with expressions of deepest disapproval: A young man of the highest standing among them, being ill, after much entreaty finally answered that his dream showed a bow rolled in bark; that if any one wanted to go with him as an escort, there was but one man on earth who had one of the sort. A company of resolute men put themselves on the road with him; but at the end of ten days there remained to him only six companions, the rest turning back on account of the hunger which pressed them. The six go with him many a day’s journey, and in following the tracks of a little black beast, come upon the cabin of their man, who warns them not to partake of what a woman who was to be present should offer them for the first time. Having obeyed him, and having upset the dishes upon the ground, they perceived it was only venomous reptiles she had presented to them. Having refreshed themselves with the second course, it was a question of bending the rolled bow, which not one of them succeeded in doing, except the young man in whose behalf the journey had been undertaken. He received it as a gift from his host, who invited him to take a sweat with him, and, upon emerging from the sweat-box, metamorphosed one of his companions into a pine tree. From there they advanced to the village of souls, whence only three returned alive, and all frightened, to the house of their host; he encouraged them to return home with the help of a little meal, such as the souls eat, and which sustains the body wonderfully. He told them, moreover, that they were going to pass through woods where deer, bears, and moose were as common as the leaves on the trees; but that, being provided with so marvellous a bow, they had nothing to fear, that they would be very successful in the chase. Behold them returned to their village, with every one around them rejoicing, and learning their different adventures.58

Similarly, a modern anthropologist working amongst the Native American Salteaux in the 1930s was given several accounts of soul-visits to the land of the dead. One informant told him: I saw a man who died and lay dead for two days. He told me what had happened to him . . . He thought he was going to sleep . . . ‘all of a sudden,’ he said, ‘I found myself walking on a good road. I followed this road. On it I came to a wigwam. I saw an old man . . . ‘I’ll show you where your parents are staying,’ he said. While we were walking, we came in sight of lots of wigwams. As far as I could see, there were wigwams. The old man pointed out one of them to me. ‘You go there,’ he said. ‘That’s where your mother and father live.’59

Such accounts are based not only on the intuition of an afterlife very like the land of the living, but also on the idea that the soul is capable of leaving the body during periods of unconsciousness. In this state it can pass to the other world and then return to its host body.


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Christian teaching on this subject was quite different: the soul could not leave the body temporarily, and separation of body and soul could only take place in the moment of death. But the Church faced the persistence of more traditional soul belief at a popular level. Thus in his treatise On the Soul (De Anima), the North African theologian Tertullian (d. 230) attempted to discredit the philosopher Apollonius of Tyana’s story of a man named Hermotimus of Clazomenae, whose soul was in the habit of periodically leaving his body to travel abroad as he lay asleep; one day, his enemies burnt his body so that his soul would have no place to which to return and would therefore perish. Tertullian, worried by the implications of this story for Christian doctrine, in particular the concept of the resurrection of the body, argued energetically against it.60 In the late fourth and early fifth centuries, we can see both Ambrose of Milan and Augustine of Hippo still trying to combat this type of belief when they argued that the souls of men could not – as was popularly believed – pass into animals while they lay unconscious.61 Augustine also struggled to counter the idea that the soul, like the souls of the Native Americans discussed above, was able to pass into afterlife – in this case the Christian afterlife – and then return. In 416, he attempted to bring into disrepute the popular Visio Pauli or Apocalypse of Paul, a text narrating the journeys of a soul in the other world, based on the passage in 2 Corinthians 12:2–4, where Paul writes: I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) such an one caught up to the third heaven. And I knew such a man, (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) How that he was caught up into paradise and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.62

Augustine gave short shrift to the Visio on a number of grounds: . . . there have been some vain individuals who, with a presumption that betrays the grossest folly, have forged a Revelation of Paul, crammed with all manner of fables, which has been rejected by the orthodox Church; affirming it to be that whereof he had said he was caught up into the third heaven, and there heard unspeakable words ‘which it is not lawful for a man to utter’. Nevertheless the audacity of such might be tolerable, had he said that he heard words which it is not as yet lawful for a man to utter; but when he said ‘which it is not lawful for a man to utter’, who are they that dare to utter them with such impudence and non-success?63

But the continuing popularity of the Visio, which led to the production of many versions in the medieval period, must have been due not only to its depiction of

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the other world, but also to popular belief in the ability of the soul to leave the body.64 Augustine continued his campaign against such ideas into the 420s. In his De Cura pro Mortuis Gerenda (On the Care to Be Had For the Dead), composed c.421/2, he relates the story of a man from his own diocese named Curma, who had lain in a coma for several days. Curma had apparently alleged that, while he was in this state, his soul had left his body and visited the afterlife, temporarily joining his dead relations. From thence, his soul had been sent back to his body – at precisely the moment when another man also named Curma, a smith, had died. Augustine dismisses the whole story as a dream or dream-like vision, pointing out that Curma claimed to have seen not only the dead but also some of the living – including Augustine himself.65 According to Augustine, Curma was told in his vision to have himself baptized, and he subsequently put himself forward as a candidate for baptism. Thus the story seems pitched to suggest not only popular belief in the ability of the soul to leave the body during periods of unconsciousness and in the permeability of the barrier between this life and the next, but also that Christianity was being brought face-to-face with such concepts by the recently converted. Ideas of this sort may have been even more widespread. In both his treatise On the Care to Be Had For the Dead and also in his City of God (c.415–27), we can see Augustine arguing energetically against the popular intuition that the dead were active in the world of the living. He states in the plainest possible terms the separation of the living and the dead and the impermeable nature of the divide between their respective zones: . . . for the departed to be by their general nature interested in the affairs of the living is impossible.66

His argument is that if the souls of the living do not and cannot visit the dead, then neither can the dead penetrate the world of the living or have any knowledge of it – and by implication, therefore, any influence or power over it. To prove this, he turns to the well-known biblical story of the uncharitable rich man (Dives), whose soul went to Hell, while that of Lazarus, the beggar who had lain at his gate, was taken up into the bosom of Abraham. Gazing up from his torments in Hell, Dives begged Abraham first to send Lazarus to him with water to cool his tongue and then, if he would not do this, to send Lazarus back to earth to warn his brothers to mend their evil ways. Abraham, as Augustine trenchantly points out, did neither. There was no question of his soul being sent back to visit the living. Nor should we, he continues, think that those in the next life have any precise knowledge of what is happening on earth. Any information Abraham possessed concerning Lazarus’ life on earth must have been communicated to him by Lazarus himself when he arrived in the afterlife; and similarly Dives, in Hell, can have had no precise knowledge of his brothers’ current situation, but


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simply demonstrated a general concern for their welfare.67 Augustine also argues on personal grounds against the idea that the dead are able to communicate with the living. If the dead could take part in the affairs of the living then, he affirms, his own mother would surely have appeared to him by now. In life, she had followed him by land and sea in order to live with him and comfort him, and if such things were possible she would surely not fail to visit him regularly to console him now that she was dead. But of course, she had never appeared.68 Only God himself – and, when he ordered them, his agents the angels – could breach the barrier between living and dead.69 The urgency with which Augustine marshals arguments drawn from reason, Scripture and personal experience suggests the persistence of traditional beliefs amongst those coming to Christianity, and probably amongst many baptized Christians too, concerning the proximity of the souls of the dead to the living.

AUGUSTINE ON FUNERARY RITES AND THE FATE OF THE SOUL Augustine also found himself forced to deal with Christian concerns over the actual burial rite. His writings reveal the anxiety felt by at least some of the faithful, who feared that if correct treatment and rites are not applied to the body, the fate of the soul in the afterlife is in jeopardy. In City of God, he attempts to allay worries about the importance of funerary rites in the situation following the sack of Rome in 410.70 Even if the bodies of Christians had on this occasion been left unburied to be devoured by animals, Augustine argues, they would not be denied resurrection. There is no question that the souls of Christians will not reach the afterlife because of what happens to their dead bodies: Augustine states categorically that lack of burial is of no consequence to them. Similarly, in De Cura he refers to Eusebius’ description of the fate of the bodies of the martyrs of Lyon.71 These had been fed to the dogs; what was left was reduced to ashes and cast into the River Rhône. But there should not, Augustine insisted, be any concern over the fate of the souls of these martyrs: God had permitted their bodies to be destroyed in this way precisely in order to demonstrate that burial is not in itself of significance to Christians where the fate of the soul is concerned.72 He preaches confidence in God’s power to resurrect the human body not only from the earth but also from any other places and elements into which it may have passed.73 He also highlights what he considers to be the non-Christian nature of belief in the efficacy of the funeral rites themselves for the soul: . . . we are not to credit that, as read in Maro, the unburied are prohibited from navigating the infernal stream . . . Who can incline a Christian heart to these poetical and fabulous figments . . .74

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In City of God, Augustine also downplays concern with funerary ritual, suggesting that it stemmed from an unsophisticated pagan mentality and claiming that anxieties of this kind had been scorned by pagan philosophers.75 However, conscious that he might be accused of saying funerals do not matter at all, in both City of God and in De Cura he affirms that ‘. . . it follows not that the bodies of the departed are to be despised and flung aside . . .’.76 Just because the rites themselves are not efficacious, Christians should not abandon the custom of decent funeral ceremonies and a proper burial. But, in keeping with Christian doctrine and the whole trajectory of his theology regarding death and the afterlife, Augustine insists that these should be seen as a consolation to the living, rather than as an assistance to the departed.77

AUGUSTINE ON POST-MORTEM PURGATION AND PRAYER FOR THE DEAD Augustine’s purpose was to reiterate the fundamental Christian teaching that the fate of the soul in the afterlife was dependent on the conduct of the individual during his or her lifetime – and not, as popularly intuited, on the correct performance of funerary ritual. But even he began to think about the potential harshness of this doctrine’s implications. His Confessions reveal his concerns about the fate of the soul of his own dead mother: although she had led a virtuous life, she was not entirely free from sin.78 Augustine therefore prayed to God to forgive any sins of which she might have been guilty. Such concerns must have been widespread, even more so in an era which saw constant outbreaks of disease. The plague described by Cyprian ceased in 266 ce, but malaria became endemic in the Roman world from the fourth century onwards.79 The living had much scope to think about the dead and the fate of the soul after death: the popular third-century Passion of Perpetua reflected not only the belief that the souls of the martyrs would attain paradise, but also the suggestion that the prayers of the virtuous living might help the souls of the dead as they awaited judgement. Perpetua prays for her dead brother, who seemed not to have been admitted to post-mortem ‘refreshment’, possibly as a consequence of his death from a disfiguring disease.80 It was probably in response to apprehensions and speculations of this kind on the part of his flock as well as to his own personal experience and theological reflections, that Augustine came to suggest that the soul might be purged of minor flaws and faults before the Last Judgement. In his Enchiridion, he quotes from the Apostle Paul who describes in 1 Corinthians a trial of individuals ‘as if by fire’.81 Augustine links this to the idea of post-mortem purgation of the soul just prior to the Last Judgement – while at the same time affirming the basic Christian doctrine that it is moral conduct during one’s lifetime which will


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determine the fate of the soul after death. Thus, he argues, anyone who has built a secure superstructure on the saving foundation of Christ (a person who builds in ‘gold, silver or precious stones’) will pass through this fire and the structure will not be burned, while even those who build in ‘wood, hay and straw’ will find their superstructure all burned away but will survive – provided they have a secure basic foundation in Christ. As to whether the offering of alms or the Eucharist for the departed might ease the passage of the soul through this purgatorial fire, he considered that this would also depend on individual conduct in this life.82 He had to be careful to emphasize that the prayers of the living for the dead do not provide the latter with new merits, merely giving back to them the consequences of old ones. Ultimately, the Enchiridion reflects that: When therefore the sacrifices of the altar or of alms are offered on behalf of all the baptized dead, they are thank-offerings for the very good, they are propitiatory offerings for the not very bad; and in the case of the very bad, even if they do not assist the dead, they are a species of consolation for the living .83

And also: . . . where they are profitable, their benefit consists either in making a full remission of sins, or at least in making the condemnation more tolerable.84

Augustine continually insists on the paramount importance of moral conduct in this life – if a person has been very wicked even the prayers of the faithful will not assuage his or her sufferings in Hell, while the best outcome he can suggest for the soul of the average sinner is that it will remain in a place of greater or lesser suffering until the end of time. But at the same time, he holds out some hope that the prayers of the living, or the offering of the Eucharist, might perhaps ease its passage through a purgatorial fire that precedes the Last Judgement. Thus, tentatively, he concedes a relationship – however minimal – between living and dead. His constant insistence on the moral worth of the deceased demonstrates his strict adherence to the basic Christian doctrine of salvation; nevertheless his concession that the prayers of the living might aid the departed soul, in however slight a measure, reflect more popular and personal concerns and worries.85 Augustine’s theology would later be promoted in the West by Julianus Pomerius and the latter’s pupil, Bishop Cæsarius of Arles, both of whom – probably in response to popular concerns – tended to turn some of his more tentative comments about prayer for the souls of the departed into a greater certainty. Julianus would write of the efficacy of prayer as a help through post-mortem purgation,86 and for many others the existence of post-mortem purgation for those guilty of minor sins became a certainty, alongside the understanding that both the saintly and the wicked would begin to taste the pleasures or pains of their ultimate destination immediately on death. These developments are

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reflected in the sermons of the pastorally active Cæsarius of Arles. Writing in the first half of the sixth century, Bishop Cæsarius was particularly concerned with his flock’s conduct and the problem of persuading sinners either to reform their conduct, or to perform penance – the latter being, at the time, a very grave undertaking, involving both civil disability and also public humiliation; and his sermons dwell heavily on the relationship between morals in this life and the fate of the soul in the next. He insisted that the very wicked would, as soon as their bodies began to be devoured by worms in the tomb, be cast straight into Hell. In one passage, he warns his audience that those who committed major sins (capitalia) and did not submit to the discipline of penance would go straight to Hell and that the intermediate, purifying fire was reserved only for those who had committed lesser offences (minuta). (Taking his cue from Augustine, Cæsarius equates ignis purgatorius with the purifying fire preceding the Last Judgement.87) Even minor sins, though, should either be avoided altogether or expiated by a valid penance in this world, such as almsgiving or a Christian acceptance of the troubles of this world. For those who had not avoided sin or made some sort of restitution for them in this life, passage through the purificatory fire would be painful and (if their faults were many) long – elsewhere in the same sermon Cæsarius equates the ‘day of the Lord’ with ‘the day lasting one thousand years’.88 The main outcomes which he wished to present to his audience were those of instant salvation or instant damnation, depending on conduct on earth, with the possibility of post-mortem purgation of the soul aided by the prayers of the living a somewhat more distant prospect. However, even if it was a more distant prospect in temporal terms, it was nonetheless regarded as a real one, as Cæsarius’ own career reveals. He founded the nunnery of St Jean whose nuns would carry out a constant round of liturgy to intercede for his own soul (and also for his city of Arles) until the Last Judgement.89 By the time of Cæsarius’ death in 542, Augustine and his followers, including Cæsarius himself, had reaffirmed and restated the central Christian doctrine regarding death and the soul: that its fate in the afterlife – salvation or damnation – was dependent on conduct in this world. But the idea of some sort of relationship between living and dead had been conceded with the cautious development of the ideas of post-mortem purgation of the soul, and of the power of the prayers of the living to help this process – even if this was technically only to be granted to those with a ‘sure foundation in Christ’ and postponed until the end of time.


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THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY Alongside this very limited concession to popular belief in the area of the afterlife, the Church attempted to channel popular thinking about the dead and the bodies of the dead into two further areas: the doctrine of the resurrection of the body on one hand, and the cult of the relics of saints on the other. Its insistence on the former may initially have been a response, as Caroline Walker Bynum has suggested, to the dishonouring of the remains of Christian martyrs in the second century.90 On the other hand, the emergence of this discourse round about the time of the Antonine Plague (166–90 ce) might suggest another possible explanation – that in a period which saw the deaths of hundreds of thousands, the Church sought to promote and suggest a positive outcome for the Christian soul at the end of time.91 This emphasis also had the effect of stressing the separation of body and soul until the Last Judgement. In the 380s we find Ambrose of Milan using the traditional commemoration interval of the seventh day after the death of his own brother Satyrus to deliver a funerary oration designed to persuade listeners to turn away from traditional modes of thought and practice associated with such commemorations. Ambrose’s purpose was to emphasize the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the body: he criticized what he described as excessive mourning, suggesting that death was a liberation and not to be feared. He mocked pagan beliefs: . . . It is a cause for wonder that though they do not believe in the resurrection, yet in their kindly care they make provision that the human race should not perish, and so say that souls pass and migrate into other bodies that the world may not pass away. But let them say which is the most difficult, for souls to migrate, or to return; come back to that which is their own, or seek for fresh dwelling places.92

Despite his disdain, it appears that the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the body was neither particularly comforting nor entirely convincing, as he himself admits: But what ought we to do, whose reward is the resurrection, though many, not being able to deny the greatness of this gift, refuse to believe in it?93

Ambrose was one of the fathers of the Church who used the dynamic Pauline metaphor of the body as a seed which, when planted in the ground, will eventually regenerate in the resurrection; others, including Augustine, preferred to explain it as a re-assembling of parts, and this explanation ultimately seems to have found more followers – at least amongst Christian writers.94 Perhaps it was more reassuring. On the other hand, the varying explanations of the process presented by churchmen may have worked sometimes to undermine the credibility of the doctrine itself. In the 420s, Augustine conceded that a few still refused to believe.95

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THE CULT OF SAINTS AND THEIR RELICS One special category of the dead came to be regarded as being able to mediate between this world and the next. In the fourth century, emperors and bishops began to move the bodies of Christian martyrs from the extra-mural cemeteries, where their memoriae had originally been found, into church buildings. The process seems to have started in the eastern part of the empire, with imperial transfers of the bodies of apostles and martyrs into basilicas. In the West, Bishop Ambrose of Milan built a basilica of the apostles where he appears to have deposited relics obtained from the east.96 In 386, he removed the bodies of two martyrs, Gervasius and Protasius, from their original resting-place, placing them under the altar of the newly built basilica.97 His action provided Milan with a focus for local sentiment in the relics of two native martyrs. Ambrose’s own account of events, in a letter to his sister, paints a picture of high drama and emotional arousal. He depicts the actual discovery of bones and also – he claimed – blood, as the result of an intuition, or ‘spirit of prophecy’, on his own part. Both invention (inventio, or discovery) and translation (their removal to his new basilica) were accompanied by dramatic miracles of exorcism and healing.98 He maintains that large numbers of his flock had gathered to see both exhumation and re-interment: During the whole of those two days there was an enormous concourse of people . . .99

Ambrose’s actions recall what Harvey Whitehouse has characterized as the essence of the imagistic mode of religiosity: ‘sporadic collective action, evoking multivocal imagery, encoded in memory as distinct episodes and producing highly cohesive and particularistic social ties . . .’ .100 The last was particularly important, as all this occurred in the middle of a sustained war of nerves between Ambrose and the Arian emperor Valentinian and his mother Justina over control of the Milanese churches.101 The importance of the invention and translation of the Milanese martyr relics lies not just in their providing an example of the importation of imagistic elements into Christianity, but also in the way in which Ambrose grasped that the emotions generated by the invention and translation, and the healings associated with these events, had the potential to be used to reinforce the doctrinal mode of religion – in this case in its Catholic, as opposed to Arian, version. The Milanese people having been worked up into what we might classify as a cognitively optimal state, Ambrose went on to attack his Arian opponents for their lack of belief both in the martyrs and in the full divinity of Son and Holy Spirit. In this way, he not only declared opposition to the Arian emperor, but also reinforced verbalized doctrine, committed to memory as ‘general knowledge’ in the shape of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed. If the magical efficacy of miracles and


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the imagistic arousal of the cult of relics cemented local ties on the one hand, they could, on the other, also be exploited to emphasize Christian doctrine and to help create the larger communities of anonymous believers which are characteristic of doctrinal religion. Ambrose’s understanding of the potential of the cult of relics is demonstrated in the way in which, despite imperial decrees against the moving of bodies – even those of the apostles – into cities, he sent shipments of the relics of his martyrs, apparently along with apostolic relics, to other dioceses: Hippo, Rouen and Bordeaux. This has been described as a ‘marketing strategy’, which helped to lay the foundations of the cult of relics in the western part of the empire.102 The places of interment of these relics would be acclaimed as loci of healing and exorcism and the saints themselves would be presented as the protectors of cities, communities and individuals, thus generating further affective experiences and reinforcing local bonds. Ambrose presumably also hoped that other bishops would use these experiences and feelings as creatively and productively in reinforcing Catholic doctrine as he himself had attempted to do. While Ambrose recognized the potential of the cult of saints and relics to provide the popular emotional underpinning to doctrinal religiosity, other churchmen worried about the theological difficulties attached to both.103 In general, as Boyer has pointed out, religious guilds – of which the Christian priesthood is one – tend to be hostile to imagistic manifestations, and Augustine sought to explore the doctrinal as opposed to the imagistic aspects of the relic cult, distancing himself from the latter as far as possible. On the Care to be Had For the Dead remorselessly spelled out that the logic of Christian theology – and something that distinguished it fundamentally from traditional beliefs and popular intuitions – was that the living could not communicate with the dead. The latter had no knowledge of what was happening in the world of the living. Only God himself had the power to breach the otherwise impermeable barrier between the zones of the living and the dead. How, then, could the saints protect, heal and intercede on behalf of the living – especially when their relics had been divided up and different part of their bodies were now to be found in different cities? The most radical view of the powers of relics was given by one of the recipients of Ambrose’s relic shipments. Bishop Victricius of Rouen set out not just to endorse the cult of relics, but to explain their powers using philosophical arguments. He proposed that . . . the relics of the saints are, in effect, consubstantial with God. They differ in that their immortality is by adoption, not by nature (it is accidental, not substantive), but once that immortality has been granted nothing separates them from the Trinity. Consequently, they are wholly present in every fragment.104

A contrary view was expressed by the Spanish priest, Vigilantius of Calagurris,

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who for his pains would find himself pilloried by Jerome in one of the latter’s shrillest invectives.105 He opposed the cult of relics and asserted the direct opposite to Victricius – that the souls of the saints were not with God or part of God, but that instead they rest . . . either in the bosom of Abraham, or in the place of refreshment, or under the altar of God . . .106

They could not, therefore, multiply and travel where they willed along with the fragments of their bodies. Nor could they hear the prayers of the living: . . . once we die the prayer of no person for another can be heard, and all the more so because the martyrs, although they cry for the avenging of their blood, have never been able to obtain their request.107

As for the practice of translation of relics: . . . what is all but a heathen ceremony introduced into the churches.108

To Vigilantius, the introduction of relic veneration challenged some of Christianity’s most fundamental doctrines, as its logic was to endanger monotheism by designating a group of the dead as a category of supernatural beings with special powers. And while, in the very last book of City of God,109 Augustine himself accepts both the idea of miracles in his own times and also of their occurrence at martyrs’ tombs – indeed he begins his discussion by reference to the translation of Gervasius and Protasius, which had taken place while he himself was living in Milan – he refuses to place the saints on the same level as God: For if the resurrection of the flesh to eternal life had not taken place in Christ or were not to be accomplished in His people, as predicted by Christ, or by the prophets . . . why do the martyrs, who were slain for this faith which proclaims the resurrection possess such power? For whether God himself wrought these miracles, by that wonderful manner of working, which, though Himself eternal, He produces effects in time; or whether He wrought them by servants; and, if so, whether He made uses of the spirits of the martyrs, as He uses men who are still in the body; or effects all these marvels by means of angels . . . so that what is said to be done by the martyrs is done not by their operation but only by their prayer and request; or whether, finally, some things are done in one way, others in another . . . so that man cannot at all comprehend them . . .110 But, our martyrs are not our gods, for we know that the martyrs and we have both but one God, and that the same . . . to our martyrs, we build, not temples, as if they were gods, but monuments as to dead men whose spirits live with God . . .111


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These views are compatible with those expressed a few years earlier in De Cura. There, he had affirmed that it was beyond his power to explain exactly how the martyrs aided the living, as the dead were not normally aware of what was happening in the world. But their intercession for the living was testimony to the ubiquity and ineffability of God.112 In his final reply to a woman named Flora, who had enquired whether the soul of her dead son would be helped by his body’s interment near the martyr’s tomb of St Felix at Nola, Augustine sombrely gave a negative answer. Tombs are memorials and the only sense in which a person buried at a martyr’s tomb may be helped, he concluded, is by the extra affection of the supplication offered when commending the soul of the dead to the patronage of the martyr resident in Heaven.113

BODIES HOLY AND UNHOLY: BURIAL AD SANCTOS Augustine, as Peter Brown has noted, saw the martyrs as some of the many recipients of God’s grace, and wanted Christians to imitate them in their steadfastness in Christianity.114 He wished the latter to avoid falling into the trap of regarding the saints as alternative gods and thus advanced a strictly orthodox doctrine that, unlike that of Victricius, refuses to confer on the saints any aspect of God’s own powers. But Augustine’s austere standpoint must have been less than appealing to many ordinary Christians, who not only intuited the presence of the dead in the world of the living but also responded cognitively to the imagistic and emotional experiences of inventions, translations and miraculous cures at the tombs of the saints. Privileged individuals arranged to be buried ad sanctos – at the tombs of the saints – in the belief that they would be resurrected in the company of those beside whom they were interred.115 Funerary basilicas incorporating saints’ tombs proliferated from the fourth century onwards, and the higher echelons of society had themselves buried within them. The example of the church of St Victor at Marseilles, which has been found to contain not only several levels of sarcophagi, but even several layers of burial inside individual sarcophagi, shows clearly the great density of inhumation which could take place in such locations.116 Church councils ruled from time to time that burials should take place outside a church,117 or that the dead should not be crowded on top of each other near sacred spots, or even interred in baptisteries.118 This legislation was seemingly to little avail. Burial ad sanctos was not only associated in the popular mind with a good outcome for the soul in the afterlife, but was also a sign of social prestige;119 so despite the rulings of church councils, privileged groups continued to pay to be buried as close to the saints as possible. In some stories and legends we can discern the Church’s attempts up to the end of the sixth century to affirm the importance of moral conduct in this life for

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the fate of the soul after death: Bishop Gregory of Tours notes with some pleasure the expulsion of the sarcophagus of a wicked man from the burial place he had arranged for it near the tomb of a saint – it was miraculously propelled through the basilica window into the courtyard outside.120 There were also attempts to claim as Christian in nature old and famous cemeteries of pagan origin. In a story indicating the persistence of popular belief in the power of the souls of the dead to re-enter the world of the living, Gregory also recounts the miraculous appearance of psalm-singing souls of the Christian departed at the church of St Stephen in an ancient Gallic cemetery at Autun.121 This tale suggests the impact of popular beliefs on the discourse of Christianity in Gaul and Francia in the fifth and sixth centuries. The strength of belief and feeling about the bodies and souls of the dead was so great that not only had the Church created its own cult of the dead, in the shape of the cult of saints, but it also found itself absorbing some traditional intuitions into it.

TRADITIONAL MODES OF INHUMATION AMONG THE FRANKS Where the burial of laypeople was concerned, the influence of family and tradition remained strong, even within churches and in Church-controlled cemeteries. The arrival of ‘barbarian’ peoples within the Roman Empire – such as the settlement of the Franks in Gaul in the fifth century – brought in populations with traditional funerary customs and beliefs different from those of Christianity. Even amongst Catholic Frankish royalty, we can see elements of traditional belief mixing with Christian ritual practice. Merovingian rulers began to adopt the custom of having themselves buried ad sanctos: Clovis and his consort, Chrodechildis, were buried at St Geneviève; Chlothar I built a church dedicated to the powerful intercessor St Médard at Soissons where he was himself to be buried, while King Guntram was the patron of St Marcel at Chalon. In the seventh century Dagobert I would endow the church of St Denis richly. Other royal burials took place at Angoulême, Rheims and Cologne. At such foundations monks solemnly chanted a regular liturgy, their intercession designed to accompany that of the saints until the resurrection of the bodies of both saints and royalty at the end of time. Yet such Christian ritual did not preclude the placing of a range of grave-goods in the tombs of Merovingian royalty buried in basilicas and churches. Spectacular discoveries – clothing, jewellery, furniture, weapons and armour – have been made at St Denis. The burial in the crypt of Queen Arnegundis in the 570s not only reveals a rich range of grave-goods in traditional fashion, but also suggests that her body may even have been embalmed. Thus while members of the ruling dynasty appear to have embraced the Church’s officially sanctioned cult of


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the dead, there seems to have been a reluctance to relinquish many traditional practices, which continued without protest on the part of the Church. The only legislation against burying objects with the dead forbade interring them with the Eucharist (see above) or the wrapping of their bodies in a veil or pallium.122 What of the mass of the Frankish population? In north-eastern Francia, the majority of the Frankish rural populace continued to be buried in large ‘rowgrave’ cemeteries – Reihengräberfriedhöfe – some hundreds of yards away from their settlements. From the end of the fifth century – that is, from the period in which the Frankish ruling dynasty converted to Christianity123 – inhumation with grave-goods gradually replaced cremation as the dominant funeral rite of the Germanic peoples. Bailey Young suggests that the . . . persistence of burial with grave-goods during the Merovingian period confirms the traditional discontinuity between high culture and popular culture which was apparent in the Roman period. The mass of the Franks remained for a long time close to the popular mentality; the Church took more than two centuries to ‘convert’ them to more rational [sic] conceptions.124

He also remarks that it was not until about 700 that the Church finally took over the responsibility for burials, which had hitherto belonged to the family.125 Thus, for example, in cemeteries in the north-eastern Moselle region, archaeologists and historians have found that burial practices into the seventh century continued to display many traditional characteristics.126 Even if some of those buried in these cemeteries were nominally Christian and took part in Christian death rituals, it is clear that they continued to supplement these with traditional practices and customs which – even if they are often interpreted at the moment in a functionalist light – reflected residual belief in the proximity of the dead. Thus we find a wide range of grave-goods: weapons, which were associated with adult males; lavish jewellery, associated with teenage and young adult women; and chatelaines, awls, knives, ceramics and glassware can all be found in graves of the sixth and seventh centuries.127 The survival of such practices reflects the continued power of tradition, community or – increasingly, in the north-east in the early seventh century – family, over the rituals associated with burial.128

THE JUSTINIANIC PANDEMIC AND FEAR OF REVENANTS While the fact of death and the continuing consciousness of the presence of the recently dead are enduringly powerful psychological and cultural considerations in themselves, the 540s saw the beginning of a period in which the European population’s thoughts must have focused more intensively on these areas. By this juncture, not only was malaria widespread in Europe, especially in Mediterranean

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coastal areas, but at some point between the fourth and sixth centuries leprosy also seemed to have turned into an endemic rather than a sporadic disease.129 On top of this, a new and lethal illness made a sudden appearance. In summer 541, bubonic plague broke out in the Egyptian port of Pelusium. By spring 542, it had not only arrived in the eastern half of the Empire, but also in the west – North Africa, Italy, Iberia and Gaul, even reaching as far as Ireland. Its route of arrival in the west was by sea and it often moved inland via river systems. Bishop Gregory of Tours describes its onset in the Rhone Valley in 543, presumably starting in Marseilles, as well as chronicling in some detail a later series of outbreaks, which definitely originated in Marseilles in 588.130 As Lester K. Little points out, the plague remained virulent for slightly more than two centuries; although it never settled anywhere for long, in some places where it visited more than once, it recurred at intervals of between six and twenty years. While there are well-known accounts of its outbreak and effects – by Gregory and by the Lombard historian Paul the Deacon,131 for example – in other areas there is no written record of its presence, which can only be inferred from the archaeological record; it is likely, for instance, that it penetrated the Scheldt, in a similar coast to river-system pattern to that outlined by Gregory for the south.132 Before plague vanished in the mid-eighth century, as suddenly as it had arrived in the 540s, it was a constant, if at the same time an apparently capricious, factor in Western European life: Overall, there was not a decade in the course of these two centuries, when it was not inflicting death somewhere in the Mediterranean region.133

Even in an age when other diseases were rife and relatively low life expectancy, together with a high rate of neo-natal mortality, meant that death was a frequently confronted reality, the repeated episodes of plague in Western Europe over such a long period was bound to intensify the nature of that confrontation. Gregory of Tours refers to the ravages of plague in sixth-century Francia on a number of occasions. It can be inferred from his account that there was a degree of reversion to non-Christian or at least unorthodox practices in the face of epidemic: he records that the streets of Paris saw a procession where the leader appeared to be practising a mixture of Christian with traditional cures – or, as Gregory would have it, witchcraft.134 As a churchman, Gregory naturally promotes the idea of the protective efficacy of Christian litanies, prayers and processions, telling how his saintly uncle, Bishop Gallus of Clermont, led his flock in procession to the shrine of St Julian at Brioude, some 65 kilometres away.135 He also describes how the same town was affected by a later outbreak to such an extent that there was a shortage of coffins and tombstones, and people were buried ten or more to one grave. While many fled to avoid the disease, a heroic priest named Cato continued to say Mass and bury the dead.136 But whether Christian burial ritual was felt to be entirely adequate by everyone throughout


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the whole of Francia, particularly the Franks of the north-east, who clung to traditional rituals and therefore, by implication, to many traditional beliefs or intuitions about the dead, is open to question. Pandemic creates fears about the nature of some of the recently dead, suggesting that they may become malevolent revenants. In societies and religions where death is regarded as a liminal process, revenants are believed to emerge in a number of ways. They can, as we have seen, be murderers, murder victims, suicides, or even twins. But much popular vampire belief centres on the conviction that those who have died in epidemics have returned as re-animated corpses in order to carry others off after them.137 In the absence of any scientific understanding of transmission of disease, the outbreak of an epidemic can prompt the intuition that the soul of the first person to die has re-entered its body, allowing it to leave the grave in order to kill others: Characteristically vampirism occurs as an epidemic . . . as the first person who died is held responsible for the deaths of others . . .138

To those who believe that the soul lingers in the vicinity of the body after death, such beliefs ‘explain’ epidemics of plague – indeed in an epidemic it might be thought that there are more vampires than normal people.139 The malicious activity of such revenants has frequently been ‘confirmed’ by the opening of graves to reveal an apparently un-decayed body, its mouth filled with blood – to all intents and purposes the blood of others who have then sickened and died to become vampires in their turn. Modern forensic science teaches us that these and other peculiar bodily manifestations, which might suggest to the lay observer that the body has not decayed, are in fact natural stages in decomposition in certain conditions; but such knowledge was not available in earlier eras (nor is it widespread in all modern societies).140 The usual reaction to outbreaks of suspected vampirism consists of attempts to deal with the corpse to prevent its re-animation. Modern vampire literature and cinema tend to dwell on attempts to ward off or ‘kill’ the vampire by means of garlic, silver bullets and stakes driven through the heart. But other – perhaps older – recorded methods concentrate on mutilation of the corpse: by decapitation or removal of the feet so that it cannot ‘walk’; or by immobilization, by binding with nets, ropes or large stones, or by wooden stakes or objects placed across the body or driven through it. Prone burial was also thought to discourage the body from exiting the grave, as might the placing of quantities of poppy or other seeds beside the body, so that if re-animated, it would feel compelled to pick them up and in this way be distracted from its evil quest for the blood of the living. Sharp objects on the body or in the grave were also thought to be effective. Such objects ranged in scale from thorns through knives to sickles, which in some cases were positioned around the neck, so that the body would be decapitated should it attempt to leave the grave. In the fact of the sickle in the

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grave, it has been suggested, may lie the origin of the figure of Death the Reaper with his scythe.141 The Frankish Reihengräberfriedhof at Audun-le-Tiche, in the Moselle region, provides us with an example of one burial-ground containing inhumations which may well indicate vampire belief, possibly encouraged by the onset of plague. The conservative nature of the burials in this type of cemetery indicates popular attachment on the part of the Franks to traditional beliefs about the dead, and this is likely to have extended to the practice of attempting to neutralize a perceived threat of revenants. Several graves at Audun contain nails. One recent commentator has doubted the suggestion that their presence may have a ‘magico-phylacteric’ significance. However, this may not after all be so far wide of the mark. The nails seldom show traces of wood and are found in odd positions which do not seem to reflect use in coffins, biers or wooden grave coverings, but may instead indicate measures intended to prevent the re-animation of the corpse.142 There are two graves in which the skulls have actually been nailed to the ground.143 In others, the body is pinned down by stones; mutilation is evident where the head has been removed and placed in an alternative position in the grave; there are instances of hands having been removed; headless bodies; and bodies buried face down.144 There are also many cases (apparently dating mostly from the second half of the seventh century) where the grave has been re-used, with the bones of the first occupant usually placed at the foot of the second burial.145 The writer of the report on Audun, Alain Simmer, was puzzled by these burials, first suggesting that here we may have cases of family re-use of the grave, but he hesitates at the prospect of a family’s ‘emptying’ a grave only a few years old ‘in conditions which must have been dreadful’ in order to make room for another body. Eventually, Simmer concludes that there were ‘profound motivations which escape us’ for such practices.146 In fact, Audun may provide examples not only of pre-emptive strikes against vampires, but even, in the shape of these re-used graves, the possible revival of a form of secondary burial rite.

ECCLESIASTICAL REACTION TO PANDEMIC DISEASE What could the Church do to cope with a revival or intensification of popular belief and traditional practice of this kind in times of pandemic? One way of attempting to come to terms with them might have been to modify Christian funerary liturgy and burial customs. Studies of twentieth-century rural Greece have demonstrated that there, beliefs concerning body, soul and afterlife consisted of ‘an interesting syncretism of Orthodox Christian teachings and various popular beliefs that are remarkably similar to those known to have existed in Ancient Greece’.147 Popular belief held that an un-decomposed body might


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be re-animated either by the soul or by the devil, and become a vrykolakas or vampire.148 Probably because of soil and climatic conditions which combine to inhibit decay, certain areas of Greece seemed to be peculiarly prone to vampire manifestations: the Greek proverbial equivalent of the English ‘coals to Newcastle’ is ‘vampires to Santorini’.149 The funerary liturgy of the Greek Orthodox Church specifically addresses these beliefs, asking for the complete decomposition of the body. The popular fixation on the importance of decomposition in rural Greece in the twentieth century was so strong that the dead were exhumed, usually after a period of three, five or seven years, and the bones examined and reburied. A partial decomposition was even taken as a sign that the sins of the dead person had not been forgiven by God and that the soul had not fully separated itself from the body. Is there evidence of any mingling of popular with Christian conceptions by the Western Church in reaction to the onset of epidemic? Did it, for instance, sanction the re-burials at Audun in the seventh century? This seems unlikely. But as we have seen, funerary ritual was a family affair and predominantly or entirely traditional in nature in rural Frankish settlements; in such circumstances there was not much that could be done to stop such practices in traditional ‘row-grave’ cemeteries such as Audun. And there was little change in Christian funerary rituals themselves in this period: into the eighth century, most Masses for the dead were Roman in origin, drawing on the Verona Sacramentary, and consisted of the traditional Masses for dead clerics, the recently baptized and the laity, celebrated three, seven and thirty days after burial.150 Such shifts as did occur in the Church’s approach to death are to be found in other areas, involving the incorporation into religious narratives of folk belief in the ability of the soul to visit the afterlife and return, and also the creation of a rather different view of the Christian afterlife itself. Such changes, however, only came about relatively gradually and were initiated on the peripheries of Christianity rather than from its centre. The conservatism of Roman practice is revealed by one of Gregory of Tours’ best-known descriptions of the effects of disease in the West. His deacon, Agiulf, had visited Rome to collect relics in 590 and witnessed the ravages first of floods, then of the plague itself. Agiulf gave a report of a sermon preached by Pope Gregory the Great, whose predecessor, Pelagius II, had recently fallen victim to the disease. Gregory – who had not yet been enthroned – enjoined repentance and penance, and also organized litanies and processions as a way of asking the forgiveness of God. He warned that people were being carried off even before they could bewail their sins and repent, and insisted they would therefore appear before God to be judged in the state of sin in which they departed this life – hence his injunctions to repentance and his organization of penitential processions.151 Gregory I’s reaction as described by the Bishop of Tours was very much in

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keeping with what we know of the pope’s Augustinian theology. There is no suggestion of any means of purging sin between the end of one’s life on earth and the period immediately before the Last Judgement. The Roman liturgy of this period may have included Masses for those whose souls died desiring, but not having received, penance; but there is no suggestion that such Masses, which are designed to implore the mercy of God, refer to any period apart from that approaching the Last Judgement; Gregory was much more concerned to achieve proper repentance of sin ante-mortem.152 However, a different approach to these questions appears in works produced on the frontiers of Christianity, in the Irish monastic foundations which played an important role in the Christianization of not only Ireland, Scotland and England but also – from the 590s onwards – north-eastern Francia and, from 613, parts of northern Italy.

CHARISMATIC MONKS, TARIFFED PENANCE AND EPIDEMIC DISEASE Ireland had begun to convert to Christianity in the fifth century, and this process was probably still not complete by the seventh. Nevertheless, Irish monks who travelled abroad as a form of ascetic self-denial played an important role in Christianizing other areas; their actions in removing themselves from their own tribal societies were not only imbued with penitential and ascetic considerations, but also had the important effect of rendering them anomalous and liminal and therefore, potentially, exceptionally powerful in spiritual terms.153 The driving forces behind Irish monastic expansion and evangelization abroad in this period were the charismatic leaders Columba of Iona in Scotland, and Columbanus of Luxeuil in north-eastern Francia and northern Italy. Recent work stresses the importance of charismatic leaders of this type as agents of religious change, and charismatic authority has been recognized as essential to the foundation of both doctrinal and imagistic modes of religiosity.154 Max Weber’s concept of ‘charisma’ proposes that it is a special type of authority, based on a direct link with a super-empirical being or beings (in Weber’s terms, possessing ‘powers . . . not accessible to the ordinary person . . . of divine origin’) – and that it is also a revolutionary force which permits the replacement of conventional structures by new ones.155 As presented by his hagiographer, Jonas of Bobbio, Columbanus demonstrates again and again the ability to perform miracles, which Weber characterizes as the basic evidence of a connection with the divine, along with the recognition by followers of this connection that is central to the creation of charisma.156 At the same time, while the power of the charismatic appears to be rooted in the imagistic mode of religion, it can also underpin the doctrinal mode. Thus a charismatic can be the bridging figure between the two, as he may


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attract those familiar with imagistic religions to doctrinal ones.157 As Michael Wallace-Hadrill pointed out a number of years ago, there was a considerable gulf between sixth-century Frankish piety consisting of devotion to relics and local holy men, and the approach of Columbanus. The monasteries he founded in Francia and Italy were not created around urban relic shrines but instead were situated in rural areas, in two cases at fountains and pagan places of worship. Columbanus’ achievement . . . focused upon God and the relationship of God with man. It was indeed a gust of fresh air . . . His sermons or Instructiones are about God, not about saints.158

There are thirteen surviving sermons ascribed to Columbanus, some of which are addressed to his monks, but most of which also contained ideas and material that could have been delivered, in the vernacular, to a more general audience. These are works of moral exhortation in which Columbanus teaches the creed; the rooting out of vices and the planting of virtues; the trials and sorrows of the present world; the rewards of eternal life; the vanity of human desires and passions; human life as a highway; and the soul and judgement after death.159 Collectively, the sermons represent a distillation of Christian doctrine at its most austere, with a concentration on the transience of the human condition and the rewards of eternal life – the classic world-rejecting dogma of a universal religion. The moral teachings of Christianity and the relationship between the individual and the Christian God were also emphasized by Columbanus through his application of the Irish practice of penance. The Irish and British Churches developed the concept of penance, offering an alternative to the way in which it had traditionally been performed on the continent. There, penance for major sins in the conventional sixth-century fashion involved civil disability and public humiliation: penitents could not perform military service or marry (or if they were married, they had to separate from their spouse). They were made to wear sackcloth and ashes, and to leave the church when the Eucharist was offered. Once a person became a penitent, this humiliating and limiting status lasted for the rest of his or her life. Most people – understandably – postponed penance until their deathbed. Cæsarius of Arles had been concerned about this, and had tried tackling the problem by suggesting that for younger people, penance might be limited and performed more than once; but his suggestions made no great impact on the situation.160 What the Insular penitentials, or books of penance, now offered was limited, repeatable penance, based on a set tariff of penalties according to the seriousness of the sin. This approach was partly derived from the monastic tradition of private confession of faults, evil thoughts and sins to a spiritual father, a tradition we find from the earliest monastic literature onwards: rather than requiring public confession of wrongdoings, the Irish or British

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system allowed the individual to confess in private to a monk or priest. The concept of a set tariff itself, by which one could pay off one’s penitential debt, was inspired by the legal customs of the Celtic peoples (which were comparable with those of the Germanic nations). The fact that pagan Ireland had developed its own sophisticated legal culture may well have encouraged Christian churchmen to utilize elements taken from law in an effort to make Christianity seem more acceptable.161 From the point of view of the penitent it was possible, even though penances might be rigorous, to relate to the concept of a set penance for a specific offence, as these were similar to the compensatory tariffs operating in secular law. From the Church’s standpoint, the administration of penitential discipline forcibly made the point that individuals owed a moral debt to God, that their moral status was important to him, and that his observation of and judgement of their conduct was a fundamental of the Christian religion. Thus the penitent who might first have been introduced to the idea of the Christian God as creator of Heaven and earth, as expressed in the Irish hymn Altus Prosator,162 was not going to assume that he was the remote creator God found in a number of cultures, supreme and yet at the same time, in practical terms, of little or no importance (see Chapter 4 below). The practice of confession and the administration of tariffed penance by the Irish Church helped to bring home the message of the active nature of the Christian God and his awareness, through confession, of the ‘strategic information’ of the secret thoughts and actions of the individual, as well as his requirement of ‘compensation’ by means of the exaction of penance. Such teaching possibly also helped to reify difficult-to-grasp notions such as God’s omnipresence and omnipotence. But if the administration of tariffed penance had considerable advantages in assisting the spread of Christianity, it also suffered from what might be considered as a major disadvantage in times of pandemic: it focused attention on the question of what happened to the soul if one died with one’s penance incomplete. Where the traditional form of penance had been practised, it seems to have been the case that penitents could be re-admitted to communion on the point of death, although Bishop Cæsarius of Arles pointed out the dangers of deathbed penance in his sermons, insisting that those who had committed grave sins and left penance to the last moment should not automatically expect to be guaranteed a good outcome in the afterlife.163 The Penitential of Finnian (UUinniau), an Irish text of the sixth century, reveals a strict attitude towards the completion of the newer style of tariffed penances. Anyone who believed him or herself to be in danger of death was granted communion, on condition of becoming a penitent and attempting to fulfil the penance that was then imposed; but if he or she recovered only to abandon the penance, the Penitential warned, the consequences would be on the individual’s own head. It goes on to suggest that the Church would not desert such a person at the end of his or her life, which presumably means that


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it followed tradition in not denying communion at the very last moment; but it also seems to imply a lack of confidence that this would always be sufficient to save the sinner’s soul.164 This, in turn, must have raised doubts about the fate of the soul in the Christian afterlife when full penance had not been performed. Was the soul therefore condemned to eternal damnation? The Christian view of the afterlife was in itself very different from that of the pagan Irish and Franks, and the notion of Hell must have been both unfamiliar and frightening. Columbanus’ austere form of doctrinal Christianity offered little in the way of reassurance: Tremble, I beg of you . . . and with your mind ever in a crisis of fear and fright unceasingly meditate that terrible approach of the divine judgement, when before that dread judgement-seat of Christ the Judge, Fire shall try each man’s work, of what sort it is, and each as he has acted shall receive the body’s due of each, either good or ill, and when the Son of Man at His coming shall render to each according to his deeds.165

Such fears, along with doubts about the validity of deathbed penance or the worth of an incomplete penance, and the possibility of one’s soul being condemned to eternal punishment, can only have been intensified in times of plague. We know of several outbreaks of epidemic disease, including plague, in Ireland in the sixth century – the first occurrence in 544, followed by another in the 550s and a possible third in 576 – and more in the seventh. It has been calculated that in the fourteenth-century Black Death, 20 per cent of victims might recover from plague in its commonest, bubonic, form – perhaps the sort of situation which prompted Finnian/UUinniau to legislate for those who had vowed penance thinking they were about to die, but then recovered only to abandon it. In its most virulent bacteraemic and pneumonic forms, the later pestilence generally killed within a few hours to three days.166 Gregory of Tours describes dramatic and unpredictable patterns of infection and mortality when the Justinianic pandemic hit Marseilles in 588, where first one household perished and after an interval the rest of Marseilles was affected. The plague then apparently burnt itself out, only to return some time later.167 In circumstances of this sort, people who had been given set penances may well have wondered what would happen to their souls if they were carried off suddenly in mid-penance. Were they damned to Hell for all eternity? The answer seems to be that some Irish churchmen abroad, and apparently at home as well, gradually began to develop a more liminal picture of death and the relationship between life and afterlife in an attempt to reassure their flocks that this was not the case. Attempts to make the prospect of the Christian afterlife less unattractive in times of epidemic were not without precedent: as we have seen, in the pandemic which began in 251 ce, the North African Bishop Cyprian of Carthage had suggested that not just the martyrs but even the ordinary faithful might enter the presence of Christ on death.168 But this had been a minority

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opinion. Now the Church’s discourse relating to the afterlife began to shift further to incorporate popular ideas. In the first instance, we come across the idea that the soul might leave the body, visiting the afterlife to experience a form of preliminary judgement, before then returning to this world to fulfil a penance. It is significant that this idea is first expressed in Book Two of the Life of Columbanus by Jonas of Bobbio, written in the 640s and purporting to describe events at the double house of Faremoutiers. This was a community of nuns and monks which owed its origins to the activities of Columbanus and his successor as Abbot of Luxeuil Eustasius, amongst the aristocracy of north-eastern Francia in the late sixth and early seventh centuries. While the Franks of this area were technically Christians, it fell to Columbanus and his disciples to take Christianity beyond a superficial level, administering penance and often encroaching on the prerogatives of an increasingly resentful episcopate (damned by Jonas as insufficiently active in spreading the Christian message).169 The Franks of the north-east, as we have seen, still largely clung to traditional modes of inhumation and, presumably, to the traditional modes of thought underlying these practices. The collision between the new – and in many ways more effective – form of penance and the questions it raised, on one hand about the fate of the soul after death in Christianity and on the other about the widespread belief in the liminal nature of death amongst the Franks, would begin to generate some new conceptualizations of the Christian afterlife.

THE EVOLVING CHRISTIAN AFTERLIFE In Book Two of the Life of Columbanus, Jonas offers us the extraordinary spectacle of the temporary ‘death’ of Sisetrude, the cellaress of the nunnery of Faremoutiers. Because she died before expiating all her sins on earth, her soul was actually sent back to re-enter her body so that she could make complete penance before dying once more. Sisetrude related what she had experienced when her soul had temporarily left her body and reached Heaven, only to be sent back again to earth. (In the same work and in a variant on the theme of expiation, Eustasius, Abbot of Luxeuil, experiences a vision in which he is asked whether he would rather suffer extreme corporeal pain for thirty days before being allowed to die and enter heaven, or less severe ones for forty.170) The most remarkable feature of the story, however, is that her soul is allowed to leave her body; the Life Christianizes this idea by specifying that it is taken up by two angelic youths in white robes, rather than presenting its departure as a spontaneous event, as in the folk narratives discussed earlier. Jonas narrates a number of deaths at Faremoutiers: the monastery’s particularly intensive penitential regime, in which nuns were required to confess three times a day, seems to have necessitated


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attempts to reassure the community that a penitential debt could be repaid. Jonas does not attribute any of the deaths at Faremoutiers specifically to plague itself, but refers in several cases to fever, which might be read to mean that another disease, such as malaria, was prevalent in the community. Whatever the actual cause of the nuns’ deaths, the sequence of illness, visits of the soul to the afterlife, and a final expiation of sin before death and admission to Heaven, played out across several chapters of the work, reflects concerns which must have been all too real during the pandemic of 541–750.171 St Augustine had denied that it was possible for a soul to visit the other world and return; but a more liminal construction of the Christian afterlife, already tentatively proposed in the popular Passion of St Perpetua and more extensively in the Visio Pauli, was now beginning to emerge. A soul might see the afterlife for a brief spell, only to be returned to its body again to complete its penance. For the moment, this interpretation was offered within monastic circles only; the favorable outcomes depicted by Jonas applied only to nuns and monks of exemplary life, and how far these ideas became known outside monasteries is debatable. But it may be indicative both of the extent to which traditional beliefs persisted in this region, and also of the very recent association between an aspirant Frankish aristocracy and monasticism, that such suggestions could be made in a monastic context. A more radical approach to the problem of incomplete penance would reach a wider audience in the account of the out-of-body experience of the soul of the Irish monk Fursey (d. c.650). Like Sisetrude’s, Fursey’s soul was swept up into the next world by angels as he lay gravely ill and unconscious. In this other world, high above the earth, his soul was attacked by demons, who took him for a dead sinner and claimed him as their own as he had not performed penance for all his misdeeds. There was no room in this existence for penance, they declared, and insisted the angels hand him over for punishment in the flames. But Fursey’s guardians suggested that there might indeed be room for penance in the afterlife. The connection between this changing view of the afterlife and plague is implied in the latter part of the narrative, where Fursey’s soul goes on to meet those of two Irish holy men, who prophesy plague and famine to come. The account of Fursey’s experience locates it in Ireland, where paganism still survived to an extent and where traditional beliefs about the dead were reflected in the practice of furnished burial, decapitation of bodies, and even the persistence of cremation ‘until well into the first Christian millennium’.172 The dispute between angel and devils may itself reflect differing views held in the Irish Church on the subject of penance and its continuance in the afterlife, when Fursey was a monk in his native country in the 620s; his subsequent departure for England, where he founded the important East Anglian monastery of Cnobheresburg in the 630s, could have been caused by disagreements over this new and radical suggestion. The other possibility is that the view enshrined in the text of the Life of Fursey, composed

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shortly after his death c.650, was actually developed in England or even possibly after he arrived in Francia in the 640s and founded the monastery of Lagny, as its narrative was relevant to the needs of both the Franks and, as we shall see, the Anglo-Saxons.173 It appears that in areas where the Christian religion was comparatively new or its implantation was relatively superficial, the many differences between Christianity on one hand and traditional intuitions and beliefs on the other concerning body, soul, death and the afterlife were thrown into sharp relief by the development of tariffed penance and the presence of epidemic disease. The Church did not make changes to its funerary rituals, which remained focused on the separation of body and soul and their eventual re-union at the end of time. To the Christian faithful it offered the prospect of intercession, which might help the souls of the dead in a period of purgation immediately preceding the Last Judgement, along with the cult of saints. The latter offered both a limited means of communication with the dead and assurance of bodily resurrection, as well as an affective, emotional tie to the Church. Nevertheless, in some areas where Christianity was only weakly established, churchmen also began to respond to the concerns generated by the pandemic affecting Western Europe in this period, gradually elaborating a discourse of the relationship between this world and the next which had a little more in common with popular conceptions and needs than the strictest doctrinal view allowed. All of these developments would play an important part in the reception and diffusion of Christianity amongst the Anglo-Saxons in the seventh century.

3

Gregory the Great and the English Mission

‘NOT ANGLES BUT ANGELS’ Two works written by Northumbrians, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, composed in the 730s, and the slightly earlier anonymous Life of Gregory the Great, by a member of the religious community of Whitby, give somewhat differing versions of a story which has become one of the best-known anecdotes in medieval history. The Whitby Life relates that before he became pope, Gregory heard of the arrival of certain fair-haired and fair-skinned boys or youths in Rome. When he enquired as to their race, they answered: ‘The people that we belong to are called Angles.’ ‘Angels of God,’ he replied. Then he asked further, ‘What is the name of the king of that people?’ They said ‘Ælli’, whereupon he said, ‘Alleluia, God’s praise must be heard there.’ Then he asked the name of their own tribe, to which they answered ‘Deire’, and he replied: ‘They shall flee from the wrath of God (de ira) to the faith.’1

The Life asserts that Gregory was so moved by this encounter that he asked the Pope to let him leave the city for England on a mission of evangelization – but having set out, he soon returned after receiving an indication from God that he should stay in Rome.2 This charming fiction, repeated in essence by Bede, who says it is one of the traditions of his people,3 purports to explain how Gregory first heard about the English and determined to bring them into the Christian fold. Both he and the anonymous Whitby writer reflect the existence by the eighth century of an important myth – the myth that England, or even Northumbria, occupied a special place in Gregory’s consciousness and in the history of his papacy, preordained and miraculously foretold. By the eighth century, Gregory’s status as the Anglo-Saxons’ ‘own’ pope would lead Bede to treat him with special reverence and to reproduce many of his letters regarding the first mission to England in the Ecclesiastical History. But the origins of Gregory’s involvement with the English peoples, as reflected in his own writings, have less dramatic and more complex origins. What appears

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to be the earliest reference in Gregory’s writings to the conversion is shrouded in obscurity. In a passage in his Moralia, completed in 595, Gregory appears to allude to Christianization in Britain, when he writes of ‘barbarous tongues’ chanting the Hebrew ‘alleluia’ as far away as ‘Britannia’.4 This reference has puzzled many commentators. It is just possible that it might allude to the recent conversion of some of the Anglo-Saxon peoples by the British Christian churches – though even if it is the case that such events had actually occurred, we have no way of knowing how they had come to Gregory’s attention. If he had heard reports of the Christianization of some of the Anglo-Saxons, it may have made him begin to think in terms of the possibility of gathering greater numbers into the Christian fold. However, a later letter of Gregory’s might possibly be read to suggest that he had been unaware of the existence of British churches before the arrival of his mission to the Anglo-Saxons in England.5 As it is, these comments remain enigmatic and could simply be explained as the result of a post-595 revision of the text of the Moralia. Why might Gregory have sent a mission to Anglo-Saxon England in the mid 590s? At this stage in his pontificate he had virtually no practical experience of dealing with non-Christians, and in his great theological works he gives no particular thought to their conversion. It is true that the Moralia – in origin a series of conferences to the monastic circle in which he lived in Constantinople, set down formally in writing soon after he became pope – does make a distinction between preaching to the faithful and to infideles. There, Gregory writes that the Church ‘preaches knowledge of the Trinity’ to infidels as it preaches the four cardinal virtues to the faithful: the holy Church, he maintains, accommodates its preaching carefully to its hearers’ minds.6 This passage might be interpreted as a key to understanding the missionary development of the Western Church, if seen only in the context of Gregory’s later statement that non-believers should be led to the Church ‘by steps and degrees’. However, a recent analysis of the context of this passage has demonstrated that we cannot read any great significance into what is, in effect, a passing remark and not a statement of policy.7 Far from seeking to set out the basis of the Western Church’s approach to non-Christians, Gregory here is merely using the contrast between preaching to Christians and non-Christians to explicate a text from Job: ‘Can you bind the glittering stars of the Pleiades or loose the turning bands of Orion?’ His aim is not to explain the Church’s policies, but to illustrate a piece of Old Testament rhetoric, which takes as its basis the way in which the seven stars of the latter constellation appear to rotate, so that it appears sometimes with three stars at the top, sometimes four.8 In the same way, Gregory suggests, by way of illustration, the Church sometimes preaches the three persons or the four virtues, depending on its audience. But apart from remarking that the Church is therefore varying its preaching according to its audience, Gregory does not develop his ideas further.

G R E G O R Y T H E G R E AT A N D T H E E N G L I S H M I S S I O N

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A similar attitude is demonstrated in the Liber Regulae Pastoralis, composed in the first year of Gregory’s pontificate. There, Gregory often draws out and makes explicit what has been explored in the more diffuse Moralia. The Regula Pastoralis articulates some of Gregory’s most fundamental ideas about the Christian life, both active and contemplative, seeking to express the resolution of a conflict which had preoccupied him since the beginning of his religious career, but particularly since he became pope. Gregory aims to instruct Christian leaders or rectores – who may not only be bishops or pastors, but even members of the secular elite – in techniques of pastoral care. Here we might surely expect to find – if Gregory considered the question to be an important one – some development of the allusion to preaching to the faithful and to unbelievers contained in his Moralia. However, it is striking that although Book Three is particularly concerned with preaching, amongst its many categories of those who are to be ministered to – such as men and women, young and old, rich and poor, sad and joyful, single and married, the rash and the humble, the greater and the lesser sinner, the secret evildoer and the secret performer of good deeds – there is no reference to particular techniques of preaching to non-Christians, or contrast between the types of preaching required when dealing with pagans and Christians.9

JEWS AND PAGANS How did Gregory deal with non-Christians in practice? Did he learn anything from his involvement with them that might have led him to launch his mission to England, or helped him with its organization? In the course of the 590s, he came into contact with both Judaism and also with Italian paganism, and his writings reflect contrasting attitudes to two different types of religion. About twenty of the letters in his Register are devoted to practical questions concerning the Jewish communities of Italy, Francia and Spain, where his intervention was called for on several occasions by the communities themselves, who complained of ill-treatment by Christian clergy.10 Gregory was prepared to defend Jewish communities against those who attempted to further infringe their already limited rights, censuring, for example, the Bishop of Terracina who had expelled the Jews of his city from buildings which they had used as their synagogue.11 His views on Jews and Judaism are revealed in his exegetical work, the Magna Moralia, where he wrote that The synagogue stands as the redeemer’s mother according to the flesh: from the Jewish nation he came to us in the flesh visibly. But the synagogue kept its redeemer covered up with the veil of a scripture read literally, in failing to open the eyes of the mind to the spiritual meaning of his coming . . .12

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Implicit in Gregory’s exegesis is the recognition that Jews were worshippers of the same God as Christians, although in his view they had wilfully refused to see the truth of Christian revelation. But the same passage reveals his confidence in their future conversion: There will be a time . . . when Christ will be visible even to the synagogue. There will doubtless be a time at the end of the world when he shall make himself known to the remnants of his nation – just as he is, as God.

Gregory’s conviction that the Jews would eventually accept Christianity meant that he was less aggressive in his attitude towards them than were many of his clergy.13 Towards paganism and its remnants, religions and practices without either any relationship to Christianity or any written doctrinal basis, his attitude was very different. Gregory followed the long-established pattern of the coercive regime of the Christian Roman Empire. Force was an acceptable, even a normal means of the propagation of the faith.14

He took action against the many ‘infidel’ peasants who lived on ecclesiastical properties, and in 599 he wrote to Bishop Januarius of Cagliari advocating the use of force if necessary against those who continued in non-Christian practices: We vehemently exhort your fraternity to maintain pastoral vigilance against idolworshippers, soothsayers and magicians; to preach publicly among the people against those men who do such things and recall them by persuasive exhortation from the pollution of such sacrilege. If, however, you find them unwilling to change and correct their ways, we wish you to arrest them with a fervent zeal and, if they are slaves, to chastise them with blows and torments . . . If, however, they are free men, let them be led to penitence by strict confinement . . .15

He ordered Bishop Agnellus of Terracina to investigate reports of ‘tree-worshipping’ and other ‘nefarious’ practices, and, if they proved true, to punish the perpetrators.16 Gregory was also aware that in the Sicilian diocese of Tyndaris, some ‘worshippers of idols’ had converted, but others remained pagan, protected either by the patronage of the powerful or by their remote location.17 In this latter case he urged coercion, recommending that the bishop obtain help from the secular authorities to produce conversions. Gregory did not even recognize imagistic pagan practices and religion as religion and his only strategy for dealing with them, when the pagans concerned were of minimal political or social importance or where Christians resorted to traditional practices, was coercion. He had to employ a slightly different strategy in the case of the Barbaricini, a North African tribe who had been expelled by the Vandals and taken up residence in Sardinia, where they lived by banditry and


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violence. They were defeated in 594 by the imperial military commander, who seems to have insisted on their conversion as part of the terms of peace.18 Gregory could not consider the tribe’s cults and practices as a religion – to him, they were ‘insensate animals [who] . . . worship sticks and stones’.19 But he found that the leader of the Barbaricini, Hospito, had already been baptized, and sent a letter to him exhorting him to lead his people to Christ.20 He also sent two papal agents, Felix and Cyriacus, to the island to oversee the process of Christianization, as he could not rely completely on Januarius of Cagliari; and he revived the ancient see of Fausiana to help provide a proper ecclesiastical framework.21 However, beyond the establishment of conventional diocesan structures, preaching and baptism, Gregory employed no special tactics for dealing with these followers of non-doctrinal religion. His letter to Hospito simply suggests that the baptized leader should be able to admonish his people to set their eyes on the goal of eternal life; in its brevity and austerity it makes an interesting contrast with the way he would later address the Anglo-Saxon ruler of Kent. A potentially important group of pagans in Italy with whom Gregory might have interacted was the Lombards – or at least a part of this people, whose religious history is extremely complex. When the Lombards had first entered Italy they were largely pagan, but their leaders had embraced Arian Christianity. Their rulers during Gregory’s pontificate, first Authari, then Agilulf, were Arian rather than Catholic Christians. To complicate matters further, Agilulf ’s wife Theudelinda was Catholic – but a Tricapitoline schismatic and not, therefore, in communion with Rome.22 Some Lombards were, like their king, Arian; some were Catholic; and many seem to have remained pagan.23 The tangled nature of these circumstances effectively blocked Gregory from any meaningful attempt to deal with pagan belief or practice. The initial and most obvious problem for him when he became pope was Authari’s hostility to Catholicism. After Authari’s death, Gregory wrote to all the bishops of Italy, reminding them that the late king had forbidden his people to give their sons Catholic baptism, and rejoicing that after issuing this prohibition, Authari had died. Bishops were now to encourage Arian Lombards to have their sons baptized as Catholics and to preach eternal life to them ‘without ceasing’.24 After this, his energies appear to have been devoted to persuading Queen Theudelinda to end the Three Chapters Schism, but he seems to have underestimated the depth of northern feeling and he never persuaded her to give up her attachment to schismatic Catholicism (a course of action which would have undermined her husband’s independent position). Unable to establish his authority over Theudelinda – indeed, by the latter stages of their correspondence, he seems to have been reduced to defending his own orthodoxy – Gregory failed to ask her to use her influence to combat either Arianism or paganism amongst the Lombards. In cases where Lombards had ventured into dioceses which actually recognized his authority, such as Narni and Luni, Gregory

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briskly commanded their bishops to ensure that there was preaching to Arians and pagans alongside the Catholic faithful, but laid out no special plan of how to deal with these groups.25 Priests were simply to admonish pagans to stop carrying out their cults and to teach them the fear of God and – the goal he emphasized to Hospito – the prize of eternal life. In line with his actions and instructions about pagan minorities elsewhere in Italy, Gregory seems to have believed that their minority position there would render them susceptible to Christian pressure; his correspondence reveals no detailed knowledge of Lombard paganism and no strategy for approaching it. All in all, it seems that in the 590s, although pastorally committed to the spread of Christianity, Gregory had devoted no real thought to the mechanics of conversion and Christianization. Robert Markus has suggested that this is because Gregory was living, imaginatively even more than in reality, in a ‘radically Christianized society’ and that in Gregory’s time ‘Everyone, for practical purposes, was a Christian’.26 Looking at the question in terms of modes of religiosity, we could also say that he displayed incomprehension of and hostility to non-doctrinal religion, and had developed no special strategies for dealing with it.

THE BEGINNINGS OF THE ANGLO-SAXON MISSION Given all of this, how did Gregory first become involved with the Anglo-Saxons? In practical terms, it appears to have been concerns in Francia that would gradually draw him into involvement in England. In 595, Bishop Virgilius of Arles had written to him requesting that he be appointed papal vicar and allowed to use the pallium. This request was supported – and had quite possibly been initiated – by Childebert II, ruler of most of Francia since 593, in the hope of extending his own power and prestige. When Gregory granted Virgilius’ request, he also entered into correspondence with the king in an attempt to obtain his backing for reform within the Frankish Church, asking him to prevent the ‘heresy’ of simony and the consecration of laymen as bishops. Gregory must have been well-informed about the political situation at Childebert’s court: in the following month he wrote not just to Childebert but also, separately, to his mother Queen Brunichildis, commending to them both Candidus, who was to replace the patrician Dynamius as rector of the patrimonies of the Roman Church in Francia. In both letters Gregory appears as a supplicant, craving royal support in the administration of his ‘little patrimony’ – patrimoniolum – in Provence: to Brunichildis he writes that he hopes that the lands may now be managed profitably, while to Childebert he expresses the hope that if any property belonging to the patrimony has been wrongly alienated, it may now be restored.27


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It is in the context of the depleted Gallic patrimony that we find Gregory’s writing to Candidus himself, instructing him to hasten to use any income from the lands – Gallic solidi which could not be spent in the papal states – either on clothes for the poor or on English boys about seventeen or eighteen years old. The boys are destined for the service of the Church and are to be sent into monasteries, but because they are pagans, they are to be accompanied by a priest who is to baptize any who falls ill and looks likely to die on the journey.28 In the contents of Gregory’s letter to Candidus, we appear to see the origins of the legend of the English slave-boys purchased in Rome by Gregory recounted both in the Whitby Life and by Bede. However, far from confirming the legend’s picture of a simple impulse towards evangelization on Gregory’s part, the letter and its predecessors demonstrate that even if he had begun to think about the Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons – and this is by no means clear – his initial involvement with England was bound up with his relations with the Franks and with his anxieties over Church possessions in Francia. Gregory’s immediate agenda in his dealings with the Frankish king and his mother was the restoration of property which might have been taken away from his ‘little patrimony’. But Childebert may also have encouraged him in return to take a more active interest in the conversion of the Anglo-Saxon peoples – particularly those who had the closest links to Francia. What motivations might have led Childebert to take this step? Although he had controlled most of Francia since 593, it was his rival, the young King Chlothar, who had political links to England through the marriage of Bertha, a daughter of the late King Charibert of Paris, to Æthelberht, who would become King of Kent – a marriage which had taken place some time between 575 and 581 at the instigation of her uncle, Chilperic. Æthelberht’s Frankish marriage reflects the close relationship between eastern Kent and Francia indicated by archaeological finds of Frankish goods and in the name of his father, Eormenric.29 When he married, Æthelberht was a pagan, but Bertha was allowed to keep her own religion. She arrived in Kent accompanied by Liudhard, described by Bede as a bishop: his statement is confirmed by the evidence of a coin found at the Church of St Martin in Canterbury, which bears the inscription ‘LEU.DARDUS EPS’.30 Through his marriage, Æthelberht was, by 593, drawn into the struggle for authority within Francia. On Chilperic’s death he was succeeded by Chlothar, who was too young to rule personally. Nevertheless, from Childebert’s perspective, the presence of Bertha and Liudhard at Canterbury was unwelcome evidence of another court’s hegemony over Kent. In these circumstances it is not too difficult to see him attempting to encourage Gregory in the Christianization of the English in the hope of counterbalancing or reducing his rival’s influence across the channel. Why did Gregory instruct that English slaves be purchased and dedicated to

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the service of God? The traditional assumption is that he intended to have them trained and then sent back to England to convert their people.31 But even if this were his plan, it can only have been a long-term one: they were pagan teenagers and it would take a number of years before they could be baptized, instructed and returned to their native land as missionaries. It is difficult to imagine Gregory, who laid great stress on contemplative attainment, allowing them to return before a considerable time had passed, even if they were to be accompanied by more experienced clergy. In fact, Gregory’s letter does not suggest urgent enthusiasm for conversion as Candidus could also have spent the money on clothing for the poor. If he had at this point formulated the idea that the Anglo-Saxons might be brought into the Christian fold, he does not seem to have been able to see a way of putting the idea into execution in the near future. But his approach to the English would develop during the following year when he despatched a mission, consisting of monks from his own monastery, headed by their prior Augustine, to Kent. What prompted Gregory’s more direct approach? This is a question to which we can only offer hypothetical answers. He evidently realized the significance of the undertaking, as it was launched from his own monastery and headed by his own prior, Augustine. This choice of personnel reflects Gregory’s customary policy of using trusted monks, men of spiritual power and contemplative wisdom, to oversee reform within the Western Church: he sent Abbot Cyriacus, ‘the father of many monasteries’, to ensure the smooth running of conversion and the revival of an old diocese in Sardinia; and his own deacon, Peter, was put in charge of the Church’s patrimonies in Sicily. However, it is not clear what spurred him into direct action. Whatever the legends recounted by Bede and the Whitby Life might suggest, there is no evidence that he was inspired by learning in detail about the English from the slaves purchased by Candidus. There is nothing in his directions to Candidus instructing specifically that the boys were to be sent to Rome, and they may even have been put into Frankish monasteries. One argument put forward to account for the shift in Gregory’s approach and the launching of the mission is that it was sent out in response to new initiatives by Æthelberht himself, who now feared that his links to the weaker of the two Merovingian rulers might lead the more powerful, Childebert, to invade Kent.32 Interesting though this hypothesis is, it cannot be proved. Childebert’s rejection of a Lombard bride in favour of a Catholic Visigothic princess, and his aggression towards the Lombards, have been taken as evidence of his hostility towards those who did not share his religious orthodoxy; but both events had important political as well as religious dimensions, and both had taken place in the late 580s. There is no direct evidence that he intended to invade Kent or that Æthelberht was concerned about a possible invasion. The argument rests in part on another hypothesis – the suggestion that Bishop Liudhard was now


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dead; but even if that were true, it does not necessarily mean that Æthelberht was prepared to make overtures to the Burgundian-Austrasian court. His queen, Bertha, is unlikely to have encouraged such a move, which would have isolated her politically and possibly rendered her own position insecure. In addition, Æthelberht’s actions on Augustine’s arrival suggest that he was unlikely to have made approaches to Childebert at this stage. However, if Liudhard were indeed dead, Childebert may have thought it a propitious moment at which to encourage Gregory to take decisive action. It is easy to imagine Childebert continuing to encourage papal interest in the pagan English as this, if it came to fruition with his support, would certainly work to overshadow Neustria’s connections with Kent.33 An alternative or additional explanation is that Gregory was aware that at this point Kent had achieved a position of dominance over the other southern Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.34 In 596, Gregory claims that he has heard that Angli were desirous of conversion – though later in the same passage, he also expresses uncertainty about the wishes of these same Angli.35 This reference to all the Anglo-Saxon peoples as Angli could be read to indicate that he was aware of the coming together of Jutes, Saxons and Angles under Æthelberht’s overlordship and had begun to realize that a mission might yield considerable results in terms of converts, if Æthelberht himself would not only accept Christianity but also go on to impose it on the other kingdoms and populations under his control. The little we know about the mission itself has to be deduced mainly from Gregory’s own letters. It appears to have set out some time in the spring of 596 and quickly run into difficulties, as in July we find Gregory writing to Augustine’s monks appointing Augustine as their abbot and ordering them to complete the task they had begun.36 They were not to allow themselves to be deterred either by the difficulties of the journey or by ‘the tongues of evil-speaking men’. From this letter and its timing, it has been deduced that Augustine and his monks had travelled no further than the Rhone valley when they learned of the death of King Childebert. Hostilities now broke out in northern Francia between the Neustrians and the forces of Childebert’s young heirs, Theuderich and Theudebert. Augustine’s party appears to have lost heart and he seems to have lacked either the will or the authority to make them go on. He was forced to return to Rome to seek instructions. Gregory sent him back with clear orders: Augustine was, as abbot, provided with full powers of compulsion over the monks and the party was to continue on its journey. The mission’s hesitation and confusion in the face of Childebert’s death suggest that he had been closely linked with Gregory’s decision to send out a group of monks from his own monastery and that once the Frankish king was dead, they were apprehensive about their position. The letters Gregory sent to Francia in the same month in which he wrote to Augustine’s monks demonstrate his own anxieties about the two projects

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in Francia which he had launched, the mission to England and the recovery of the lost revenues of the Roman Church’s Gallic patrimony.37 He despatched a number of letters – mostly to be carried by Augustine himself – in which he exhorted bishops, aristocrats and the Burgundian-Austrasian dynasty to help him with both. It appears that, while Childebert may have encouraged him to evangelize the English, he had not been willing or able, in the short interval since 595, to provide much in the way of backing for Gregory’s attempts to control the patrimony. Gregory wrote sternly to Virgilius of Arles ordering him to assist Augustine and his mission, but also reminding him that his predecessor had kept in his own hands patrimonial revenues that should have been sent to Rome, and adding that it was execrable that what had been preserved by kings should have been taken away by bishops.38 Augustine was entrusted with letters addressed to Bishops Etherius of Lyons, Pelagius of Tours, Serenus of Marseilles,39 Desiderius of Vienne and Syagrius of Autun, asking for help for both himself and Candidus;40 and also one to Protasius of Aix which not only asked for assistance once again but also demanded that he instruct Virgilius to hand over the revenues of the patrimony.41 Augustine also carried with him a letter soliciting the help of Arigius, patrician of Gaul, asking for support for himself and for Candidus as governor of the patrimony which was in Arigius’ region.42 At the same time, he took a highly flattering letter to Childebert’s young heirs, Theuderich and Theudebert, in which Gregory gave prominence to the idea of converting the English – but once again asked for support for Candidus.43 Having first agreed to the regent Brunichildis’ suggestion that he hand over relics to the Bishop of Saintes,44 Gregory also sent some to her.45 These actions appear to have been a prelude or an accompaniment to a letter sent with Augustine which asked both for her support for the English mission and assistance for Candidus.46 It looks as though, having being encouraged to launch a mission by Childebert and initially hoping that it would also bear fruit in the vexed matter of the patrimony – something which it actually failed to do – Gregory was now attempting to sell both enterprises to the dead ruler’s sons and to the regent Brunichildis. He used every means at his disposal to convince them. When he wrote to Theuderich and Theudebert in July 596, he suggested that the conversion of the Angli would increase their power: Since God omnipotent has adorned your kingdom with rectitude of faith and has made it conspicuous among other nations by the integrity of its Christian religion, we have conceived great expectations of you, that you may by all means desire that your subjects be converted to the faith in virtue of which you are their kings and lords.47

This is a remarkable statement as it implies that the kings had some sort of authority over England. Gregory was plainly hoping to gain assistance by holding out the promise of political advantage in return for help and support. He


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played another political card, insinuating that the Neustrians had failed in their Christian duty of converting their neighbours: . . . it has come to our knowledge that the people of the Angli is desirous, through the mercy of God, of being converted to the Christian religion, but that neighbouring priests neglect them . . .48

He repeated similar complaints to Brunichildis, whose help he also solicited. But although he is careful to suggest at this juncture that the mission is bound to be blessed with success because the Angli are ready for conversion, he also lets slip that in reality he is much less certain about the disposition of the potential converts: . . . it has been our care to send to them . . . Augustine . . . with other servants of God . . . to whom we have enjoined to take with them some priests from the neighbouring parts, with whom they may be able to ascertain the minds of the Angli . . . that through them we might be able to learn their wishes . . .49

Such admissions might easily have undermined his case. But however uncertain the undertaking may have been in reality, Gregory’s charm offensive seems to have worked and his enterprise apparently gained the support of Brunichildis and her grandsons. The queen-regent must have seen, as Childebert had before her, the chance to outmanoeuvre Neustria through missionary activity and association with the pope. The venture was also supported by Brunichildis’ favourite bishop, Syagrius of Autun, who probably consecrated Augustine bishop when the later was en route for England. Gregory would later reward him with the privilege of the pallium and thank him for his assistance.50 But no-one was thanked more effusively than Brunichildis: in 601, Gregory would look back on her support for the mission and assure her that she had done more for it than anyone else – except God himself.51 Such an excess of diplomatic politeness towards Brunichildis may be due to the fact that, at the same time, we find Gregory also thanking her grandsons’ rival, King Chlothar of Neustria.52 Chlothar had been about twelve years old when the Gregorian mission set out in 596 and his grandmother, the formidable Fredegund, had died in either that or the following year. Thus he may not have been in a position initially to realize the importance of the mission or to do anything about his opponents’ backing for it – hence Gregory’s complaints about lack of provision of priests. But his assistance was acknowledged in 601. Had Chlothar at last been forced into action by his defeat by Theudebert and Theuderich at Orvanne in 600, and decided to offer some help so as not to be outmanoeuvred in Kent as well? Gregory’s letter suggests that he expects Chlothar to provide even more assistance in the future, so his initiative may well have been of recent date and spurred on by his political and military difficulties.

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This hypothesis may be confirmed by a letter sent by Gregory to Bertha about the same time. It strongly suggests that Bertha had not been active in bringing her husband to Christianity, and instructs her to take on a more committed role in urging him to spread the new religion: And indeed you ought some time ago now, as being truly a Christian, to have inclined the spirits of our glorious son, your husband, by the good influence of your prudence, to follow, for the good of his kingdom and of his own soul, the faith which you profess – so that for him, and for the conversion of the whole nation through him, fit reward might be born to you in the joys of Heaven. For seeing, as we have said, that Your Glory is both fortified by a right faith as well as instructed in letters, this should have been neither tardy of accomplishment nor difficult for you. And since, by the will of God, the time is now suitable, go ahead: so that with the co-operation of divine grace, you can make up with increase what has been neglected. For these reasons, strengthen by continual exhortation the mind of your glorious husband in love of the Christian faith; let your solicitude pour into him an increase of love for God, and so kindle his spirits even for the fullest conversion of the nation subject to him . . .53

The most likely interpretation of the letter is that Bertha had held back from encouraging a mission she perceived as being linked with a rival court to the one with which she was associated. But now, as Chlothar was lending his support to Augustine, she was being asked to do the same. And in 613, in a development that few in 600 would have predicted, Chlothar II would become sole ruler in Francia. This would ensure that it was the Neustrian connection which would, in the years immediately following, exercise an important influence over the development of Kentish Christianity (see Chapter 6).

THE MISSION ARRIVES IN KENT Bede’s description of Æthelberht’s first meeting with Augustine and his party suggests that the king did not receive them with honour or deference: on the contrary . . . sitting in the open air [Æthelberht] commanded Augustine and his comrades to come thither to talk to him. He took care that they should not meet in any building, for he held the traditional superstition that, if they practised any magic art, they might deceive him and get the better of him as soon as he entered.54

Is it entirely likely that a king married to a Christian wife, who had brought her own chaplain with her from Francia, was as afraid of clergymen as this suggests? It is possible that the appearance of men dressed in what looked to Anglo-Saxons like women’s clothing suggested to the king a type of ritual practitioner associated with spells and enchantments (see Chapter 4 below). But it may also have suited


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Æthelberht to find a pretext for putting Augustine at an initial disadvantage.55 Now that Childebert was dead and his successors were two youths and a female regent, the secular political impetus behind the mission was no longer so formidable and there was no urgent need to consider baptism. There is no record of Bertha – or Liudhard, if he were still alive – having anything to do with the mission. Indeed, as we have seen, Gregory was less than satisfied with her attitude up to 601 and it is likely that she kept her distance from a mission which she perceived as coming from a court hostile to Chlothar’s. The success of the mission in its early years is difficult to assess. Bede’s presentation of its progress in the Ecclesiastical History is thought to be based partly on traditions preserved orally and partly on his attempts to rationalize an incomplete set of papal correspondence, brought to him by Nothelm, later Archbishop of Canterbury.56 A number of question marks surround the progress made by Augustine and his followers in the years between 597 and 601. In July 598 Gregory wrote, in a letter to Eulogius, Patriarch of Alexandria, that more than ten thousand of the Angli had been baptized and that Augustine and his monks were so resplendent with miracles that they seemed to imitate the apostles.57 It is noticeable that there is no specific mention of the king’s baptism, though it is hard to imagine the mission getting very far without this taking place. Augustine may have been making some headway with conversions by emphasizing the more imagistic elements already accommodated by Christianity. It is noticeable that although Gregory mentions miracles to Eulogius, a letter sent to Augustine in June 601 issues warnings.58 In a typically Gregorian turn of phrase and thought, the Pope rejoices that the souls of the Angli are drawn ‘by outward miracles to inward grace’, but considers that the power to perform miracles must be a source of fear – precisely because of its capacity to engender pride – as well as joy. As commentators have noted, it was certainly not that Gregory did not believe in miracles; he considered, however, that they had been more frequent and necessary in the times of the apostles. But at this stage it is his doctrinal approach which is most apparent. He states that this is an occasion for the most serious fear; he urges Augustine to judge himself ‘within’, and points out that even Moses was judged at fault by God although he had performed so many ‘signs’.59 The letter of June 601 sent to Augustine forms part of a burst of diplomatic activity on Gregory’s part which suggests that he realized that the mission was in a position to capitalize on the support for it now given by Chlothar and Bertha. Not only did he write to Augustine and to Bertha, urging her to make up for her past inaction, but in June 601 he also exhorted Æthelberht to behave like a new Constantine and to spread the faith amongst the peoples subject to him. This seems to confirm Gregory’s apparent understanding of Æthelberht’s preeminence as ruler; and Æthelberht, as we shall see, was in a position to compel the baptism of both the East Anglian and East Saxon rulers. Gregory also sent

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additional personnel to Augustine, to reinforce his missionary efforts: three of the men he despatched, Mellitus, Justus and Paulinus, would go on to play key roles in the nascent English Church. He appears to have envisaged the settingup – in an echo of the earlier organization of the Roman Church in Britain – of a Church centred on two metropolitans, one at London and the other at York.60 His privileging of London, when Augustine was actually based at Canterbury, is not perhaps quite as out of touch with reality as modern commentators have suggested. Augustine may have informed Gregory that Æthelberht exercised influence over this area through his sister Ricula’s marriage to the East Saxon dynast Sledd. Gregory may conceivably have expected Augustine himself to move to London: Bede notes that Æthelberht founded the Church of St Paul there.61 Gregory envisaged that after Augustine’s death, a bishop of London would exercise supreme authority in the south of the country and, if he were the senior of the two metropolitans, over the whole English Church. But although Augustine consecrated Mellitus as the first bishop of the East Saxons in 604, London would prove less than welcoming to Christianity once its ruler Sæberht, the son of Ricula and Sledd, died in the second decade of the seventh century; and Canterbury retained its pre-eminence. When writing to Æthelberht in June 601, Gregory instructed him to destroy pagan idols and shrines.62 Just over a month later, he had apparently taken further thought about the English mission and was, in the light of what looked like conditions more favourable to its success, beginning to evolve what we might regard as a distinctive missionary strategy in regard to non-doctrinal religion. In July he despatched a letter after Abbot Mellitus, one of the additional personnel he had sent to help Augustine, and who was at that date making his way to England through Francia, effectively abandoning his instruction to Æthelberht to remove pagan idols and shrines. Now, he instructed Mellitus that, while ‘idols’ should be removed, the fana themselves, if well built, should be preserved, sprinkled with holy water and furnished with altars. In place of sacrifices to pagan gods, Gregory envisages that animals may be killed and then eaten at feasts on saints’ days or on the anniversaries of the dedication of these new churches. Although Gregory expresses his characteristic hope that through external observances (here, feasting) the recently baptized will be led to a true interior appreciation of interior – and eternal – joys, he also acknowledges the necessity for moving forward in missionary work not in leaps but ‘by degrees and steps’ (gradibus vel passibus).63 However tentatively, he had perceived the necessity of tempering the doctrinal nature of Christianity with imagistic elements more familiar to pagans in a manner he had never considered when dealing with pagan minorities in Italy. This was an important development in Gregory’s thought, and reflects his developing recognition both of the significance of the English mission and of the magnitude of the task ahead.

4

Anglo-Saxon Paganism and the Living

THE SEARCH FOR GODS It is possible that Gregory spoke with the bearer of Augustine’s letter to him in Rome in 601, and that this conversation provided him with some understanding, however biased or basic, of the nature of Anglo-Saxon paganism – or at least an awareness of the very real gap which existed between it and Christianity. Unfortunately, there is no record of any such conversation, and historians are at a very great disadvantage when attempting to describe or analyse the beliefs of the pagan Anglo-Saxons. The only near-contemporary written references to them are very limited in extent and come from the Christian monk Bede and from other churchmen such as the compiler, in the late seventh or early eighth century, of the Penitential attributed to Theodore of Tarsus, Archbishop of Canterbury, whose purpose was neither to understand nor to explain them.1 Historians have therefore turned to the archaeological and toponymic record and sometimes to the world of later Norse myth and legend in an attempt to find further evidence for the religious beliefs of the Anglo-Saxons. Traditional approaches to the study of Anglo-Saxon religion have relied to a great extent on attempts to identify the gods who were worshipped by the Angles, Saxons and Jutes. The most basic indicators of the cults of individual gods in Anglo-Saxon England were usually held to be the archaeological record and toponymic evidence. The place-name evidence for gods used to be thought considerably more extensive than it is nowadays, and the distribution of placenames is itself often problematical.2 However, the combination of the two yields some pointers. The name of the god Tiw appears in a couple of runic inscriptions and on cremation urns from the early Anglo-Saxon period, as well as in three theophoric place-names in Saxon and Jutish areas of England.3 Another Anglo-Saxon god is Thunor, ‘thunder’. Imported into England by the Saxons and Jutes, he had forest clearings or groves dedicated to him in the southern areas of Anglo-Saxon England.4 His name is also known from the early medieval legend of St Mildrith in which a thegn called Thunor is said to have murdered her two young brothers. The name Thunor appears to have been taken from the

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place-name Thunoreshlæw in Thanet (‘Thunor’s mound’ or ‘barrow’), which itself appears in the legend. In all probability, this place-name reflects the worship of Thunor, that is, ‘thunder’, ‘both as a phenomenon and as a person’.5 A third Anglo-Saxon god who appears in the archaeological and toponymic record is Woden. His cult in England is revealed in a number of place-names, all in the southern half of the country, such as Wansdyke, Wednesbury, Wensley and Woodnesborough.6 He may possibly also be commemorated in a number of place-names incorporating the prefix Grim, such as Grim’s Dyke (Hants), but ‘Grim’ is a by-name for the Scandinavian god Odin and there are difficulties in establishing a definite link between Woden and the numerous ‘Grim’ sites.7 Historians and philologists have attempted to throw some light on the scanty evidence we possess about the identity of the deities worshipped by the Anglo-Saxons by viewing it through the prism of the written material of later Scandinavian mythology. The figure of Woden is clearly reflected in the Scandinavian Odin, while Thunor finds his counterpart in Thor. But while the names of Woden, Thunor and Tiw survive in the English names for weekdays, we cannot be certain that Frig, the Norse goddess whose name is reflected in our modern Friday, was even known in Anglo-Saxon England: her name may have arrived as a consequence of later Viking settlement.8 Where Anglo-Saxon gods are concerned, many problems prevent us relying directly on information from later Old Norse and Icelandic mythology to fill the gaps in our knowledge. Its literary manifestations are very late and were mostly preserved in Iceland; they date from the period after paganism had come into contact with Christianity and were set down in writing by sophisticated Christians. Important works such as the Heimskringla and the Prose Edda – the latter a major source for Old Norse and Icelandic mythology – were written by the Icelandic statesman Snorri Sturluson (1179–1241), over two hundred years after Iceland had officially accepted Christianity. Snorri’s Prose Edda has been described as a ‘handbook for poets on the world of the pagan gods, giving explanations of metaphors based on the old myths’.9 The first part or Gylfaginning, in which three figures named High, Just-as-High and Third reply to the questions of an early Swedish king called Gylfi, gives an account of cosmology ranging from the creation of the divine world to its destruction. Many of Snorri’s sources are lost and we cannot safely determine how far, two hundred years after the conversion of Iceland, he shaped his basic material. Similarly, the major collection of verse known as the Poetic Edda may contain valuable elements dating back to the tenth century, but is preserved in a late-thirteenth-century manuscript, and scholars are faced with the problem of determining not only the authenticity of its different parts but also those of verses attributed to earlier individual ‘skalds’ or poets.10 Comparable caveats apply to the mythological material contained in the sixteen books of the Gesta Danorum of the Dane Saxo Grammaticus (c.1185–1216).

A N G L O - S A X O N PA G A N I S M A N D T H E L I V I N G

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Thus the richness of this material should not blind us to the very real difficulties of using it to extrapolate back to the gods and cosmology of the Anglo-Saxons. Both Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon paganism were fluid and constantly developing phenomena, and we should always bear in mind that there may be a very real gulf between the Anglo-Saxon gods and their later Scandinavian personifications, as well as an inexact fit between the two pantheons. There is no evidence, for example, that the seventh-century Anglo-Saxons knew of the god Baldr, who seems to emerge at a later date.11 Can we say with confidence that the Anglo-Saxon Woden had developed all the attributes of the Norse Odin – and was the latter the same as his literary person presented later by Snorri? – or that Thunor and Thor, aside from their identification with thunder, were exactly the same? In terms of myths, there is no evidence that the Anglo-Saxons possessed a fully developed idea of Valhalla in the later Norse sense. Even if they had a word cognate with valkyrie, as Richard North has demonstrated, these are more likely to be the ‘mighty women . . . hurling spears’ referred to in the later Anglo-Saxon Charm for a Sudden Stitch, rather than the Viking valkyrie associated with Valhalla and familiar to us from Old Norse literature.12 The difficulties surrounding the problem of the connection between AngloSaxon divinities and the gods of Norse myth have led some scholars to reject outright the idea that later Scandinavian literature can be of any use whatsoever to the study of Anglo-Saxon paganism.13 But this opinion is far from universally held, and others believe that some relevant material may be, with care, extracted from later texts. Turning to what they consider to be the identifiably older material embedded in Scaldic and Eddic poetry and in the Prose Edda, they believe we can discern pre-Christian allusions, echoes or vocabulary that help us to interpret the scant early Anglo-Saxon evidence concerning deities and religion. A great deal of this work is based on highly technical philological study – and it sometimes reveals further problems in assuming a direct link or equivalence between Anglo-Saxon and Norse deities. Richard North, for instance, suggests not only that the Anglo-Saxons did not know the entire pantheon of Scandinavian gods now familiar to us through Snorri, but that they also worshipped several divinities whose memory has all but vanished. These include sea-deities or personifications of the ocean; a heavenly body who may be the morning star; and a ‘brilliance’ or ‘glory’ numen, Old English wuldor. None of these entities – thought of both as persons and personifications – crystallized into later Norse gods and goddesses, though their characteristics and attributes are preserved in later Old English poetry and in Old Norse vocabulary.14 On the other hand, certain divine characteristics may have remained the same over the centuries and across different countries, even as the picture of Norse deities developed further. The Norse Thor’s attribute of the hammer can also be associated with the Anglo-Saxon god Thunor – amulets from a seventh-century Kentish grave include miniatures of a

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hammer and spears.15 The Norse Odin was popularly portrayed as blind in one eye, and North also believes we can see an indirect allusion to a similar blindness in the Anglo-Saxon Woden in a passage in Bede.16 The Old English text Solomon and Saturn suggests that the later Anglo-Saxons were familiar with the idea that Woden had created runes, and also with the equation of Woden with the Roman Mercury.17 Another well-trodden path in the search for Anglo-Saxon gods has been the use of the writings of the first-century Roman author, Tacitus. In Chapter 40 of his Germania he describes how, centuries before they came to Britain, the Angli, forebears of the Angles, along with other continental Germanic tribes, worshipped Nerthus, whom he identifies as a goddess, Terra Mater: On an island in the Ocean stands a chaste grove, in which a wagon, veiled with cloth, is dedicated; only the priest has leave to touch it. This man can tell when the goddess is present in her innermost shrine and with many a show of reverence, he escorts her as she is drawn along by female oxen. Happy then the days, festive the places she makes worthy with her arrival and her stay. They do not go to war, do not take up arms; all iron is locked up; then, and only then, are peace and quiet known and loved, until the same priest returns the goddess, who is satiated with her dealings with mortals, to her temple. Soon the wagon and vestments and, if you want to believe it, the deity herself, are washed in a solitary lake. Slaves administer, whom the same lake swallows immediately afterwards. Hidden thus the terror and sacred the ignorance of what that thing may be that is only seen by those about to die.18

According to Tacitus, Nerthus is definitely a female divinity, Mother Earth; but a reading of the sources suggests that at some time between the first century and the ninth she underwent a sex change and became a male earth-god. Ingenious suggestions as to the reason for this range from the theory that a female deity eventually became unacceptable to warlike peoples, to the idea that Tacitus himself actually misunderstood the information he was given and that Nerthus was either a male consort of Terra Mater whom he fails to mention, or the priest who accompanied her wagon. Scholars cite in support of the latter theories the tale of the marriage between the god Njörðr, whose name is etymologically related to Nerthus, and the giantess Skaði (Earth) recounted in Snorri’s Gylfaginning. Njörðr wanted to live by the sea, Skaði in the mountains – but they married nevertheless. This union – held to reflect the worship of earth and sea in coastal communities – has been interpreted as a later literary reflection of the postulated marriage of Terra Mater to a male Nerthus.19 In Old Icelandic texts dating from the ninth to the thirteenth centuries, the son of the later Norse god Njörðr was known as Ingui-Freyr. The first of these two names has suggested a connection with the Ingvæones, whose name shares the same stem and means ‘friends of Ing’, who were one of the tribal groupings


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known centuries earlier to Tacitus. Like the Angli, they lived in proximity to what Tacitus terms ‘the Ocean’. Many scholars regard ‘Ing’ as a first-century personification of Nerthus, now revered as a male earth-god who made a seasonal fertility tour of his regions – just as, in later Norse myth, Freyr is supposed to have done. The worship of Ing/Ingui as a god of the earth and of fertility is believed to have spread from the Ingvæones to the Angli, who subsequently brought his cult to Britain. Ingui, North suggests, was especially prominent in Northumbria, where he was related to the worship of sea, sky and earth and central to the agricultural world of the Angles in the early seventh century.20 In this way, he was a pivotal deity who ensured the well-being of the land and people and was regarded as so important that he was characterized as a progenitor of the Anglian kings. Under the name Inguec, he figures in the Latinized version of the Historia Brittonum as a great-great-grandfather of the sixth-century Bernician King Ida, and may even have been regarded as the progenitor of all Anglian kings.21 However, Ingui’s cult had competitors. In an action paralleled by other emergent Anglo-Saxon ruling dynasties which consolidated their positions in the late sixth or early seventh centuries, Eadwine, who became ruler of Northumbria in 616, also took up a more personal allegiance to Woden, whose cult was also known in sixth-century England.22 According to a tale relayed in slightly different forms by Bede and in the Whitby Life of Gregory the Great, this switch took place as a result of a vision experienced when he was in exile at the court of King Rædwald of the East Angles, and aware that his life was in danger as his enemy Æthelfrith, ruler of Northumbria, had asked Rædwald to arrange his death. At this low point in his fortunes a mysterious stranger appeared to him, promising success against his enemies and great power, if only he would obey him.23 Both Bede and the Whitby author give the story a Christian slant, identifying the stranger as Paulinus, the bishop who would later baptize King Eadwine; but North suggests that the figure in the original tale was actually Woden.24 Eadwine would go on to defeat Æthelfrith in 616 at the river Idle and thus become ruler of Northumbria, a triumph he probably ascribed not just to the help he received from Rædwald, who decided to side with rather than assassinate him, but also to his newly acquired personal devotion to Woden.25 Woden’s name appears in the genealogies in which the gods of the emergent ruling dynasties of the late sixth or early seventh centuries were euhemerized by ruling Anglo-Saxon dynasties as ancestors. This seems to have formed an important part of the early stages of royal Christianization – instead of worshipping the traditional gods, baptized members of ruling families now presented them as their human ancestors.26 But it is unclear how many of the emergent ruling groups had taken up the cult of Woden, as a battle god appropriate to their personal behaviour and family aspirations, and how many were still attached exclusively to the gods significant to their people as a whole, in the period

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immediately before their baptism. Unfortunately for scholars trying to trace the cults of individual gods before the arrival of Christianity in individual kingdoms, the adoption by a number of kings of Woden as royal ancestor in the early stages of Christianization obscures the more complex realities of the previous situation and does not allow us to see when or to what extent his cult had been added by individual rulers to their normal practice.27 Only the ruling family of the East Saxons seem to have remained impervious to this Woden-izing trend, instead claiming descent from an ancestor called Seaxnet. His name – interpreted as ‘need of the Saxons’ – suggests that he was the original god from whom all Saxons had claimed descent. He seems to be the precursor or counterpart of the continental deity Saxnot, who appears in the eighth-century Saxon formulation of renunciation of pagan worship, where he is named along with Woden and Thunor.28 The kings of Kent who claimed to be Woden-born also included Oisc, who may also have been a god, in their genealogy.29 The ruling dynasty of Wessex traced its descent from Scyld Sceafing, a figure associated with the sheaf as a sign of agricultural prosperity, and the husband of the Danish goddess Gefion, whose cult is regarded by some as a continuation of that of Nerthus.30

ANGLO-SAXON GODDESSES? Some of the greatest problems of interpretation surround what initially appears to be a most promising early source telling us about Anglo-Saxon deities – Chapter 15 of the treatise On the Reckoning of Time, composed by the English monk Bede (d. 735), author of the Ecclesiastical History of the English People. This chapter, on the traditional names given in the past to the months by pagan Anglians, names two female deities: . . . Hrethmonath is named for their goddess Hretha, to whom they sacrificed at this time. Eosturmonath has a name which is now translated ‘Paschal month’ and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month. Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance.31

This may all look plausible – but serious doubts have been voiced about Bede’s reliability on these topics.32 His Anglo-Saxon etymology has been questioned and it is suggested that here he may be guilty of inventing deities to explain the names of the months. The lack of confirmation for the names of the two goddesses is held by some to be crucial. Eostre has been characterized as a product of Bede’s etymological fancy: the month, it is argued, is linked to the term for ‘east’ or ‘dawn’ and may even be related to the Christian Paschal festival. The notion of Hrethmonath as a month dedicated to a female deity called Hretha has equally


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been called into question. Some commentators prefer the etymology of ‘fierce’ or ‘cruel’ for the hreth- element of the word, and maintain that we are probably dealing with a description of the weather – after all, a well-known proverb nowadays holds that March comes in like the fiercest of animals, the lion. In support of this argument, it may also be relevant that Solmonath, roughly our February, is thought by some (in contradiction to Bede’s own explanation of its meaning) to take its name from climatic conditions, while two summer months, according to Bede, are called Litha, ‘gentle’ or ‘mild’. Other scholars – while acknowledging that Bede’s picture is far from unbiased, coloured as it is by his Latin learning as well as by his Christianity – are more convinced of the value of his information. The fact that his parents placed him in a monastery at the age of seven is not thought to have prevented him from learning something about the paganism of the Anglo-Saxons, both from his elders and also from oral tradition. It is even argued that his information might be especially valuable, as he is not campaigning directly against survivals and superstitions, as is, for example, the ‘Disciple of the Northumbrians’, who compiled the Penitential attributed to Theodore of Tarsus, Archbishop of Canterbury, at the end of the seventh or beginning of the eighth century; instead, he is portrayed as attempting to imagine pagan life as it might have been. The lack of Norse counterparts for Hretha and Eostre has certainly not deterred all experts, even those whose approach is based on tracing the intricate web of relationships between Nordic literature and Anglo-Saxon religion, from accepting them as genuine. One suggestion links them to the ‘mothers’ celebrated on December 25th which Bede calls Modranecht – possibly the matres or matronae who appear on stone sculptures of the Roman era, sometimes bearing fruit; their cult had originally been brought to Roman Britain by Germanic auxiliaries in the imperial armies, and had continued into Anglian times.33 Alternatively, this group might consist of the goddess Frig, associated with two other female deities (possibly Eostre and Hretha?) – but we cannot be certain that the Anglo-Saxons worshipped Frig. This interpretation raises many questions, not least that of the precise nature of Modranecht and the actual meaning of the word. The questioning of Bede’s etymology is also contested: while Hretha may come from rede, ‘fierce’, this association is a late one and the word hreth could suggest either the lengthening of the days following the equinox or the growth of spring flowers and plants. Or perhaps Hretha is another version of the name of the deity Nerthus; if this is the case, Nerthus is still, at this stage, female. In Eostre, we do indeed have a word that appears to be cognate with ‘east’, but tantalizingly this is the direction associated with Ing in the later Old English Rune-Poem.34 At the moment, therefore, there is little agreement on the worship of these goddesses in early Anglo-Saxon England. Moreover, we cannot be certain that these were the ‘mothers’ of Modranecht, or even what this celebration actually was.

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COSMOLOGY AND MYTH Whether we regard myth as reflecting the beliefs of tribes or peoples about their origins, or as a man-made explanation of the social as well as of the natural and supernatural orders, we are have few clues where Anglo-Saxon pagan mythology is concerned. However, a careful reading of Bede may possibly give us a fleeting glimpse into an important aspect of Anglo-Saxon myth and cosmology which has some similarities not only to slightly later evidence from the Continental Saxons, but also to the later Norse cosmology reflected in Icelandic literature and also to Eurasian shamanistic belief.35 There are indications in his account of the Northumbrian King Oswald’s victory over two British rulers (one of them a pagan), of a sacred plain or meadow called ‘Heavenfield’ – Hefenfelth.36 Bede comments on the antiquity of the name (antiquitus nomen accepit), which could therefore date from pre-Christian times. It has been suggested that this field reflects the concept present in Germanic – and other – non-Christian religions, of a heavenly plain associated with one or more trees. Oswald’s raising of a cross there (see Chapter 7 below) has been taken to imply that he was setting up a Christian rival to, or replacement for, a pagan tree, or possibly a ‘universal column’ like the Irminsul of the continental Saxons which was described by the medieval writer Rudolf of Fulda as ‘sustaining everything’, and which Charlemagne destroyed in 772.37 The ideas of a tree and of Hefenfelth appear to relate not only to the Saxon Irminsul but also to the pre-Christian cosmos of the Icelanders which, as far as we can tell, ‘might be represented as a mighty tree in the centre of a round disc surrounded by water’. The Creation Song in the later Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf refers to a bright plain encircled by water, while the whirling disc, representing the moving circle of the cosmos, is sometimes represented as a swastika, a decoration found on Anglo-Saxon jewellery and cinerary urns.38 The world-tree or Yggdrasil plays an important part in later Icelandic cosmology, where its role is analogous to that of the Irminsul as described by Rudolf, as the centre of nine worlds. The later Anglo-Saxon Nine Herbs Charm refers to seven worlds, so it is possible that the Anglo-Saxons before the coming of Christianity also believed in a number of worlds (though the Charm’s concept may derive from classical rather than northern pagan traditions).39 The concept of a tree rising through several worlds is also found in northern Eurasia and has shamanistic connotations – among Siberian shamans, a central tree may be used as a ladder to ascend to the heavens, a concept perhaps preserved in the name Hefenfelth.40 It is striking that Bede also claims that one of the miracles performed by earth taken from the battlefield on which Oswald died – Maserfelth – was the preservation from fire of a house-post on which a bag of it had been hung. The house-pillar in the Germanic house was regarded as a microcosm of the world-tree.


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Echoing the themes of earth and fire which appear in Bede’s account, one Scandinavian source refers to the ritual spattering of the world-tree with white mud, while another describes the world-tree’s survival in the cosmic winter or the conflagration which were thought to mark the end of the world. Thus it is possible that the Anglo-Saxons may have shared some of the basic cosmological ideas that appear in developed form in later Norse mythology. These may include an early version of the end of the world, which we see in the highly elaborated Norse concept of Ragnarök, in which the gods and the world are destroyed, but a new heaven and earth emerge and the earth is re-peopled by two survivors.41 The artefact known as the Franks Casket or ‘Rune-casket of Auzon’ is also thought to contain important evidence of early Anglo-Saxon mythology. This enigmatic object is a carved whalebone box; the scenes on its sides and lid offer a selection – perhaps a sequence – of scenes which draw on a number of myths and histories, Christian, Classical, Jewish and northern pagan, as well as several carved and (one) incised inscription in runes and in Latin. One of the two scenes depicted on the front panel depicts the Nativity and visit of the Magi, but with several additions of what appear to be non-Christian symbols. To the left is a scene in which a crippled man with a headless body lying at his feet holds a cup made from a skull and faces a female figure. There is another female figure accompanying her and at the bottom right of the picture a second man strangles birds. This is generally agreed to be a depiction of Weland or Wayland the Smith, alluded to in the Anglo-Saxon poem Deor and in later Norse legend, and renowned for his craftsmanship in all sorts of metalwork. While the detail of many features of the object’s complex imagery is still elusive, the most ingenious explanation of the casket – and one which suggests a total meaning for its component parts – is that it was intended to serve as a jewellery box on which the pictures act, along with the runes and letters, as a charm.42 Instead of seeing some dots and symbols which look like – but are not – runes as evidence of the sculptor’s incompetence and/or desire to fill up space, this interpretation sees a constant use of magically significant numbers (reached by adding the number of runes to these other signs), while initial or alliterative runes themselves are used as ideographs, signifying, for example, ‘wealth’ and ‘gift’. Three of the carved scenes were intended to function as protectors of the wealth therein – those depicting Weland, maker of precious objects, the magi as bringers of wealth and the archer represented on the lid as a defender of wealth. The other three panels, viewed clockwise, affect or manipulate the fate of its owner. Romulus and Remus protect and help in exile or on journeys; the Roman conquest of Jerusalem invokes fame and spoils gained in battle; and finally, the scene of burial and mourning on the right side represents a hero’s death.43 Many recent commentators on this important artefact date its creation to around the late seventh century,44 and this would indicate that the Anglo-Saxons

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of the conversion period were familiar with the legend of Weland and that, like other ancient and medieval peoples, they valued smiths very highly for their skill in creating both jewellery and weapons. The Weland legend bears similarities to the story of Daedalus, smith to King Minos of Crete, and may have originated amongst Germanic tribes who came into contact with the Graeco-Roman world, thus eventually reaching Anglo-Saxon England.45 The appearance on the casket of the twins Romulus and Remus, identified by the accompanying runic letters and described as exiles, may not just invoke protection in exile or on a journey, but also recall the god of Germanic creation-legend, Tuisto, whose name means ‘twin’. It has been suggested that the twin figures may also make reference to the legendary Anglo-Saxon ancestors Hengest and Horsa – traveller brothers who led a people – or to the dual kingship found in some Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.46 Scholars have defined the classic Indo-European creation myth as involving ‘Man’ and his ‘Twin’, and many versions of the story include the sacrificing of ‘Twin’ in the process of creating the world, people or city: thus Romulus slew his brother at the creation of Rome. The depiction on the Franks Casket is not of the twins being suckled by a standing wolf but of the discovery of the twins as young adults lying beside a recumbent she-wolf, possibly suckling and surrounded by men who are bowing the knee and carrying spears rather than crooks. An even more unusual element is provided by the inclusion of a second wolf at the top of the picture. Does this depiction contain elements that look forward to the kingship of Romulus and the murder of Remus? Livy describes how each was saluted king by his own followers – possibly the gesture performed by the spearcarriers in the picture. The element of murder/sacrifice may have been part of the myth of Tuisto (Twin) and Mannus (Man): although Tacitus does not refer directly to it, his description of the human sacrifices of the Semnones, one of the German tribes (see below), could suggest that this is the case. But it is also clearly present in the later Norse legend in which the giant Ymir (Twin) is slaughtered by Odin and his brothers.47 In fact, although commentators nowadays tend to accept a date of c.700 ce for the Franks Casket, they do not mention the important discussions of the 1970s, which indicated that it might have been carved in tenth- or early eleventh-century Yorkshire, in the period after the Viking invasions.48 The lack of resemblance between the Casket and undisputed works of the Northumbrian golden age, the existence of parallels from tenth- and eleventh-century sculpture in northern England and Scandinavia, and the appearance of traces of tenth- and eleventh-century Scandinavian Ringerike style in the Casket’s decoration, have suggested to some that it was made in the period after the Viking settlement of eastern England.49 If the Franks Casket is to be read as a ‘magical’ object, then it might also be relevant that legends of this later period associate Weland and other famous smiths with magic.50 Rather than gaining even fleeting insights


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into the mythology of the Anglo-Saxons in the period of Christianization from an examination of the Casket, we may be looking at a reflection of later Scandinavian myth and beliefs combined with Christianity.

A SUPREME BEING? There are many difficulties associated with traditional approaches to AngloSaxon paganism: the debates over philological issues, and the uncertainties about the identity and even the existence of Anglo-Saxon goddesses, present us with problems of a major order. However, both the comparative study of religion and also cognitive anthropology provide us with other ways of looking at this whole area. Both disciplines indicate that in a number of polytheistic religions, not all gods are viewed as being of equal importance. In some religions, creator gods are deemed to be supreme – yet, paradoxically, they are often regarded as being of less practical importance than ancestors, sprits or other gods and supernatural beings – and so receive a lot less attention. This is a well-known phenomenon in African and Australian aboriginal religions, where creator gods might in theory be highly respected supreme beings, but in practice are lacking in ritual celebration. Amongst African examples are the creator-gods of the Fang people, Mebeghe and Nzame, who had no cults or rituals addressed to them and were in normal circumstances of little importance to people – other deities or spirits were regarded as having powers relevant to everyday and practical concerns. Similarly, the Ewe considered the god Mawu to be the maker of human beings, who sent men and women into the world yet was not concerned thereafter with their day-to-day wellbeing.51 But although they are often said to be absent or to have ‘gone away’, such powerful gods may be turned to in times of crisis.52 Did the Anglo-Saxons have any such god? The sky god known in Old English as Tiw was imported to England by the Saxons and Jutes in the fifth century. He has given his name to the third day of the week over large areas of Northern Europe and although he or his archetype was regarded as a war-god as well by the fourth century, when his week-day became identified with the ‘day of Mars’ (Mardi in French), in origin his attributes and functions were rather different. He was the Indo-European Sky Father Tiwaz (Sanskrit Dyaus, Greek Zeus, Latin Jovis, Lithuanian Dievas, Latvian Dievs, Prussian Deiws).53 His name means both ‘god’ and ‘heaven’, and as such he may once have been regarded as creator of the world as well as a god of light.54 In the first century, it looks as if Tiwaz, the forerunner of Tiw, was invoked along with Wodenaz, the precursor of the Anglo-Saxon Woden, by some of the Germanic tribes: in his Annals, Tacitus recounts the defeat of the Chatti by the Hermunduri in 58 ce and the sacrifice of the defeated Chatti to both gods in a bitter struggle over the rich salt-producing

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river between them.55 Each tribe had apparently been prepared to invoke the two deities; but Tacitus also states that by the time at which he was writing, the end of the first century, above all the Germans worshipped ‘Mercury’ i.e. Wodenaz. It may be the case, therefore, that Tiwaz, later Tiw, was originally regarded as a distant creator god, to be summoned only in times of crisis. This thesis may be supported by the fact that while three to five ‘Tiw’ place-names have been traced in Anglo-Saxon England, none were created in the later settlement of Iceland.56 In Snorri’s thirteenth-century version of Norse mythology, the role of All-Father has now passed to Odin, who is far removed from the distant sky god or creator god of so many other mythologies, although it is still possible to see that this role must originally have belonged to another god, likely to have been Tiw.57 The advice given by Bishop Daniel of Winchester to St Boniface on converting the heathen in the eighth century might also be read to suggest that the Anglo-Saxons thought that there was a supreme being, as he notes that pagans believed that one had to take care not to offend the god who was more powerful that the rest.58 One other piece of evidence which might offer some additional support for the hypothesis that the Anglo-Saxons recognized the concept of a supreme being or creator god, is that when Rædwald, the ruler of the East Angles, returned home after accepting baptism at the court of Æthelberht of Kent (see Chapter 6), he erected a Christian altar beside a pagan shrine. The pagan altar, Bede’s wording indicates, was the smaller of the two.59 This could suggest a syncretistic understanding of the Christian God, interpreted in terms of previous conceptions of a supreme being – a god who was the creator and as such had to be shown respect with a larger altar, but who would, in practice, be little invoked: hence the desirability, even necessity, of a second altar for sacrifices to other gods.60 However, there are other possibilities lying behind this description. The Christian altar could have been erected on a pre-existing religious site associated not only with sacrifices but also with healings; or it may have been associated with the cult of Woden and the dead (see Chapter 5). It may be a mistake to read into Bede’s elliptical comment any significance other than that of Christian diabolization of pagan deities (see Chapter 7). Just as he repeated the – incorrect – Biblical characterization of the Samaritans as worshippers of more than one god, he also took the stance of Psalm 96:5: ‘The gods of the pagans are demons’.

LESSER SUPERNATURAL BEINGS In cultures where a powerful creator god is envisaged, this god is not necessarily thought of as habitually having full access to human interactions, covert actions and desires, the so-called ‘strategic information’ which humans think important.61 The god who is the maker of human beings is not inevitably


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considered to be of everyday relevance. The African Ewe people had much less to tell the early twentieth-century German ethnographer who studied them about their supreme god, Mawu, than they had about, for example, the female, caring earth goddess.62 If Bede’s female deities – including those celebrated at Modranecht – really were worshipped by the Anglo-Saxons, we should think of them in the context of deities or supernatural beings believed to have frequent interaction with humans on account of their control of fertility and nature. As such they would have been of great importance in everyday and domestic life, even if they are now difficult to trace – partly on account of what Else Mundal has recognized as a tendency for the identities of female divinities to merge into one collective group.63 Other divinities whose memory is only preserved linguistically – sea-deities or personifications of the ocean, a heavenly body who may be the morning star, together with the ‘brilliance’ or ‘glory’ numen, wuldor – may have been thought of in roughly comparable terms, not as major gods, but as supernatural beings with significant powers. Even so, it is likely that supernatural agents thought by the Anglo-Saxons to have the most frequent interaction with everyday affairs may not even have been gods as such, but instead what we might class as lesser supernatural beings. In her memoir published in 1870, the English governess to the Thai royal family, Anna Leonowens, highlighted Thai Buddhist belief in a remote creator-god, only to denigrate what she characterized as the depraving and malignant ‘superstition’ which led the Thais also to believe in a large number of ‘gods, demons, genii, goblins, wraiths’.64 Her description reflects a negative construction of other religions typical of Christians of her era, but it nevertheless points up the need felt by peoples who believe in a remote creator god and other major deities also to believe in other, more immediate, supernatural beings. Although our only written evidence for them comes from a period later than that covered by this book, elves – ælfe, sing. ælf – were undoubtedly an important representative of this category for the Anglo-Saxons. These were human-like supernatural figures, non-monstrous and in the early Anglo-Saxon period apparently male in form, though exhibiting gender-transgressing and effeminate traits. Earlier scholarly constructs made them fire magical arrows to cause illness – but the latest scholarship has established that, while ælfe were thought of as inflicting illness, they did this through a type of magic possibly related to the Scandinavian seidhr, which is a form of shamanism (see below). They seem to have been conceived of as posing a threat to those members of the ruling elites whose erotic desires transgressed accepted social boundaries and thus threatened social order.65 Although we can only see them in later reflexes and reflections, in ælfe we appear to have a classic example of one type of supernatural agent important in non-doctrinal belief-systems – beings anthropomorphic in form, with full access to the deepest desires and secret actions of individuals, and mattering deeply to human beings,

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as they have the ability to inflict harm on them. At the same time they may also have been regarded as sources of help, providers of prophetic information, and suppliers of supernatural power.66 Elves are unlikely to have been the only representatives of this type of agent conceptualized by the Anglo-Saxons of the conversion period; fairies, for example, also appear as sources of supernatural power in later English-speaking culture and they, or their equivalents, probably played a similar role at an earlier date.

RITUAL The existence of ritual in religion is almost universal: ‘it is rare that people have concepts of gods . . . without prescriptions for particular sequences of actions to be performed at specific times and with the expectation of particular results’.67 One of the most common practices the world over is sacrifice, rationalized as an attempt to propitiate the gods or to ensure good health or a good harvest. The actual agency of the gods in the last activity never seems to be quantified – as Pascal Boyer observes, no one dispenses with all the practical and empirical measures which they know will ensure a good crop. In addition, the exchange implied in sacrifice is not a real one: if animals are sacrificed to the gods, they are generally eaten by the participants in the ritual. Thus in return for an unquantifiable or non-guaranteeable benefit, the gods receive an immaterial offering. The distribution of the sacrificed food amongst participants may also have some sort of social or intuitive significance, in many cases consisting of unconditional sharing, which contrasts with normal social interactions, described in the anthropologist Clifford Geertz’s account of the twentieth-century Javanese slametan or ritual meal.68 From a functionalist point of view, such rituals are relevant to perceptions of social processes, serving to create or reinforce an impression of group identity and cohesiveness at a local or neighbourhood level.69 But feasts of this type also effect a transition from normal life to an alternative religious context in which the everyday is transformed.70 This may all apply to the Anglo-Saxons. The letter of instruction sent after Mellitus in June 601 by Gregory the Great in his first attempt to put a conversion strategy in place makes specific reference to the practices of sacrifice and feasting amongst the pagan Saxons: And because they are in the habit of slaughtering much cattle as sacrifices to devils, some solemnity ought to be given them in exchange for this. So on the day of the dedication or the festivals of the holy martyrs . . . let them make themselves huts from the branches of trees around the churches which have been converted out of shrines and let them celebrate the solemnity with religious feasts. Do not let them sacrifice animals to the devil, but let them slaughter animals for their own food to the praise of God . . .71


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What Gregory seems to have grasped here, after some reflection, is the importance of the feast itself in the sacrificial ritual. He hopes to detach the element connected to the local social group from non-Christian religion and inscribe it in the context of the wider Christian community, through linking the feasts to the Christian calendar.72 According to Bede, . . . Halegmonath means ‘month of sacred rites’ . . . Blodmonath is ‘month of immolations’ for then the cattle which were to be slaughtered were consecrated to their gods . . .73

This seems to confirm to some extent Gregory’s idea that the Anglo-Saxons sacrificed cattle, though here we also seem to be dealing with a regular slaughter of animals that were not to be over-wintered.74 He also describes other festivals and offerings related to his controversial goddesses: . . . Solmonath can be called ‘month of cakes’ which they offered to their gods in that month. Hrethmonath is named for their goddess Hretha, to whom they sacrificed at this time. Eosturmonath has a name which is now translated ‘Paschal month’ and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month . . .75

As we have seen, both Bede’s etymology and his identifications of deities have been much debated. His rationalization of Solmonath as a month when cakes were offered to the gods might be explained as an agricultural sacrifice when ploughing the first furrow of the year in the light of the ‘Field Ceremonies’ described in an eleventh-century English manuscript. These involve cutting the furrow, reciting an incantation, and placing a cake baked from three kinds of meal under the furrow.76 If Bede can be trusted, there were other feasts and sacrifices during spring and autumn, during Eosturmonath and, later in the year, just before Blodmonath, Halegmonath. Were these, as the rites of Solmonath possibly were, rites carried out by individual farmers or local communities? We are still largely in the dark where such celebrations, including Modranecht, are concerned.

DID THE ANGLO-SAXONS EVER PRACTISE HUMAN SACRIFICE? Does Bede give a complete picture of the range of Anglo-Saxon ritual? Sacrifices are classified by some theorists of cognition and religion as ‘special patient’ rituals – in other words, those rituals where the most direct connection to the supernatural being invoked is by the person or persons on whose behalf the sacrifice

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is being made and where the focus is on them and their qualities. These – along with ‘special instrument’ rituals, which include many types of divination – are contrasted with ‘special agent’ rituals, where the supernatural being, through an agent, typically a priest, occupies a place of greater ritual centrality and is considered to be present in the ritual.77 Such rituals are less frequently celebrated and also have ‘super-permanent’ effects on the participants or ‘patients’ – ‘when gods do things they are done for once and all’.78 Either they cannot be reversed at all or they require other special rituals to undo them. Rituals of this kind include initiation rites, circumcisions, weddings and funerals. The terrifying initiation rite which imprints itself on the consciousness of the initiands, in what is classified by some theorists as a ‘flashbulb memory’, is the classic expression of this type of ceremony; and many such rites include an opportunity to come face to face with the supernatural being itself in the shape of cave-paintings, skull masks, icons or figurines.79 Those who have studied events of this kind conclude that their overall effect is to forge the initiates into an egalitarian and cohesive group, which presents the face of a limited and boundary-conscious ritual community to the outside world.80 Were such rituals ever part of Anglo-Saxon religion? Tacitus’ much earlier account of the Germanic peoples reveals that the Semnones sacrificed human beings: Tradition has it that the Semnones are the most ancient and most noble of the Suebi; credibility in their antiquity is confirmed by a religious practice. At an appointed time, all the people of the same name and of the same blood, represented by embassies, come together into a forest hallowed by the auguries of their ancestors and by ancient awe and, with the slaying of a human being in public sacrifice, they celebrate the dread beginnings of barbarian ritual.81

Later in the same chapter Tacitus states that the Semnones thought their first ancestors had emerged from the grove where the ritual was performed.82 This has suggested to one expert on Indo-European myth that their ritual dismemberment of a man was nothing less than a re-enactment of the tribal origin-myth, without which ‘society and the very cosmos would crumble’.83 Sacrifice itself, even human sacrifice, in this analysis falls under the heading of a ‘special patient’ rather than a ‘special agent’ rite. Nevertheless, there are features of Tacitus’ description of the Semnones’ ritual suggesting it has features in common with the ‘special agent’ initiation which generates ‘flashbulb’ memories and forges a bond between those who were present. In addition to the possibility that the person carrying out the sacrifice may have been regarded as personifying the god or gods involved, Tacitus notes the deliberately awe-inspiring nature of the Semnones’ ritual: There is another display of reverence to the grove: no one enters it unless he has been bound with a cord, as a token of his inferiority and a display of the divinity’s power. If


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he has by chance stumbled, it is not permitted for him to raise himself and get up: he rolls out on the ground.84

Like the terror rites, the contrived circumstances of the Semnones’ entry into the grove reversed everyday assumptions about the free status of the participants, as well as inhibiting any instinct to help one another. Paradoxically, such strategies are perceived as creating an internal cohesiveness amongst participants, who are in this case linked as a group, not just by ties of kin but also by participation in the rite. Coupled with the grisly fact of human sacrifice, the deliberately disorientating and awe-inspiring experience of entering the grove would have produced intense emotions, recollected with increasing vividness later in life. Similar general tribal gatherings held in groves or special central places at quite widely spaced chronological intervals, and involving human sacrifice, may also have been customary amongst the Celts, Gauls and pagan Scandinavians.85 Did ritual human sacrifice form part of traditional Anglo-Saxon religion? The fourth-century Gallic author Sidonius Apollinaris claims that the continental Saxons, when about to set sail, sacrificed one in ten enemy prisoners, choosing them by the casting of lots and torturing them.86 Tacitus not only states that the slaves who washed the goddess Nerthus were ritually drowned, but also that the Germanic tribes were allowed to make human sacrifice to ‘Mercury’ – i.e. Woden – on certain days to win his favour.87 But commentators point to the dearth of direct written evidence for such practices in England.88 While there have been suggestions that the hacking off and display of the head, hands and arms of the slain King Oswald of Northumbria after his army’s defeat by the pagan Penda of Mercia in 641 also carries reminiscences of a human sacrifice to Woden, this is not at all clear: any ‘sacrifice’ here is of parts of a dead body, not a living person. A more likely explanation of Penda’s action is that it was like the later Norse raising of a Niðstong or pole of disgrace with someone’s features on it – the greatest insult possible. The pole itself recalled the world-tree that Oswald had sought to replace with the Christian cross.89 Possibly more relevant to the problem of human sacrifice are Bede’s comments about Bishop Wilfrid’s conversion of the South Saxons to Christianity in 681. Bede claims that . . . For three years before his [i.e. Wilfrid’s] coming into the kingdom, no rain had fallen in those parts, so a most cruel famine assailed the populace and pitilessly destroyed them. For example, it is said that forty or fifty men, wasted with hunger, would go together to some precipice or seashore, where in their misery they would join hands and leap into the sea, perishing wretchedly either by the fall or by drowning.90

What Bede appears to be describing here is what specialists have classified as a ‘crisis rite’ or ‘rite of affliction’.91 It looks as if already-starving men offered

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themselves as human sacrifices in an attempt to propitiate the merciless god or gods who had withheld rain for so long. ‘Crisis rites’ are by their nature non-recurrent as they are a response to individual disasters, in this case a prolonged famine. So could the resort to human sacrifice in crisis indicate that there had once been amongst the Anglo-Saxons more regular forms of human sacrifice? We cannot say for certain, but by the time of the Augustinian mission to Kent in the 590s Gregory’s informants, as we have seen, had clearly told him only about fana – shrines – together with animal sacrifice and feasting, and not about any assemblies involving human sacrifice, which a Christian author would surely have singled out for condemnation. The existence of the sort of shrines, sacrifices and feasts visualized by Gregory has been confirmed for many by archaeological discoveries at Yeavering in Northumbria, an important Bernician ritual and royal centre in the first part of the seventh century. There, Building D2 contained between its double walls a pit filled with animal bones, almost exclusively those of oxen and with a high proportion of skulls amongst them. It looks as if the bones were not only placed in this pit but also stacked above ground, while a nearby building (D3) was surrounded by pits which contained split ox-bones: the excavator thought the building itself might have been a kitchen and that a hollow outside it may have been used for butchering animals. The traces of what look like several flimsy huts outside D2 may correspond to the ‘huts of branches’ mentioned by Gregory when he instructed that new Christians were to be allowed to continue feasting at fana which had been converted into churches. The buildings and posts associated with them at Yeavering are thought by some to have been converted to Christian use following the baptism of King Eadwine in the manner suggested by Gregory, though this is, as we will see, by no means clear.92

SACRED LANDSCAPES Toponymic evidence indicates that in Anglo-Saxon England some natural features of the landscape had been associated with specific gods – Wednesfield (Woden’s field); Woddesgeat (Woden’s gap); Wodnesdene (Woden’s valley); Thunderfield and Thunresfield (Thunor’s field); Tyesmere (Tiw’s pool); Tysoe (Tiw’s spur of land) and – possibly – Tuesnoad (Tiw’s piece of woodland).93 There are also several associations between Woden and other man-made earthworks such as Wansdyke and Wednesbury (Woden’s burh), which imply that the Anglo-Saxons made a connection between gods and the supernatural on one hand, and giant or impressive remains or structures on the other. Germanic paganism on the continent was traditionally associated with sacred forest groves and clearings, and a number of sites link the name of Thunor to the Anglo-Saxon leah or clearing:


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Thunderley and Thundersley, both in East Saxon territory, together with the two examples of Thunreslea in South Saxon lands. Names such as Oakleigh, Ockley (Kent) and Oakley (ten examples from the south of England and the Midlands) all derive from ac or oak, the tree sacred to Thunor, combined with leah.94 Two other sets of place-names indicating religious sites are not linked to the name of any god.95 The first of these is weoh, or shrine (possibly also ‘holy place’ or ‘idol’), sometimes apparently linked to the name of an individual in the cases of the South Saxon Patchway (shrine of Paeccel) and the lost Cusanweoh. Mostly, however, it is not identified with persons but appears in forms such as Waden Hill, Weedon, Weeford, Weoley, Whiligh, Willey, Wy, Wyfordby, Wyham and Wyville. Some examples of weoh can be found on hilltops but others are located in low-lying positions near rivers. Many of these sites, according to David Wilson, are situated beside ancient routeways – never more than a mile away, and usually nearer. Exceptions are Weedon, Weedon Lois and Wysall, but even these still have, arguably, fairly close links to Roman routes or remains.96 So here we appear to have a class of shrine or site sometimes in the custody of an individual, but much more often accessible to travellers. These stand in contrast to the other important category of religious site not associated with individual gods, the hearg or hearh. This is probably what Bede meant when he wrote (in the plural) of fana. Conventionally, as Wilson points out, this used to be taken to mean ‘temple’ or even ‘sacred grove’ or ‘idol’; but as he indicates, it is also cognate with an Old Norse term indicating a sacrificial cairn or altar built on a high place. He suggests that these occupied prominent positions on high land and – as two names suggest – were communal places of worship for a tribe or specific group, perhaps at particular times of the year. Twelve locatable hearg place-names include Harrow-on-the-Hill, just outside London and first recorded in 767 as gummeninga hergae, the hearg of the Gummeningas; Peper Harrow; and the lost Besingahearh, probably near Farnham in Surrey, the hearg of the Besingas. To these sites indicated by Wilson, we should also add the location identified as Harrough Pightle, marked on a seventeenth-century map, close to Sutton Hoo.97 Wilson proposes that locatable hearg sites also include two instances of Harrowden; one Harrrowdown and a Harrowdownhulle; three Harrow Hills; and Mount Harry. And experts have suggested that some place-names which refer to a ‘head’ may indicate locations where pagan rites were celebrated around posts with totemic animal heads or representations of heads fixed to them, the most obvious example being Gateshead, referred to by Bede as Ad Caprae Caput.98 This custom is probably also alluded to by Aldhelm, Abbot of Malmesbury and later Bishop of Sherborne (d. c.709), when he writes of crude pillars of the snake and the stag: the actual term he uses is hermula cruda – crude little herms – suggesting a representation of genitals as well as a head on these pillars or posts.99 This evidence, such as it is, may be read to suggest that at some time after

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their arrival in England, the Anglo-Saxons had located groves and sites similar to those they had known on the continent and dedicated them to various deities – Tiw, Woden, Thunor. Perhaps the type of infrequent but highly dramatic rite described by Tacitus in relation to the Semnones was initially carried out there – or perhaps the dedication of these sites reflected only a memory of discontinued rituals. The egalitarian ethos produced by rites involving a degree of disorientation as well as human sacrifice, where religious experience or revelation is not mediated by tribal and military leaders and where intense emotions and memories are created in the participants, had the potential to focus attention away from aspirant rulers on to the community or tribe as a whole, and the place of the individual in it. So such ceremonies may have disappeared, while more regular rituals were carried out at the man-made tribal hearg and possibly also at the ‘head’ sites. But study of other cultures suggests that we should also consider the possibility of the existence of networks of local shrines – a few of which may be indicated by the survival of weoh or hearg names – central to agricultural life and the supernatural beings who controlled the land and the harvest.100 Some of these may have consisted of little more than wooden platforms or miniature houses and may not have survived, while others may have been re-used fragments of Roman stone or sculpture, and still await recognition as altars. The uses of such altars to offer sacrifices to propitiate the harvest god or other tutelary deities is likely to have formed a fundamental part of the rhythms of life in a society where freedom from famine could never be taken for granted. And the possibility that the totemic animal pillars also bore genital representations suggests that the beings they represented were understood as controlling human or animal fertility. Thus, in common with other non-doctrinal religions, Anglo-Saxon paganism invested the landscape, both natural and man-made, with a complexity of meanings.101 Belief in the inherent sacrality of natural features such as rocks, trees and pools, which are credited with healing power, is universal throughout imagistic religions, and both the name Hefenfelth and the limited number of place-names which connect trees, pools and clearings to specific gods probably only reflect a very small proportion of the number which were actually credited with healing or apotropaic properties and invested with ‘an abundance of beliefs and meanings’.102 In an age when medical knowledge was limited, such sacred places were of immense importance.103

RITUAL CHANGE, DIVINATION AND RITUAL SPECIALISTS Were major rituals performed by a class of priests or religious specialists? Tacitus’ descriptions of the German tribes on the continent at the end of the first century certainly make reference to priests and cults of individual gods, but did the


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equivalents of these priests still exist in Anglo-Saxon England at the time of the arrival of Christianity? The existence of sites sacred to individual gods discussed above would suggest that they did. The place-name Besingahearh, hearg of the Besingas, suggests the existence of tribal altars or shrines.104 Whether kings – as well as priests – sacrificed there is open to question. The notion of ‘sacral kingship’ no longer enjoys the credibility it once did, although Chaney’s suggestion that rulers sacrificed on behalf of the people in rituals associated with periodic hostings may be valid.105 Can we deduce anything further about Anglo-Saxon religious practices and specialists? Tacitus refers to the German tribes’ habit of divination by horses . . . raised at public expense in the same glades and groves, all white and unpolluted by any work for man . . . And greater credence is given to no other method of prophecy, and not only among the common people, but also among the aristocracy and among the priests; for the latter consider that they are servants of the gods, while the horses are privy to the gods’ thoughts . . .106

Did this practice continue in Anglo-Saxon England? The importance of the horse is certainly indicated by horse-burials including those at nine sites associated with human burials, among them Sutton Hoo and Great Chesterford, although the numbers never reach anything like those on the continent, where at one cemetery in Westphalia thirty horses were buried with twenty-four males.107 If we cannot be absolutely certain that divination by horses was practised in England, then we may have better evidence for other methods. One of the types of divination penalized by the late seventh-/early eighth-century Penitential ascribed to Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury is divination by interpreting the flight of birds. This was a common practice in many civilizations, including those of the Romans and Celts as well as the Germanic peoples.108 The Whitby Life of Gregory the Great illustrates the existence of a strong belief in the predictive power of birds: [King Eadwine] was hurrying to the church to receive instruction . . . when a crow set up a hoarse croaking from an unpropitious quarter of the sky. Thereupon the whole of the royal company who were still in the public square heard the bird and turned towards it . . .109

According to the story the royal entourage clearly took the appearance of the crow in a certain quarter of the sky – possibly the right side – as a bad omen, and hesitated to enter the church along with Eadwine. Divination is also sometimes based on a belief in the mental or perceptual properties of inanimate objects, in what has been called ‘counter-intuitive mentation’. (Arguably this is also found in Christianity in the belief that images or statues of saints have these powers. Alternatively they can possess counter-intuitive

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physical properties, when they weep or bleed.) A well-known example of this is that of the Uduk-speaking people of the Sudan who believe that a type of ebony tree possesses the power to eavesdrop on conversations, detect the actions of witches, and comprehend the movement of the arum, an animating life-force or spirit which exists both in humans and in nature and can outlive bodies.110 The twigs of the tree can be made to reveal its information by being burned and then plunged by a diviner into a bowl of water – the messages are read in the way in which the twig burns and in the patterns formed by the ashes on the surface of the water. This may cast some light on the beliefs underlying the Germanic tribes’ custom of divining by twigs outlined by Tacitus: They have as much regard as anyone for auspices and the taking of lots. Their method of casting lots is unvaried. They slice a branch cut from a fruit tree into slips and throw these, distinguished by certain marks, completely at random on to a white cloth. Then the priest of the state, if it is a public consultation, or the head of the family, if it is private, first having prayed to the gods and gazing up at the sky, picks up three, one at a time, and interprets them in accordance with the mark that had been inscribed before.111

The reference to the use of twigs from fruit trees could suggest that only certain kinds of trees were thought suitable – perhaps because like the ebony, they were believed to possess certain powers. Had the Anglo-Saxons inherited this tradition of twig-divination? It is impossible to establish with any certainty how long such practices and traditions survived. The Old English metrical Nine Herbs Charm, which appears in an eleventh-century manuscript but originated in a much earlier period, refers to Woden taking nine ‘glory-twigs’, wuldortanas, and smiting into nine pieces a ‘sneaking’ snake which has poisoned someone.112 Because of the appearance of Woden in the poem, it is sometimes assumed that these must have been twigs carved with magical runes.113 But equally they might have been the nine medicinal herbs brought by Woden, which also feature in the poem.114 Even if this particular form of divination was no longer current, the general belief in augury and the Christian Church’s disapproval of it is reflected in Pope Boniface V’s approving comment in his letter to Eadwine of Northumbria’s Christian Queen Æthelburh – that she avoided the enticements of augurers as well as of shrines and the worship of idols.115 Exactly what Boniface understood as augurers is not clear. Were augurers a priestly class as described several centuries earlier by Tacitus? Pascal Boyer has examined the emergence of what he terms guilds of religious specialists across a number of religions and societies, and notes that such guilds derive their livelihood, influence and power from ‘providing particular services, in particular the performance of rituals’ which interact with supernatural agents.116 But he also concludes that they may find rivals in other providers – local witch-doctors,


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healers and shamans who also claim that they offer some supernatural interaction or protection.117 Åke Hultkrantz distinguishes between wise men and women, whom he called herbalists; ‘medicine men’; and shamans.118 Hultkrantz’s typology suggests a broad spectrum of relationships with the supernatural amongst these groups: wise men or women may be mainly concerned with herbal remedies but also sometimes employ magical formulae, and we could probably find their equivalent in Anglo-Saxon England. It is possible that a significant proportion of the healers of the conversion period were women: female burials accompanied by bags of amulets – which often occur only once per cemetery, or perhaps once per generation per cemetery – may indicate the existence of such ‘cunning women’. The bib with bucket pendants found in a female burial at Bidford-onAvon, together with a scalpel-like knife, suggests the grave of someone who had exercised a considerable range of healing skills.119 And while the late seventh-/ early eighth-century Penitential attributed to Archbishop Theodore does not forbid the use of curing-stones or herbs on their own to heal the possessed,120 it does stipulate penances for women who performed ‘diabolical incantations or divinations’.121 Healing by women probably played a very important part in the everyday life of the Anglo-Saxons, and women healers did not necessarily occupy the marginal position that might be assumed from our comparative lack of information about them or from historians’ usually androcentric approach to discussing religious and medical activities. Although the scant written sources for the conversion period tell us more about male medico-religious specialists and sometimes suggests a hierarchy of such practitioners, modern research indicates that the relationship between different kinds of specialists would not be understood in hierarchical terms: one type, or even one individual, would have been seen as better at curing one kind of illness, whereas another group or individual would have been thought of as more competent to deal with a different disease or symptom.122 The Penitential of Theodore, however, seems to differentiate between women and men, laying down significantly harsher penalties for men and for clerics who practise incantation and divination (as well as for individuals who invite diviners and ‘magicians’ into their houses) than for women.123 This might suggest that it associated males with a pre-eminent position amongst medico-religious practitioners – but if so, this perception may have been created both by awareness of dynastic reliance on shamans who happened to be men in the period immediately before conversion (see below) and also by the Christian Church’s own elevation of males in the religious hierarchy. Numerous varieties of shamanism are found throughout the world: the best known are the types practised in Siberia and the circum-polar region, as well as amongst Native North and South American peoples. The term – which originates in a Siberian word meaning excited, raised or knowing in an ecstatic manner – refers to a trance-like state, akin to a temporary death, in which the shaman’s

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spirit temporarily exits the body to visit the spirit world, where it consults totemic helping spirits in order to divine the future or to recover the ‘lost’ or ‘stolen’ souls of sick persons so that they are restored to health. The role of shamans is complex: although the classic works on shamanism characterize them as ecstatic mediators between human and spirit worlds, they also summon spirits to give them counsel, while their healing role may be primarily diagnostic and divinatory. From a functionalist perspective, they mediate divisions of class, caste and even ethnicity when performing their rituals.124 In its purest form shamanism is found amongst hunting peoples, and Hultkrantz has suggested that in societies which are technologically more advanced and practise agriculture, shamanism is replaced by priestly action, idols and spirits incarnate, and ceremonial rituals of worship.125 However, as he himself indicates, shamanism also survives in other circumstances. Raymond Firth has examined the role of similar ‘spirit-mediums’ amongst the Tikopia, who were cultivators as well as hunters and fishers.126 The theory that shamanistic religious specialists might have existed amongst the Anglo-Saxons is lent credibility by the way they appear to have shared the belief common to many peoples in soul dualism or in a multiplicity of souls, one of which was capable of leaving the body, usually taking on the form of an animal, while the body itself lay unconscious. In the later Anglo-Saxon poems Wanderer and Seafarer, the speakers send their disembodied souls out over the seas, making the conventional image of poet as rambler a metaphor for their shamanistic journey.127 The mobile soul implied in The Seafarer is similar to the later Icelandic fylja, leaving and re-entering the home that is the body, with affinities that seem more avian than human. Well-known artefacts from the conversion era itself, such as the Benty Grange and Sutton Hoo helmets, with their protective animal figures, indicate another common facet of non-Christian soul belief and shamanistic practice – belief in a totemic guardian animal which endowed the wearer of its representation with power. This animal was not merely a symbol but a ‘literal entity ethereal yet tangible, the avatar of an alternative mode of being that united its possessor with a transcendent reality’.128 Thus both literature and material culture seem to confirm that as well as having ‘wise’ men and women who had some sort of relationship with the supernatural, the Anglo-Saxons also had religious specialists who went into trances to visit the spirit world, either to heal and carry out divinations or to cast spells. The rituals performed by Anglo-Saxon shamans in order to visit the spiritworld may have been similar to those of the later Scandinavian seidhr, in which the shaman, in this area and period frequently a woman, sat on a platform before going into a trance. (One saga suggests that when carried out by a man the seidhr ritual was thought to be obscene.)129 While we have no direct evidence of female shamans in Anglo-Saxon England, we should not necessarily rule out their existence, although in the very limited written evidence shamans seem to be men.


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However, it has been suggested that in Anglo-Saxon England persons of mixed gender sometimes acted as ritual specialists. There are a considerable number of burials in Anglo-Saxon cemeteries of individuals who may be identified as biologically male but who are buried with grave-goods more generally associated with women – and some of these burials may be of such specialists.130 Did Anglo-Saxon shamans – whether male, female, or mixed-gender – exist in competition with an official priesthood, as Boyer suggests shamans did elsewhere? When writing about the continental German tribes of the first century, Tacitus mentions a Naharvali tribal priest of the Alci twin gods who dressed in female attire.131 Tacitus’ description might lead us to hypothesize the existence of a crossover between shamans and official tribal priests at this early stage – as might the apparent gender confusion surrounding the goddess/god Nerthus/Njörðr. One analysis of Hindu religious specialists, while suggesting that hereditary priesthood and shamans are generally distinct groups, has also demonstrated that there can sometimes be an intersection between the two, so it is not impossible that there had always been a shamanistic dimension to the Anglo-Saxon priesthood.132 It may be more relevant, however, that at a later date there was an association in Scandinavia between the god Odin and seidhr,133 which may go back to his earlier personification, the Anglo-Saxon Woden; and Woden was the god whose cult was, as we have seen, adopted by many of the aspirant ruling dynasties of the late sixth and early seventh centuries. There may thus be grounds for thinking that, in keeping with the increasing importance of the cult of Woden to rulers, shamans played an increasingly significant role as religious specialists in this period. One of the most important traditional roles of the shaman is that of healer: While in a trance the shaman may find out the cause of a disease or even cure the diseased person . . . since the origin of a disease is supernatural, it has to be removed or done away with in a supernatural way.134

Similarly, Raymond Firth notes that in Tikopia the most common occasion for a spirit-medium to go into a trance was when someone was suffering a serious illness, for purposes of diagnosis.135 The rise of shamanistic rituals and cults to a position of importance in the latter part of the sixth century may have been assisted by outbreaks of epidemic disease during which people turned to them for help. One piece of evidence suggesting the prominence of shamanistic religious specialists in the early seventh century is the well-known description of Eadwine of Northumbria’s conversion in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History. As we have seen, Eadwine was one of the rulers who adopted Woden’s cult in furtherance of his personal ambitions, while there is also strong evidence to indicate that before this, the fertility god Ingui had been of central importance to the Anglian

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people as a whole. Bede writes that at the time of his conversion to Christianity, Eadwine had a pagan primus pontificum, head or chief priest, also described as a pontifex sacrorum, or ‘priest of rites’.136 The first description suggests not only that Eadwine or his people had other priests, but also that this man was the most important of all. Bede alleges that when Eadwine accepted baptism, this ‘priest’ broke with his former cults by mounting a stallion which he was not normally supposed to ride, and desecrating the pagan shrine at Goodmanham in Deira by casting a spear over it, although he was not supposed to bear arms.137 Whether the entire picturesque story, which has the priest dramatically renouncing his religion as unprofitable, is essentially true will probably always be a matter for debate, and it is very likely that Bede’s picture is either biased or incomplete or both.138 Nevertheless, from it emerges a picture of a ritual practitioner who was distinguished from other males by neither carrying weapons nor riding a male horse – in other words, who had some of the mixed-gender characteristics associated with some shamanistic religious practitioners. And the fact that Bede also gives his name as Coifi demonstrates that he was marked as special in another way: it indicates that he was born with an amniotic membrane or caul still attached to his head.139 Individuals born with the caul are often presumed to possess very special powers, although the exact nature of these faculties has been open to various interpretations. In some cultures, they are thought to be destined to become revenants or vampires, while in others the possession of a caul is considered as bringing good fortune. Crucially, the caul is often associated with shamanistic abilities. In sixteenth-century Italy, birth with the caul designated benandanti, men and women whose spirits were believed to leave their bodies in order to take part in ‘night battles’ against witches to protect the crops.140 One folk belief from the Anglo-Scottish border recorded in the nineteenth century held that those born with the caul possessed special powers of healing – but also that this power was drawn from their own vital energy and if it was drawn on too much, they would fade away and die.141 Coifi may therefore have been a shaman whose abilities made him the most important of Eadwine’s ritual specialists. He may also have had a later counterpart in the princeps sacerdotum idolatriae, a head or prince of the ‘priests of idolatry’, who stood in tumulo excelso, on a high mound or barrow, and attempted to halt the Christian Bishop Wilfrid and his party by means of ‘magic arts’ (magicis artibus) as they sailed towards the Sussex coast in the 660s.142 The ruler of the South Saxons had not been baptized at this stage, so the figure described in the Life could have been the most important ritual specialist associated with the ruling dynasty, hence his characterization as the ‘prince’ of such specialists amongst the South Saxons.143 Both men also seem to be associated with mounds or barrows. The ritual site desecrated by Coifi is generally identified with the


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later Anglo-Saxon church at Goodmanham in eastern Yorkshire. This appears to have been placed on the site of a barrow, which is likely to have contained burials from a much earlier period (see Chapter 5 below).144 When Wilfrid’s hagiographer Stephen depicted the priest standing on a tumulus, he may well have intended to suggest that he was occupying a similar barrow containing burials. All this brings us to the very important question of the place of the dead in Anglo-Saxon paganism.


5

Anglo-Saxon Paganism and the Dead

PAST AND CURRENT APPROACHES The written sources for pagan Anglo-Saxon religion and the dead are even more fragmentary than those which tell us about Anglo-Saxon religious beliefs and the living. But we possess an extensive archaeological record in the shape of the many Anglo-Saxon cemeteries excavated in the last two centuries, particularly in the wealth of information revealed by the advanced techniques of recent years. We know more abut these cemeteries than we do about Anglo-Saxon settlements and they have provided archaeologists and historians with an invaluable guide to the Anglo-Saxon lifestyle: dress, diet, health and disease, longevity and mortality, and social status. For a considerable time, popular interest in mortuary data focused – and to some extent still does, though in an increasingly sophisticated fashion – on ethnicity and the extent of Anglo-Saxon settlement in the British Isles.1 With the advent of the ‘new’ or ‘processual archaeology’, reflected in at least the technical aspects of work on the Anglo-Saxon period from the 1980s onwards, the emphasis changed towards investigating the evolution of social structures and economic factors through looking at cemeteries. A critique of this approach emerged with the development of ‘post-processualism’, which sought to redress processualism’s lack of consideration of issues such as the expression of power, ideology and symbolism.2 For an earlier generation of archaeologists, it was self-evident that mortuary rites were connected with religious belief. Audrey Meaney’s 1964 gazetteer of Anglo-Saxon burials deals in its introduction with issues of soul belief.3 Writing about Anglo-Saxon paganism in the early 1990s, David Wilson concluded that however enigmatic the record, . . . many aspects of burial are to be found widespread, and it seems evident that they represent widely held beliefs and traditions, far beyond those of the family or the individual.4

But recent approaches often reflect the functional bias of post-processualism. Variations in mortuary rite – especially the variation in grave-goods accompanying

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burials or cremation – have attracted a functionalist interpretation; although it is also argued that some variations can express dissent rather than ritual discourse, such discussions nevertheless mostly centre on social and political identities.5 Some of the most recent explorations of the topic have involved another broadly functionalist approach – the relationship between mortuary rituals and memory, some aspects of which will be discussed below. Other factors have tended to shift discussion of archaeological evidence away from the sphere of religious belief. Simplistic attempts to establish the religious affiliation of the deceased – ‘pagan’ or ‘Christian’ – from grave orientation, gravegoods, or even body posture, are no longer in fashion.6 The difficulties of such approaches have already become apparent when considering mortuary evidence from Francia. Yet there have also been some attempts to move away from the prevalent, largely functionalist view of mortuary ritual, and to focus on questions of the religion and belief-systems involved. Recently, Neil Price has discussed the ideology of transformation and shamanistic religious connotations present in Anglo-Saxon cremation rites.7 Sally Crawford has noted the apparent lack of votive deposition practised by the Anglo-Saxons, which stands in sharp contrast to the Celts, for whom an essential part of religion was the irrecoverable votive deposition of valuable objects in rivers and lakes. She observes what seems to her to be the relative paucity of sacrificial sites in pagan Anglo-Saxon England, and also argues that the weapons, jewellery, keys, vessels and other items commonly found in Anglo-Saxon graves – some locally produced, others imported – must have represented a considerable material loss to family or community. Furnished inhumation, she concludes, was a rite involving belief-systems.8 Both articles appear to be moving tentatively towards acknowledging what are already familiar ideas to theorists and historians of religion – the widespread belief in the liminality of death, and the fact of burial of grave-goods as evidence of belief in the supernatural and in an afterlife.9

CREMATION For the Anglo-Saxons in England, as for their forebears on the continent and for many other peoples, cremation destroyed the flesh, thus ensuring the safe passage of the soul to the afterlife and preventing it from returning to haunt or harm the living.10 Many Anglo-Saxon cemeteries contain cremated remains.11 In eastern England between c.450 and the early seventh century, when cremation seems to have been superseded altogether as a funerary rite by inhumation, cremation cemeteries (where there are few or no inhumations) were larger than inhumation cemeteries (where there are few or no cremations).12 Cremation used to be regarded as a

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minority rite south of the Thames,13 but recent excavations have also found considerable numbers of cremations in southern England, notably at Apple Down, Sussex. Nevertheless, it seems to be the case that cemeteries where cremations are in the majority are found in Anglian rather than Saxon/Jutish areas of settlement: most of the sites with more than fifty cremations are from the regions north of the Thames.14 The sites of few actual cremation pyres have been discovered: one example has been found at the cemetery of Snape in Suffolk, but others, still undiscovered, may have been at some distance from cemeteries where the Anglo-Saxons buried the cremated remains, often in urns, in a final funerary rite.15 The religious character of both primary and secondary rites in England was further emphasized by the frequent inclusion of grave-goods: a ‘reasonably high’ proportion of cremations contain either items which had placed on the funeral pyre along with the body, or added later to the interred urns – mostly brooches, glass beads and vessels, spindle-whorls, tweezers, shears and combs.16 Animal sacrifice is particularly associated with cremation. Pigs, sheep and goats were butchered and placed on the funeral pyre, and their remains retrieved and placed in funerary urns alongside human bones and ashes. In some cremation burials in the Spong Hill and Sancton cemeteries, animal remains – mainly horses – were placed in their own cinerary urns alongside the urns containing the remains of the dead person, and in some cases even given their own grave-goods. Examples of animal sacrifice accompanying cremation rites are common in many cultures throughout the world.17 As a footnote to this discussion of cremation, we may also observe that some Anglo-Saxon cremation graves appear to have wooden structures associated with them: the best-known examples of these are the thirty-one at Apple Down, Sussex. There and elsewhere, four- (and sometimes five-) post structures are associated with a cremation burial. These have been interpreted as huts housing the cremation deposits of an individual family.18 But since any surviving deposits have been found buried in the ground and the structures themselves ranged in size from 1 metre square to over 2.5 by 2.7 metres, with the majority being 1.4 metres or slightly longer, there are possible alternative explanations of their purpose. One might be that rather than being at ground level, the post-holes mark the sites of stilts supporting a type of higher structure found in other cultures.19 This could, in line with some of the excavators’ ideas, have been designed to hold several cremation deposits – but, given that buried cremation deposits have been found, this purpose may be questioned. Instead, structures on stilts might have been intended to house the bodies of the dead in a process of desiccation prior to cremation. This theory may be supported by the fact that not all the buried cremations are housed in a centrally placed pit or urn: several have been placed in the post-holes, suggesting that posts and structure were removed at the time of cremation.20

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Cremation, nowadays conducted in Europe and North America under mechanized conditions out of sight of mourners, is arguably the most difficult, expensive and possibly unpleasant form of dealing with a dead body.21 The complications and expense associated with pyre cremation are such that it is often restricted to royalty and the wealthy.22 The largest single component of the human body is water – 57.1 per cent of its weight. This makes the energy requirements for its disposal very high: it has been calculated that approximately 146 kilos of pine wood would be necessary for a pyre cremation, though modern pyre cremations have been known to use two to four times that amount, either because of weather conditions or just because of the ineffectiveness of a pyre as a retainer of heat. The placement of the body can also impede the effectiveness of cremation, especially if it rests on top of the pyre with feet and ankles projecting.23 The process is not necessarily a rapid one. It takes some time for even a modern cremation furnace to attain its maximum temperature, and then it can take over two hours to cremate the bodies of those who have died from any disease in which the body has become wasted – though a body with more fat will burn more easily.24 Without the technology of the modern crematorium it is difficult to maintain a constant temperature, and the removal of body liquids and gases by previous exposure and dehydration may have been thought to make the process of reducing the body to the stable components of bone and ash rather easier. Another possible explanation of the four- and five-post structures is that they supported a framework on which the body was actually cremated, as one of the major difficulties of cremation lies in getting enough oxygen to the side on which the body lies.25 However, this would presumably have left rather more traces of fire on the ground than the excavators have found. A belief in the effectiveness of cremation as a means of safely stabilizing the body, combined with a realization of the difficulties of carrying it out, may account for the way in which a number of inhumations in Snape Anglo-Saxon cemetery are covered or partially covered by charred wood, combining physical restraint of the body with a symbolic ‘cremation’.26

SECONDARY TREATMENT OF BODIES The Apple Down cemetery excavation has also revealed post-holes over two inhumation graves similar to those surrounding the cremation burials.27 A broadly comparable structure has also been found at Polhill in Kent, where some of the large post-holes found in one cemetery have been interpreted as either a small hut or funerary structure.28 The inhumation cemetery at Morning Thorpe in Norfolk contains evidence of another post structure, which appears


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to date from a late stage in the cemetery’s use.29 There are further examples of such post-holes in cemeteries in burial grounds elsewhere and it has also been suggested that the slots found in a number of inhumation cemeteries should also be interpreted as evidence of such constructions.30 The cemetery at St Peter’s, Broadstairs, contains a number of graves with sockets along their sides, suggesting the construction of structures supported by posts or stilts over the sites of individual inhumations.31 Exposure and reburial is one of the classic funerary rites of transition and stabilization of the body: as observed in Chapter 2, in some cultures the body may be exposed in a shelter, which can take the form of either a miniature wooden house raised on piles or a platform covered by a roof. Did the Apple Down grave structures and others like them, in England and on the continent, correspond to these structures and the tree-suspended bark coffins of the Huron? We have no certain way of knowing, but excavations there, at Snape and elsewhere have revealed mineralized fly pupae in some graves, indicating a period of exposure before burial.32 This evidence combines to suggest that some Anglo-Saxons may have been given a second burial once their bodies had partially decomposed.

FURNISHED INHUMATION While the deposition of grave-goods with both inhumations and cremations indicates the religious nature of Anglo-Saxon funerary rites, excavations have revealed a degree of variation in its practice, and not all graves contained gravegoods.33 This does not imply a diversity of belief-patterns: theorists of religion have established that elaborate or complete rituals were often the prerogative of elites, with those of ordinary people following a simpler version of the same pattern. The same applies to rituals of exposure and secondary burial.34 There is also the possibility of regional variation: the Anglo-Saxon cemeteries of Bernicia have appeared to some to be less well-furnished than those of other areas, and it has been argued that Anglo-Saxon settlement in Bernicia was less intensive and probably later than in Deira – though recent excavations have revealed finds more in keeping with those of other regions.35 If the deposition of grave-goods is gradually being acknowledged once more as a religious rite by those who study Anglo-Saxon cemeteries, many other features found there – as well as evidence of cremation and possibly of exposure before final burial – would immediately suggest to anthropologists that the AngloSaxons viewed death as a liminal process in which the soul gradually detaches itself from the vicinity of the body to pass into another world. The most obvious of these include signs of funeral feasting and the deposition of food-offerings in graves. Joints of meat seem to have been relatively common offerings, but others

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ranged from duck eggs in a pottery urn to onions and crab-apples in a hanging bowl.36

THE LIMINALITY OF DEAD INFANTS Another indication of these beliefs may be found in the generally low numbers of infant burials in Anglo-Saxon cemeteries. While there are a number of exceptions to this rule – notably the cemeteries at Great Chesterford, Essex and Lechlade, Gloucestershire – the percentage of burials of children under three – and even under five – years old is much lower than we might expect in a society where infant mortality was presumably high. One figure quoted in 1993 and based on a survey of over 1000 burials found that only 6 per cent of aged skeletons were those of infants under three years of age, with 11 per cent those of children under five. This contrasts with the numbers of infant burials found in some late Roman Christian cemeteries in the British Isles.37 Various explanations have been offered for the striking level of underrepresentation of infants in Anglo-Saxon cemeteries. One recent discussion suggests that their bodies may have been buried shallowly, or were disturbed by animals and so are now invisible to archaeologists. It also notes that the few found in earlier cemeteries tend to be marked out in some way, either by inclusion with adults, or by some unusual feature of the burial.38 Another suggestion has been ‘that, unless some children – but not all – were disposed of elsewhere, there was a surprisingly low level of infant mortality in Anglo-Saxon England.’39 This seems improbable. On the other hand, there is evidence strongly suggesting that pagan Anglo-Saxons traditionally killed, or exposed, unwanted children and that this custom persisted until at least the late seventh century, possibly longer: the Penitential attributed to Theodore imposes penances for the homicide of children by women, the slaying of children by poor women, and the killing of children who have not been baptized.40 All this provides further evidence that the Anglo-Saxons viewed death as liminal: while shocking to modern sensibilities, the killing, or more commonly the exposure, of some infants is another indicator of belief in death as a liminal process, and in the ability of the souls of the very young to cross the threshold between life and afterlife. Recent work points to the marginalization and separation of the dead infant from the rest of the dead as a common feature of pre-historic and historic societies for thousands of years.41 Rather than being given full funeral rites and buried in cemeteries, the bodies of those who have died very young have been found in a variety of liminal locations – underground passages, ditches, boundaries, beneath floors – their spirits deemed capable either of slipping back into the world of the spirits, from whence they had come, or into


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another foetus, creating a new life.42 Thus various categories of infant – children of poor parents, or those born with some impairment, or, in many societies, female children – who had not undergone some ritual of social recognition such as a naming-ceremony or formal recognition by a father, could be exposed; if they were not rescued, they would die, their spirits either drifting back into the other world or finding their way into an unborn baby. From a functionalist standpoint, Robert Hertz noted the very weak social reaction of peoples to the death of infants, who scarcely impinged on the horizon of the collective consciousness, and also the existence of a widespread belief in the liminality of their souls: As they have not really been separated from the world of the spirits, they return there directly, without any sacred energies needing to be called upon and without a period of painful transition appearing necessary.43

The fact that archaeologists have also found a small number of strikingly wellfurnished child burials in Anglo-Saxon cemeteries tends to confirm rather than contradict this thesis. While tiny infants who were exposed or who had died without any recognition of their status would not be thought of as requiring funeral formalities, it was quite different for the slightly older children of elites and leaders. Invested with status both by their recognized place in their family, as well as by the family’s social position or aspirations, they might therefore merit a rich individual burial.44

GATEWAYS TO ANOTHER WORLD Another indication of Anglo-Saxon belief in the liminality of death is to be found in the tendency to re-use ancient monuments as burial places. This is another aspect of funerary practice recently subject to functionalist interpretation, which stresses mainly the social identity of the dead, ‘the construction and negotiation of origin myths, identities and social structures’ and in particular the role of the dead as an extension of the living community.45 But viewed from the standpoint of religious and soul belief, it is evident that burial in locations associated with the past or with the dead of an earlier era was thought of as a particularly effective means of achieving the soul’s transformation from potentially threatening ghost into beneficent ancestor.46 Studies of later Scandinavian afterlife belief reveal not only the differentiated afterlife in which warriors were received into Valhalla, but a much fuller and more vivid conception of the dead, in which they were believed to live in the mountains or around ancient monuments.47 These ideas provide a context for the high rate of Anglo-Saxon re-use of earlier monuments for their burials: one study claims that about a quarter of all known Anglo-Saxon burial sites are placed in older monuments. The most favoured places for such

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mortuary rites were Bronze-Age round barrows, but the Anglo-Saxons also re-used a variety of other monuments to house their dead – barrows from the Neolithic and Iron Age periods, henges, stone circles, monoliths, and various kinds of earthworks or enclosures. Roman structures – not just mausoleums and cemeteries but also temples, villas, bath-houses, forts, and even roads – were also used by the Anglo-Saxons as places of burial. This ‘inscription of the dead in particularly ancient locales’ created an ‘idealized community of ancestors’.48 The desire to associate the living with communities of ancestors provides further confirmation that like many other peoples worldwide and through the ages, the Anglo-Saxons thought that the afterlife was basically a prolongation of the present life. As we have already seen, it is often conceptualized as a land or village of the dead, very like the world of the living. At the same time, as studies of Native American peoples have demonstrated, there may also exist a degree of uncertainty about the other world, reflected in the way in which the world of the dead is not part of the world of the gods. Some individuals only believe in what they themselves have experienced or what has been experienced by shamans in their ritual trance, or by those believed to have entered the world of the dead while lying unconscious or in a coma.49 A similar uncertainty amongst the pagan Anglo-Saxons may be reflected in Bede’s story of Eadwine of Northumbria’s consultation with his thegns about the desirability of becoming a Christian: Another of the king’s chief men agreed with this advice and . . . added, ‘This is how the present life of man on earth, King, appears to me in comparison with that time which is unknown to us. You are sitting feasting with your ealdormen and thegns in winter time; the fire is burning on the hearth in the middle of the hall and all inside is warm, while outside the wintry storms of rain and snow are raging; and a sparrow flies swiftly through the hall. It enters in at one door and quickly flies out through the other. For the few moments it is inside, the storm and wintry tempest cannot touch it, but after the briefest moment of calm, it flits from your sight, out of the wintry storm and into it again. So this life of man appears but for a moment; what follows or indeed what went before we know not at all. If this new doctrine [i.e. Christianity] brings us more certain information, it seems right that we should accept it.50

This famous passage may well reflect Bede’s Christian bias when he makes the counsellor advise accepting Christianity. But it represents more than either the deployment of a striking image or, in the use of hall as metaphor, ‘a shared social myth about the limits of human capacity’.51 It suggests not only the Anglo-Saxon conception of the soul as a bird which could fly free of the body, but also a degree of uncertainty about the afterlife on the part of Anglo-Saxon pagans. The use of localities associated with ancestors and the past as cemeteries may have helped to ease this feeling of uncertainty. So too may the association of gods with a few of these sites, indicated by the combination, in five place-names, of the Old English


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hlæw and beorg, burial-mound or barrow, with the names of Woden and Thunor: Wodensbeorg (Wiltshire), Wodenslawe (Bedfordshire), Woodnesborough (Kent), Thunoreshlæw (Kent) and Thunreslau (Essex).52 These names suggest that both Woden and Thunor were at some stage constructed as psychopomps associated with funerary rites, able to conduct the souls of the dead safely to the land of the dead and the ancestors, much in the way of the Tempon Telon of the Olo Ngaju described by Hertz in his classic essay on death rituals.53 Even if we lack the evidence to associate the mortuary rituals performed there with a specific god, the famous burial ground of Sutton Hoo in East Anglia contains evidence of many of the types of funerary rite discussed above: unurned cremation, urned cremation (and burial of human and animal ashes in a bronze bowl), as well as furnished inhumation. It also makes conscious use of an ancient landscape – neither monumental nor funerary, in this case, but the remains of a an embanked field system created in the Iron Age on a site which had seen occupation in the earlier Neolithic and Bronze Ages and which now became the setting for a number of burial mounds.54 The earliest burials (c.590–610) consisted of cremations placed in bronze bowls and in one case on a wooden trough or boat, and were accompanied by horses, food animals, gaming pieces and other grave-goods. The ‘poverty’ of two nearby cremations has suggested to excavators that there might have been an ‘association of servitude’ between them and the persons whose cremated remains lie under the mounds close by.55 Sutton Hoo’s furnished inhumations include a horse-and-rider burial, alluding to Frankish, Germanic and Scandinavian practice, together with its famous ship burials, the slightly later burials of children or young people in boats or coffin, and that of a woman adorned with silver on what may have been a bed. As well as containing a variety of grave-goods, some of which come from Francia, Rome and even Byzantium, the ship burial in Mound 1 may itself be thought of in the first place as a furnished inhumation – as may the burial in a chamber under a ship in Mound 2.56 The existence nearby of a hearg or shrine – signalled by the survival for centuries of the name Harrough Pightle – is probably also significant.57 The cultural affinities of Sutton Hoo and the three other English sites containing boat or ship burials, all in Suffolk and all dating from the later sixth to the eighth centuries – and especially the similarities to the ship burials of Vendel and Valsgärde in Sweden – have been much discussed, though there are differences as well as similarities between the two groups.58 The symbolism of the ship has puzzled the site’s most recent excavators, who suggest that the emergence of this practice at Sutton Hoo in the 620s or 30s, a generation or so after its re-appearance in Sweden, is symptomatic of a ‘defiant dialogue’ with Christian Frankish Europe, as well as an expression of alignment with pagan Scandinavia. At the same time, the excavators acknowledge that the practice is known worldwide and appears in tales from Beowulf to Morte d’Arthur – though they can only

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conclude that ‘it is difficult to resist the notion that boat-burial contained some meaning related to a belief-system now largely lost’.59 Seen in the context of rites of transition and belief in the liminality of death, however, the symbolism of the boat becomes more obvious. Ethnographers have pointed out the element of boat imagery present in the art of the circumpolar region, and its connection, in the beliefs of the people who lived and live there, to shamanism and shamanistic journeys to the other world.60 Given the proximity of Scandinavia to this region, it is not hard to imagine how these ideas might have travelled southwards and how the concept of the boat as bearer of the soul to another world appeared in East Anglia, with its well-attested links to Scandinavia. Sutton Hoo has been characterized by its latest excavator as a ‘princely burial ground’ and, as such, as evidence of the emergence of a ruling elite in the late sixth and early seventh centuries.61 In an earlier period, the Anglo-Saxons were buried in large ‘folk-cemeteries’. Archaeologists claim to be able to detect evidence of social organization or differentiation appearing in these from the middle of the sixth century onwards, for example in Kent. There is general agreement that individuals and families began to indicate status through mortuary rite and custom in the second half of the sixth century. Many funerary rites naturally lend themselves to display: the building of mortuary structures and exposure of bodies prior to cremation or burial, as hypothesized above, could also have functioned as expressions of social status or aspirations. Anthropology and ethnography suggest that as well as accepting considerable restrictions on their own social interaction before this took place, the families of the deceased might also have to sponsor feasts to mark the occasion of the second funeral. Such ceremonies lent themselves to a parade of family wealth or influence: even the length of time a body was kept before secondary rites were carried out could serve as an indicator of the status of the individual or family involved.62 The account by the ninth-century Englishman Wulfstan of his visit to the ‘Este’ of the Baltic reveals that there, the wealthier the deceased, the longer he lay above ground awaiting his cremation while his ‘mourners’ drank and gambled.63 Moving away from current largely functionalist approaches, the question of why this particular area of ritual might have been used for such purposes should be considered. While the dead are of such importance in many religions that the rituals connected with them may contain the potential for social manipulation, the changes in inhumation practices that begin to appear in Anglo-Saxon England in the mid-sixth century could also be interpreted to indicate in the first place an increasing focus on mortality and the afterlife. These changes have been read in social terms as an attempt to protect resources, but could be seen, too as an elite’s – or emergent elite’s – resort to increasingly elaborate funerary rituals because of concerns about the safe transit of the soul to the afterlife. It is striking that the sequence of change in burial practice begins with a scattering of


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ring-ditches around graves in predominantly flat-grave cemeteries, as well as with the appearance of barrows in flat-grave cemeteries.64 The former could indicate a desire to mark a boundary between the living and dead and to contain the potentially dangerous body and soul within the space of the grave. The reasons behind this hypothetical interpretation of the evidence can only be offered in the form of another hypothesis, but the advent of plague in Western Europe from the 540s onwards may have been a crucial factor in producing these changes. The Annales Cambriae record not only the death of Maelgwyn, king of Gwynedd, in 547 from plague, but also a subsequent ‘yellow’ plague, which struck Ireland in the 550s (and may or may not have been the same disease).65 With both Wales and Ireland affected, it is difficult to believe that the Anglo-Saxons escaped entirely unscathed; and even if epidemic disease did not reach them from the west, it could have arrived in eastern Kent as a result of its well-attested trade links to northern Francia. Gregory of Tours describes its appearance further south in the Rhone Valley in 543, presumably via Marseilles.66 It is possible that there were other episodes which he did not record of plague arriving in northern Francia from the east via trade routes, with a similar coast-to-river system pattern, allowing it to penetrate, for example, the Scheldt.67 If it could reach this area, it is also likely to have affected the ports of Northern Francia that traded with Kent and other areas of the south. If plague had arrived in Kent and the south of England, why might this have led to the construction of ring-ditch graves? The answer is likely to lie in the fear of vampires or other malevolent revenants (see Chapter 2). The most effective way of preventing their occurrence is through the performance of adequate funerary ritual to ensure the safe transit of the soul to the afterlife. Of all the means discussed above, cremation is considered to be the most effective way of stabilizing the body to foil revenant activity, though as we have seen, it is both resource-intensive as well as difficult, and is a form of disposal of the body available mainly to elites and their immediate associates.68 It is possible that exposure, disarticulation and secondary burial were also practised as a means of reducing the body to a desiccated state, although these, too, must have had their difficulties and drawbacks. Alternatively, as revenants are believed to be unable to cross water,69 it is possible that the ring-ditches we find in the Kentish and other late sixth-century Anglo-Saxon cemeteries were designed to fill up with water, thus constructing a real boundary between the dead and the living.70 At the very least, the isolation of a grave by means of a ring-ditch, complete or pennanular (in the latter case ‘closed’ by a post bearing some sort of totem) created a symbolic or magical barrier between dead and living. If this hypothesis is correct and the creation of ring-ditch graves was part of an elite response to epidemic disease, one consequence – particularly if there was a recurrence of plague – would have been to focus attention on funerary

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ritual as a way of asserting elite status. In the early years of the seventh century, the scattering of ring-ditch graves appears to have been replaced partly by barrow cemeteries, where most interments were placed beneath small individual mounds. This period also sees the appearance of larger, more isolated barrows and groups of barrows.71 A sequence of this sort can be found at Sutton Hoo, where the main cemetery is preceded by one of a slightly earlier date – sixth or early seventh century – at nearby Tranmer House. Located by the site of a Bronze Age cremation interment, it contains both cremation and furnished inhumation burials and may have continued into an area which Martin Carver suggests included mounds visible as late as the seventeenth century. Nine of the cremations, which have been dated to the latter phase of cemetery use, are surrounded by ring-ditches.72 This addition of ditches symbolizing the division between living and dead could suggest a particular degree of anxiety about the potential return of these individuals, as cremation is commonly assumed to be the most effective means of stabilizing the body, and one which would not require any additional preventative measures. On the other hand, the ditches are smaller and shallower than those recorded at other Anglo-Saxon sites, and they may now be primarily being used as signifiers of status rather than performing their original function. Considering the main Sutton Hoo site, Martin Carver suggests that the emergence of monumental burial mounds there may indicate a historical circumstance in which proclaiming an existing social stratification had become important.73 If we project this idea a little further back on to the creation of ring-ditch burials here and elsewhere, we might be justified in suggesting that the historical circumstance in that case was the arrival of plague in England. At this juncture, elite families could have scaled up their investment in mortuary ritual in the hope of ensuring the safe transit of their members’ souls to the afterlife, thus – incidentally – affirming that elaborate mortuary ritual was a marker of status and in this way setting a pattern for the future. Anthropologists and historians alike have long been aware that ‘traditions’ can be created and that ritualization – the marking or setting-off of some activities from others – can be manipulated to create new meanings.74 The barrows and ring-ditch cremations at Tranmer House, along with Sutton Hoo and the other major barrow burials of the early seventh century, would then indicate that by this stage, rituals and beliefs associated with death and the transition to the afterlife were important enough in Anglo-Saxon England to be used to signal status, and that in the period which sees the emergence of Anglo-Saxon ruling dynasties and kingdoms as we know them, mortuary rituals constituted a vital element in underpinning the aspirations of individuals and elites. One well-known royal site that might be re-examined in this context is Yeavering in Bernicia. Its interpretation has been revised in several ways since its


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famous excavation report was published in the late 1970s.75 The director of the excavation, Brian Hope-Taylor, offered . . . the possibly startling suggestion of an immensely long continuity in ritual observance . . . a thread running unbroken (if at times weakened) from the Bronze to the AngloSaxon age.76

More recently, Richard Bradley has argued vigorously against this picture of continuity, postulating instead the selective re-employment and reinterpretation of some of the prehistoric monuments on this site, in this case two Neolithic or Bronze Age monuments, a round barrow and a stone circle, in the Anglo-Saxon era. (The third and arguably the most impressive existing monument was a henge, which was neither re-used nor situated in the excavated area published in the 1970s.) According to his argument, the past was being deliberately and selectively exploited as ‘a source of authority’ by an Anglian elite.77 The Western RingDitch, the site of a former stone circle and the scatter of Bronze Age cremations in and around it, became the site of radial inhumations, as well as of a square wooden enclosure.78 Nearby was placed a building that has been interpreted, because of the large number of cattle skulls found buried there, as a ‘temple’. The ancient Eastern Ring-Ditch also became the focus of ritual attention. The post placed at its centre was used to align another ritual post and a succession of Anglian royal halls along with an enigmatic ‘grandstand’, resembling a section of an amphitheatre, and a third ritual post. These, it is thought, were used for royal ceremonies and assemblies by Bernician and Northumbrian rulers. Along and around this alignment were placed several unfurnished and two furnished inhumations. In this way, at Yeavering, the symbols and rituals of Bernician and Northumbrian kingship in the late sixth century and the first half of the seventh were consciously inscribed on the world of the dead, who inhabited both the site of the former stone circle at the western end of the complex and also the ring-ditch marking the position of an ancient barrow at the eastern end. John Blair has suggested that at Yeavering, as at some other Anglo-Saxon sites of the period, we find new ritual structures being set up, combining a re-use of ancient monuments with square plans and the erection of focal posts in a revival of an earlier Roman and Romano-Celtic idiom known in Britain as well as Gaul.79 He argues for an emergent elite’s borrowing from the aristocratic culture of Celtic Britain the idea of the hero-ancestor; and he also suggests that these structures might be the fana referred to by Bede at various points in his Ecclesiastical History together with the ermula cruda (‘crude little herms’) mentioned by Aldhelm in his letter to Heahfrith, c.680.80 Not everyone agrees with his interpretation of the wooden structure of the Western Ring Ditch and its associated burials or the enclosure built against one end of the ‘temple’ (and also surrounded by burials) as Anglian;

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but there is little doubt that the graves aligned on the post set up in the Eastern Ring Ditch date from this phase of Yeavering’s existence.81 Thus inhumation in some sort of relationship to the ‘ancestors’ also formed part of the process of royal legitimization and royal symbolism in Bernicia. A similar pattern may have emerged in Deira. There, the royal centre in the reign of Eadwine was at York – but east of this lay the ritual site at Goodmanham, where Bede describes Coifi deliberately profaning and destroying the altars and shrines of the idols with their surrounding enclosures (aras et fana idolorum cum septis quibus errant circumdatis).82 This ‘place where the idols once stood’ (locus quondam idolorum) is probably the large barrow on which Goodmanham church now stands. The fact that Coifi was able to put them to the torch suggests a wooden post and fences similar to those set up in Anglian times at Yeavering.83 The creation of the Goodmanham ritual site seems to have been a fairly recent event as, in the passage describing the destruction of the ‘altars’, Bede reveals that Coifi had originally consecrated them himself. It is possible that the site was associated not only with the dead, but also with the cult of Woden, recently adopted by Eadwine: as we have seen, some other burial sites are associated with Woden, who is believed to have had associations with the dead.84 What rituals were carried out at the posts and enclosures of Goodmanham and Yeavering? Coifi’s name, as we have seen, suggests he was a shamanistic religious practitioner. One capacity attributed to those born with a caul was the ability to communicate with the dead and to conduct the souls of the dead to the next world. This is hardly surprising – there are many analogies between shamanistic initiation and healing procedures on one hand, and funerary rites on the other.85 In the process of initiation, the shaman’s soul endures ordeals in another world: his symbolic death there through a grisly dismemberment is a prelude to his return to this world with new powers.86 As a healer, or diagnostician, he sends his soul to the other world to learn the cause of his patient’s disease or to retrieve the patient’s soul, which has been stolen from him. These procedures involve journeys to the afterlife, dissolution, transformation and regeneration. The same is broadly true of funerary rites, and a well-known part of the role of the religious specialist in many cultures is to assist the soul into the world of the dead and to transform it from potentially threatening revenant into benevolent ancestor. It has recently been suggested that animals sacrificed during Anglo-Saxon cremation rites may either have been regarded as part of a new identity created for the deceased through this process of transformation, or may have been thought of partly as agents helping that process – in other words as playing a shamanistic role in the transition of the soul to the afterlife.87 The same may be true of the animal sacrifices accompanying burials such as the horse burials at Sutton Hoo, Great Chesterford and elsewhere. The only other ritual specialist apart from Coifi mentioned in the Christian literature of the era, the


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South Saxon ‘prince of the priests of idolatry’, is also connected with the dead, portrayed in the Life of Wilfrid standing on a mound or barrow as he attempts to cast a spell on Bishop Wilfrid and his followers.88 Do we have the grave of a shamanistic religious specialist in inhumation AX at Yeavering?89 The literally liminal nature of this burial, at the doorway to an Anglian hall, aligned on posts of ritual significance, might reflect the intention that the soul of the man buried there would pass into the body of someone stepping over the burial. He might even, like Coifi, have been marked by the caul: as well as being a designator of shamanistic powers, the amniotic membrane is thought to be a sign that the child born with it is destined to return from the dead.90 The occupant of the grave was buried with a staff – interpreted as a version of a Roman surveyor’s staff, perhaps connected with the alignment of the hall itself on the ritual posts erected at Yeavering. As well as the staff, which appears to have been surmounted by the figure of a bird or a goat, the burial was accompanied by a goat’s head or skull, placed over the body’s lower legs. Staffs are thought to have shamanistic associations,91 while the goat’s head reminds us that the name Yeavering – Bede’s Ad Gefrin, probably deriving from the Brittonic – means ‘hill of the goats’. Commentators have postulated that this was a pagan cult site used first by British and later by Anglian Bernicians.92 Goat remains are amongst the most commonly found animal bones in cremations throughout England,93 suggesting the goat’s totemic importance, and further south in Bernicia we find one other notable ‘goat’ site at Gateshead, Bede’s Ad Caprae Caput.94 ‘Head’ place-names of this type have long been thought of as ritual centres, where the head of a totemic animal – or its representation – was placed on a pole and worshipped. Was inhumation AX aligned on posts surmounted by goats’ heads? Situated at the doorway of a hall now dated to the reign of Eadwine (616–33),95 it reflects the significance for him of pagan rituals connected with death and the transition to the afterlife at the point when churchmen from Kent first arrived in Anglian Northumbria. Both the tiny amount of written evidence relating to Anglo-Saxon paganism, and also the archaeological record, suggest that when the first Christian missionaries landed in Kent, it was undergoing a period of cultic change and development. It is inherently unlikely that either domestic rituals or traditional seasonal rites relating to fertility and agriculture would have gone into decline; but it seems that around this time emergent elites and some nascent royal dynasties took up and controlled not only the cult of Woden but also rituals associated with illness and death – rituals which had become the focus of more intensive attention in some areas, in response to plague – in order to further their own personal or dynastic ambitions. It may even be the case that this period marks the emergence of Woden as psychopomp, an aspect prominent in his later Scandinavian reflex, Odin. Whatever the truth of this suggestion, the

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association of religion and ritual with dynastic consolidation, war and politics from the late sixth century onwards may have had consequences for the acceptance and progress of Christianity in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the course of the seventh. While a number of rulers would attempt to spread the new religion throughout their kingdom, others, as the next chapter indicates, seem to have associated it primarily with the establishment and consolidation of their own position and power, and the domination and control of their peers.

6

The Diffusion Of Christianity and the Establishment of the Anglo-Saxon Church

KENT, THE EAST SAXONS AND THE EAST ANGLES In his account of the reception of the Gregorian mission in Kent, Bede tells us that although Æthelberht allowed the mission to establish itself, granting it provisions, somewhere to stay and the right to preach, he was not converted immediately. His baptism came only after he had observed both the purity of the lives of the monks and priests involved, and was attracted by their promises, ‘the truth of which they confirmed by performing many miracles’.1 Though Bede is vague about the actual date of the king’s baptism, his comments might make us reflect on the nature of his acceptance of Christianity. While he emphasizes the simple and innocent way of life of the mission as attracting Æthelberht to the new religion, many other factors were at work. As we have seen, Æthelberht had originally moved towards Christianity in response to pressures coming from the various Frankish rulers. Nevertheless, we cannot describe his decision to convert solely in terms of international politics. Robin Horton has argued in relation to the acceptance of Islam and Christianity in modern Africa that the existence of a cult of a supreme being rendered the monotheistic religions a little more accessible and that rulers there functioned as ‘men of two worlds’, moving between the traditional microcosm of local beliefs and the macrocosm represented by the monotheistic religions.2 In the case of Anglo-Saxon England, it is likely to have been the emergence of the cult of Woden as a focus or vehicle for dynastic aspirations which provided the initial bridging factor: the recent establishment of a link between the worship of one particular god and dynastic consolidation probably rendered the idea of the acceptance of another new cult less extraordinary in Æethelberht’s mind. And then there is the attraction of a religion in which the doctrinal elements are accompanied by imagistic ones. Bede may present Augustine and his mission as living an exemplary life of apostolic simplicity (‘the way of life of the apostles and the primitive church’) but his coupling of ‘promises’ with ‘miracles’ also suggests that Æthelberht was drawn to those elements of Christianity which most closely resembled his traditional religion.3 In this case the imagistic aspects of the new belief were represented

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by what Augustine and his group claimed as miracles – most likely to have been exorcisms or healings, which were probably associated to a great extent with shrines and relics. Bede maintains that Æthelberht did not compel others to follow him because he had been taught by Augustine that the service of Christ should be voluntary. Bede is also certain that his son Eadbald did not accept the new religion with him.4 However, Eadbald’s paganism may have reflected a family desire to maintain as many connections as possible, rather than any recalcitrance on his part. Æthelberht himself is named by Bede as ‘the third English king to rule over all the southern kingdoms’.5 Like the heads of all emergent ruling dynasties at the time, his position was based essentially on prowess in battle and therefore also on the provision of booty and tribute with which to reward his followers;6 but he must also have been dependent on a variety of alliances in an attempt to keep his position intact. One of the primary ways of cementing alliances was through marriage – Æthelberht’s marriage with Bertha had been undertaken to enhance the prestige of his family in Kent, and to elevate its status above that of any possible competitors. Equally, if it had seemed strategically important to align with Francia and therefore with the European Christian macrocosm, he also needed to maintain his position in the local microcosm. Bertha died at some unknown point between 601 and 616, and after her death Æthelberht remarried, again almost certainly for political reasons, to a woman from another provincial elite family which either ruled or aspired to rule in its own area.7 We do not know either the date of Bertha’s death or the identity of Æthelberht’s new wife, only that Eadbald followed the tradition of marrying her himself on his father’s death, an act which cemented the alliance made by his father with whichever family or kingdom this wife came from. For the time being, at least, it was the English microcosm rather than the Frankish macrocosm that was of greater importance to him. As a king who dominated the south-east of England, Æthelberht not only permitted the establishment of a bishopric at Canterbury, and also another for the people of west Kent at Rochester, but was able to persuade two other rulers to accept baptism at his court.8 His sister had married Sledd, a member of an East Saxon family, and it is likely to have been this Kentish connection which had elevated Sledd’s status to that of ruler.9 By 604, their son Sæberht ruled in London and became a Christian under Æthelberht’s influence. Æthelberht seems to have been responsible for the foundation of St Paul’s in London, suggesting either that Sæberht was something of a puppet king or that his real power lay elsewhere in the East Saxon kingdom. Kentish influence, in London at least, appears to have declined with Eadbald’s accession. Sæberht’s sons had not been baptized and although Bede claims they had given up pagan practice to some extent when their father was alive, he adds that they now reverted to open paganism.10

THE DIFFUSION OF CHRISTIANITY

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The other ruler to be baptized in Kent was Rædwald of the East Angles; but when he returned home he was, according to Bede, persuaded by his wife and by ‘evil teachers’ not to abandon his former religion altogether. While he apparently created a Christian altar, he also maintained a smaller pagan one in the same fanum (temple or shrine) ‘on which to offer victims to devils’.11 In describing these actions, Bede is vastly disapproving in tone, but we seem to be dealing with an example of syncretism, the synthesis of elements from more than one religion, which enabled Rædwald to keep up two alliances, the pagan one probably to another emergent ruling family represented by his wife. Bede makes no mention of any Christian hierarchy being set up amongst the East Angles at this period and it is possible that Rædwald, not offered continuous demonstrations of the miraculous powers of the new god by resident missionaries, treated him in the manner of a more distant supreme being. While the mission to Kent appears to have prospered during Æthelberht’s lifetime, during the rule of Sæberht’s sons and of Eadbald its position declined dramatically. Sæberht had probably owed his status to his connections to Æthelberht and had accepted Christianity as a consequence of this relationship: the fact that the East Saxon rulers later traced their descent back to Seaxnet, originally the god of the Saxon people, alone, suggests that his family had never adopted the cult of Woden. His sons remained within the pagan microcosm. While they demanded the Eucharist from Mellitus, who had been made Bishop of London, any ideas they might have harboured about the possible ritual efficacy of the sacrament were clearly outweighed by the desire to stay in independent control of London, and they refused baptism.12 Bede tells how Mellitus and Justus were so discouraged by their lack of progress in London that they retreated to Francia; Lawrence, who had succeeded Augustine, was on the point of joining them, when the Apostle Peter appeared to him in a vision and scourged him for his temerity. Lawrence therefore remained in Kent and converted its ruler Eadbald.13 This colourful story obscures the likelihood that Eadbald was baptized because of changes in his political circumstances. The accession of Chlothar II in 613 saw Francia fall under the rule of a single king, powerful enough to be able, a few years after his accession, to extend his authority across the channel. We know that Eadbald married a second, Frankish, wife, possibly the daughter of the mayor of the Neustrian palace, in what amounted to an acknowledgement of Frankish hegemony.14 By doing so, he aligned Kent definitively with the Christian macrocosm. London was still a no-go area for the mission, but Justus returned to his place as Bishop of Rochester and Mellitus replaced Lawrence, who had died, at Canterbury.

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NORTHUMBRIA The most powerful ruler in England at this stage was Rædwald of the East Angles, no doubt helped by the alliances reflected in his syncretism. In 616 he was persuaded by his wife not to acquiesce in the murder of a refugee at his court, Eadwine, a prince of the Deiri; instead he backed Eadwine and they defeated the latter’s rival Æthelfrith at the River Idle.15 Thus Eadwine came to rule over the two northern kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira. As we have already seen, he seems to have adopted the cult of Woden as appropriate to his position and power. Bede, who earlier in the Ecclesiastical History places Eadwine’s conversion in a religious context, also re-tells the story as a political one. He records that Eadwine became the most powerful king in Britain: . . . like no other English king before him, he held under his sway the whole realm of Britain, not only English kingdoms but those ruled over by the Britons as well. He even brought the islands of Anglesey and Man under his power . . .16

Early in his reign Eadwine’s successes were already such that he does not appear to have considered the adoption of Christianity as a strategic necessity and even when he married Eadbald of Kent’s sister, Æthelburh, he was in a strong enough position to resist demands that he convert. Instead, he agreed to let Æthelburh and her retainers practise their own religion. She brought with her from Kent Paulinus, consecrated bishop by Justus, as chaplain. The following year, Eadwine narrowly escaped death at the hands of an assassin sent by the king of the West Saxons, just as his daughter Eanfled was born – on an Easter Sunday. Eadwine allowed her to be baptized and vowed that if he was victorious over the West Saxons, he too would become a Christian. According to Bede, even though he defeated the West Saxons, he hesitated a long time before fulfilling this vow.17 Though Bede claims that Eadwine was pondering the mysteries of the Christian faith, it seems just as likely that he was considering the political implications of the decision. He may have been delaying until after the death of Rædwald, not wishing to appear to commit himself to an exclusively Christian set of alliances and thus ensuring that he could take over as overlord of other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.18 Bede records that Pope Boniface V wrote to Eadwine urging him to accept baptism, expounding the doctrine of God the Creator and the undivided Trinity, as well as condemning the ‘pernicious superstition’ of worshipping man-made idols and reminding Eadwine that both his wife and brother-in-law were Christians.19 In addition, Boniface wrote to Æthelburh herself, in the clear belief that a baptized consort should influence her husband to convert. Although he sent her a ‘blessing’ of St Peter in the form of a contact relic, Boniface also warned her that marriage between a Christian and an unbeliever was inappropriate.20 The tactic of writing to the king’s Christian wife is reminiscent of


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Gregory I’s approach to Bertha in 601 and suggests an awareness of the role of the queen in Germanic society, perhaps partly learned from Gregory’s correspondence with queens such as Bertha, Theudelinda and Brunichildis. Popes appear to have developed the expectation that the Christian wives of rulers would act as convert-makers, by continually exhorting their husbands to accept baptism.21 But in the last analysis it was both Bertha’s and Æthelburh’s husbands’ political situation which would count the most in any such decision. Boniface showed good strategic awareness where the latter was concerned, as his letter to Eadwine also mentions the gift not only of another Petrine ‘blessing’, but of a robe embroidered with gold and a ‘garment from Ancyra’. These were powerful symbols of the macrocosm, and would have been prized by Eadwine in the same way as the rich goods imported from the Mediterranean region found in elite burials of the early seventh century. The attractions of the idea of the Roman Empire for Eadwine are demonstrated by Bede, who describes the Roman-style standard which was carried before the king. They may possibly also be seen in the building at Yeavering that resembled a section of a Roman theatre.22 The use of the concept of Romanitas – Roman-ness – by English rulers of the seventh century to create and sustain their own power is well documented: it was symbolized earlier by the acquisition and later on in the seventh century by the distribution to their followers of prestigious imported goods.23 Boniface’s letter to Eadwine may be at times severe and theological in tone, but his choice of gift reflects a perception of some of the factors which might make Christianity attractive to a king in the far north-west of Europe as part of the repertoire of rulership.

THE BAPTISM OF KINGS In a pattern reflecting the dominance at different periods of Kent, East Anglia, Northumbria and Mercia, the rulers of the emergent Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were gradually absorbed into the Christian macrocosm. The Christian institutions of sponsorship and god-parentage could play a very useful part in establishing and cementing relationships of hegemony and submission, and in looking at the pattern of Christianization over the following three or four decades it is striking how mission and baptism were wielded as symbols of hegemony over other areas and rulers, by rulers of kingdoms where Christianity was still in its infancy.24 Eadwine’s power was sufficiently great to ‘persuade’ Rædwald of the East Angles’ successor Eorpwald also to adopt Christianity.25 Bede suggests that Eorpwald took steps to Christianize the East Angles; but after his death the kingdom may have been ruled by the pagan Ricberht for three years up to the accession of Sigeberht in c.630–1. Sigeberht provides another example of the way in which

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political necessity could lead to baptism – he had been baptized while in exile in Francia, in what was evidently a display of political submission to his hosts.26 Bede initially credits the arrival of Christianity amongst the West Saxons to the work of Bishop Birinus in the 630s, the apparent result of a papal missionary initiative. But he also stresses the political role played by King Oswald of Northumbria in the baptism of King Cynegisl: ‘. . . it so happened’, he writes, ‘that at the time, Oswald, the saintly and victorious king of the Northumbrians was present and stood godfather for him’. Oswald later married his godson Cynegisl’s daughter – an act which would not have been acceptable in Italy or Byzantium – and Bede claims that on the occasion of his baptism ‘both kings’ gave Birinus the city of Dorchester-upon-Thames in which to establish his episcopal see.27 This all combines to suggest Northumbrian hegemony over the West Saxons during Oswald’s reign – as well as emphasizing the important symbolic dimension of Cynegisl’s baptism and the political nature of baptismal sponsorship amongst Anglo-Saxon royalty. However, while Oswald may have succeeded in establishing Northumbrian dominance over the West Saxons, Bede may exaggerate his role somewhat. Birinus’ mission had no connection with him and his ‘donation’ of Dorchester may be a misunderstanding, deliberate or otherwise, of his witnessing of Cynegisl’s donation. Perhaps Bede wished to create a firmer link between Oswald and the Roman mission – as opposed to the Irish one he introduced to Northumbria (see below).28 It is also noticeable that while one of Cynegisl’s sons, Cwichelm, accepted baptism with his father, the other, Cenwealh, did not. He remained within the sphere of traditional religion, not necessarily because of any disagreement between himself and his father, but instead quite plausibly because of the perceived advantages of retaining bonds with Wessex’s non-Christian population, which must have been in the vast majority at the time when Cynegisl and Cwichelm were baptized. But when he succeeded Cynegisl as king, Cenwealh was defeated by Penda of Mercia, whose sister he had repudiated as his wife: and on fleeing to the court of the Christian King Anna of the East Angles, he at last allowed himself to be baptized. The arrival of Christianity in Mercia, according to Bede, also followed a political pattern.29 Oswald’s successor as ruler of Northumbria was Oswiu. In about 653, he and his son Alhfrith, sub-king of Deira, were able to compel Peada, the son of Penda of Mercia and ruler of the Middle Angles, to accept baptism when he married Alhfrith’s sister, Alhflæd. Christianity was later established in Mercia itself by conquest, when its pagan ruler Penda was defeated by Oswiu at the battle of Winwaed in 655. Although Oswiu was replaced as ruler of Mercia after only three years by Penda’s younger son Wulfhere, ending the period of Northumbrian power south of the Humber, there seems to have been no question of a reversion to paganism. King Sigeberht of the East Saxons was pressured by Oswiu into


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accepting Christianity in c.653 and Bede also tells us that King Æthelwealh of the South Saxons was baptized ‘in the kingdom of Mercia at the suggestion and in the presence of [King] Wulfhere who, when Æthealwealh came forth from the font, received him as a son’.30 This event must have taken place in the late 660s or early 670s.31 Gradually, the pagan microcosm began to shrink as more and more rulers were absorbed into the Christian macrocosm. In terms of practice and belief, this incorporation could initially have been assisted either by the fact of a recent cultic re-focusing (on Woden) or the perception of the Christian God as a distant creator. And kings were probably more than a little reconciled to the admission of political submission implied in being the godson of another king by the mental association of Christian Europe with the valuable objects which came from this world, and by the prospect of ‘re-creating Romanitas among the property-owning class as the solution of how to assert and consolidate their kingship’.32 That baptism could still be seen primarily in terms of personal conversion and dynastic power relatively late in the century is suggested by the case of Æthelwealh, who received ‘two provinces, namely the Isle of Wight and the province of the Meonware in the land of the West Saxons’ from Wulfhere. Although baptized and married to a Christian princess of the Hwicce, he seems to have done nothing about converting his followers or people, something which was only accomplished several years later.33 Even as late as 685–6 the macrocosm had not completely swallowed up all branches of every ruling family: Æthelwealh was overthrown and killed by Cædwalla, a pagan member of the ‘currently unsuccessful branch of the Wessex ruling dynasty’.34 Cædwalla would be driven out of the land of the South Saxons but then recaptured it, as well as the Isle of Wight, after becoming ruler of the West Saxons. Only after this did he allow himself to be baptized by the eminent Northumbrian churchman Wilfrid, who was at that time in exile in the south of England.35

CHRISTIANITY IN NORTHUMBRIA The survival and extension of Christianity in Northumbria itself appeared to be compromised after the death of King Eadwine in 633. Eadwine’s expansionist activities had given him hegemony over Mercia, as well as control of Anglesey and Man. His aggression seems to have triggered off a response by Caedualla, a ruler of a northern British kingdom, in association with Penda, a member of the Mercian ruling dynasty who would go on to become its king.36 After Eadwine’s defeat and death at Hatfield Chase, Northumbria once again split into its two constituent parts. Caedualla allowed Eanfrith the son of King Æthelfrith, Eadwine’s predecessor and enemy, to rule in Bernicia, while Osric, a son of Eadwine’s uncle, took charge of Deira. Both of these men, according to Bede,

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had been baptized while exiled during Eadwine’s reign ‘amongst the Irish or the Picts’; but when they returned, they . . . reverted to the filth of their former idolatry thereby to be polluted and destroyed.37

The apparent readiness of Eanfrith and Osric to abandon Christianity on their return from exile raises many questions about the level of Christianization amongst the Northumbrians achieved by Bishop Paulinus during the last part of Eadwine’s reign, despite his success in preaching south of the Humber in Lindsey and Eadwine’s compelling Eorpwald, king of the East Angles, to accept baptism.38 The death of a baptized king in battle might in itself be taken to indicate the ineffectiveness of Christianity as a guarantor of success and protection for ruler and people, though as Caedualla, the victor and now their overlord, was presumably a British Christian, both rulers might conceivably have remained Christians themselves. But their return to paganism may signal that the level of implantation of Christianity in Northumbria was largely confined to certain areas and groups. Bede states that Eadwine was baptized with his nobility and a large number of the common people.39 However, his account only describes Paulinus baptizing at York, where Eadwine had the church of St Peter hastily built out of wood while he was receiving instruction for his own baptism, and in the rivers near the royal centres of Yeavering in Bernicia, and Catterick and Campodunum in Deira.40 Bede’s description of Paulinus’ spending thirty-six days catechizing and baptizing at Yeavering affirms that During these days from morning to evening he did nothing else but instruct the crowds who flocked to him from every village and district in the teaching of Christ. When they had received instruction he washed then in the waters of regeneration in the River Glen, which was close at hand.41

Impressive though this picture of mass baptisms appears on first reading, we have no way of knowing either the actual numbers involved in these events, or how often they were repeated on anything like this scale in the six years between Eadwine’s own baptism and his death. Nor can we say how far other areas apart from those around royal residences were touched by Paulinus’ activities – though, conversely, we can assume that the time he spent in Lindsey extending Eadwine’s influence in this area must have taken away from the time he could devote to evangelization north of the Humber.42 Important changes would soon occur which would eventually secure the future of Christianity amongst the Anglians of Northumbria. Osric attacked Caedualla and was killed by him; Caedualla then devastated Northumbria and also killed Eanfrith. But Caedualla himself was defeated and killed in 634 by Oswald, an exiled member of the Northumbrian royal house. Oswald temporarily united the


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two kingdoms – although he was a son of Æthelfrith of Bernicia, his mother was Acha of Deira and he seems to have been acceptable to both – until his death in battle against Penda of Mercia in 642.

THE EPISCOPAL HIERARCHY Just as the emergent royal dynasties only accepted Christianity one by one, so the establishment of an episcopal hierarchy throughout England was at first a patchy and piecemeal affair, which followed on royal baptism. Papal interest in the process had not stopped with the sending of letters to kings and their Christian wives by Popes Gregory and Boniface: in the 630s, Pope Honorius I sent Birinus, who had probably originally been a monk of Bobbio, to the West Saxons. Honorius may have been aware of the lack of progress in establishing anything along the lines of the hierarchy and organization envisaged by Gregory I, and may also have been worried by the prospect of Irish or British churchmen operating in the south-west. Another foreign clergyman who arrived in England in the same decade was Felix, possibly a former Bishop of Châlon, but now a political exile who was appointed bishop in East Anglia during Sigeberht’s reign by Honorius, Archbishop of Canterbury. The arrival of Felix marked the beginning of an uninterrupted succession of East Anglian bishops up to Berhtgisl, who held the office when Theodore of Tarsus was appointed to the archdiocese of Canterbury in 669. But by the late 640s, the popes were too preoccupied with the divisive and violent Monothelite Controversy, which posed a grave threat to the unity of the Christian oikoumene, to be able to pay too much attention to what was happening in England. The training of clergy and bishops was not a rapid process: the see of London had lapsed when its first holder, Mellitus, became Archbishop of Canterbury and the first native bishop in the Anglo-Saxon Church according to Bede was Ithamar, who succeeded Paulinus at Rochester (see below). When Honorius died in 653 an Englishman, Deusdedit, was consecrated by Ithamar – but only after an interval of eighteen months. In Wessex, Birinus’ successor was Agilberht, a Frankish churchman who was appointed by King Cenwealh in 650. However, Agilberht returned to Francia in 660, when Cenwealh (allegedly also annoyed by Agilberht’s lack of proficiency in the Anglo-Saxon language) attempted to divide his diocese and placed Wine, who was probably an Englishman but had been consecrated in Francia, in a second see at Winchester. Although his action in dividing the diocese may at first appear to reflect an intensification of the process of Christianization, Cenwealh’s commitment to the dissemination of Christianity is in some doubt, because several years later he would expel Wine, leaving the West Saxons, according to Bede, without any bishop at all for a considerable time.

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On his expulsion from Wessex, Wine seems to have bought the see of London from the King of Mercia, who at that time controlled the East Saxon peoples and rulers: the previous bishop of the East Saxons, Cedd, had died in the plague of 664. However, a bishop was eventually restored in Wessex. Bede suggests that Cenwealh, who was experiencing pressure from his enemies, had come to believe in the efficacy of Christianity, equating his expulsion with his former paganism and his restoration to his kingdom with acceptance of baptism. He therefore attempted to put an end to his current difficulties by demonstrating his support for Christianity, and invited Agilberht to return. Agilberht refused but instead sent his nephew Leuthere, who was eventually consecrated bishop of the West Saxons by Theodore of Tarsus, who became Archbishop of Canterbury in 669. In Northumbria, Oswald’s accession marks the opening of a new chapter in the implantation of Christianity in which Kentish influence was replaced by that of the Columban church of Iona. Eadwine’s widow Queen Æthelburh fled to Kent and Paulinus departed with her, ending his days as Bishop of Rochester and leaving only a deacon, James, behind in York as a representative of the original mission to Northumbria. The focus of the Northumbrian Church switched to Lindisfarne, close to the Bernician royal residence of Bamburgh, where Aidan, who had been sent from Iona, established a monastery as his episcopal residence. It was his successor, Finan, who had also been trained at Iona, who baptized King Peada; the priests Cedd, Adda, Betti and Diuma were sent to the kingdom of the Middle Angles and when Penda of Mercia was defeated by Oswiu of Northumbria, Diuma, an Irishman, was consecrated bishop for both kingdoms as well as for Lindsey: according to Bede this was because of a shortage of trained personnel.43 Cedd was later consecrated bishop of the East Saxons by Finan and two other bishops, and seems to have worked from two monastic bases – one in Essex and the other, at the request of King Oethelwald of Deira, son of King Oswald, at Lastingham. Thus in effect Northumbria had two bishops, one for Bernicia at Lindisfarne and the other at Lastingham in Deira. Cedd died of the plague in 664 and was succeeded in his monastery, and as a bishop, by his brother Chad (see below). And even though Northumbrian dominance of Mercia ended in 658, the latter still accepted Northumbrian bishops and Diuma was succeeded by Trumhere, Jaruman, Chad himself and Winfrith, all trained in Northumbria. The political basis on which individual kings accepted baptism combined with the evident shortage of trained priests to ensure that the initial progress of Christianity within Anglo-Saxon England was slow.44 Sometimes this was literally the case – Aidan followed the Irish tradition of travelling around his diocese on foot. When presented with a horse by the king, he promptly gave it away to a beggar. While his asceticism and humility were demonstrated by his insistence on walking, this ensured that his progress around his extensive diocese was


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necessarily measured, a consideration which mattered far less in Ireland, where there were many more bishops and much smaller dioceses. Legend has it that when, in 669, Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury found the Northumbriantrained Bishop Chad making unhurried pedestrian progress around his flock in Mercia, Lindsey and the kingdom of the Middle Angles, he lifted him bodily on to a horse.45 Although there was no conversion of a people without the support of a king, royal baptism by no means implied the swift disappearance of paganism from his kingdom.46 Arguments have been put forward for the Christianization of the ritual sites at Yeavering and Goodmanham in Northumbria along the lines suggested by Gregory the Great in his letter to Augustine of 601. The evidence for these transformations is less than clear. Paulinus may indeed have preached at Yeavering, but the orientated building and the cemetery which took over from the ‘Eastern Ring-Ditch’ there ‘are not self-evidently Christian’, while the date of the first creation of a church on the Goodmanham mound is not known (and Bede records only the destruction of a pagan ritual site there, not its replacement by a Christian one).47 One location where such a transformation might plausibly have been carried out is the monastery of Ad Caprae Caput mentioned by Bede: its name suggests that it was situated near or on a former pagan ritual post surmounted by a totemic animal head, in this case of a female goat.48 The importance of the goat in the paganism of some Anglo-Saxon groups or peoples is also hinted at by Burial AX at Yeavering which appears to be that of a ritual specialist, accompanied by a goat’s skull. Elsewhere, as we have seen in the case of Æthelberht, kings did not necessarily move immediately to enforce Christianity, and their successors could revert to paganism for a time. Bede thinks that ‘idols’ were removed from Kent only at some time after 640 and before 664, on the orders of King Eorcenberht, who also decreed that Lent be observed throughout his kingdom; and he also claims that Ealdwulf, king of the East Angles from 663–713, remembered seeing Rædwald’s syncretistic shrine still standing.49 Shrines whose existence is still indicated in place names such as Harrow, near London, may be those ‘where the pagan religion lingered for some decades after the acceptance of Christianity by the ruling families of various kingdoms’.50 Such survivals may even reflect not just the continued existence of paganism but even the possibility that an initially limited understanding of the nature of the Christian God by baptized Anglo-Saxons may have worked to inhibit the disappearance of a number of traditional cults and shrines. It is noteworthy that the oldest Christian hymns from both Ireland and England – the Altus Prosator and Cædmon’s hymn – praise God as Creator, suggesting that this was a popular way of teaching about Christianity’s God.51 But then the Altus Prosator goes on to set out the powers and properties of the Christian God as clearly as possible – perhaps suggesting the realization of the need to offset any impression that such

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a creator god could be remote. Cædmon, a herdsman turned poet, does not, concentrating simply on God as creator of Heaven and earth. Does this imply that some in the Anglo-Saxon Church might at the outset have attempted to capitalize on an understanding of a creator god, seeing this as a way of making Christianity comprehensible, without immediately realizing that this could also suggest a god who was comparatively distant and inactive? If this was indeed a common perception of the Christian deity, it could have unintentionally encouraged the continuation of traditional sacrifices to the old gods, perceived as being more closely involved with everyday life. At the same time, Bede does suggest that a few kings had a deeper understanding of Christianity and took an active role in promoting the new religion. He depicts King Oswald of Northumbria acting as interpreter for the Gaelic-speaking Aidan, whose language he had learned in exile in Scotland. Bede also records that before engaging in the battle against Penda and Cædualla which gave him control over Northumbria, Oswald set up a wooden cross and prayed before it. His raising of a cross before his small force, and his prayer for victory, suggest that he was deliberately paralleling pagan prayers at a tree or column representing the world-tree which was situated at Hefenfelth, a pre-Christian name which suggests a sacred meadow.52 Thus Oswald was actively Christianizing a pagan site which may have contained a sacred tree or tree-trunk pillar like the later Saxon Irminsul (see Chapter 4 above), now rivalled or replaced by his cross. His action may partly reflect what he had learned about the process of Christianization from his exile in a Christian country and his baptism in the Columban branch of the Irish Church. But he must also have realized the necessity and importance of achieving a more profound level of Christianization than had been reached under Eadwine, if he wished to maintain his position. It is even possible that he was involved in the initiative to have the pagan ritual site Ad Caprae Caput turned into a monastery. It is noticeable that Sigeberht of the East Angles, also presented by Bede as an active Christianizer, was similarly baptized in exile. Both Oswald and Sigeberht were connected, though to differing extents, to the Irish Church, which was not only experienced in the business of converting the heathen, but which also attempted, through its application of the techniques of confession and penance, to achieve a more than superficial degree of Christianization. In addition, the Columban church of Iona into which Oswald was baptized had worked to adapt Christianity to the needs of warrior kingship, broadly in line with developments in Europe, where the Visigothic and Frankish churches had begun to develop rituals for blessing kings and their armies as they set out to war.53 This may be reflected in Adomnán’s account of Oswald’s victory at Denisesburn, which relates how Oswald was granted a vision of St Columba promising him victory (and makes no mention of any raising of a cross, suggesting instead that the majority of his army accepted baptism after victory and thus making Columba a major player in


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the Christianization of Northumbria).54 Sigeberht eventually resigned his office to become a monk in a monastery he had founded: when removed from it to lead his people into battle, he refused to carry anything but a staff in his hand, and was slain. It has been suggested that his decision to become a monk reflects a tendency in the Irish Church not to expect kings to promote Christianity as actively as did churchmen abroad.55 It could also reflect the sincerity of Sigeberht’s personal conversion. Later in the century, Oswiu of Northumbria and Sæbbi of the East Saxons also retired to monasteries, in both cases after they had reigned for three decades.56 Bede tells us that Sæbbi would have taken this course long before, had his wife permitted a divorce. Later still, Cædwalla, the conqueror of the South Saxons converted by Wilfrid, resigned to go to Rome, where he died after ruling for only two years. His successor Ine would follow his example thirty-seven years later.57 King Cenred of Mercia and Offa, son of Sigehere of the East Saxons, also ended their lives as monks in Rome. The devotion of these kings to Christianity is highlighted by Bede, who nevertheless sounds a note of regret concerning Offa, ‘a youth so lovable and handsome that the whole race longed for him to have and hold the sceptre of the kingdom’.58 Nevertheless, where at least some of these monastic retirements are concerned, our limited knowledge of events may fail to reveal existing dynastic tensions and succession struggles, and some may not have been entirely voluntary.

RELATIONS WITH THE BRITISH CHURCH Did the native British Church play any part in assisting the process of the Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons? There were substantial British kingdoms in the north and the west of the island, where the episcopal and monastic British Church still survived at the time of the arrival of the Gregorian mission. Historians have even suggested that the western Anglo-Saxon peoples of the Hwicce and the Magonsæte were Christianized at the end of the sixth century by the indigenous British Church.59 Bede, however, makes no reference to any such process, if it ever took place: instead, he paints the British Church of Wales and the west in a deeply unflattering light – although he also incidentally reveals the strength of its traditions.60 He claims that Augustine of Canterbury had met its bishops and teachers (episcopos sive doctores) on the borders of the Hwicce and the West Saxons, but that the British had insisted on adhering to an erroneous method of calculating the date of Easter; did not baptize in the same way as the Roman Church; and refused either to join him in evangelizing the heathen, or even to acknowledge him as their archbishop. According to Bede, many of the recalcitrant British churchmen came from the great Welsh monastery of Bangor Iscoed. He records that this house had seven sections of at least three hundred

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monks each, and he gloats over the subsequent slaughter of monks of this monastery – allegedly predicted by Augustine – on account of their ‘heresy’, their refusal of co-operation, and their refusal to preach to the pagan Anglo-Saxons themselves.61 The Northumbrian Bede’s bias against the British appears to reflect a degree of hostility between the Germanic invaders and the Britons, intensified, it has been suggested, by Northumbrian folk-memories of the devastation inflicted by the ‘bestial cruelty’ of the British ruler Cædualla following his defeat of Eadwine in the 630s.62 What of the Britons under Anglo-Saxon rule? They are to all intents and purposes invisible in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, whose narrative often concentrates on missionary work at the courts of the Anglo-Saxon kings, and whose account of Christianization is heavily biased towards the eastern part of England.63 He was ‘profoundly ignorant of ultra-Pennine Northumbria and had no informant from Mercia or from Western Wessex’.64 It is also the case that those areas where Bede does not tell us of the establishment of Anglo-Saxon bishops and monasteries are areas where we have evidence for the greatest survival of Brittonic speakers.65 Yet Britons may have outnumbered the incomers (although there are also theories that that many British died, fled or were enslaved in the process of AngloSaxon settlement, as the sixth-century writer Gildas suggests).66 Anglo-Saxon implantation may have been comparatively weak in some areas, for example in Bernicia; and even in the immediate vicinity of important Roman towns such as London and Lincoln, as well as in the Chilterns, there is a lack of distinctively Anglo-Saxon material culture.67 The consolidation of Northumbria led to the absorption of the British kingdoms of Elmet, Gododdin and eventually Rheged, thus adding to the numbers of British already in its territories.68 But how strong the British churches were in areas under Anglo-Saxon control is unclear. There are indications of a pagan revival in late Roman Britain, and it has been argued that the survival of eccles place-names (from the Latin ecclesia, church) indicates the continuing existence of Christian communities in the midst of non-Christian populations: some of these may have played a role in the Christianization of the Anglo-Saxon incomers.69 They are absent from a large part of England from Yorkshire and the East Midlands down to eastern Wessex, but the earliest eccles names in Kent and Norfolk have suggested the possibility of early incorporation of British communities into the landscape of Anglo-Saxon settlement.70 The existence of martyr cults such as those of Saints Alban and Sixtus (see Chapter 7) may have helped keep other British Christian communities alive into the seventh century. In addition, Bede records that in Kent, Queen Bertha had been given a former Roman church, St Martin, in which to worship, while Augustine recovered a Roman church for his cathedral.71 However, it is not at all clear that in either of these cases, or at Rochester, there was any continuity of Christian worship rather than merely of Christian topography. And on the negative side, the Life


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of Bishop Wilfrid suggests that in Northumbria, British clergy were sometimes driven out by the Anglo-Saxon takeover of their areas.72 How common this might have been is hard to say, as both Wilfrid and his hagiographer were severely prejudiced against the British Church because of its celebration of Easter at a different date from the Roman one. As the Irish had been converted to Christianity largely through the efforts of British Christians, their Church followed the same calculations. Although in the time of Oswald the southern Irish churches had accepted the Roman system of Easter dating, the northern Irish, Columban and Pictish churches maintained their old-fashioned traditions into the eighth century.

DOCTRINAL DISSENT The lack of consistency in methods of calculating the date of Easter would prove a major challenge to the stability and existence of Christianity in Northumbria. A doctrinal religion needs to have agreement on its doctrines – and disarray over the celebration of its most important festival can only weaken its impact on peoples whose traditional religions largely centre round festivals. In the 630s and 40s, Popes Honorius and John had warned the Irish churches about their Easter calculations: the arrival of Birinus from Bobbio as bishop to the West Saxons warded off any potential threat that Irish or British practice might spread in this region;73 but the influx of Irish monks and teachers in Oswald’s reign signalled the beginning of the problem in Northumbria. On one hand, Bede expresses genuine admiration for the efforts of the Irish, apparent in his comments on Bishop Aidan: . . . Aidan taught the clergy many lessons about the conduct of their lives but above all he left them a most salutary example of abstinence and self-control . . . he neither sought after nor cared for worldly possessions but he rejoiced to hand over at once, to any poor man whom he met, the gifts which he had received . . . 74

Bede has the greatest respect for Aidan as a man of outstanding gentleness, devotion and moderation, and also for the other Irish monks who arrived in Northumbria: . . . preaching the word of faith with great devotion. Those of them who held the rank of priest administered the grace of baptism to those who believed. Churches were built in various places and the people flocked together with joy to hear the Word . . .75

But although Bede held the Irish in far higher respect than he did the Britons, he was also concerned that when they arrived in Northumbria they celebrated Easter

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. . . between the fourteenth and the twentieth day of the moon. The northern province of the Irish and the whole nation of the Picts were still celebrating Easter Sunday according to that rule . . .76

The issue of the calculation of the date of Easter had been raised by Augustine of Canterbury in his disastrous meeting with the Welsh churchmen c.600, but it had not been the primary cause of his disagreements with them, nor did he denounce them as heretics because of it. And it is difficult to know how far in practice Northumbrians were conscious of the differences between Irish and Roman customs in the days of Aidan, when so much evangelizing activity was carried out by Irish monks and priests. Although Bede tells us that Paulinus, who would have followed Roman calculations, baptized many,77 we have no way of knowing how long his church in York survived under the care of James the deacon once he left for Kent. The divergence really became evident at the royal court after the succession of King Oswiu, whose wife Eanfled was Eadwine’s daughter and who had been baptized by Paulinus and brought up in Kent. She brought her own chaplain with her and sometimes the king was to be found celebrating Easter Sunday while she and her entourage were still observing Lent. Bede declares that although differences had been tolerated in Aidan’s lifetime on account of his sanctity, after his death . . . those who had come from Kent or Gaul declared that the Irish observance of Easter Sunday was contrary to the custom of the universal church.78

The source of the dissent on this occasion seems to have been Ronan, an Irishman who had learned the ‘correct’ continental calculations in Gaul and Italy, and who antagonized Aidan’s successor Finan. More acute controversy broke out under his successor, Colman (c.661–4). This time, the problem was almost certainly caused by Wilfrid, a Northumbrian churchman who had been educated at Lindisfarne but who had also gone on a lengthy pilgrimage abroad; his biographer, Stephen, claims that he visited both Rome and Lyon. In Rome, he says, Wilfrid learned the correct method of calculating the date of Easter. (Stephen also claims that he received the Roman form of tonsure at the hands of Archbishop Dalfinus of Lyon.) Despite his early religious formation at Lindisfarne, Wilfrid’s experiences on the continent now appear to have led him to regard the Irish as Quartodecimans and Judaizers – that is, that they celebrated Easter on the fourteenth day of the moon, regardless of whether it fell on a Sunday or not. The Quartodecimans were an early Christian group, probably of Jewish origin, condemned in the second century for celebrating Easter on the Jewish Passover, and Bede is careful to point out that strictly speaking the northern Irish and Columbans were not Quartodecimans, as they only celebrated Easter on the fourteenth of the moon if it happened to fall on a Sunday. If it fell on any other day, they waited until the


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following Sunday.79 But the tone taken by Wilfrid’s biographer Stephen, writing in the early eighth century, suggests that he returned from the continent hostile to Irish practice, which he now regarded as heresy, and was utterly determined to root it out. Bede states that Wilfrid was . . . the first bishop of the English race to introduce the catholic way of life to the English churches . . .80

– a remark which implies that, on his return from the Continent, Wilfrid had insisted on a new standard of Christianity which included not only the correct celebration of Easter, but also adoption of the Roman tonsure for monks. He convinced the sub-king of Deira, Alhfrith, that his view was the correct one and the king granted him, around 660, a monastery of forty hides at Ripon. Alhfrith had formerly presented this land to Abbot Eata, one of Aidan’s English pupils, and his monks, including Cuthbert, later Bishop of Lindisfarne. The king now demanded that they observe the Roman Easter – and when they refused and left the monastery, it was handed over to Wilfrid. Alhfrith’s action can be read as a direct challenge to his father Oswiu, in that it questioned the validity of the type of Christianity which he, like Oswald, had accepted in exile. His support for Wilfrid seems either to have soured relations between himself and Oswiu, or to have been symptomatic of an estrangement between them. The problems created for Christianity in Northumbria by the emerging conflict over the celebration of Easter were immense. Historians have sought to explain both the hostility of Wilfrid to the Irish and also Bede’s equivocal stance towards them in terms of attitudes towards episcopal wealth and power, but the fundamental problem needs to be understood in terms of a struggle over the correct celebration of the most important of all Christian festivals.81 The challenge presented first by Ronan, and then to much greater effect by Wilfrid, threatened to undermine much of the work already done in Christianizing Northumbria, which had largely been carried out by monks and clergy with connections to the Irish and British monasteries of Iona, Melrose and, of course, Lindisfarne itself. Bede states that This dispute naturally troubled the minds and hearts of the many people who feared that, although they had received the name of Christian, they were running or had run in vain.82

These people may also have included some British Christians. Once objections to the British and Irish way of calculating the date of Easter had been raised so vocally by Ronan and Wilfrid, new Christians came to fear that their baptisms, performed by priests whose orthodoxy was now being called into doubt, were

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invalid and that they might not ever reach the Christian Heaven as they had been promised. The distinctive Irish form of the monastic tonsure was also questioned by Wilfrid. We can, perhaps, gain some idea of the pro-Roman party’s position by looking at a later work, the letter addressed by Aldhelm of Malmesbury to Geraint, the British King of Dumnonia (Devon and Cornwall) and his bishops. Aldhelm questions the point of good works performed outside the Catholic Church and expresses a horror of heretics and schismatics – in effect stigmatizing the British as such. He traces the British form of the tonsure back to Simon Magus; and he lays stress on the connection between St Peter, who holds the keys to Heaven, and Rome. How can the Britons hope to enter Heaven if they reject the Roman form of tonsure and Paschal calculation? It is likely that Wilfrid and his supporters argued in similar terms, thus rendering the situation in Northumbria so acute that the royal council known as the Synod of Whitby was summoned in 664. It was held at the monastery headed by the Abbess Hild, the great-niece of King Eadwine. Although the main protagonists were Colman on one hand and Wilfrid on the other, and although it was presided over by Hild herself, it was attended by kings Oswiu and Alhfrith. It was Oswiu who took the initiative to convene it, observing that those who served one god should observe one rule of life. In their accounts of Whitby, both Bede and Stephen suggest that the synod was basically characterized by a simple division between the Irish and Roman parties: Bede, for example, says that Hild supported the Irish. Both suggest that that Wilfrid and the Romans emerged victorious from the debate, with Colman and many of his supporters departing for Ireland. King Oswiu was apparently swayed by Wilfrid’s argument (similar to that later used by Aldhelm) that it was better to follow St Peter, who was the rock on which Christ had founded his Church and who held the keys of the gates of Heaven, than Columba, who represented a mere handful of people in the remotest corner of the earth.83 Yet both accounts appear to over-simplify the situation. It has recently and convincingly been argued that three rather than two parties emerged in the aftermath of the synod. On the one hand, there was Colman and those, including English monks and priests, who simply refused the new Roman standard of catholicity and retired to Ireland. Then there was Wilfrid, together with his supporters, Bishop Agilberht and the priest Agatho, who completely rejected the Irish traditions; years later, Wilfrid would boast of how he had been the first . . . after the death of the first elders who were sent by St Gregory, to sift out the poisonous weeds planted by the Irish . . .84

This was not a practical attitude where the survival of Christianity in Northumbria was concerned and although both Bede and Stephen suggest that Wilfrid was victorious at Whitby, his more extreme view of the Irish as heretics did not


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prevail. While King Oswiu may have accepted the Roman method of calculating Easter (and the departure of Colman also gave him the opportunity to choose his replacement), he appears to have realized that to reject altogether the thirty years’ work of what Bede terms ‘the episcopacy of the Irish’ would have been disastrous for the continued existence of Christianity, to which he and his family were now committed. In what can be seen as an irenic gesture the bishop initially appointed for the Northumbrians was not Wilfrid, as Stephen suggests, but Tuda, who combined the virtue of being an Irishman with the fact that he came from the south where the Roman calculation of the date of Easter was accepted. And it appears that while Oswiu, together with Hild, Eata (by now Abbot of Lindisfarne) and Chad, who would shortly succeed Tuda, accepted the Roman Easter calculations themselves, they were not disposed to regard those who remained in Northumbria, but continued in the Irish or British tradition, as heretics. In a gesture based as much in pragmatism as anything else, they remained in communion with those churchmen who stayed in Northumbria but calculated the date of Easter, or wore the tonsure, in the Irish fashion. Thus by means of a compromise which both Bede and Stephen gloss over in their different ways, the threat to the survival of Christianity created by this fundamental ‘doctrinal’ split was averted for the time being. Tuda died not long after his consecration and an anomalous situation then arose, reflecting the divisions between Oswiu and his son. Wilfrid was sent abroad for consecration to the see of York in 664 by Alhfrith and Bede claims that while he lingered abroad awaiting consecration by Agilberht, Oswiu sent Chad to be consecrated by Deusdedit, Archbishop of Canterbury. On arriving in Canterbury Chad found that Deusdedit had died, and he was eventually consecrated by Wine and two unnamed British bishops.85 The problems raised at Whitby surfaced again with the arrival of Theodore of Tarsus, an easterner with no previous experience of the English situation, as Archbishop of Canterbury in 669. There had been no occupant of this office since 664, when Wigheard, designated as successor to Deusdedit, died before he could be consecrated. Theodore seems to have been educated at both Antioch and Constantinople before arriving, like many other eastern churchmen in the seventh century, in Rome. Thus he would have been both acquainted with the fourth-century Synod of Antioch’s canon against actual Quartodecimans, and used to the Roman calculation of Easter. He was appointed by the Pope in 668, and on his way to Canterbury he stayed for several months with Wilfrid’s supporter Agilberht, now Bishop of Paris, who no doubt informed him of the situation as both he and Wilfrid saw it. Arriving in England, Theodore travelled round the various kingdoms, consecrating bishops and teaching the canonical calculation of the date of Easter. His reactions when he reached Northumbria have to be reconstructed partly from

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the once-again conflicting accounts given by Bede and Stephen, though in this case we also possess later collections of writings which stem ultimately from Theodore himself. Both Stephen and Bede focus on his treatment of Bishop Chad of York, whom he now sent to Mercia, which needed a bishop. Stephen tells us that Theodore deposed Chad and installed Wilfrid at York, that Chad humbly confessed to the sin of being ordained to another man’s see by Quartodecimans – that is, the two British bishops – and that he did penance for these offences. Stephen also adds that when Theodore decided to send Chad to the Mercians, he ‘ordained him fully to the aforesaid see through all the ecclesiastical degrees’. Bede merely has Theodore point out the irregular nature of his consecration, which is ‘confirmed anew after the Catholic manner’: it is only in the following chapter that it is revealed that Chad has been retired to his monastery of Lastingham, that Wilfrid is now in charge of the see of York, and that the Mercian ruler asks for a bishop for his people.86 Theodore’s treatment of Chad, as depicted by Stephen, indicates that he felt it necessary for him to do penance and be re-ordained. The texts of the Iudicia Theodori, a later collection of his rulings and judgements as archbishop, suggest that this was indeed Theodore’s first reaction. These decrees require that anyone previously baptized by a heretic be re-baptized, and anyone ordained by a heretic be re-ordained. Re-ordination was not the norm in the West and Theodore should not have consecrated Chad after the latter had done penance: such rulings reflect his background in the Eastern Church. The text also contains a clause modelled on the Synod of Antioch’s condemnation of the Quartodecimans, which states that anyone who keeps Easter ‘with the Jews’ on the fourteenth of the moon ‘shall be driven out of every church unless he does penance before his death’. This harsh judgement is also applied to those who associate with ‘heretics’: by praying with a heretic; giving or being given communion by a heretic; allowing a heretic to celebrate mass; joining the congregation of heretics; ordering mass to be sung for a dead heretic; reciting the names of dead heretics alongside those of Catholics; and venerating a devout heretic’s relics. This last clause could relate to relics of Bishop Aidan: Bede records that Colman took some, but not all, of the relics of Aidan with him to Ireland.87 As a whole, these rulings reflect not only Theodore’s condemnation of those who did not celebrate Easter correctly, but also his recognition that there had been a considerable degree of interaction between Catholics and ‘heretics’, to which he wished to put an end. Thus – as revealed by Stephen’s narrative of his re-ordination of Chad – his first actions were uncompromising and directed to a large degree against the pragmatists who had continued to work alongside Irish and British clergy. His severe and uncompromising response to the state of affairs on the ground was not simply a result of his eastern training and his residence in Rome, but was also undoubtedly influenced by the way in which


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Agilberht and Wilfrid had represented the situation to him. Wilfrid had returned from the continent in 666 and Bede tells us that he consecrated bishops and deacons in Kent, where there was no archbishop for several years, as Deusdedit’s successor had died in Rome before his consecration. He then seems to have returned to his monastery at Ripon, perhaps a somewhat isolated figure amongst other Northumbrian Church leaders who were prepared to take a more conciliatory attitude towards the Irish and British legacy. But in 669, with the arrival of Theodore, Wilfrid apparently found a kindred spirit where his attitude to ‘Quartodecimans’ was concerned, and he was at last restored to the see of York. However, Wilfrid and Theodore would not remain allies forever, and Theodore seems gradually to have softened his line on the seriousness of British and Columban Easter practice. There was, of course, to be no compromising on the essential correctness of the Roman calculation of Easter, and the first decree of the Council of Hertford of 672/3, summoned and presided over by Theodore, enjoins That all keep Easter Day at the same time, namely on the Sunday after the fourteenth day of the moon of the first month . . .88

And as well as containing the clauses demanding re-ordination for ‘heretics’ and penance for those consorting with them, the Iudicia preserved under his name also enshrine another series of decisions which appear much less severe.89 They stipulate that those ordained by British or Irish bishops ‘who are not united to the Catholic Church as regards Easter and the tonsure’ be confirmed again by the laying-on of hands and a collect, and that churches consecrated by such bishops be re-consecrated. Thus the British or Irish bishops are not stigmatized as out-and-out heretics whose baptisms, ordinations and consecrations are invalid – although they are not to be given chrism or Eucharist unless they express a wish to be united to the Church. And while Theodore does not seem to have insisted on re-baptism for all those baptized by Irish or British churchmen, he allows it for those who are doubtful about the validity of their baptism. Theodore’s moderation of his initial severity towards the British and Irish appears to have sprung from a realization that a pragmatic attitude was necessary – and perhaps, too, from a gradual recognition that the Irish and British were not, after all, true Quartodecimans. His capacity for adaptation is evident elsewhere: in his changing regulations on remarriage, and in his bowing to the local custom of regarding women as the heads of double monasteries. He and Wilfrid were to become increasingly alienated from one another. Wilfrid did not attend the Synod of Hertford in 672/3 but sent representatives instead, possibly realizing that Theodore represented a threat to his methods and power: the creation of new dioceses was indeed discussed, though no agreement on this issue was reached. But Theodore pushed ahead with his reorganization of the English Church

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(see below), and in 678 divided Northumbria into three, with episcopal centres at Hexham/Lindisfarne and York, and a separate see for Lindsey: his pragmatism is once more demonstrated by the fact that the three bishops appointed – Eata, Bosa and Eadhæd – were all associated with the grouping within the Northumbrian Church which was well-disposed towards the Irish. This move must have to some degree aided the survival of Christianity as the uncompromising Wilfrid was now replaced by individuals who would not insist on re-baptizing all those who had been baptized by the Irish, or indeed those in communion with them. It is noticeable that although Eata was replaced at Hexham (though retaining Lindisfarne) after three years, by Wilfrid’s supporter Tunberht, he himself was deposed from the episcopate after another three and replaced by Cuthbert, who had trained at the British-founded monastery of Melrose. It is tempting to speculate that this may have been a consequence of an uncompromising attitude towards those baptized or ordained by the Irish, and even towards those who were simply tolerant of them, on Tunberht’s part. This must remain speculation, but it is striking that when, c.687, Wilfrid achieved a partial restoration of his rights by being sent to administer the Lindisfarne diocese, his attitude seems not to have softened one bit. Towards this monastery, where some of Aidan’s relics were housed, he seems to have behaved exceptionally harshly. Bede – without actually naming Wilfrid or specifying the nature of the ‘blast of trial [which] beat upon that church’ – records that many of the monks chose to leave Lindisfarne during the year he spent there before he was moved on. Although Wilfrid would play a remarkable role in establishing Christianity both in Northumbria, where he created the churches of Hexham and Ripon, and amongst the South Saxons and on the Isle of Wight, his doctrinal inflexibility may have presented a threat – albeit a temporary one – to the survival of Christianity in the north of England.

PESTILENTIA Another potential threat to the survival of Christianity amongst the AngloSaxons was the arrival of what Bede calls pestilentia, an outbreak of the pandemic which had affected Europe and the Middle East since the 540s and which may possibly have made earlier appearances among the Anglo-Saxons, not reflected in any written source.90 Bede claimed that it ravaged the length and breadth of Britain and reached Ireland as well. It appeared initially shortly after an eclipse of the sun on May 1 664, killing both King Earconberht of Kent and Deusdedit Archbishop of Canterbury on 14 July; in the autumn it was present in Deira, where Bishop Cedd died in his monastery of Lastingham on 23 October. About the same time Tuda, who had recently been appointed bishop to the Northumbrians at the Synod of Whitby, was also carried off by the same disease.


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Another victim was Boisil, prior of Melrose: one of his monks was Cuthbert, future bishop of Lindisfarne who, according to Bede, also fell ill with a bubo in the groin (in femore), but recovered.91 It is possible that Wilfrid’s patron, King Alhfrith of Deira, of whom we hear no more after 664, was a victim of the same illness. While the plague appears to have abated in severity after 664–6, there were later recurrent outbreaks: the monastery of Gilling was struck between 666 and 669 and Wilfrid invited its abbot Tunberht (later Bishop of Hexham) and Ceolfrith (later Abbot of Jarrow) and other monks to Ripon. Bede records many deaths at the monastery of Barking at some time between 666 and 675; he notes the death of Chad, now bishop to the Mercians, and many of his monks at Lichfield in 672; and he gives a description of the swelling on the neck which was a symptom of the illness which killed Abbess Æthelthryth of Ely, a former queen of Northumbria, c.680. While this period has been characterized as one of ‘sporadic and scattered outbreaks’,92 it appears that the plague made a more severe return ‘in many provinces of Britain’ c.684–7, although Bede, who makes this claim, only gives details about the monastery of Selsey in Sussex (founded by Wilfrid) and, as we might expect, about Northumbria. He describes the plague reaching Lindisfarne at some point between 676 and 685, where it lingered for about a year, killing almost the whole community. In the western part of the country it also devastated an unnamed monastery near Carlisle, while in the east it affected Monkwearmouth. At Jarrow all the choir monks died, leaving only Abbot Ceolfrith and a small boy – sometimes said to have been Bede himself – to sing the offices. While the descriptions of both Abbess Æthelthryth’s and Cuthbert’s symptoms appear to be those of bubonic plague, transmitted by the bite of rat fleas, the outbreak of the 680s may have consisted partly of the pneumonic version of the disease, which can survive winter in cold climates. The fact that its episode at Lindisfarne began at Christmas, combined with its propensity to devastate both monasteries and rural communities, has suggested to some that in the 680s we are dealing with the virulent pneumonic form which can be spread by airborne transmission. It should be noted, though, that some historians argue that the transmission of this form of the disease has more to do with cultural practices than with climate.93 The arrival of pestilentia initially proved calamitous for the organization of the Anglo-Saxon Church, undermining the existence of an episcopal hierarchy which had only gradually been extended over the previous decades. The year 664 saw the deaths of a very high proportion of bishops. Cedd, Deusdedit, Tuda and Damian of Rochester all died in this year; two were certainly, the other two probably, plague victims. In addition, Deusdedit’s replacement Wigheard (along with his entourage, which must have included English monks and clerics) perished, according to Bede, in what appears to be an otherwise unrecorded Italian occurrence of the plague when he journeyed to Rome for papal consecration.

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That left only Chad at York, Jaruman in Mercia, Boniface-Berhtgisl in East Anglia, and Wine of the West Saxons, from whom Chad had eventually sought consecration. With the Anglo-Saxon episcopate so depleted, it is hardly surprising that two British bishops took a role in this ceremony. Wilfrid may have been saved by his journey to Francia, but the fact that he took some time to return to England may have been a consequence of the plague, and it is plausible that he was also deterred by the death of Alhfrith, which may be attributable to the disease.94 Subsequent recurrences in the late 660s and 670s also affected the episcopate as Chad, by now bishop to the Middle Angles, perished in 672. A death rate of 25 to 50 per cent amongst bishops is much higher than in the Black Death of 1348–9 in England. In addition to a depleted episcopate, Bede’s narrative identifies plague’s arrival in the 660s as a key point for the resumption of non-Christian rituals and practices – though on different scales – as far apart as Essex and Northumbria. He comments that in Essex, one of the two East Saxon rulers, Sigehere, . . . together with his part of the nation, deserted the sacraments of the Christian faith and apostasized. For the king himself and the majority of both commons and nobles loved this present life, seeking no other and not even believing in any future existence; so they began to restore the derelict temples [fana] and to worship images [simulacra], as if they could protect themselves by such means from the plague.95

Bede here appears to be describing a perception of weakness on the part of the new religion in the face of disaster, and a deliberate reversion to pagan ritual in an attempt to halt it or ward it off. The restoration of fana and simulacra may have been carried out in an attempt to placate the old gods: anthropologists have observed a tendency to believe that misfortune following on adoption of a new religion is a manifestation of the vengeance of the deities whose cult has been abandoned or neglected. In the twentieth century, Raymond Firth recorded that many of the recently baptized Tikopia, during the period of the spread of Christianity, interpreted the depredations of the kalimotu grub amongst their crops and the presence of a crocodile off-shore as protest manifestations of the traditional gods.96 Expressions of such beliefs revealed to him the way in which, even after baptism, credence in the older gods persisted, with changes in natural phenomena being read ‘in terms of power relations between the old and new gods’. 97 The impact of plague may have suggested to some that the old gods were, in fact, more powerful than the Christian one, leading to attempts to placate them by restoring traditional shrines and cults. Perhaps the reversion of a part of the East Saxon people to pagan rituals is not entirely surprising. The sons of the first Christian ruler, Sæberht, had remained pagan and when Bishop Mellitus temporarily left England because of his lack of success, he returned to the country not as the Bishop of London, a


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position which remained vacant, but as the Archbishop of Canterbury. London itself is presented by Bede as a pagan stronghold, and the major pagan shrine of Harrow-on-the-Hill lies nearby. The East Saxons remained without a bishop until the 650s. After the baptism of their king, Sigeberht, c.653, in Northumbria, Finan of Lindisfarne sent Cedd to Essex first as priest and then, finding that his mission was making headway, consecrated him bishop.98 Bede tells us that Cedd established churches in various places, ordaining priests and deacons to assist him in preaching and baptism, especially in Ythancæstir (Bradwell-on-Sea), where his church still stands, and in Tilbury. But Bede makes no mention of activities in London. While we only know of one ruler in the days of Sigeberht, the emergence of two on his death has suggested that there was in fact a territorial-political division between East Saxon and Middle Saxon lands – Middlesex, Hertfordshire, Surrey – which had existed since the sixth century. These areas, together with London, were detached from the East Saxon kingdom altogether in the eighth century, becoming part of Mercia, in a process which seems to be at least partly foreshadowed by events in the latter part of the seventh.99 It seems, therefore, that when pestilentia struck, Christianity was by no means firmly implanted amongst all of the East Saxon territories. A distinction may be suggested between on one hand the Middle Saxon areas and London, the original centre of the diocese, but now a region where Christianity was weak, and the East Saxon lands on the other. Even in the latter area, where Cedd’s pastoral activities seem to have been concentrated, it is difficult to assess the strength of the new religion. Although Bede makes much of Cedd’s success, he also notes that he used to return frequently to Northumbria to preach, and it appears that he was in effect simultaneously acting as bishop for Deira, using his monastic foundation of Lastingham as a base.100 Cedd’s death from the plague in October 664 occurred at Lastingham, and after this thirty monks left his East Saxon monastery for Lastingham, to reside at his place of burial (where they too, with the exception of one small boy, also died). Sigeberht’s successors appear to have been joint rulers called Swithhelm and Swithfrith: Swithhelm accepted baptism in East Anglia at the court of King Æthelwold, and Cedd’s episcopate continued. If, as has been hypothesized,101 these two kings were the murderers of Sigeberht, they must have taken significant steps to reconcile themselves with him, presumably including renunciation of unlawful marriages. All this would suggest that at this stage East Anglia exercised significant political control over the East Saxons, thus aiding the implantation of Christianity (though it also raises the question of why, although Æthelwold acted as sponsor, it was Cedd himself rather than Bishop Berhtgisl of the East Angles who actually carried out the baptism). Swithhelm seems to have died about the same time as Cedd: he and Swithfrith were succeeded by Sæbbi and Sigehere, believed to have been cousins. Sigehere, who, according to Bede, apostasized, probably ruled over London, Hertfordshire and Middlesex, and may

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have conquered Kent in association with Mul, brother of the pagan West Saxon ruler Cædwalla. Wulfhere of Mercia quickly moved to assert his authority over the whole of the East Saxon people when Sigehere, and the areas over which he exercised authority, abandoned Christianity. Wulfhere first dispatched his own bishop, the Northumbrian Jaruman, with assistants . . . to correct their error and recall the kingdom to a true belief. A priest who was a companion on his journeys and shared his preaching told me that he acted with great discretion, for he was a religious and good man and, travelling far and wide, he succeeded in bringing back both the people and King Sigehere to the paths of righteousness.102

After accomplishing this task, Jaruman, together with his ‘priests and teachers’, returned home and Wulfhere further consolidated his influence over the area by selling the see to Wine, the expelled Bishop of the West Saxons.103 The actions of Wulfhere in sending what amounted to a mission to Sigehere and his people reflects not only the political importance to him of Christianity as a symbol of his control of the East Saxons, but also the effort needed to establish Christianity on a firm footing in London and the surrounding areas. In the first place, the decisions and actions of Sighere as king were of paramount importance: had he remained pagan, then Christianity would have failed as both a religious and a political force, as his nobility would also have abandoned the religion, probably sooner rather than later.104 In twentieth-century Tikopia, we can see a similar process at work in the following account of the missionaries attempting re-conversion. Pa Tafua was a chief who had apostasized and, like Sigehere, he was eventually persuaded by missionaries to return to Christianity. His return was crucial: Then came the evangelists. They went first to Pa Kafika. They went to shake Pa Kafika. [Firth translates the Tikopia term ru, which can have either physical or intellectual connotations, as ‘to shake’.] . . . They shook away at him; he objected; they shook away but he was not moved. Then they went to Pa Taumako; they worked, worked, worked away at him. He objected; they shook away but he was not moved. Then they left him for Pa Tafua. They said to him, ‘You have been baptized. Come to church.’105

Firth makes much of the effectiveness of the combination of the power of external authority – in Sigehere’s case represented by Jaruman and his ruler Wulfhere – with the reiterated argument described here in effecting the Ariki Tafua’s return to Christianity. He also stresses the importance of symbols in the whole process; the argument in Tikopia did not centre primarily on the question of religious conviction, but on recognition of religious symbols in general. Thus the Ariki Tafua . . . was persuaded to recognize once again the power of the cross traced on his brow; he and his elders were browbeaten into going again to church as a symbol of their


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Christianity; and the elders were expected to follow their chief as the symbol of their allegiance.106

Where Sigehere’s thegns were concerned, similar considerations of loyalty and allegiance to their ruler would have encouraged their return to Christianity, just as in the East Saxon lands, Sæbbi’s nobles and people had remained Christian with him. Despite the political aspects of Sigehere’s defection from and return to Christianity, the fact that these events were associated with the outbreak of plague also indicates a strong perception of Christianity’s ineffectiveness in the face of disaster. Bede gives no clue as to the arguments used by Jaruman and his assistants to counter this assessment, merely recording, as we have seen above, that the fana and altars which Sighere and his people had erected were destroyed and that churches were re-opened. His account of Cuthbert’s activities in Bernicia, however, is suggestive. On his travels around the region in the period following the plague of 664, when there may have been recurrent outbreaks,107 Cuthbert had apparently found not only that people had behaved wickedly, contrary to Christian teaching, but that they had resorted to what he calls ‘false remedies of idolatry’,108 incantations or amulets, in the hope of curing or warding off the disease. Bede presents the plague itself as ‘a blow from God the Creator’, and this is one argument that Cuthbert, Jaruman and other Christian teachers might profitably have used against those who argued that the old gods were more powerful and the old ways more effective.109 The picture of the Christian God inflicting a powerful blow would doubtless have been characterized as a punishment for wickedness and un-Christian behaviour. On the other hand, it is worth noting that in the case of Cuthbert and Bernicia, Bede records no royal reversion to pagan practices or official re-opening of shrines and altars. Although the demographic impact on the countryside could have been considerable, there was by this stage no question of the royal dynasty’s abandonment of Christianity. It had very publicly committed itself to the continuance of the new religion, both by the creation of a double monastery headed by a member of the royal family at Whitby and also by insisting on doctrinal uniformity at the Synod of Whitby.

THE ENGLISH CHURCH UNDER THEODORE OF TARSUS The initial mortality caused by plague in England was probably cataclysmic, but experts suggest that its overall demographic effects were ultimately not as severe as those of the Black Death in the fourteenth century.110 It appears to have ceased after 23 years, around 687, and did not become endemic or trigger further cycles of mortality. Thus there may have been a comparatively rapid demographic recovery and even during the later outbreaks, in one of which Chad died, the

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structures of the Church were developed by the remarkable figure of Theodore of Tarsus, Archbishop of Canterbury from 669 to 690. No replacement was made for Wigheard, who had died in Rome before his consecration, until 668, when the Pope appointed Theodore, an eastern monk born in 602. Theodore was one of the many ecclesiastical refugees from the Arab invasions of the eastern part of the Empire who could be found in Roman monasteries in the seventh century, and he had earlier been involved in the major ecclesiastical controversy over the doctrine of Monothelitism. But he was effectively only the third choice for the position and the Pope sent Hadrian, the African head of an Italian monastery (and his own first choice) to England with him to make sure he did not introduce what Bede calls ‘any doctrines contrary to the truth of the faith in the manner of the Greeks’ into England.111 These do not, perhaps, look like the most promising qualifications for a prospective Archbishop of Canterbury, but Theodore was to prove a remarkably energetic leader, before his death at the great age of eighty-eight. It is under Theodore that we can see the first attempts to develop a coherent diocesan and organizational strategy as opposed to an ad hoc expansion, driven largely by the rise and decline of the powers of individual kings and supervised intermittently and somewhat anxiously by distant popes. On arriving in England in 669 he made a tour of inspection along with Hadrian and attempted to fill the gaps in the episcopate, which at that stage consisted of Wine in London, who had bought his office; Chad, whose consecration was problematic; and Wilfrid who, according to Bede, had been in effect acting as bishop in Kent, before Theodore’s arrival.112 As part of this initiative, Theodore sent Chad to Mercia; and Wilfrid returned to take up his position at York. In 672 or 673, Theodore summoned the synod of Hertford.113 Of the ten decrees it issued, the first deals, as we have seen, with the need for everyone to celebrate Easter on the same date – the point that had threatened the doctrinal unity of Christianity in England – and the last deals with marriage. The other eight are all concerned with the organization of the Church. As a native of the eastern empire and a former resident of Rome, Theodore would have thought of a diocese as a relatively small unit based on the old Roman cities. He arrived in England to find much larger sees, corresponding to kingdoms or parts of kingdoms, governed by bishops who might operate outside their own territories and, in the absence of cities, use monasteries as their base. The eight clauses give the impression that Theodore thought the organization of the Church was ramshackle, even chaotic, and was determined to instil a sense of order and hierarchy as well as the achievement of more conversions. The canons state that bishops should not intrude without permission into each other’s dioceses; that monks and clerics likewise remain within their proper spheres and do not wander about without official permission; that bishops and clergy should not make excessive demands for hospitality when travelling


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about; that precedence among bishops should only depend on the date of their consecration; and that there should be regular synods. The most contentious clause which Theodore attempted to force through stated that ‘more bishops shall be created as the number of the faithful increases’. There was no agreement on this last demand from those present at Hertford – Bisi of the East Angles, Putta of Rochester, Leuthere of the West Saxons and Winfrith of Mercia, and the two representatives sent by Wilfrid who, as we have already seen, did not attend himself.114 Did Wilfrid scent trouble? He had recently been restored to York by Theodore and controlled a huge ecclesiastical territory, stretching into Lindsey in the south; in the early 670s he had also begun to set up the monasteries of Ripon in Deira (gifted to him earlier by Alhfrith after the expulsion of an Irish community) and Hexham in Bernicia as pastoral centres inside that diocese. His monastic empire extended into the British territories to the west of the Pennines and also, as a result of Ecgfrith’s expansionist drives, into Mercia and even in the direction of the Picts.115 Wilfrid’s success and his apparent effectiveness in attracting monastic recruits was also, according to his Life, based on his understanding of the concepts of service, influence and munificence as well as on his reputation for learning and personal asceticism: Nobles, men of high position in the world sent their sons to him to tutor so that they might have the choice either of giving themselves to God or else of returning as grown men with Wilfrid’s recommendation to enter the king’s service as warriors . . . His gifts to both clergy and laity were on such a grand scale that he was second to none in largesse.116

In distributing his gifts, Wilfrid was acting as a leader of society and to some extent meeting traditional expectations of a culture-hero, securing the values of his society (in this case to promote a religion based on a very different figure from the traditional hero who sustained a culture, the redeemer who promised future transformation.)117 His achievements would thus prove something of a double-edged sword. To both King Ecgfrith (who according to Bede had been present at Hertford) and to Theodore, Wilfrid must have looked like the classic ‘over-mighty subject’, and in 678 they moved against him, with Theodore dividing Northumbria into three dioceses (Hexham-Lindisfarne, York and Lindsey).118 Despite Wilfrid’s departure for Rome to appeal against this division – the dispute would only be resolved in the first decade of the eighth century – Theodore went ahead with his reorganization of the Anglo-Saxon episcopate. Instead of the few bishops, some with irregular consecrations, whom he had found on his arrival, he apparently succeeded by 680 in bringing the number up to twelve: Canterbury, Rochester, London, York, Ripon, Hexham, Lindsey, Lichfield, Dunwich (Domnoc) and North Elmham (for the East Angles), Winchester and Worcester.119 Hexham

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and Lindisfarne were subsequently divided and a bishop sent to the Picts, though following the Northumbrian defeat at Nechtansmere in 685, his authority was confined to the southern side of the Forth.120 By Theodore’s death in 690, there may also have been bishops appointed for the Magonsæte at Hereford and for the Middle Angles at Leicester.121 Viewed from a distance this sequence of events might suggest that although they were initially questioned, Theodore’s plans for consolidating the episcopate were subsequently successful. However, despite the dramatic increase in the number of bishops and dioceses during his episcopate, the comparatively limited nature of what he was actually able to achieve should be borne in mind: Pope Gregory I had envisaged twelve bishops dependent on a metropolitan at Canterbury and another twelve subject to a metropolitan at York.122 The dioceses he had created were still extensive, and in the eighth century Bede himself would complain of the lack of contact between bishops and the faithful in Northumbria. Even as dioceses were established in the seventh century they were often at the mercy of royal ambitions and warfare. Some time after the Council of Hatfield (679), Theodore deposed Winfrith of Mercia, Chad’s deacon and therefore a bishop with Northumbrian affiliations, and promoted two Mercian abbots to the episcopate – Sæxwulf Abbot of Medehamstede to Lichfield, Eorcenwold Abbot of Chertsey to London.123 But this policy, which seems to reflect Wulfhere’s dominance, was reversed when Wulfhere attacked Ecgfrith of Northumbria and was defeated and subsequently killed while fighting in Wessex. Sæxwulf was replaced in Lindsey by Wilfrid, though he continued to serve as bishop to the Middle Angles and Mercia.124 And in 678 Æthelred of Mercia attacked Kent, with the effects of making the Bishop of Rochester flee and disrupting this diocese for some time.125 Ejected from his Northumbrian diocese by his king in 678, Wilfrid brought Christianity to the South Saxons and the Isle of Wight, in effect working independently of Theodore. All this tends to suggest that consolidation of an episcopate was not particularly high on the list of royal priorities everywhere in Anglo-Saxon England. Rather, in the second half of the seventh century and particularly from the 670s onwards, Anglo-Saxon ruling dynasties came to perceive the uses of Christianity in strengthening their own position through the foundation or generous endowment of monasteries. Theodore did his best to sustain and extend an episcopal network, but it took time for the effects of his reforms to be felt. In any case, monasteries not only appealed to royalty as a politically useful way of organizing the Church, but had also already proved their worth as useful centres of Christianization. In an earlier period, in regions on the frontiers between Christian and pagan Europe, bishops such as Severinus of Noricum used monasteries as ‘mission bases’, seeing an advantage in creating a substantial foundation


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with a body of personnel in the shape of monks and clerics (or monk-clerics) to work in the surrounding countryside. In Britain, Columba of Iona (d. 597) had created sub-monasteries with a variety of functions including ones related to pastoral care: his main monastic community was offshore on Iona, but in addition he founded a settlement on another island, Tiree, to which penitents were sent. On the mainland of Scotland, he also established sub-monasteries such as one on Loch Awe headed by a cleric. Traces of the existence of such cells can be found in Scotland in the place-name ‘annat’, which indicates an old church that had served as a centre for pastoral activity.126 Cells also functioned as agricultural or craft centres. Their existence is paralleled in Ireland and also in Irish foundations on the continent, such as Columbanus’ monasteries of Luxeuil-Fontaines-Annegray in Francia and Bobbio in Italy.127 In Ireland itself, while the monks and clerics associated with monasteries and cells may originally have carried out some or all of their agricultural work themselves, they not only performed pastoral duties but also took on laypeople as tenants. The classification there of certain tenants and dwellers on monastic land whom we might not think of as strictly ‘monastic’ as monachi/manaig suggests the importance of monasticism in interactions between Church and laypeople, and this must have applied equally in England: the poet Cædmon, composer of the first English hymn, was originally a cowherd rather than a monk on the Whitby estates.128 Both Lives of St Cuthbert record the existence of a dependency of Whitby at Osingadun that seems to fall into the category of a monastic cell or dependency which was also an agricultural centre, and there must have been many such sites associated with the larger monasteries in the conversion period.129 In Northumbria, the monastic churches of Monkwearmouth-Jarrow were decorated with pictures from biblical scenes which could have been used to instruct any laity who entered – most likely workers on the monastery’s lands, who would have attended at least at major festivals. Through monasteries, laypeople could come into more regular contact with the repetitive rituals of the Christian Church and might fix them in their consciousness, in this way becoming part of the wider community of Christian believers. And for others, who submitted themselves to the new style of penance, monasteries and their dependencies could not just administer purgative penance, but even go on to offer the sinful layperson renunciation of the world as a gateway to a higher level of Christian living as a conversus.130 If monasteries served as centres of Christianization on the one hand, they also reflected a degree of indigenization of Christianity on the other.131 The ‘monastic boom’132 of the 670s in England was produced by the interplay of political, economic and cultural factors reflecting the Anglo-Saxon kings’ immense landed resources and wealth at this stage, and also by the realization that monasteries could reflect and enhance this prestige as well as signalling royal power in the

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localities. In 679, King Hlothere of Kent gave land to his monastery of Reculver, in a charter referring to it as the ‘city’ of Reculver – an ecclesiastical civitas located inside a Roman fort.133 While Fursey’s East Anglian monastery had initially been a relatively modest foundation under Sigeberht, it was more richly endowed by his successor King Anna in a pattern which seems to be reflected elsewhere: later foundations or endowments tended often to be more generous than earlier ones. This trend is particularly noticeable in Northumbria where, after Whitby and in the period of Northumbrian expansion, kings made grants of several hundred hides to monasteries such as Bede’s own community of MonkwearmouthJarrow.134 In the South Saxon kingdom, Wilfrid’s monastery at Selsey received an endowment of eighty-seven hides from King Æthelwealh, together with all the stock and people on the land, including no less than two hundred and fifty slaves.135 Even the devastating impact of plague, which may have wiped out smaller monasteries, could not undermine the larger and better-resourced ones. Although there are considerable grounds for thinking that in Northumbria the coastal houses of Lindisfarne, Whitby and Hartlepool may have imported and spread the pestilence as a result of their economic and pastoral activities, they nevertheless survived.136 The disastrously hit Monkwearmouth recovered, taking in monks from other houses, so that when its abbot Ceolfrith departed to visit Rome in 715, he left behind at Monkwearmouth-Jarrow a community numbering about 600. Even if some of these were estate workers rather than choir monks, the figure is a high one. It is worth remembering too in this context that the literary and artistic production which has come in modern eyes to define the Northumbrian ‘Golden Age’ – the Lives of Cuthbert and Wilfrid, the Whitby Life of Gregory, the Lindisfarne Gospels, the Cuthbert Coffin, the Codex Amiatinus – was achieved by the major Northumbrian monasteries in the period c.700, suggesting that survivors of the plague may have, as in the case of the fourteenthcentury Black Death, benefited from increased access to resources.137 The political usefulness of monastic foundations had been learned a generation or two earlier in slightly different circumstances by an emergent Frankish aristocracy; and in the Benedictine Rule introduced to England by either Wilfrid or Benedict Biscop (or both), there was now a monastic blueprint which could be adapted to provide a charisma of office for monastic leaders such as royal abbesses.138 As in seventh-century Francia, the double house came to play an important part in the dynastic strategies of elite families. Theodore of Tarsus apparently did not approve of the institution – but grudgingly allowed what he called ‘the custom in this region’ to survive.139 Royal women – not needed for military leadership and possibly seeking a career alternative to marriage or a suitable retreat as a widow – could now rule as abbesses, controlling large territories and acting as guardians of family history and, when kings such as Eadwine and Oswald were buried in churches, places of burial. Such women who


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became abbesses maintained the important female role of counsellor, adviser and mediator, a role normally played by royal brides.140 The Kentish, Northumbrian and Mercian royal families all endowed double houses.141 The most famous of these is undoubtedly Whitby, headed by the Northumbrian princess Hild, who presided over the 664 synod and died in 680. Her career and that of her successor as abbess, Ælfflæd, reflects the growing importance of monasticism to Anglo-Saxon royal dynasties.142 Bede notes that she was daughter of Hereric, the nephew of Eadwine, and from his account of her life we might infer that she had been married before taking up the religious life at the age of 33. It seems that like the Kentish princess Eorcengota, the daughters of King Anna of the East Angles and her widowed sister Hereswith, she intended to go to Francia to enter the monastic life in one of the famous aristocratic double houses of the north-east, as there were no such institutions in England. Aidan, however, persuaded her to settle in Northumbria where she was given a single hide of land on which to found a monastery; then she became Abbess of Hartlepool, which had been founded by another (non-royal) woman; and finally she founded or reformed Whitby. Ælfflæd was dedicated to the religious life by her father King Oswiu, when scarcely a year old. He also gave sixty hides of land in Deira and sixty in Bernicia to monks who were to pray for his people. Ælfflæd entered Hartlepoool under Hild and subsequently was given ten hides of land on which to found Whitby: Bede records that she died there at the age of sixty and was buried in the church along with her mother Eanflæd, her father Oswiu and her grandfather Eadwine. She was thus custodian of her family’s history and burial place, and the relics of the royal saint Eadwine. Double houses could also fulfil a variety of educational and pastoral roles in addition to their dynastic ones: Hild not only presided over the Synod of Whitby but was responsible for the education of six men destined for the episcopate. Two of her clerical trainees who became bishops were sent on to Canterbury to study further in the school founded by Theodore of Tarsus: the curriculum followed by one, Oftfor, was primarily reading and scriptural study which seems, according to Bede, to have been the Whitby curriculum. Coldingham, Ely, Wimborne, Much Wenlock, Minster-in-Thanet, and Bardney in Mercia were all royal double houses – but was Whitby under Hild exceptional as a double house in providing education for priests and monks? Political functions may have predominated elsewhere, as the association of Minster-in-Thanet with a royal regio suggests.143 The history of this house also illustrates another feature of some early Anglo-Saxon double houses – the passing of rule from mother to daughter.144 In all of these ways, as elsewhere in early medieval Europe, a female religious house could function as an outpost of the court and a centre of family politics as well as a centre of liturgical performance and cultural production (through the copying of manuscripts, for the use of others as well as for the nunnery itself).145

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The relationship between monasteries and episcopal establishments in the seventh century was often close. Aidan based himself at Lindisfarne. Cnobheresburg was probably a major focus of Christianizing activity before Fursey moved to Francia, as Theodore of Tarsus would later create a bishopric at North Elmham to fulfil the role it had originally carried out.146 We have no proof that Wilfrid was ever a monk as such, although he was brought up at Lindisfarne: he was tonsured abroad as a cleric.147 However, not only did he create monastic-clerical bases at Hexham and Ripon, but his work in the south was based on his monastery of Selsey, where he ‘carried out the duties of a bishop in those parts in both words and works’.148 There seems at this stage to have been little or no attempt to keep clerics and contemplative monks separate in communities housing both, except perhaps at Canterbury. Cedd’s two communities at Bradwell and Tilbury, for example, provided bases for priests and deacons.149 Nonetheless, we should not make the mistake of assuming that there were no other kinds of church apart from monastic churches and cells. Bede’s accounts of the activities of both Paulinus and Cedd suggest that they preached and baptized at royal vills, such as Yeavering and Rendlesham, while Aidan died at a church on the royal estate at Bamburgh.150 Other small churches, not necessarily associated with monasteries, must have existed: the Penitential of Theodore refers to married clergy, who presumably fulfilled a role equivalent to that of a parish priest, even if formal parochial organization was lacking.151 But even after Theodore’s reforms, pastoral work continued to be carried out to a considerable extent from minsters – monasteries housing a mixed population of monks and clerics. Whether we should think of any of these in terms of exclusively clerical communities, as was once hypothesized, is debatable: it now seems more likely that we are dealing with groups of mixed clerical and monastic personnel.152 As the idea of intercessory offering of the Eucharist for the dead began to be elaborated further (see Chapter 7 below), more monks, in any case, took clerical orders. Whatever their technical status, all these communities and individual churchmen needed to consider how to meet the challenge of mass Christianization – and it is to that challenge that the following chapter turns.

7

Christianization: Problems and Responses

THE CHALLENGE OF MASS CHRISTIANIZATION The acceptance of Christianity by kings in the early days of Christianity was often a political matter, not followed immediately, in every case, by a drive to Christianize their peoples. The political and dynastic nature of many rulers’ baptisms is also reflected by the way in which they were accompanied by the euhemerization of pagan gods as ancestors, a process seemingly tolerated by the Church, as a claim of descent from Woden indicated royal status.1 The Church could also offer a version of Christianity in keeping with rulers’ military aims. But how acceptable was it to the population at large, whose values and practices were to some extent in conflict with Christian teachings, and whose initial understanding of the nature of the Christian God was likely to have been a syncretistic appropriation of Christian ideas?

WARRIOR VALUES How far did Christianity appeal to the Anglo-Saxon warrior class? Bede paints a picture of Eadwine of Northumbria consulting his counsellors when considering whether he should accept Christianity or not, and puts the famous comparison of life to the flight of a sparrow through a lighted hall into the mouth of one of Eadwine’s optimates.2 Such optimates were closely dependent on their leader: English royal households in the seventh century appear routinely to have included teenage boys from what historians describe as ‘aristocratic families’. These ‘king’s thegns’ would aspire to receive, by their mid-twenties, a reward for their service in the form of a land grant – this would enable them to marry and become a local nobleman or gesith, in what one authority has summed up as a ‘two-part aristocratic career of royal service followed by local authority’.3 While these ties might have led fighting men to accept their leader’s religion, Christianity nevertheless posed problems for them as, in Michael WallaceHadrill’s words, ‘pagan cultus as practised by warriors shared ethical concepts

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with the warrior’s fighting-creed’.4 There was no guaranteeing that the values of Christianity were always easy for warriors to accept – quite the reverse. For the thegn who associated his lord’s hall not only with treasure and reward, but also with drinking at royal feasts, the ruling of the Penitential attributed to Theodore of Tarsus, which dates from the late seventh to early eighth century that a layman who vomited through drunkenness should do penance for fifteen days cannot have been particularly welcome.5 Nevertheless, the Penitential’s section on manslaughter navigates a path between religious and secular values: if a man slays another in revenge for a relative, he is assigned seven or ten years’ penance – although this is then halved if he pays the appropriate legal compensation. Greater leniency is shown to the warrior who kills either because his lord has ordered it, or in public war: he is simply not allowed to enter a church for forty days.6 This ruling seems to indicate that the Church understood the need to come to terms to some extent with the realities of military service and ties of loyalty governing the life of the Anglo-Saxon thegn. It also recognized the warrior’s reluctance to abandon his weapons, when it stipulated a penance of seven years for those who would not give up their arms after killing with malice aforethought (as opposed to three years if they did agree to disarm).7 We also see the Church addressing the warrior ethos of the time in the lines of the poem engraved in runes on the Ruthwell Cross. This Anglian monument in Dumfriesshire, which dates from either the late seventh or more probably from the first quarter of the eighth century, declares that Almighty God stripped Himself. When he willed to mount the gallows, Courageous before all men.8

The idea of a courageous Christ, who epitomises the quality admired above all by the Anglo-Saxon elite, counteracts the potentially alienating picture of an ignoble death on the gallows. Certainly, in the previous century the balance between heroic and Christian values must frequently have proved difficult to find, even in kingdoms whose Christianity came wholly or partly from the apparently militant Columban-Northumbrian tradition. Bede tells the story of how King Sigeberht of the East Saxons was murdered by two gesiths for the reason – or on the pretext – that he was considered too ready to pardon his enemies, forgiving them for wrongs they had done him as soon as they asked his pardon.9 At least one of his murderers was a baptized Christian, and Bede’s recognition of the problems this created may be gauged from the way in which he attempts to shift the focus of the tale slightly by also making Sigeberht’s death a consequence of his disobedience to Bishop Cedd. The account of these events indicates the disjunction perceived between the observance of gospel precepts and the traditional values of honour and revenge, as well as the payment of blood money and compensation enshrined in the law codes of the Germanic peoples. It looks as if Sigeberht, by leaning

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too far in the direction of the former, offered his murderers the opportunity to defend their actions by an appeal to traditional customs and values – and that the admission that such tensions had existed was embarrassing to Bede.10

MARRIAGE, CONCUBINAGE AND SEX Beyond the elite of kings and warriors, what problems did the Church face in taking Christian values and teachings to the population at large? One area of difficulty indicated in Bede’s narrative of the death of Sigeberht of the East Saxons occurs in his reference to the ‘unlawful marriage’ of one of the gesiths who murdered the king. Bishop Cedd had been ‘unable to prevent or correct’ this marriage and so had excommunicated the man. This reveals another area of divergence between traditional customs and values on one hand, and Christianity on the other, that had become apparent shortly after the arrival of the first missionaries. On the death of Æthelberht of Kent, his son Eadbald had followed the tradition of marrying his father’s widow – an action criticized by Bede not only as ‘polluted with fornication’ but also as encouraging apostasy and lapses from ‘continence’ amongst others. That marriage and related issues continued to be an area of contention is demonstrated by the fact that the only decree issued by the Council of Hertford in 672/3 which was not concerned with Easter or ecclesiastical organization dealt with marriage: Let nothing be allowed but lawful wedlock. Let none be guilty of incest and let none leave his only wife except for fornication, as the holy gospel teaches. If anyone puts away his own wife who is joined to him by lawful matrimony, he may not take another if he wishes to be a true Christian; but he must either remain as he is or be reconciled to his own wife.11

The opening sentence suggests that concubinage and serial marriage, as well as marriage within degrees of kinship forbidden by the Church, were still common. By attacking the practice of concubinage, the Church was launching an attack on an important social institution, as a concubine was a member of a man’s household and her children could inherit from their father if he so wished.12 Although the laws of King Wihtred of Kent of 695 urge men to regularize ‘illicit cohabitation’ and expel foreigners who refuse to comply, the Church may still have failed to discourage traditional norms of marriage entirely.13 The Whitby Life of Gregory the Great alludes to men bound to ‘unlawful wives’: the story ostensibly refers to pagans in the time of Eadwine, but its singling out of marriage as an issue may indicate that marriage and concubinage were still contested areas in Northumbria in the early eighth century.14 The fact that Theodore also decreed penances for those who had married more than once also had the potential to

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alienate some of the population, while the penances imposed by the Church for various forms of sexual activity ranging from masturbation to anal intercourse, and even sex on Sunday and religious holidays, would have been regarded by many as intrusive and may well have delayed the spread of Christianity among the populace.15

CHRISTIANIZATION AND GENDER At the highest social level, that of the ruling dynasties of Anglo-Saxon England, it was recognized that women could play an important part in upholding their family’s influence by ruling monasteries: in this capacity Hild of Whitby, who had, according to Bede, ‘spent her first thirty-three years very nobly in the secular habit’,16 was even able to oversee the education of a number of future bishops. Further down the social scale, the relationship between women and the Church may have been a less easy one. The difficulties surrounding the existence and identity of Anglo-Saxon goddesses, especially the ‘mothers’ of Bede’s Modranecht (see Chapter 4 above) gives some indication of the problems surrounding any attempt to establish the role of women in Anglo-Saxon paganism and their reaction to the arrival of a new religion. If, as their name suggests, the ‘mothers’ were female supernatural beings particularly associated with birth, fertility and domestic concerns, it is likely to have been difficult for the Church to discourage popular beliefs and everyday rituals connected with them. Discussing the progress of Christianity in sixteenth-century Mexico, Serge Gruzinski observed that ‘idolatry’ – a term by which he denoted a range of traditional practices – ‘resisted better in a domestic context, where it managed to preserve a link to the immediate environment’.17 The almost total silence of the written sources where non-royal and secular women are concerned is broken by a few telling examples which appear to support the thesis that women were more reluctant to abandon the old ways. As Cordula Nolte has indicated, the Penitential attributed to Theodore allows the dismissal of a non-Christian woman by a Christian husband.18 The wording seems to suggest that it was not uncommon for wives of Christians to remain pagan, and the final section of Part I of the Penitential – headed ‘Of the worship of idols’ – groups together a series of penalties, some of which obviously relate to the women and the domestic sphere, while others could also be read as applying in this context. The clearest case of a ruling directed at women is the seven years’ penance for females who put their daughters on a roof or in an oven to cure a fever.19 Audrey Meaney has observed that the custom of placing a child in a warm outdoor oven to sweat out a fever has survived into modern times, and that being placed on a roof in the sun’s rays may have a similar effect – but admits that this does not seem entirely to explain either the gendering


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of the practice or the fact that the penance is severe. Instead, she suggests the possibility that the process was accompanied by incantations.20 However, clause four of the same section lays down a much lighter penance for a woman who performs ‘diabolical incantations or divinations’ – either one year’s penance, or three forty-day periods, or one forty-day period.21 The practice and penalties should also be compared with the first and fourth clauses, which state that anyone sacrificing to ‘demons’ in minimis – meaning either in trivial matters, or to a lesser extent – should do one year’s penance, while for major offences a whole decade is specified; for divinations and auguries associated with shamanistic practices or practitioners, and inviting the latter into the home, laypeople become penitents for five years. It is possible that both the gendered nature of the healing practice and the penance, which are greater than those for incantation by women and approach in severity the punishment for major sacrifices to ‘demons’, indicate that both oven and house-roof were closely associated with protective divinities – the elusive ‘mothers’? – who were guardians of hearth, home and women; and that to the Church, such healing practices represented a continuation of their cult. It is also possible that the custom of ‘sacrificing to demons’ frequently took place in a domestic context, as did the eating of sacrificed food, condemned in the last clause of this section. The laws of Wihtred of Kent, issued in the 690s, include heavy penalties for ‘sacrificing to devils’ and such rites were, at this date, likely to have been essentially domestic affairs.22 Another ritual which is often likely to have taken place in the home is the burning of grain where someone has died, ‘for the health of the house’: as discussed later in this chapter, there is likely to have been an association between women and aspects of traditional funerary ritual well into the period of Christianization.23 The previous section of the penitential, which deals with issues of sex and marriage, assigns penances to women who use semen or their husbands’ blood in aphrodisiacs or remedies, the making of which occupies the grey area between healing and magic.24 The tenacity of the customs evoked by the Penitential suggests that women who lived in secular households, some of whom would have been potentially marginalized by the Church’s attempts to discourage concubinage, may have been to an extent resistant to Christianization, all the more so as the Church had directed its initial attention to high-status males. Christian ideas of ritual purity may also have served to oppress or alienate women, although it has recently been argued that the sections of the Libellus Responsionum – the replies of Gregory I to queries by Augustine – dealing with questions of ritual purity, such as the ban on women entering a church after giving birth, actually represented a more relaxed attitude than that demonstrated by the British and Irish churches.25 Even if this is the case, the Penitential ascribed to Theodore sought to establish stricter standards, moving away from Gregory’s spiritual interpretation of Old Testament purity rules by endorsing the idea that

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giving birth causes impurity, and assigning a three-week penance for any woman entering a church during the forty-day period in which she was considered to be unclean.26 Theodore also barred menstruating women from communion and church (a prohibition which applied to both laywomen and nuns).27 If the Anglo-Saxons did not themselves cherish similar notions of impurity, such prescriptions may have served to distance a proportion of secular women from the Church. On the other hand, the Church may have succeeded in connecting with women to some extent by its introduction to England of the cult of the Virgin Mary, reflected in the dedications of churches at North Elmham, Hereford and Lichfield. In the late seventh century, Pope Sergius I (687–701) unified four Marian festivals – Presentation, Annunciation, Assumption and Nativity – which had earlier been introduced from the east into the Roman basilicas at various dates in the seventh century into a set of related celebrations.28 Alain Stoclet has suggested that in Constantinople, the cult of Mary had been fostered early in the course of the Justinianic pandemic to provide terrified populations with an object of devotion more proximate – and in some ways also more familiar – than Christ himself and thereby to prevent them from falling back into devilish superstition.29

Both Stephen and Bede tell how Wilfrid fell ill as he was returning from Rome in 704 and had a vision of St Michael, who told him that he had survived thanks to her intercession. Wilfrid went on to dedicate a church at Hexham to the Virgin, though the date of the Cuthbert Coffin – 698 – which carries an image of the Virgin and child suggests that her cult had actually arrived in England before this, while Bede records that Benedict Biscop brought an icon of the Mother of God to his community at Wearmouth, and subsequently built and dedicated a second church there to her.30 The Ruthwell Cross carvings depict both Annunciation and Visitation.31 Although attempts have been made to cast doubt on the extent to which all four feasts were celebrated in pre-Viking England,32 the fact that the Anglo-Saxon Church began to emphasize the cult of Mary meant that it was attempting to equip itself with a valuable alternative to any veneration of the figures of the mysterious but powerful ‘Mothers’ mentioned by Bede. Even if the beginnings of an emphasis on Marian devotion post-date the plague in England, the cult of Mary must have been intended to function in the way suggested by Stoclet, as an easily identifiable figure, as well as a protective one. The role of Theotokos – or bearer of God – assigned to the Virgin in the theological debates of the fourth-century Church may have presented the idea of the incarnation in a well-balanced way – but it also, as Stephen Benko has pointed out, began her journey towards a goddess-like status. Indeed, in late antiquity her cult had


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sprung in part from pagan cults of female deities: the first impulses towards regarding her as a divinity appeared in regions such as Asia Minor where Christians were more sensitive towards the female aspect of God.33 By laying particular emphasis on the veneration of the Mother of God, her connection to divinity, her experience of childbirth and motherhood, and the death of her son, the Anglo-Saxon Church must have hoped to replace any lingering cult of pagan female deities. But it may be significant that what little evidence we have points to this emphasis being introduced late in the seventh century and early in the eighth. Attempts to counter the influence of goddesses associated with the spheres of fertility and domesticity may not initially have seemed of major importance to the Anglo-Saxon Church as it concentrated its attention in the first place on kings and emergent royal dynasties, and while Christian queens were expected to act as convert-makers, women in general were not the immediate objects of the conversion drive. And where the existence of a ‘third gender’ was concerned, the Anglo-Saxon Church was responsible for introducing the Christian binary model of the body, gender and sexuality, refusing to recognize the man-woman identity. Theodore’s Penitential assigns penances to those whom it designates as ‘sodomites’ and ‘effeminate’.34

BAPTISM AND INFANT BAPTISM One method by which we might expect the Church to have attempted to consolidate its influence over the population as a whole was by insisting on infant baptism. The early Church had concerned itself principally with the baptism of adults; but since Augustine’s time, infant baptism had become much more common and was regarded, on the continent, as the norm.35 However, ‘in the mission setting of Britain, the baptism of adults regained a prominence it had not had for generations in older Christian lands’.36 The little information we possess concerning baptism in the seventh century often relates to adults – for example, to Paulinus’ preaching and baptizing in Northumbria, or to the baptismal sponsorship of kings. Although the first missionaries to Kent were presumably familiar with the theory and practice of infant baptism (though, according to Bede, one of Augustine’s questions to Gregory I was on this topic),37 as were foreign bishops such as Agilberht and Theodore of Tarsus, the Penitential attributed to Theodore seems to indicate on one hand the assimilation of the idea of baptismal sponsorship into Anglo-Saxon social structures, but on the other, the difficulties of persuading people to have infants baptized.38 That the Anglo-Saxons took a positive view of the role of adult baptism is indicated in a number of ways. The laws of Ine of the West Saxons, issued in the 690s, indicate the social importance of the formation of ties of spiritual

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kinship as a result of baptismal sponsorship, or sponsorship at confirmation. The Penitential of Theodore allows cross-gender sponsorship,39 but interestingly, we see no reference to women in these particular clauses: instead they focus on males, and compensation is fixed for the slaying of spiritual kin – godfathers, godsons – in the same way as for natural kin. It also emerges that the king may stand as sponsor for others, recalling the cases of baptismal sponsorship of kings described by Bede (see Chapter 6 above). These implied a political subjection, while royal sponsorship of thegns must also have reinforced bonds of loyalty and fealty.40 On one level, the ties of godparentage and sponsorship were so useful in Anglo-Saxon society that they were moulded to its own pattern: for a long time the Anglo-Saxons rejected the prohibition of marriage between spiritual kin that became prevalent elsewhere.41 However, the baptism of infants was quite another matter.42 Long-held intuitions and beliefs about those whose spirits had just come from another world into this one were just as tricky to deal with as beliefs about the dead whose souls required to be conveyed in the opposite direction. The Penitential attributed to Theodore not only suggests that the Anglo-Saxons continued to kill or abandon unwanted children, but also indicates a reluctance to have infants baptized. One section imposes a penance on parents who have failed to have their children baptized by the age of three.43 And one of the first clauses of Ine of Wessex’s roughly contemporaneous law-code decrees a penalty of thirty shillings for anyone who allowed a child to remain unbaptized after it was thirty days old, going so far as to prescribe the forfeit of an individual’s entire possessions if an unbaptized child died after this period.44 All this suggests that the Church was experiencing difficulties in enforcing child baptism and that traditional customs – involving either a process of formal recognition, or alternatively, infanticide or exposure – were hard to displace. At the same time, it seems that some Anglo-Saxons were developing a syncretistic understanding of the baptismal ritual, another factor quite possibly militating against the routine baptism of infants. The Life of Wilfrid recounts that when he was performing his pastoral duties as a bishop, one woman who came to him for baptism attempted to trick him into baptizing her dead first-born son as well, in the belief that, through the ritual, the child would be brought back to life.45 The mother who attempted to deceive Wilfrid could have believed that her son’s spirit had not definitively reached the afterlife and that there was something in the baptismal ritual that might still recall it. The nature of the ritual itself, which involved elements such as the exsufflatio, in which the priest breathed on the candidate, exorcism, salt and the anointing of various parts of the body with chrism, and possibly most important of all, water, may have done something to encourage such beliefs.46 Eadwine of Northumbria may also have developed a similarly syncretistic understanding. Bede states that even after he had accepted


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baptism and although their mother was the Christian princess Æthelburh, two of his children, who must have been comparatively young, were only baptized at a later time (tempore sequente) and ‘were snatched from this life while they were still wearing the chrisom’, that is, within eight days of their baptism.47 This description suggests that his children may not have been baptized until they were seriously ill, while Theodore’s Penitential specifically refers to ‘pagan’ children who are weak and who have been recommended for baptism.48 All this might be taken to reflect the widespread existence of a partial understanding of the Christian idea that children must die baptized, and also of the related fear that the soul of the unbaptized child is vulnerable to attack by demons. Such an understanding could have encouraged Eadwine and others, whose thinking would still also have been conditioned by traditional conceptions, in the belief that baptism might at least effect the secure passage of the infant’s soul into the afterlife. Sally Crawford has offered the hypothesis that baptism might have been popularly misunderstood as applying to infants on the margins of death, and has pointed out that the idea that ‘a lively child had no need of baptism’ enjoyed a very long existence indeed in medieval England.49 Thus while Bede, in his Homily on the Gospel of Mark, alludes to parents taking part in the baptismal ceremonies of their children and so liberating them from the devil, we should not assume from this that even in the eighth century all children were automatically baptized soon after birth. An account of an afterlife vision written after 757 claimed that the ‘penitential pits’ of the hereafter contained the souls of a great multitude of mourning children who had died unbaptized in the episcopate of Bishop Daniel of Winchester.50 This could be a reflection of inadequate pastoral provision; but it could equally suggest the tenacity of older views in the last Anglo-Saxon kingdom to be Christianized. The South Saxons might have offered mainly sickly children for baptism or even, for a time, continued to dispose of unwanted infants in traditional fashion. We should not necessarily assume that views of the latter practice were gendered and that all women would immediately welcome Christian attempts to penalize exposure or infanticide.51 Theodore identifies poor women as a group who might kill their children, penalizing them less severely than the better-off, as well as legislating against abortion.52 This suggests that exposure might have been practised for economic reasons, and was regarded in some cases as an alternative to abortion. And as long as the spirits of the newly-born and very young were thought of as being capable of returning easily to the spirit world from which they came or of passing into other babies, exposure and perhaps even the killing of certain children would not necessarily have attracted the degree of popular condemnation that we might expect. When, several centuries later, Iceland accepted Christianity, the Icelanders reserved to themselves the continuation of two traditional customs: the eating of horseflesh and the exposure of children.53 It would only be through changes in widespread

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beliefs about the nature of death and the transition of the soul to the afterlife that the Church could even begin to overcome some of the hesitations over – as well as syncretistic constructions of – infant baptism that appear to have been current in the early days of Christianization.

SYNCRETISTIC APPROPRIATIONS AND TRINITARIAN DIFFICULTIES How did the Anglo-Saxons conceptualize the Trinity? The threefold nature of the Christian God is not always simple even for believers to understand, and the challenge of conveying its meaning to pagan polytheists is only too easy to imagine: how is it possible to have one god who is three at the same time, and yet is not three separate gods?54 In addition, anthropologists have commented on the ambiguous or polysemic nature of Christian concepts and terms (coupled with the difficulties of finding appropriate translations for many terms) in the understanding of missionized peoples. Those coming from religions with a concept of a supreme being or creator god on one hand, and lesser, more active gods on the other, may develop an understanding of the Trinity in which the Christian deity is viewed as remote and comparatively inactive, while Jesus is a lesser if more approachable god, created by the Father. Thus Christian missionaries who focus on the idea of a supreme being as a valuable starting-point for conversion run the risk of allowing their flocks to construct their god according to their own preconceptions.55 That the Church did emphasize God’s role as creator is suggested by the story of the earliest known Anglo-Saxon poet Cædmon, originally a herdsman of Hild’s abbey at Whitby. According to Bede, although formerly unable to sing, he was commanded in a vision to hymn the beginning of created things. Cædmon sang: Now we must praise the Maker of the Heavenly kingdom, the power of the Creator and his counsel, the deeds of the Father of glory and how he, since He is the eternal God, was the Author of all marvels and first created the Heavens a roof for the children of men and then, the almighty Guardian of the human race, created the earth.56

Bede rendered his words – with apologies for losing some of their original beauty and sense – in Latin, but the effectiveness of Cædmon’s poem stemmed from its being in the vernacular, and Bede claims that he also sang about many other important episodes taken from both Old and New Testaments as well as the pains of Hell and the joys of Heaven. Did the Anglo-Saxon Church in the seventh century have to confront a degree of failure to understand or accept the full divinity of the Son, as a result of attempts to focus on God the creator? That this is a possibility is suggested


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by the fact that the Council of Hatfield of 679 sent to Rome, in support of Pope Agatho’s campaign against Monothelitism – a definition of the nature and person of Christ which had seriously threatened the unity of the Christian Church for a large part of the seventh century – its endorsement of a creed which contained the Filioque clause. This was a statement of the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father ‘and from the Son’ (filioque). It was certainly technically valid in an anti-Monothelite context, but as it was an addition to the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed it could have caused further controversy, and it is tempting to think that there must have been a very specific reason for its inclusion. The Hatfield profession of faith was presented to a Roman cleric, John the Archcantor (or Precentor), who had been sent to England to investigate the orthodoxy of the Anglo-Saxon Church.57 It has been suggested that Wilfrid, ejected from his diocese the previous year and in Rome to appeal his case before the Pope, might have made insinuations against Theodore of Tarsus’ orthodoxy and fitness to head the English Church, and that Theodore sent the creed to Rome in an attempt to repair the damage to his reputation. Yet the formulation of the creed may reflect more than this. Theodore himself was familiar with the idea of the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son through his earlier involvement with the eastern theologian Maximus the Confessor and the Lateran Council of 649, and he might well have decided that its credal affirmation at Hatfield was a way both of teaching correct doctrine to peoples whose view of the Trinity was conditioned by their earlier beliefs, and also of defending himself and his Church against any criticism.58 That the precise relationship between Father and Son was still an issue into the eighth century is implied by the Ruthwell Cross poem, which opens with a phrase suggesting the equality of Christ with his Father: Almighty God stripped Himself. When he willed to mount the gallows . . .

This statement actually risks expressing a heresy – the ‘Patripassian’ belief that it was God the Father who had suffered on the cross. But as Éamonn Ó Carragáin has remarked, Arianism – that is, the denial of Christ’s equality with the Father – was seen as more serious. The later development of the Ruthwell Cross Poem, the well-known Dream of the Rood, would correct this confusion, affirming parenthetically that Christ was God and stressing that it was Christ the hero who ascended the cross. It is also worth noting in this context that the Irish Antiphonary of Bangor, which dates from the last part of the seventh century, contains a prayer which was designed to be recited daily at the sixth hour (when Christ is believed to have ascended the cross), and includes a similarly ‘Patripassian’ formula. This could suggest that the Irish Church also experienced difficulties with a popular understanding of the Trinity that was less than orthodox.59 Altogether, there may be reasons to believe that syncretistic understandings of the nature of God

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and of the Trinity developed in both England and Ireland, and that these may initially have helped the spread of Christianity; but that soon both Churches attempted to spread a more doctrinally correct view amongst the people. One of the duties enjoined on clerics by the 747 Council of Clofesho was that they themselves should have a correct understanding of the Trinity, and teach it to those who came to them.60

SACRED SITES, RELIC CULTS AND MIRACLES Some aspects of the Church’s practice and doctrine posed potential obstacles to the acceptance of Christianity. It found it necessary to emphasize Christ’s courage, to counter the image created by the manner of his death; its teachings on marriage and concubinage ran directly counter to long-established social institutions; it attacked some important cults and practices associated with women and with the domestic sphere; and it seems likely that it had to work hard in an attempt to move its flock beyond syncretistic understandings of infant baptism and the Christian God. It also needed to achieve several paradigmatic shifts of belief. One of these involved convincing the populace that Christianity could provide an adequate replacement for the old gods whose cults were associated with harvests and survival. Even if the cult of Woden appears to have been popular with the emergent ruling dynasties which then went on to adopt Christianity, those of Ingui-Freyr or Seaxnet (‘need of the Saxons’) and rituals connected with them, or with other supernatural beings associated with nature and the harvest, would have continued be of major importance to those who tilled the soil. Bede’s Life of Cuthbert tells the story of a group of monks who were borne out to sea by an adverse wind as they attempted to sail a raft downriver: . . . on the other bank stood no small crowd of the common people . . . they began to jeer at the monks’ manner of life, as if they were deservedly suffering, seeing that they despised the common laws of mortals and put forth new and unknown rules of life. Cuthbert stopped the insults of the blasphemers, saying: ‘Brethren, what are you doing? Would it not be better and more kindly to pray to the Lord for their safety rather than to rejoice over their dangers?’ But they fumed against him with boorish minds and boorish words (rustico et animo et ore stomachantes) and said: ‘Let no man pray for them and may God have no mercy on any one of them, for they have robbed men of their old ways of worship (veteres culturas) and how the new worship is to be conducted nobody knows’. . .61

The uncertainty voiced by the Northumbrian countrymen at the removal of the old rites (veteras culturas) was ultimately focused on the outcome of those rituals: the guaranteeing of a good harvest and the survival and prosperity of the community. In Pascal Boyer’s words, ‘doctrines are not necessarily the most important


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aspect of religious concepts’.62 How was the Church to remove such doubts and uncertainties, and replace the old ways? In 601, Gregory I had ordered the Kentish mission to follow the strategy of building churches on pagan shrines, and to apply the traditional custom of feasting to Christian holy days (see Chapter 3). His instruction seems to reflect consideration of what he had been told about non-doctrinal Anglo-Saxon religion, deliberation which had led him to some degree of understanding of the importance of sacred sites to the peoples he wished to convert. The wisdom of his strategy was considerable, as anthropological studies indicate that outdoor sanctuaries and holy trees, wells and rocks retain their supposed powers even when control of them passes from one religious group to another: the way in which two religions may ‘share’ or contest control of sites provides further testimony of this tendency towards continuity.63 Yet while Gregory’s advice has been much quoted by historians, how far Anglo-Saxon churchmen were actually aware of it, or were able to follow it in the early days of Christianization, is open to question. It is difficult to find many definite examples of Christian churches constructed over pagan sacred sites early in the conversion period, although Aldhelm of Malmesbury (d. c.709) seems to refer to such substitutions when he writes in his Letter to Heahfrith that . . . where once the crude pillars of the same foul snake and the stag were worshipped with coarse stupidity in profane shrines, in their place, dwellings for students, not to mention holy houses of prayer, are constructed skilfully by the talent of the architect.64

The possibility of continuity between pagan sites and churches dedicated to certain Christian saints, particularly St Michael the Archangel, has been raised by modern writers.65 Nevertheless, we cannot be certain about the date of any such developments or of an early date of the church at Bampton, which was possibly aligned on a pagan pillar,66 nor that earlier shrines at Yeavering or even Goodmanham were Christianized at an early date. More positively, John Blair has pointed to the re-use of a pagan cemetery on a hillock (which may have been mistaken for a barrow) at Ripon, initially by the original Irish monastery there, before Wilfrid aligned his church on it. Bede’s reference to the foundation of the monastery Ad Caprae Caput also provides us with a strong suggestion of a similar action in the 640s or 50s (see Chapter 6). The initiative for this latter transformation may have come not only from churchmen but also from King Oswald of Northumbria, who seems to have recognized the importance of setting up a Christian cross at Hefenfelth, a sacred pagan meadow or clearing near the battlefield of Denisesburn.67 After Oswald of Northumbria’s death, both Hefenfelth and also the place of his death, Maserfelth, appear to have become centres of popular cults which seem to reflect what he himself – if we are to believe Bede – had been aiming

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at in his lifetime: the re-inscribing of pagan healing and apotropaic practices and rituals in a Christian context, and the Christianizing of this pagan sacred site. This is strongly suggested by Bede’s story of a monk of Wilfrid’s abbey at Hexham whose broken arm was healed by moss taken from the cross, a tale which might be read to imply that the moss taken from Hefenfelth’s tree or column had previously also been used for healing in this way. Similarly, at Maserfelth the earth from the spot where Oswald fell in battle was apparently regarded as possessing the power to cure people and animals: again Bede’s text might be taken to imply a continuity between these and older practices when he notes that a bag of earth taken from the spot and hung on a house-post miraculously preserved it from fire. It has been suggested that this may indicate the Christianization or Christian interpretation of a pagan apotropaic practice, just as the Hefenfelth story indicates Christianization both of traditional practices and the site on which they took place.68 Although we can only catch glimpses of pagan customs and beliefs from Bede’s narratives, he appears to indicate that such cults were non-elite in nature and so we have a potentially valuable insight into the elements of Christianity which had a popular appeal – that is, non-doctrinal ones which involved belief in supernatural intervention in everyday life, and in the efficaciousness of certain sites and substances in producing cures, affording protection, or ensuring the prosperity of the land. All this combines to suggest that the cult of relics would be one of the most effective ways of establishing or maintaining Christianity amongst the population. They may even, in the south, have continued to be aware of the burial place of a Roman British martyr, St Alban, around whose relics and cult the remnants of a British church could well have survived, even after the disappearance of a diocesan structure. This might have been an important influence on the Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons, although nothing can actually be proved.69 Augustine of Canterbury, who had relied greatly on demonstrations of the miraculous powers of the Christian God to establish a church in Kent, seems to have been well aware of this. He wrote to Pope Gregory I about the existence of a local British martyr, Sixtus, though he lamented that his burial place did not ‘shine with miracles’ and asked for relics of St Sixtus, pope and martyr, to be sent to enhance the shrine.70 If Augustine did indeed obtain any relics of Sixtus from Rome, these are likely to have been contact relics, objects or cloth (brandea) that had touched the body of a saint.71 Gregory I sent contact relics to kings, queens and his supporters outside the city: it is likely that this was the type of relic of the apostles and martyrs that Bede states he conveyed to Augustine in 601.72 In the 660s, Pope Vitalian sent similar ‘blessings’ to King Oswiu, along with a cross with a golden key made from the fetters of Peter and Paul, for his queen.73 Contact relics, whether obtained from Rome or from Francia, had the potential to be made into personal reliquaries, which could then be worn in the same way as amulets and pagan apotropaics.


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It has been suggested that both the great gold buckle from the Sutton Hoo ship burial and the buckle found in the princely burial at Prittlewell were possibly designed to contain contact relics.74 The appearance in some female burials from c.650 onwards of copper-alloy cylinders which sometimes contain either herbal residues or some fragments of expensive textile suggests either actual reliquaries containing contact relics, or amulets modelled on them.75 The attractions of possessing such a source of healing and protective power were so great that when Wilfrid was imprisoned by the King of Northumbria, Queen Iurminburh seized his chrismarium full of relics for herself – though his hagiographer shows her then being punished by God for her temerity. Obtaining corporeal relics of martyrs from Rome was, in fact, no easy matter in the early stages of Anglo-Saxon Christianization. Popes were notoriously reluctant to disturb relics of the Christian martyrs or distribute them outside the city, as a letter of Gregory I to the Empress Constantina demonstrates, and it is not until the pontificate of Honorius I (627–38) that we see one set of corporeal relics being moved.76 While further translations within Rome itself did then take place, it was only in the second half of the eighth century that the pace of distribution of corporeal relics from Rome to other parts of Europe speeded up. Altogether, it seems unlikely that the Anglo-Saxon Church obtained much, if anything, in the way of corporeal relics from Rome in the seventh century – but this may not have been such a disadvantage if individuals such as Iurminburh felt they were able to tap into the power of portable contact relics that had the advantage of resembling traditional amulets.77 The resemblance appears to have been emphasized by Wilfrid, who had apparently been in the habit of wearing his chrismarium around his neck: this had evidently impressed the queen, who carried the relics around with her from place to place. It seems likely that in its first stages, the cult of saints and relics amongst the Anglo-Saxons very closely resembled traditional apotropaic and curative practices linked to older sacred sites or to amulets, and was not centred in the main on churches and monasteries. While this similarity could initially have assisted the spread of Christianity, anthropologists argue that even in a modern Christian context, the relationship between the popular understanding of healing and shrines and official ecclesiastical discourse can be a complex one – in other words, the belief-system tacitly operating is not always exactly the one that the Church is promoting.78 This is probably even more the case among a people in the process of being introduced to a new religion. Ideally, the Church needed to be able to manage miraculous manifestations in order to emphasize that they were the work of the Christian God. Gradually, it managed to gain greater control of the cult of relics. One of its tactics was to place as many as possible in churches and monasteries. Benedict Biscop imported relics to Monkwearmouth-Jarrow, and Wilfrid brought more back with him in 654, 680 and 704: we are told that

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Wilfrid went round the churches of Rome collecting them, and that each was labelled with the name of a saint.79 It is likely that in both cases we are dealing once again with contact relics, cloths or objects that had touched the bodies of saints. However, as the century wore on, we can discern also a growing emphasis on the importance of corporeal relics, as the bodies of Anglo-Saxons saints were translated to conspicuous places in churches. The body of Cuthbert was moved in 698 to a place of honour in the Lindisfarne monastery church.80 Even in this case, along with attempts to suggest the magnitude and superiority of the miraculous powers of the dead bishop, the use of contact relics persisted. Bede records the healing power of earth soaked by the water in which his body had been washed, after the relics of the martyrs also housed in the church had been seen to fail as agents of a cure. After Cuthbert’s translation, the sick were healed not just at his tomb but also by his shoes. In the introduction to his poetic Life of Cuthbert, Bede could write of the news of miracles at his shrine reaching Jarrow on a daily basis.81 Bede also attests to the survival of more accessible forms of contact and healing relic outside the monastery church, but within its control – in the area on to which the water used to wash Cuthbert’s body had been thrown, and also in pieces of a calf-skin with which his cell had been repaired after his death.82 In Mercia, the sacred locus was brought under closer ecclesiastical management when Chad’s body was moved from the cemetery to a shrine inside his church at Lichfield: the faithful could reach into this construction to take out some healing dust.83 At the monastery of Ely, where Abbess Æthelethryth had died of the plague in the 680, her incorrupt body – which now apparently bore only a small scar marking the place on her neck where a large swelling caused by plague had been lanced – was placed in a fine stone sarcophagus and enshrined on high in 699.84 The fate of the body of Oswald created opportunities for the transformation of his cult from a popular one to one associated with the elite.85 Both his relatives and the Church recognized the potential of representing him as a new type of saint, a king who had greatly advanced the cause of Christianity: It is not to be wondered at that the prayers of the king who is now reigning with the Lord should greatly prevail, for while he was ruling over his temporal kingdom, he was always accustomed to work and pray most diligently for the kingdom which is eternal.86

Oswald’s head and hands had been removed after Maserfelth in a ritualized act of disrespect – but their separation from his body conveniently led to the development of a number of relic cults, not only at the church of Bamburgh but also at Bardney in Lindsey, where the monks had at first been reluctant to receive the body of a man whom they evidently considered to be a Northumbrian oppressor. Even the wood of the stake on which his head had been fixed after his death – said by Bede to have been of oak, a tree with strong pagan associations – and the dust


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touched by the water in which his bones had been washed were credited, like the earth drenched by the water in which Cuthbert’s body was similarly cleansed, with prophylactic properties.87 As Bardney, at the instance of Oswald’s niece Osthryth, took over this popular cult, it seems to have been associated with exorcisms as well as with the healings more characteristic of its original popular manifestations. The cult thus provided the opportunity for ritualized conflict between good and evil, with the bodies of the possessed as battleground, and the triumph of the Christian God over the devil, whose manifestations included pagan gods and supernatural beings (see p. 159 below).88 Bede also records that Wilfrid’s community at Hexham instituted the custom of keeping an annual vigil at ‘Heavenfield’, the old pagan site of Hefenfelth, on the night before the anniversary of Oswald’s death; this was done in response to miracles performed there, and had been followed ‘recently’ (nuper) by the construction of a church.89 In Bede’s brief notice it is possible to discern the outlines of a gradual and possibly contested appropriation of a sacred locus – originally pagan, but then Christianized by Oswald – by the monks of Hexham, whose annual vigil and Mass there looks like the first step in a campaign to take over the site. In the south, Bede also records the miraculous cessation of the plague at Wilfrid’s monastery of Selsey, when Oswald appeared in a vision to a dying child. This enabled regular cultic celebrations to develop: From that time, not only in his monastery, but in many other places, the Heavenly birthday of this king and soldier of Christ began to be observed yearly by the celebration of Masses.90

Thus Oswald’s cult, initially popular, non-elite, even unofficial and based like pagan cults on natural features along with healing and apotropaic practices, was taken over by the Church and would go on to develop several regional bases as well as dynastic (and, eventually, European) dimensions.91 Another Christian king similarly re-constructed as a saint was Eadwine. His body was moved from Hatfield Chase, where it had apparently lain since his death, and taken to Whitby, a house presided over by royal abbesses of his own family (though Bede also notes that his head was buried at York).92 The division of the bodies of these royal saints to some extent worked to compensate for the Roman Church’s reluctance to divide the bodies of its own holy, as it gave increased opportunity for the Church to control the imagistic manifestations – translations, healings, exorcisms and visions – which characterized this aspect of Christianity. It may also be the case that the cults at Hexham and Whitby owed a certain amount of their impetus to the tensions and rivalries which existed between Wilfrid’s party and Whitby, which sided with those who took a more moderate line in relation to the Irish after 664. The potential of relic cults for creating a cognitive link between Church and

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laity was exploited in another way by Wilfrid himself, who attempted to produce a type of imagistic religious experience for lay visitors to his monastery churches, which could be combined with instruction in the doctrinal mode. Although he was able, in all probability, to bring back only contact or secondary, rather than corporeal, relics from his trips to Rome and the continent, the two crypts which he built at Ripon and Hexham in the 670s reflect ingenious attempts to create a very particular religious experience, based on what he himself had seen in St Peter’s in Rome. There was little architectural integration of the crypt with either of Wilfrid’s churches: the central feature of both was a relic chamber, a recreation of the cubicula designed to accommodate entire bodies in the Roman catacombs. The retention of this form, even though there was no major corporeal relic, together with complex, dimly lit entrance passages, would have created an effect of mystery and disorientation.93 These impressions were designed to produce a feeling of religious awe among the visitors to the shrine, creating a vivid, affective and imagistic religious experience, even though there was no actual martyr present. Similar structures existed at Brixworth and Wing and there may also have been one dating from this period at Canterbury.94 It is also conceivable that the existence of stone outdoor crosses carved with religious scenes, symbols and texts, such as the eighth-century Ruthwell and Bewcastle Crosses, reflects a pattern of replacement of earlier wooden crosses such as Oswald’s, which themselves in turn reflected the Christianization of traditional pagan sacred outdoor sites. Even if the Ruthwell Cross did not literally replace a sacred pagan tree or column, it did so metaphorically: the inhabited vine-scrolls carved on its narrow sides . . . emphasize that the cross is fundamentally a tree: an image, central to pre-Christian Germanic religion, which in Christian culture became an arbor vitae, an image of the mysterium fidei.95

Karen Jolly has observed that the use of crosses in the later Anglo-Saxon period both as markers of space and boundaries, and also in Christian rituals appropriate to agricultural needs, suggests ways in which an earlier tradition was Christianized.96

THE FESTAL YEAR Though the cult of saints and relics and the type of imagistic religious experience connected with them must have played a very important part in ensuring the establishment of Christianity, the Church also needed to build on these by creating basic routines and patterns of worship. Thus John the Archcantor, who visited England in the 670s, instructed the monks of Monkwearmouth in the liturgy of


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the Roman basilicas and the annual festal cycle of the Roman Church.97 Where the major feasts were concerned, Christianity came to the Anglo-Saxons with one clear advantage: the capacity to link the most important Christian festal dates to the key points in the solar cycle. The actual day of the year on which Christ was born is unknown, and the dating of Christmas to 25 December is often said to have originated in a Christian takeover of the Festival of the Unconquered Sun (Sol Invictus). While the latter looks like a traditional winter solstice celebration, it had in fact been instituted by the Roman Emperor Aurelian (270–5 ce) as a way of unifying pagan cults and celebrating the Empire’s perpetual rebirth. Some Christians may already have been celebrating the birth of Christ on 25 December – a date which commemorates his incarnation, rather than his baptism on 6 January – and the Emperor Constantine gave 25 December the official status of the feast-day of the Nativity in the Empire (though the eastern half was slow to accept it). This meant that Christmas conveniently coincided with the pagan winter solstice celebration of Modranecht, referred to by Bede. The Christian Church had already, from the third century on, decided that Christ had died around the spring equinox,98 and he was also thought to have been conceived exactly nine months before. If the pagan Anglo-Saxons had indeed celebrated the kind of spring festivals suggested by Bede, then Easter could be seen as a ‘substitute’ festival, the calculation of its date partly based on that of the spring equinox. But as we have seen, the dissonance between the Anglo-Saxon Church on one hand and the British and Irish Churches on the other (a divergence partly based on different equinoctial dating) could have been confusing for laity in areas where the two observances existed side by side, and where every so often they celebrated Easter on different dates – for example, for those who saw Queen Eanfled of Northumbria and her entourage still observing Lent while her husband was celebrating Easter. Where other festivals were concerned, the early Anglo-Saxon Church was greatly dependent on ‘imported’ festivals and saints’ lives. The Lindisfarne Gospels include a calendar which lists saints of the Roman Church and also some obscure saints from Campania in Southern Italy, suggesting that calendars had been brought from the continent by figures such as John the Archcantor of the Roman Church, Birinus, Theodore, Hadrian, Benedict Biscop, and Wilfrid. Benedict Biscop had accompanied Theodore and Hadrian on their journey from Rome to England in 668–9 and even though this was several years before the foundation of Monkwearmouth, it is quite possible that Hadrian, who had been an abbot in Campania, influenced the liturgy of the house, as we find evidence of a Neapolitan liturgical calendar being used there.99 The Gaulish and Frankish churches also exercised a degree of influence over the cycle of feasts and the knowledge of saints’ Lives, such as the Life of St Martin. The monastic Lives of the hermits Paul and Antony were also known, as the iconography of the Ruthwell

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Cross demonstrates. Despite the contribution of Irish monks and teachers to the Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons, however, Irish influence seems less obvious.100 The importation of continental saints and their feast-days helped provide the Church in its early days with a framework of festivals, emphasizing a mode of religiosity which pagan and newly baptized Anglo-Saxons could understand.

TEACHING, PREACHING AND MIRACLES In the eighth century, anyone who saw the carved cross at Ruthwell in Dumfriesshire would have been looking – as well as at the monastic saints Paul and Antony breaking bread in the desert – at scenes referring to or symbolizing the Visitation and Incarnation, as well as at the cross itself, the instrument of Christ’s passion. The latter theme was elaborated further through the poem in which the cross is made to speak. This is likely to have been an effective device, based on the sort of counter-intuitive mentation found in many religions, and both Pascal Boyer and Justin Barrett have noted how people are more likely to recall stories in which intuitive expectations are violated, thus achieving a cognitively optimal effect.101 And a central part of the cross’s speech is aimed at a secular audience through its depiction of the heroism of Christ. Other elements of its presentation of Christianity were more complex, aimed perhaps at the clerics, monks or nuns of a nearby religious community.102 The conceptual structure of its images and verse is that of a dramatized reception of the body of Christ by the cross, which hands it on to men, bowing down to present it to his followers. A sequence of Eucharistic images ‘celebrates the way in which humanity receives Christ’s body’.103 Some of the Ruthwell Cross’s imagery has been interpreted as representing baptism and repentance, and as a whole it can be read as representing the cross, the Church and the Eucharist.104 But its carving of Christ being acknowledged by, or triumphing over, two animals, symbolizing the victory of Christianity over the forces of evil (or paganism) and a depiction of Christ healing a blind man, as well as the vine-scrolls which substituted for the pagan tree, may have also had more immediate impact on a wider and less educated audience.105 We also find art being used to transmit the Christian message at Monkwearmouth, as Benedict Biscop brought back with him from the continent . . . many holy pictures of the saints to adorn the church of St Peter he had built: a painting of the Mother of God, the Blessed Mary ever-Virgin, and one of each of the twelve apostles which he fixed round the central arch on a wooden entablature reaching from wall to wall; pictures of incidents in the gospels with which he decorated the south wall; and scenes from St John’s vision of the apocalypse on the north wall. Thus all


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who entered the church, even those who could not read were able, whichever way they looked to contemplate the dear face of Christ and of his saints, even if only in a picture, to put themselves more firmly in mind of the Lord’s Incarnation and, as they saw the decisive moment of the Last Judgement before their very eyes be brought to examine their conscience with all severity.106

However, to use these icons successfully and also to turn imagistic, affective experiences into some level of doctrinal understanding, the Church needed to accompany them with a high level of verbal explication coupled with exhortation. The importance of teaching and preaching is shown in many descriptions of the work of the seventh-century Anglo-Saxon Church. Instruction had to be carried out in the vernacular: Augustine and his party were accompanied by Frankish interpretes so that their message would be intelligible, and King Oswald of the Northumbrians translated for Bishop Aidan, who spoke Irish.107 Bede goes so far as to suggest that visits by clergy to the countryside were a popular aspect of Christianization: Now it was the custom at that time amongst the English people when a clerk or a priest came to a village, for all to gather together at his command to hear the word, gladly listening to what was said and still more gladly following up by their deeds what they could hear and understand.108

To help them convey basic Christian doctrine, monks and clerics required a stock of vivid and edifying sermon material, particularly to stress the power of the Christian God and Christian holy men in contemporary or near-contemporary situations. Thus the Ecclesiastical History, the Lives of Cuthbert, the Whitby Life of Gregory and to a lesser extent Stephen’s Life of Wilfrid all seek to demonstrate the powers of their heroes. Augustine of Canterbury had quickly come to appreciate the effectiveness of miraculous demonstrations in the 590s, despite Pope Gregory I’s warnings about the dangers of ‘vainglory’,109 and the Whitby Life of Gregory affirmed that Miracles are granted for the destruction of the idols of unbelieving pagans, or sometimes to confirm the weak faith of believers; most of all they are granted to those who instruct the pagans and so, the more gloriously and frequently they are manifested in those lands, the more convincing they become as teachers . . .110

At the same time, while all these texts recognize the importance of the miraculous in connecting with the pagan or the recently converted, they have another fundamentally important message to convey. They are all careful to present miraculous abilities and miracles as a manifestation of the power of the Christian God. Bede himself does not see a miracle as merely a matter for wonder – miraculum: he also uses terms such as caelestia indicio, signum or indicium as well or instead, to denote that miracles are signs of God’s power, or grace, or mercy.111

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DOCTRINE, BELIEF AND THE CHRISTIAN HOLY MAN The texts produced by the English Church in this period do not simply provide a recital of miracles of healing performed by God through living holy men or at the tombs of dead ones: they also display an awareness of fundamental questions of belief which arose at this stage. This is highlighted in Bede’s account of the evangelization of the South Saxons: although their queen was a Christian and their king had accepted baptism several years previously, his ealdormen and gesiths and the rest of the South Saxons were, in Bede’s words, ‘still in the bonds of heathen practices’, despite the efforts of a small Irish monastery at Bosham to convert them. Bede describes how Wilfrid found the South Saxons afflicted by famine, the consequence of a drought that had lasted three years, and alleges that men ‘wasted by hunger’ were throwing themselves off cliffs. Wilfrid’s baptism of the people ended the lengthy drought: . . . on the very day on which the people received the baptism of faith, a gentle but ample rain fell; the earth revived, the fields once more became green, and a happy and fruitful season followed. So, casting off their ancient superstitions and renouncing their idolatry, ‘the heart and flesh of all rejoiced in the living God; for they realized that He who is the true God had, by his Heavenly grace, endowed them with both outward and inward blessings.112

The importance of associating Christianity with benefits in this world as well as in the next is also demonstrated in the following section of Bede’s account: When the bishop first came into the kingdom and saw the suffering and famine there, he taught them how to get their food by fishing: for both the sea and the rivers abounded in fish but the people had no knowledge of fishing apart from eels alone. So the bishop’s men collected eel-nets from every quarter and cast them into the sea so that with the help of divine grace, they quickly captured 300 fish of all kinds . . . By this good turn, the bishop won the hearts of all and they had the greater hope of Heavenly blessings from the preaching of one by whose aid they had gained temporal blessings.113

Whether this story, or indeed the one which precedes it, is true or not is questionable, though not susceptible of either proof or disproof: what is important is that Bede’s final comment encapsulates neatly the realization that to make converts and survive, the ‘other-worldly’ religion of Christianity needed to come to terms with the worldly needs and expectations of the populace as a whole. It is noticeable that Wilfrid’s hagiographer, Stephen, does not use this tale in relation to the South Saxons – but he tells a very similar story of Wilfrid’s conversion, on his travels abroad, of the Frisians, where . . . in the pagans’ eyes his doctrine gained strong backing by the fact that his arrival was marked by an unusually large catch of fish. Indeed the year was an abnormally fruitful


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one for every kind of produce. All this they attributed to the glory of the God which the holy man was preaching. So his preaching was accepted . . .114

The Whitby Life of Gregory also deals with a number of issues of doctrine and belief. It tells the story of a Roman matron who refused to believe in transubstantiation – only for the Eucharistic bread that she herself had provided to manifest itself as a finger covered in blood.115 This vivid tale may have provided especially effective sermon material: in an analysis particularly relevant to this particular narrative, Theodore Vial has suggested that in Reformation theology, the Lutheran position that the Host was ‘fleshbread’ (Fleischbrot) was cognitively optimal, while the rational strength of Zwingli’s analysis, in which the bread remains bread, would prove weaker in terms of popularity.116 Similarly, the Life asserts that contact relics – likely to have been the most usual type of relic found in Anglo-Saxon England – have the same powers as the bodies of the saints themselves, as the blood of the saints enters into them, once again violating intuitive expectations in a memorable manner.117 While the power of the Christian God is made manifest through these relics, non-Christian practices and practitioners are vanquished by the Christian holy man: Pope Gregory defeats two ‘magicians’ who stand on a high place and attempt to cast a spell on him.118 (This tale recalls Stephen’s account of Wilfrid’s defeat of a pagan priest of the South Saxons who had tried to put a curse on him and on his party.)119 In another story, Bishop Paulinus of Northumbria confronts the traditional belief in augury by birds head-on: when a crow whose croaking in an ‘unlucky’ quarter is thought to indicate that Christianity will bring no good, he orders a boy to shoot it with his bow and arrow – and then points out that it had been unable to predict its own death.120 Another text providing churchmen with a stock of sermon material directly addressing issues of Christianization was the work known as the Dialogues, traditionally attributed to Pope Gregory the Great.121 The authenticity of this piece has long been debated and recent work has shown that although it contains some genuine Gregorian material, taken from works such as his Moralia, the bulk of the text was composed in the 670s.122 The associated thesis that it originated in Rome, however, is less convincing, especially in view of its depiction of monasteries which used the Benedictine Rule mingled with other elements: the Rule is unlikely to have been known in Rome at this stage.123 However, one of the earliest manuscripts of the work was created in Northumbria,124 while the attribution of the work to Gregory would have lent it the greatest possible authority in England. The narrative substance of the Dialogues relates the exploits and miracles of Italian monks and clerics, with a few female religious and some non-Italian holy men added for good measure. It has long been recognized that many of

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its tales are based on others found in works ranging from the Bible, through early monastic literature and some of the writings of St Augustine, to the series of anonymous Italian hagiographical works collectively known as the Gesta Martyrum, which was still expanding in the seventh century. The versions of these stories contained in the Dialogues differ in many respects from those in the earlier sources: Francis Clark has produced a masterly outline of the relationships and also charted the explanations for resemblances offered by successive generations of scholars.125 What has gone so far unremarked is that different discourses emerge from the different versions of the tales. The Gesta narratives, for example, embody the Italian origins and concerns of the churches which produced the saints’ lives; the discourse of the stories embedded in the Dialogues often concerns questions of belief relevant to the process of Christianization, and is rooted in an ecclesiastical organization of a different character from that of Italy. Book One of the Dialogues, for example, tells of a famous abbot named Equitius, who was in the habit of preaching and teaching in the province of Valeria, converting many to Christianity. This clearly encroached on the role of the clergy, but the Dialogues record how he had been divinely permitted, by a vision, to do so. The jealous Roman clergy objected and persuaded the Pope to summon him to Rome to answer for his presumption: however, the Pope too experienced a vision and rescinded the order before Equitius could be removed from his monastery.126 The elements of the Equitius story can be found in more than one of the Gesta. In the seventh-century Italian Passio Abundii et Carpophorii, also known as the Legend of the Twelve Syrians, Proculus, one of the twelve who has become a bishop, is accused before the Pope of celebrating dominical Mass too early in the day, but is vindicated and restored to his rank with honour. A similar tale is to be found in the Life of Cerbonius, bishop of Populonia, who also celebrates dominical Mass at dawn and then has a meal with his clergy. He is denounced by the city populace, who cannot take part in the Mass, and as a consequence is summoned to Rome by an angry pope. A third possible parallel exists in Chapter 150 of John Moschos’ classic work of eastern spirituality, The Spiritual Meadow, where the Bishop of ‘Romilla’ is called to appear before the Pope.127 The point of the Equitius story is quite different from all of these. It appears to be a vindication of the monastic right to teach and preach against the claims of clergy to be able to do this exclusively. As such, it may well reflect the tensions evident in the Anglo-Saxon Church following Theodore of Tarsus’ attempts to put it on a more conventional episcopal basis in the 670s, and it could even conceivably have originated somewhere in the Wilfridian group of monasteries.128 The case for monasteries as centres of Christianization is also defended in Book Two of the Dialogues, where St Benedict of Nursia himself is pictured using his monastery as a base for Christianization, discouraging pagan practices amongst the peasants living nearby and destroying pagan shrines and altars on Monte Cassino.129


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The discourse of the Dialogues reflects the problems faced by the Church in dealing with traditional non-Christian patterns of belief and behaviour, and also in establishing doctrinal norms. In the latter case, a number of narratives, through condemnations of Arianism, emphasize the importance of belief in the full divinity of the Son, paralleling the presentation of Christ as God in the Ruthwell Cross Poem.130 This served the purpose of counteracting syncretistic views of God as distant and even uncaring, and his son as a created and lesser (though more active) god. At the same time, Christianity is still presented in terms of existing cosmology, in that the traditional pantheon is now diabolized, and the gods hitherto worshipped are identified with the devil. The devil himself appears before St Benedict, in a guise suggesting that the writer was attempting to identify him with the pagan god of thunder: . . . he had an appearance utterly revolting to human eyes. He was enveloped in fire and, when he raged against the man of God, flames darted from his eyes and mouth. Everyone could hear what he was saying . . .131

The singling out of the god of thunder and lightning is particularly interesting in view of the association between a stormy summer and the outbreak of plague in 664: the Annals of Clonmacnoise characterize this summer as one of extreme heat (which can turn to thunderstorms), and Bede associates the arrival of plague with storms which turned summer into winter.132 This passage may indicate one way in which the Church reacted to the belief that the disaster of plague had been caused by the old gods seeking revenge for their abandonment in favour of the new religion, and believers’ tendency to revert to worshipping them in times of crisis.133 Elsewhere, the text attempts to confront – and diabolize – belief in lesser supernatural powers. A nun who has forgotten to ‘sign’ a lettuce she has illicitly picked and eaten – that is, to make the sign of the cross over it – is immediately possessed by a little demon which has then to be exorcized by the saintly Abbot Equitius.134 Traditional medical and ritual practitioners are also associated with the devil. In Dialogues II, 20, a healer is described in derogatory terms as a mulomedicus – a mule-doctor – and also as a personification of the devil, who sends one of Benedict’s own monks into a fit or trance, explained in Christian terms as diabolical possession, ended when Benedict strikes him. The healer is depicted carrying a three-legged stool and bow, so is presumably a shaman. The text’s attempts to deride him as a mule- or horse-doctor recall the association between shamanistic practitioners and horses suggested in Chapter 4 above.135 Elsewhere in the same work, ‘magicians’ are reviled in a characterization of ritual and medical specialists that devalues their religious connections.136 The Dialogues make plain the distinction between the miraculous, a manifestation of God’s power, on one hand, and ‘magic’ on the other.137

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Throughout the first three books of the Dialogues we also find miracles relating to the marvellous ability of Christian holy men to exert control over food supplies and harvests, natural phenomena and animals. The formation of a discourse appropriating such powers for Christianity was crucial, as demonstrated by Bede and Stephen’s narratives of Wilfrid’s conversion of the South Saxons and the Frisians, together with the tale of the confused and resentful Tynesiders in the Life of Cuthbert. To take only a few examples, Constantius, a pious sacristan of Ancona, is able to change water into oil for the lamps of his church.138 Nonnosus, a prior, can miraculously produce supplies of oil during a period of shortage.139 Bishop Boniface of Ferentino – who, as a boy, prayed successfully for the death of a fox which was eating his mother’s hens – is able to produce seemingly limitless quantities of wine from a small vineyard, banish crop-eating caterpillars from a garden by invoking the name of Christ, and even make the grain in his granary multiply.140 St Benedict himself renews his monastery’s supply of oil and, on another occasion, flour when Campania is struck by famine,141 while Sanctulus of Norcia not only turns water into oil, but also miraculously produces loaves, in a miracle compared to that of the loaves and fishes.142 A monk is able to make a bear act as a sheep-dog: after his death, his cloak is carried round the fields in a procession by the local populace, as it possesses miraculous rain-making properties.143 Christian holy men also demonstrate their ability to control birds – traditionally associated with divination and augury – water, iron, and seemingly immovable rocks.144 (Similarly in the Ecclesiastical History, Cuthbert produces crops in places where formerly nothing would grow, and in Bede’s Life he produces water from dry ground, drives away birds from the crops he himself has sown, and shows his mastery of birds and sea-creatures).145 On more than one occasion in the Dialogues, the origin of these powers is discussed. Peter, Gregory’s interlocutor, is made to ask whether holy men can always obtain what they want – or whether they have to do this through prayer.146 The virtus or power of the holy man is attributed firmly by Gregory to God.147

SOUL AND SPIRIT The opening of Book Four of the Dialogues sets out the Christian conception of a single soul animating the entire body: In considering the movements of the body, it is from the lowest activity that we infer the soul’s presence in the body . . . Imagine a house under construction and visualize the lifting of immense weights and large columns suspended from mighty cranes. Tell me who is doing this work? Is it the visible body that pulls those massive materials with its hand, or is it the invisible soul that activates the body?148


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This particular discussion – which has puzzled modern commentators – suggests that the Anglo-Saxon Church had encountered difficulties created by belief in multiple souls or body souls which worked or governed the different parts of the anatomy, discussed in Chapter 2.149 This was also a problem for seventeenthcentury Jesuit missionaries working amongst the Native Americans. One commented that they think of the soul as divisible and you would have all the difficulty in the world to make them believe that our soul is entire in all parts of the body . . .150

Yet at the same time, the Dialogues also appear to reflect a syncretistic understanding of the soul or spirit. In one story, St Benedict of Nursia goes from Monte Cassino ‘in spirit’ to appear in a dream to two of his monks at Terracina.151 The idea that the spirit can wander abroad when we are unconscious, without us necessarily wishing it or having power over it, is a common folk-belief which has its origins in the conception of more than one soul at work in the body, the conception contested at the beginning of Book Four of the Dialogues. Many issues seem to be hinted at by this narrative. The difficulties presented by Christian soul belief and terminology for peoples who believed in more than one soul is suggested by the experience of Catholic missionaries in America who borrowed a Navajo word meaning ‘that which stands within’ to explain the spiritual, undying part of man. But this word actually refers to a Navajo belief that in the chest of man there is an image or symbol of turquoise which, if it remains upright, will make him strong, and exists only in those who have undergone certain ceremonies. Unfamiliar concepts can be lost or altered in translation. But conceptual differences which result in the understanding of terms in a way other than that originally intended by the Church can also lead to the evolution of syncretistic forms of Christianity, which partly escape Church control.152 Syncretism can reveal a degree of resistance to, as well as accommodation of, another set of beliefs.153 Thus the Terracina narrative suggests that the strength of belief in the soul’s ability to leave the body during a state of unconsciousness was so strong that the ecclesiastical composer of the Dialogues felt obliged to re-inscribe it in a Christian context, while at the same time reiterating the idea of the single soul. This is an area that may have continued to be contested in the following centuries. A more conventional ecclesiastical line was taken by the eighth-century English churchman and scholar Alcuin, who used the idea of the spirit’s journeying outside the body to represent thought and imagination, and insisted that the soul left the body in reality only at the moment of death.154 Nevertheless, the idea of the potentially mobile spirit, distinct in some way from another soul, seems to have been deeply embedded in Anglo-Saxon culture and survived to some extent into the later Anglo-Saxon period. In his translation of Boethius’ De Consolatione Philosophiae, King Alfred employs the Anglo-Saxon term gast rather

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than sawl to render the Latin spiritus, using it specifically in the context of the spirit’s wandering abroad in dreams; and in Bishop Wærferth of Worcester’s Old English rendering of the Dialogues, made for Alfred, gast is also the term used to convey the idea of the wandering spirit of the sleeping Benedict.155

CHRISTIANITY AND DEATH The question of soul belief brings us back once more to the important question of the dead: how did the Anglo-Saxon Church attempt to cope with traditional practices and beliefs about burial, soul and the afterlife? As the Church had consistently found, the issue of a fate in the afterlife which depended on the moral status of the individual was probably one of the most difficult concepts to instil in peoples who either believed that the afterlife was in many respects a prolongation of the present existence, or who had had no systematic teaching on the fate of the souls of the dead. Many peoples simultaneously cherish the belief that the souls of the dead dwell in their burial places along with a vague conception of a world of the dead which is minimally differentiated – if differentiated at all – by the moral status of the person when alive. To judge by their funerary customs, the Anglo-Saxons of the fifth to seventh centuries, along with other Germanic peoples of this date, shared the view of an afterlife where there was no special reward for the virtuous or guaranteed retribution for all of the wicked. In later Norse mythology, the dead were thought both to reside in their burial mounds and to dwell in the land of Hel, goddess of death. Such conception of differentiation as did exist focused largely on belief in Valhalla, the Hall of the Slain, but this development reflects either the influence of Christianity or – more plausibly – the emergence in Scandinavia of a small aristocratic warrior cult focused on Odin.156 The images of damnation and celestial reward found in the Icelandic poem Voluspá, in which a Sybil relates the history of creation from its beginnings to the doom of the gods and the end of time, reflect both its late date – 1000 ce – and the influence of Christianity.157 For many peoples, arrival in the afterlife is dependent mainly on the manner of death or on the correct performance of funerary and mortuary ritual by kin, tribe or people. When the Jesuit missionaries in North America in the early seventeenth century attempted to teach the Montagnais about retribution, Heaven and Hell, they were met with the retort: In that you lie, you people, in assigning different places for souls – they go to the same country, at least ours do; for the souls of two of our countrymen once returned from this great village.158

This instinctive desire to reject the Christian version of the life of the soul


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after death reflects the difficulties inherent in accepting the ideas of an afterlife existence which is principally or entirely determined by one’s morality while alive. Such a response may also have been common among the Anglo-Saxons, even after formal acceptance of Christianity, ensuring a continuing attachment to traditional mortuary customs among baptized Christians. As these rituals had become the focus for the expression of dynastic aspirations more or less at the period when Gregory the Great’s mission arrived in Kent, the Church was going to face considerable problems in persuading the Anglo-Saxons to accept its teaching.

FURNISHED INHUMATION IN THE SEVENTH CENTURY In the light of all these considerations, how might we interpret two of the most famous inhumations of the early seventh century – the burial of the ‘Prittlewell Prince’ at Southend in Essex, and the Mound 1 ship burial at Sutton Hoo? The furnished chamber inhumation at Prittlewell, discovered in 2003, is almost certainly that of King Sæberht of the East Saxons, whose baptism is described by Bede, although it could just possibly be his brother Sæaxa.159 The richness of the deposition, with over 140 objects found there, places it in the same category as other high-status burials of the period reflecting elite and dynastic ambitions, such as Sutton Hoo or Taplow. They include a Coptic bowl with a foot ring and handles, similar to those found at both Taplow and Sutton Hoo, a flagon of a type made in the Mediterranean from the sixth to the ninth centuries, two Merovingian gold coins similar to those at Sutton Hoo, a lyre, well-preserved green and blue glassware of a type made in Kent, a gold belt buckle, Scandinavian-style drinking horns, buckets, and an object like a standard. Another find was a Byzantine spoon engraved with two lines of possibly Roman characters, which may have been a baptismal gift. The presence of two similar spoons with the legible inscriptions ‘Saulos’ and ‘Paulos’ in the ship burial under Mound 1 at Sutton Hoo has not convinced all commentators that the burial there is that of a baptized Christian – one has remarked that they are probably symbolic of someone’s conversion to Christianity, though not necessarily that of the grave’s occupant.160 It might be possible to argue that the spoon, like other objects such as the flagon decorated with medallions of eastern saints, should be thought of as a prestige rather than a religious item; however, the fact that two Lombard-style gold foil crosses were found where the body must have lain is a much more secure indication of the deceased’s Christian affiliation.161 The combination of overt signs of baptism with a traditional burial style is striking – but one, it should be observed, which corresponds in general terms to patterns already found on the continent, where Frankish rulers were buried in churches – but with grave-goods.162

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It looks as if we possess a very similar case in the ship burial under Mound 1 at Sutton Hoo. The identification of its one-time occupant as Rædwald of the East Angles, who also accepted baptism at Æthelberht of Kent’s insistence, has been contested; but it is nevertheless a tempting hypothesis.163 The combination of a spectacularly rich elite burial which can be dated to the 620s, with baptismal spoons incorporated into a traditional style of burial is highly suggestive. The site’s most recent excavator acknowledges the appeal of naming Rædwald, but draws back from assuming even that Sutton Hoo was a royal cemetery, let alone the royal cemetery. Nevertheless, he also speculates that if Rædwald is indeed buried in Mound 1, the possible occupants of Mounds 5, 6 and 7 could then include the earliest named rulers of the Wuffing dynasty – and either Eorpwald or Sigeberht in Mound 3.164 Whether Rædwald did actually lie in the ship burial or not, it seems more than likely, in light of the similarities between Mound 1 and the Prittlewell burial (even in the absence here of foil crosses) that this is the grave of a baptized Christian. But the suggestion that the Sutton Hoo interment represents a defiant alignment with Scandinavian paganism, in opposition to the power block represented by Frankish Christianity, implies a much sharper divide between ‘pagan’ and ‘Christian’ burial practice than actually existed.165 If, as in the case of the ‘row-grave’ cemeteries of north-eastern Francia, we postulate a strong attachment to traditional customs springing from an incomprehension or distrust of Christian death ritual, or simply the perception that it is insufficient – further intensified among emergent elites by the association of funerary ritual with their own dynastic strategies – then it is not difficult to see both Prittlewell and Sutton Hoo Mound 1 inhumations as those of baptized Christians. This argument is supported by a consideration of female elite inhumations dating from the middle and later seventh century. In what was for a time the conventional interpretation of funerary practice, these were placed in the category of ‘Final Phase’ inhumations, a supposedly transitional stage between ‘pagan’ and ‘Christian’ burial (the latter defined as unfurnished and in a churchyard). This was once seen as a distinctive category of inhumation closely associated with the arrival of Christianity; but many of the assumptions behind the creation of this classification are now questioned.166 The female elite inhumations at Desborough (Northants), Ixworth and Boss Hall (both Suffolk), Harford Farm (Norfolk), Roundway Down and Swallowcliffe Down (both Wiltshire), Ducklington (Oxfordshire), Silbertswold Down, Milton Regis, Wye Down, Sarre and Kingston Down (all Kent), are characterized by a common repertoire of gold and garnet jewellery which includes Christian motifs and cruciform ornaments. All were buried in unenclosed graveyards or traditional barrows; the burial at Boss Hall was placed in a cemetery that had not been used for some time, as if the occupant of the grave was deliberately being associated with ‘ancestors’ as a matter of deliberate and conscious choice. Although these women are buried with


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objects indicating Christian allegiance, they are still being interred in traditional mode, and some of their grave-goods, such as palm-cups, reflect not only wealth and status but also the traditional link between elite women and hospitality.167 While there are a few richly furnished male burials from the second half of the seventh century, including the warrior whose helmet is decorated with a cross as well as the more traditional representation of a boar in a barrow at Benty Grange,168 the apparently gendered nature of elite Christian burial rites in the second half of the seventh century might make us pause to reflect on the role of women in the ceremonies surrounding death and burial in the pagan and conversion periods. It is possible that the continuing association of women with the ancestors not only reflected family and dynastic associations, but also the role played in non-Christian elements of funerary rites by women. In other societies, such as that of late twentieth-century rural Greece, women frequently carried out the rituals of washing and laying out the body, and the closing of bodily orifices – all activities which are thought to help control the possibilities of pollution and the corpse’s ability to be re-animated and become a revenant.169 In addition, they performed public rituals of mourning and improvised or elaborated sung laments, reflecting the view or interests of the household or lineage, as opposed to the larger political or social unit.170 Thus they counter-balanced socio-political forces with more domestic, household concerns; and Carol Clover’s remarks on lamentation in later medieval Scandinavia as tantamount to a female industry may be highly relevant here.171 Female-dominated mourning rituals may have created a degree of female solidarity: this in turn could have encouraged a greater degree of conservatism in female burials. In a modern context, Clifford Geertz has described the problems created when death rituals and other religious rites are inappropriate to changing social and political circumstances.172 In seventhcentury England, the continuation of more traditional patterns of mourning and funerary rites in female burials could have represented the assertion of the continuing importance of familial and household modes of organization, even as new political units – kingdoms – came into existence. The presence of gravegoods with Christian motifs in a largely gendered pattern of burial may therefore be one more indication of the way in which the transition to newer patterns of religious and social organization was only achieved by degrees.

THE CHURCH AND FURNISHED INHUMATION In seventh-century Anglo-Saxon England, it would have been difficult for the Church to take a strongly prescriptive role in enforcing what we would now regard as a norm of unfurnished churchyard burial.173 We only have Bede’s word that the first recorded Anglo-Saxon Christian king – Æthelberht of Kent – was

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buried in church.174 If this were the case, it is likely to have been arranged by his Christian wife Bertha, who is supposed to have been buried in the same place, the chapel of St Martin in the church of Saints Peter and Paul in Canterbury. But as Bertha predeceased him, and as his second marriage was to a pagan, can we really be certain that Bede is correct? Most royal graves are unrecorded, and no other English kings were buried in churches until the 650s, or more likely the 670s and 80s, and some of the first kings to receive a church burial may have been those who retired – or were forced to retire – to monasteries.175 Besides, if Æthelberht were indeed buried in church, we should also consider it very probable that both he and Bertha before him were buried with grave-goods, in the manner of Christian Frankish royalty. The seventh-century Anglo-Saxon Church did not find itself in the position of the Church in eighth-century Saxony, where a defeated people could be ordered by royal capitulary to take the bodies of Christian Saxons to Christian cemeteries and not to pagan burial mounds.176 Likewise, there is no evidence that it forbade cremation as was done in Saxony – but it seems that cremation was going out of fashion in favour of furnished inhumation, in any case. It had to proceed much more cautiously – just as the seventeenth-century Jesuit fathers attempting to convert the Huron had to do: when describing the great Feast of the Dead, with its reburial of previously exposed bodies, one admitted that We have fifteen or twenty Christians interred with these infidels; we said for their souls a De profundis, with a strong hope that, if divine goodness does not stop the course of its blessings upon these peoples, this feast will cease, or will only be for Christians, and will take place with ceremonies as sacred as the ones we saw are foolish and useless . . .177

It is quite likely that Anglo-Saxon England saw, if not precisely the same procedure, as the Huron practised re-interment of bones in one large communal grave, the use of elements drawn from both Christian and traditional funerary ritual. In seventeenth-century Canada, the strength of tradition was so great that one Jesuit mission station would even disinter corpses and rebury them in a communal grave each All Souls’ Day, in a ‘Christian’ rite which clearly owed a great deal in conception to Huron practice.178 Among the Tikopia in the twentieth century, the body was committed to earth with Christian prayers, but traditional rites of mourning continued, accompanied by the celebration of social bonds between the kinship groups most affected by the death.179 In an Anglo-Saxon context, and probably also in rural Francia, it is possible to imagine Christian ceremonies taking place in church, with more traditional ceremonies involving inhumation with goods at the grave. In addition, the degree to which any Christian ritual took place in the home of the deceased in England may have been influenced not only by the continuation of the traditional rites involved in washing the body, singing laments, wakes, and feasts, but also by the extent to which Christian clergy


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were willing to come into contact with the dying. Irish priests were apparently unwilling to remain in the same house as a dying person. One justification for this might have been the Old Testament conceptions of pollution which laid down that a priest was contaminated if he was present at the time of death (Leviticus, 21:10–11).180 But while reference to the Bible may have sanctioned this idea, such notions had been rejected by the early Church, and possibly reflect the persistence of some residual non-Christian beliefs relating to death and dying even among the Irish ecclesiastical elite, which could have passed into those areas of AngloSaxon England evangelized by the Irish and by those whom they had trained. This testimony to the power of traditional beliefs strengthens the supposition that ordinary people could easily have considered Christian ceremonies on their own insufficient to ensure the soul’s dismissal from the vicinity of the grave or settlement. In the seventh century, use and abandonment of cemeteries was not dictated by Christianity or paganism as such, and though it has been suggested that Christians may have in some cases used different cemetery areas, the evidence is by no means absolutely clear.181 The important western and eastern cemeteries at Yeavering, which might have helped our understanding of this question, were incompletely excavated and various conflicting readings of them have been suggested.182 They may have been created later than proposed by the original excavator, their use continuing into the eighth century.183 The existence of a ‘church’ in the eastern cemetery has also been questioned,184 although it is possible that the structure in question might originally have been one of the types of building alluded to in two clauses of the Penitential attributed to Theodore of Tarsus. In this late seventh- or early eighth-century text, we appear to glimpse some limited attempt by the Church to separate pagan from Christian burial. The two clauses discuss the problems arising when a wooden ecclesia where the unbaptized have been buried must be moved to a new site and an altar consecrated. If there is already a consecrated altar, and if religious are buried there, Masses may be celebrated; but if there is a pagan burial on the site, the Penitential instructs that it is better to cast the body out.185 One explanation offered of this passage is that it refers to a ‘modest equivalent of the old Roman cemeterial basilicas’, buildings not intended for regular liturgical worship, in cemeteries whose development began in the pagan period and remained unconsecrated.186 This seems reasonable, but leaves a question-mark over the origins of such wooden churches, especially as it instructs that in order for one to be consecrated, in addition to the removal of the pagan body, the boards must be washed or scraped. Did such buildings sometimes bear too close a resemblance to pagan funerary structures as well as incorporating pagan ancestor graves? This needs further investigation, although one recent commentator writes of the ‘resounding lack of evidence for Anglo-Saxon churches overlying pagan-period cemeteries of

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any kind’, so the measures laid down in the Penitential may have been infrequently carried out.187

CHRISTIANIZING DEATH How, then, did the Church persuade people to carry out funerary rites in a manner indicating a more complete acceptance of Christian doctrine? Apart from the clauses already referred to relating to cemeteries, the only other regulations concerning the deaths of adult laypeople recorded in the Penitential attributed to Theodore stipulate that Masses may be said for them at intervals of three, seven and thirty days.188 Not only is there a differentiation made between good laypeople and penitents, but the text also cites the contradictory views of Augustine and Dionysius the Areopagite on whether Mass should be offered for everyone, regardless of their manner of life.189 Combined with other textual evidence, this suggests that the Church’s tactic was to present burial in consecrated ground as a privilege to be conceded only to members of the elite who had lived a Christian life of exemplary morals.190 Thus Bede’s Life of Cuthbert tells the story of a nobleman or reeve (praefectus) who was a friend of Cuthbert and whose wife, apparently ‘vexed by a devil’, was on the point of death. The nobleman, Hildmaer, believed she would be helped not only by the sacrament as viaticum but also by burial in the consecrated ground of Cuthbert’s own minster at Lindisfarne: There was a reeve of King Ecgfrith . . . [whose] . . . wife, though given to works of charity and other fruits of virtue, was suddenly seized upon by a demon and most cruelly afflicted . . . when she lay cast out and apparently at the point of death, her husband got on his horse and came in haste to the man of God and entreated him, saying, ‘My wife is ill and seems already at the point of death; I beg you that you will send a priest to visit her before she dies and minister to her the sacrament of the body and blood of the Lord; and also that you will permit her body to be buried here in holy ground.’191

Bede’s account of the incident differs significantly from the earlier version of the Anonymous Life: in the latter there is no suggestion of interment within the minster, although Christian burial is certainly requested. In both versions, the situation is actually resolved by the miraculous cure of the wife by Cuthbert. What we appear to be seeing here is the repositioning of the original story to suggest that elite members of good life and morals associated with a particular minster might be granted the privilege of burial there.192 The Dialogues likewise suggest that burial inside a church is a privilege. This is not entirely surprising, as what the Church was offering was the equivalent of continental burial ad sanctos. Sections 52–7 of Book Four are devoted to the question of the efficaciousness of burial in church for the souls of sinners. They


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take a highly moralistic tone, with tales about the bodies of those guilty of various degrees of sin disappearing or being expelled from their places of burial inside churches, or of their bodies being consumed by fire in the grave: Learn from this . . . that if one dies in the state of mortal sin and arranges to have himself buried in church, he is sure to be condemned for his presumption . . .193

If the presentation of burial in church as a privilege to be earned might at first appear counter-productive, it seems that this gradually helped to make it appear attractive to the ruling elite. Rulers began to be buried in churches – a development perhaps encouraged by the growth of the cult of the royal saints, Oswald and Eadwine, whose bodies had been removed from more popular outdoor centres of devotion to monasteries which were the centres of dynastic cults, as well as by the retirement of some kings to monasteries.194 As we have seen, there seems to be a comparative lack in the second part of the seventh century of spectacular furnished male inhumations of the kind found for the first part. Unless a significant number of richly furnished graves still remain to be discovered, this does suggest that elite males might now have begun to seek burial in minsters or associated cemeteries.195 Cemeteries containing inhumations of mixed-sex populations, some of which date from the period before 720, are to be found at Minster-in-Thanet, Faversham and Canterbury in Kent, Monkwearmouth-Jarrow and Hartlepool in Northumbria, Nazeingbury and Waltham in the East Saxon kingdom, Burgh Castle in East Anglia, Repton and Hereford in Mercia, and Winchester in Wessex.196 The Nazeingbury burials are mostly female and therefore of nuns, and we cannot automatically assume that any of the burials at Hartlepool or Burgh Castle were those of laypeople. On the other hand, the findings at the remaining sites may confirm a move towards minster burial.

HEAVEN, HELL AND THE ANCESTORS While the Church attempted to offer minster burial as a privilege to the elite, it still needed to work to make its conception of the afterlife attractive to the populace as a whole. In a continuation of the trend established earlier in the seventh century in Irish monastic circles on the continent, it surrounded its account of the afterlife with some traditional conceptions in the hope of making it more comprehensible. Some aspects of popular soul and afterlife belief that appear in a Christianized form in the Dialogues include the story of Stephen, who came back to life after dying of plague. This begins in a very similar fashion to the story of Curma the blacksmith, contested centuries earlier by St Augustine.197 Stephen dies, but his soul is sent back to earth because it is the ‘wrong’ Stephen.

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He recounts what he has seen – but here his story differs from Curma’s. He describes a bridge across a foul black river, at the other side of which lie golden houses and beautiful meadows peopled by figures all dressed in white. The just are able to cross the bridge, but the unjust fall off.198 The idea of the soul’s leaving the body to cross a bridge – and sometimes slipping off – may have its origin in trance or coma experiences, and is a common motif in folklore in both Europe and America (especially the latter), where many native peoples are familiar with the idea of the soul’s crossing a river, bridged by a swinging or bending log, to reach the land of the dead.199 However, in the Dialogues a specifically Christian element has been grafted on to the story in the shape of a bad outcome for the wicked. Hultkrantz has also noted an evolution in this direction under Christian influence in some Native American eschatology. He suggests that originally the fall from the bridge – considered to be a particular hazard for infants and the very old by some peoples – was thought of as a consequence of irregular burial or even no burial at all.200 But with the arrival of Christianity in both North America and Anglo-Saxon England, the Church emphasized that it was moral conduct rather than age or mortuary ritual that determined the fate of the soul after death.201 The importance of moral conduct in determining the destination of the soul in the Christian afterlife is suggested forcibly in a number of stories in Book Four of the Dialogues. The soul of a five-year-old who dies of the plague goes to Hell because he died blaspheming: it is explicitly stated that not all baptized children will go to Heaven if they are not brought up with Christian values.202 If there was, as Sally Crawford has suggested, a popular misinterpretation of baptism as a rite which would take the soul of a sickly child into the afterlife, this story attempts to re-assert Christian doctrine on the importance in Christianity of one’s way of life, and in an episode which reinforces this point, the souls of the holy women Romula and Redempta go straight to Heaven.203 The contrasting stories of Theodore and Chrysaorius, only one of whom repents of his evil life after experiencing terrifying visions of demons, not only appear in the Dialogues but are also inserted into Gregory I’s genuine homilies on the Gospels.204 In an attempt to make the Christian concept of the afterlife more intelligible, several accounts of the departure of the soul from the body in the Dialogues, in Bede’s Life of Cuthbert, and in the Whitby Life of Gregory the Great, utilize popular conceptions of the soul. In all of these tales, in a firm statement of accepted Christian doctrine, the souls of holy men and women are depicted as ascending to Heaven.205 But in some cases the soul is also described as leaving the body in the shape of a bird, in a manner strongly reminiscent of traditional ideas of the free soul. In the cases of Benedict’s sister Scholastica and Abbot Spes in the Dialogues, the soul leaves as a dove; and it departs as a ‘great white bird like a swan’ in the case of Bishop Paulinus in the Whitby Life.206 In other cases, the soul is observed


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ascending to Heaven in a globe of fire; this too may reflect a Christianization of popular beliefs, as several of the Native American peoples consider that the soul rises up from a dead person in the shape of a ball of fire, a flame, or the full moon; and the Anglo-Saxons may also have cherished similar concepts, which the Church was now attempting to incorporate in its teachings in the hope of making them more comprehensible and therefore acceptable.207 Nevertheless, the Church faced very real difficulties in this area. If the idea of a differentiated afterlife was unfamiliar and unwelcome to the Anglo-Saxons, the thought of Hell itself must have presented even greater problems. The concept of afterlife punishment was both alien and highly rebarbative, as the Jesuit missionaries to North America found centuries later. When they mentioned Hell to the Huron, the latter . . . all, in turn expressing their opinions, said that they dreaded these glowing fires of Hell, and that they preferred the road to Heaven.208

As well as being an unpleasant prospect, it also smacked of the fantastic and incredible: When they first heard of the eternal fire and the burning decreed as a punishment for sin, they were marvellously impressed; still, they obstinately withheld their belief because, as they said, there could be no fire where there was not wood; then what forests could sustain so many fires through such a long space of time. This absurd reasoning had so much influence over the minds of the savages that they could not be persuaded of the truth of the gospel.209

Similar doubts appear to have been voiced by the Anglo-Saxons. Book Four of the Dialogues contains a sequence of questions in which Peter, Gregory I’s deacon, interrogates him about the reality of hellfire. Peter professes complete incomprehension as to how a physical fire can attack an incorporeal substance, namely the soul. Later he asks about the eternity of Hell: is it just of God to inflict infinite punishment for a finite fault?210 Like the Native Americans, the Anglo-Saxons had to be provided with some testimony to the reality of Hell. In seventeenthcentury Canada, one Jesuit father startled his audience into belief by throwing some sulphur, which they believed to be earth, on to burning coals so that it burst into flames as he spoke.211 The Dialogues seek to prove Hell’s existence by providing it with a geographical location: a hermit in the Lipari islands has a vision of the soul of the Ostrogothic King Theodoric being cast into its mouth, the crater of a neighbouring volcano.212 The Christian view of a differentiated afterlife was also highly problematic for potential converts in another and vitally important respect: where in this new version of post-mortem existence were the souls of their ancestors to be found? Traditional Anglo-Saxon religion stressed not only the here and now – as opposed

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to future salvation – but also joined the living with the dead in a community which included the ancestors. Pagan Anglo-Saxons, like many other peoples worldwide, considered that they would join their forefathers in the land of the dead and often had themselves buried beside ancestors, real or presumed, either close to or in some man-made feature of the landscape that to them represented the ancestral past. By contrast, the Christian idea of life after death could effectively cut off the convert from his or her forebears: Raymond Firth has noted how in Tikopia the new religion left out completely the ancestors, previously considered to be extremely active in taking care of the living.213 The idea of disassociation from ancestors could prove profoundly distressing. In sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Peru, during periods when the Church campaigned extensively against native religious practices, many Andeans asked for church burial even though they had never been baptized, in an effort to ‘maintain or reconstitute their ancestral community’ in the face of Christian persecutions. Others asked for the baptism of the mummified bodies of their ancestors, so as not to be divided from them in death.214 In the early Middle Ages, the thought of the possibility of separation from the ancestors was disturbing enough to lead some individuals to reject Christianity altogether, as attested in the well-known story of the aborted conversion of the Frisian duke Radbod. When Bishop Wulfram of Sens told him that his pagan forebears would be found in Hell, he stepped back from the baptismal font.215 Could the Church really afford to provoke such negative reactions? The Whitby Life offers one possible solution to this pressing problem when it relates the story of the baptism, through Gregory the Great’s tears, of the long-dead pagan Emperor Trajan: Some of our people also tell a story related by the Romans of how the soul of the Emperor Trajan was refreshed and even baptized by St. Gregory’s tears . . . Let no-one be surprised that we say he was baptized, for without baptism none will ever see God; and a third kind of baptism is by tears. One day as he was crossing the Forum, a magnificent piece of work for which Trajan is said to have been responsible, he found on examining it carefully that Trajan, though a pagan, had done a deed so charitable that it seemed more likely to have been the deed of a Christian than of a pagan. For it is related that, as he was leading his army in great haste against the enemy, he was moved to pity by the words of a widow, and the emperor of the whole world came to a halt. She said, ‘Lord Trajan, here are the men who killed my son and are unwilling to pay me recompense.’ He answered, ‘Tell me about it when I return, and I will make them recompense you.’ But she replied, ‘Lord, if you never return, there will be no-one to help me.’ Then, armed as he was, he made the defendants pay forthwith the compensation they owed her, in his presence. When Gregory discovered this story, he recognized that this was just what we read about in the Bible, ‘Judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. Come now and let us reason together, saith the Lord.’ Since Gregory did not know what to do to comfort the soul of this man who brought the words of Christ to his mind, he went to St Peter’s Church and wept


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floods of tears, as was his custom, until he gained at last by divine revelation the assurance that his prayers were answered, seeing that he had never presumed to ask this for any other pagan.216

Both the impact and the implications of this story are obvious: Trajan is presented as a good Anglo-Saxon king, exercising justice in a fashion compatible with the ideals of Christian kingship, his actions explicitly linked to Christ’s own commands. If such deeds were capable of winning retrospective redemption, so by implication were other charitable, noble or just actions performed by dead pagans – in which case, pagan ancestors were not necessarily condemned to Hell. In the ninth century Gregory’s Roman hagiographer John the Deacon would cast doubt on this story, sensing that it had been composed in an effort to reassure Anglo-Saxon sensibilities, and would attempt to alter it slightly.217 But the idea of baptism by tears appears to have been popular, surfacing in a much later medieval poem in which St Erkenwald (Eorcenwold, Bishop of London from 675–693) finds the incorrupt body of a British judge when St Paul’s Church is being altered. Knowing his judgements to have been just, Erkenwald baptizes him by his tears.218 Not all Anglo-Saxon churchmen agreed with this approach, however, and the fate in the afterlife of the soul of the pagan ancestor would become a contested area. In the eighth century, one of the many offences for which the English monk and missionary Boniface had a churchman in Germany condemned was for teaching that Christ descended into Hell to deliver both Christian and pagan souls.219 The view of the problem promoted in the Dialogues is closer to Boniface than to the relatively liberal attitude taken by the Whitby Life. Chapter 46 of Book Four states firmly that the saints do not pray for the damned in Hell, ‘Nor do saintly men on earth pray for deceased infidels and godless people’. That would seem to exclude any possibility of rescuing ancestral souls from the eternal separation from their Christian descendants that Radbod found so disturbing to contemplate. What the Dialogues promised the good Christian by way of compensation was the society of his or her fellow Christians and the saints in Heaven: They will recognize not only those whom they knew on earth but many saintly men and women whom they had never seen before will appear to them as old friends. And so, when they meet the saints of the ancient past, they will not appear unfamiliar to them, for they always knew them through their deeds . . .220

In later Anglo-Saxon times, another approach would emerge in the poem Beowulf, which treats the dead as heroes and creates a quite separate image for paganism, identifying it with evil monsters.221 But the idea of rescue or relief for pagan ancestors was an important issue, and popular concerns may account for the

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frequent occurrence of the theme in English art and drama of the Harrowing of Hell, Christ’s triumphant descent into Hell between his crucifixion and resurrection, to save souls held captive there since the beginning of time.

REINFORCEMENT OF TRADITIONAL BELIEFS AND PRACTICES Continuing belief in the liminal nature of death could well account not only for the ring-ditch inhumations in southern England which may mark the arrival of plague in the mid-sixth century, but also for the ‘surprising number’ of Anglo-Saxon cemeteries which contain small numbers of mutilated corpses.222 Christian ritual is unlikely to have been thought of as adequate to cope with those feared as potential revenants – murderers, suicides, anyone who had been killed by lightning, the abnormally aggressive and the difficult: the Penitential attributed to Theodore of Tarsus imposes penalties on those who burn grain where someone has died, ‘for the safety of the house’.223 The ritual of commemorative Mass after three, seven or thirty days might just possibly have gone some way to filling this particular gap – but as an innovation, it may have been felt by the Anglo-Saxon peoples to be inadequate per se. In any case, the Penitential also suggests the existence of debate within the Church itself about the desirability of saying Mass for those considered to be particularly wicked, so it is likely that it was not always said for all deceased, particularly suicides or suspected murderers. Archaeological evidence indicates that the Anglo-Saxons went on dealing with the perceived problem of the dangerous dead in their own ways. Decapitated bodies are found in graves of the fifth and sixth centuries at Brighthampton, Mitcham, Saxonbury and Winterbourne Gunner. There are also decapitated burials dating to the seventh century at Melbourn;224 at Loveden Hill, where one body has its head placed on the stomach, with a pottery urn just beyond where the head should have been; and at Chadlington, where heads have been placed by the legs. At West Heslerton, one body has been bent back in a position suggesting it could have been bound.225 A cemetery at Empingham contains a number of graves in which the bodies have apparently had boards laid on them and the soil from the grave-cut piled on top: when body and timber decayed, the soil would fall into the grave. This is one method of checking that the body has actually passed the dangerous stage of decomposition and the soul has finally departed.226 It is notable that two of these burials are double – one of a woman and child, and the other of a woman laid in a crouched position on top of a man.227 ‘Half-cremation’ burials in which the body appears to have been set alight in the grave have allegedly been found at a number of sites, particularly in central England, though this has been disputed.228 The material found in some of these


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burials may possibly indicate attempts at cremation in the open grave, but this can never have been very effective. There might be alternative explanations of this particular phenomenon. We know that in modern Greece a hole in a grave was taken as an indication that the inhabitant was a vrykolakas or vampire: in such cases a burning torch or object was thrust into the hole so that the putative vampire was consumed by fire.229 Elsewhere, we find numerous examples of bodies – including those of children – weighed down by stones, particularly flints, which were considered to have apotropaic powers, perhaps because of their association with fire.230 Grave 41 at Sewerby, in Yorkshire, is one of the most-discussed inhumations from early Anglo-Saxon England. There, a mature woman is thought by some to have been a ‘live’ burial because of her peculiar prone position: but the fact that she is also accompanied by a number of items including a flint flake, a quern fragment and a stone on her neck, as well as an iron knife, suggest that it may be the grave of a female feared as a potential revenant.231 She is buried face down in a grave already occupied by the wealthiest female inhumation in the cemetery, a younger woman.232 Perhaps she was held responsible for the younger woman’s death. Other seventh-century cemeteries where stones have been placed on a body or bodies include Camerton, Winnall (which contains a decapitated body as well), Prittlewell, Lyneham, Alvediston, and Frilford. Examples of seventh-century burial where the feet have been detached and placed by the knees include Littleton,233 Loveden Hill,234 and West Lane, Kemble. Surveying their own and other cemeteries, the excavators of the cemetery at Winnall suggested that the Christian period actually saw an increase in peculiar burials because of increased worry about the possibility of revenants.235 The onset of pestilentia – now generally identified as the Justinianic Plague – in the 660s, and its continued outbreaks over the next two decades, must have reinforced old beliefs and fears, and possibly accounts for a number of the odd burials noted above. The failure of Christian funerary ritual to confront popular perceptions that those who died in epidemics might return to carry others off is likely to have triggered acute fears – especially in view of the other popular perception that revenant activity can be caused by inadequate or inappropriate funerary rites. In the mid-twentieth century, Raymond Firth was told by one Tikopia who had been a Christian since boyhood that a dead man who had not been given proper burial rites had returned as a spirit to kill his younger brother.236 The fear unleashed by a succession of deaths, especially when the agency causing them is not fully understood, is easy to imagine. When Bede writes of pestilentia and describes the tumours from which St Cuthbert recovered and Abbess Æthelthryth died, this reflects the perception of the bubonic form of the plague of a sophisticated Christian scholar writing about events which had occurred decades earlier. He does not record a personal reaction to the near-annihilation

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of his own community of Monkwearmouth-Jarrow when he was a child there, but his reaction to this frightening and bewildering event must have been shaped by the Christian teaching of his monastic environment. He may or may not have been the small boy depicted in the Life of Ceolfrith, carrying on the recital of the Hours along with the abbot when all the other Jarrow choir-monks were dead, but the picture of these two individuals attempting to continue liturgical routine against almost impossible odds reflects a monastic resignation to the will of God and expectation of the life to come.237 What ordinary people thought, in the face of a mortality rate possibly as high as 80 per cent for those infected with the bubonic form of the plague, let alone the swiftly lethal bacteraemic and pneumonic versions of the disease, is another matter. The intuition that the dead were somehow returning to kill others is understandable. Episodes in which baptized Christians resorted to traditional measures to allay their fears in times of epidemic may be detectable in the archaeological record. At Winnall II, a late seventh-century cemetery, excavators found not only burials in a peculiar position or with flints placed on them but also two decapitated bodies, which strongly suggested to them that these corpses had been immobilized to prevent them rising from the grave.238 At Camerton, sixteen bodies seem to have been buried after rigor mortis had set in, suggesting a period of exposure before inhumation.239 We may also have evidence of similar treatment of the bodies of plague victims in the kingdom of the East Angles, where Christianity had been introduced in the 630s and which was ruled over by some notably pious kings. Excavations at Sutton Hoo have revealed, in addition to the main inhumation and cremation mounds, the burials of a number of decapitated and partly disarticulated bodies in two groups of graves, both dating at the very earliest to the second half of the seventh century. The first is located at the eastern edge of the site and centres on a four-post structure tentatively identified as a gallows, while the second apparently focuses on the cremated remains contained in the early seventh-century Mound 5.240 Both groups of inhumations are currently discussed in the context of a putative ‘execution cemetery’ dating from between the eighth and eleventh centuries, in which the bodies of victims of ritual or judicial execution had been placed. The possibility that the four-post structure is a gallows (or two sets of gallows), the evidence of binding or trussing, and the fact that these appear to be unfurnished burials, except for a plank and hurdle in two separate graves, combine to suggest to some that the site is an execution cemetery dating from the Christian period.241 However, it should be said that the evidence for other special execution sites between the seventh and tenth centuries is not extensive.242 An alternative suggestion is that executions may have begun during the life of the mound cemetery itself, and that ‘whatever the stress of early Christian leadership in East Anglia, its net consequence was unimaginable cruelty, routinely practised’.243


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Yet another possibility is that we are dealing here with attempts to disable potential revenants. One burial shows signs of having been laid under boards, possibly to immobilize it. Another may have had a broken neck, while in a third, the head had been removed before burial, placed in the grave face up and rotated. Burials 42a and 43 – both young females – had been placed prone on top of burial 42b, a supine decapitated male of mature years. Other burials surrounding Mound 5 include one which has been decapitated and had its right arm removed; two show signs of having been tied up;244 one had no head, and while a stain and traces of bone and tooth suggested where it had lain, it was not possible to tell whether it was still attached to the body when buried. One body was very mutilated, with the head and both arms detached.245 Several of the burials at the eastern edge of the site were prone, while one was face down with the legs tightly flexed under the body. Burial 29 was interred with the arms extended above the head, and 27 was buried in a ‘running’ position. The disposition of five ‘folded’ bodies is unusual: one was kneeling with back arched and head twisted against the floor of the grave, while another was buried on its back but in a grotesque position with the legs against the shoulders. In five cases, the head is detached from the neck. In two cases this may have been the result of post-depositional movement or digging. But in the other three, the head had been removed before burial, and either the neck broken or the head detached and replaced. As in the case of the Group 2 bodies, alternative hypotheses for the peculiar nature of these burials could be offered. Some individuals are thought to have been bound before execution. However, with the possible exception of a fragment found in Burial 38, no cord has been found, although the dramatic positioning of 29 has led to the thought that ‘the victim died grasping the rope that hanged him’.246 This idea is clearly linked to the tentative identification of the structure around which the Group 1 burials are centred as a gallows, although the excavators also suggest that ‘the postures may also be explained by the bodies having reached rigor mortis while still exposed outside the grave’.247 Given the possibility that at least some of the burials, and perhaps even the ‘gallows’, date from the second half of the seventh century, and taking into account the nature of the burials themselves, we may be looking at a site where plague victims, regarded as actual or potential revenants, were buried. In cases where limbs have been detached they may either have been exhumed and re-buried here, or buried after a period of exposure. The fact that one group is centred on a mound containing a cremation burial which is possibly that of a non-Christian member of the ruling dynasty, is suggestive of a desire to associate these burials with older religious and funerary traditions when Christian funerary rites were perceived as inadequate in times of epidemic. If exposure and secondary burial of bodies had indeed been a traditional Anglo-Saxon practice, the ‘gallows’ could represent an attempt to fashion a ritual structure reminiscent of – if not identical

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to – ritual posts found in older cemeteries, or four-post structures on which bodies were exposed. Even if this suggestion is valid, however, it is not intended to imply that all the unconventional burials here necessarily date from the period of plague. The radiocarbon dating indicates a wide range of possibilities, and the site could have been used between the eighth and eleventh centuries for the burials of execution victims as well. But it is not too hard to imagine how a former princely burial site first became used as a place of burial where those believed to be dangerous revenants were isolated, and subsequently took on other sinister associations. Close by, Harrough Pightle, an ancient hearg, seems to have become a ‘Gallows Hill’, perhaps suggesting a similar or parallel sequence of use. A similar burial site has been found at South Acre in Norfolk, where a number of burials have been cut into a Bronze Age barrow, now removed, but possibly the site of a ‘gallows’. Many of the inhumations suggest hasty or careless deposition; others were bound, some were decapitated. As in the case of the peculiar Sutton Hoo burials, there are no grave-goods. This, too, has been characterized as a cwealmstow or execution site, used perhaps over a period of centuries.248 But the possibility that once again we are dealing with a site used for burying plague victims and other potential revenants at an early stage of its existence should be considered. Is it the case that as well as prompting the exposure and immobilization of bodies of those who had died of the disease, the advent of plague led in some areas to the revival of the tradition of marking and isolating burials by ring- or penannular ditches? Even a penannular ditch could have been ‘closed’ by a post surmounted by a ritual object, or by a ritual object or container of water placed on the ground, creating a physical and symbolic barrier between the living and the menacing dead.249 This may be a possibility in Kent which, as we have seen, had an earlier tradition of ring-ditch and barrow burial. At Polhill in west Kent, a cemetery founded in the late seventh century, in addition to burial with gravegoods, multiple graves and an absence of infant burials, six small ditched barrows were found at the eastern end of the cemetery, as well as a sub-rectangular structure – interpreted as a Saxon funerary hut, but perhaps a structure on which bodies were exposed – at the western end of the site.250 An important group of sites which we might also consider in this context is to be found in eastern Kent. There, Eastry, the site of a royal vill along with Finglesham (‘homestead’ or ‘manor of a prince’) and Woodnesborough (first recorded in 1086 as Wanesberge, a name thought to derive from ‘Woden’s mound’) probably formed an important political and religious centre in the sixth century.251 The cemetery at Eastry contains a number of furnished burials surrounded by ring-ditches thought to date from the period 650–700.252 Nearby lies the Finglesham cemetery itself, excavated by Sonia Chadwick Hawkes between 1959 and 1967, where the famous Finglesham Man buckle, interpreted


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as evidence for the existence of the cult of Woden, was found in a grave dating from the second half of the sixth century. The cemetery’s south-eastern boundary is marked by a series of unfurnished or little-furnished burials which were surrounded by ring-ditches and which have been dated to the cemetery’s ultimate phase, the late seventh or (possibly) the early eighth century.253 Although Kent was the first kingdom to accept Christianity, it may have been hit exceptionally hard by the plague: Bede records the death of both the king and the Archbishop of Canterbury on the same July day in 664. The port of Sandwich was only five kilometres distant from Eastry: favourably placed for access to long-distance trade with Francia and the Rhineland, it is therefore likely to have provided a primary point of entry for infection. While there is no suggestion that the kings or people of Kent reverted to paganism like some of their East Saxon neighbours, a virulent outbreak of plague in some areas could have prompted a temporary return to traditional modes of inhumation, such as these late ring-ditch graves, designed to prevent revenants.254 An individual burial possibly also linked to the outbreak of plague is the late seventh-century inhumation in a well-established Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Lechlade, Gloucestershire. The grave is that of a female who has been provided with a weaving-batten, as well as a knife and a necklace of silver hoops with a pendent cross, while the large grave-pit is surrounded by a ring-ditch.255 Does the fact of its isolation by a ditch suggest that its occupant, who seems to be a female member of a Christianized elite, had died of the plague and was feared as a potential revenant? Did the outbreak of plague lead to anxieties about the dead at Yeavering in Northumbria? Although arthropod-borne diseases such as malaria and plague are characterized by a patchy spread, we cannot rule this out altogether, as the Life of Cuthbert attests the presence of pestilentia nearby.256 The relatively flimsy and apparently ritual structure attached to the ‘temple’ excluded rather than included burials – like the Sutton Hoo ‘gallows’ (but unlike the Yeavering western ring-ditch enclosure).257 There are sixteen inhumations placed very near it with one just extending into a gap, perhaps an entrance, at the south-west corner. This is the tightly crouched burial of a child, head to the east, at the eastern end of a grave; the western end contained a single ox-tooth, perhaps an amulet.258 However, the poorly preserved remains of the other fifteen bodies give no indication of the sort of restraint or mutilation we find at the Sutton Hoo ‘execution cemetery’; the rest of the western cemetery remains largely uninvestigated; and the dating of the whole sequence of burials and the so-called ‘temple’ is unclear. Even if plague led to the desertion of the site,259 its use spanned the period of transition to Christianity and there are suggestions of Christian use of the eastern cemetery. But there may be some indications of revenant worry. Three inhumations in the western ring-ditch enclosure obviously post-date the original burials,

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and two of these contain iron knives.260 Is this evidence of the deliberate re-use of the burial place of ‘ancestors’, coupled with the well-known apotropaic of knives to prevent revenants? If so, are we looking at evidence of such measures being taken as a result of the outbreak of epidemic, or occasional resort to traditional practices in the case of individuals whose ‘return’ was feared? In the future, it may be possible to test the hypothesis of association between death from plague and the peculiar burials just discussed – as well as those from Anglo-Saxon graves surrounded by ring-ditches and indeed from Frankish cemeteries such as Audun, mentioned earlier in this book. In the last decade, scientists have attempted to analyse aDNA from late medieval and early modern plague victims to find the cause of the outbreak. While techniques are still being discussed and refined, there is no theoretical obstacle to looking amongst the Anglo-Saxon burials for signs of Justinianic Plague in the same way, as 1500 years is within the range of aDNA survival.261

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHRISTIAN CONCEPTS OF THE AFTERLIFE Such possible signs of popular adherence or reversion to more traditional forms of ritual, testifying to the strength of belief amongst the Anglo-Saxons in the liminal nature of death, might be taken as confirmation of what we know already from written sources – that there was no modification of Christian funerary ritual itself, even after the outbreak of plague in 664–87, in order to come to terms with popular concerns. How far it would have been possible for the AngloSaxon Church to take the initiative in such matters is, in any case, an interesting question. Instead, it appears to have developed a discourse further modifying the picture of the Christian afterlife in an attempt to gain wider acceptance of Christian teachings on death, the soul and the hereafter. This tendency is apparent in a large number of narratives appearing in works composed in England between the first outbreak of plague in 664 and the 730s. Precedents for such interaction existed already in England. Fursey, whose account of his out-of-body experiences played such an important role in moving towards this adaptation, had worked in the kingdom of the East Angles for a number of years; and although Bede suggests that he eventually became reluctant to tell his story, it is difficult to believe that his work in spreading Christianity in East Anglia did not involve preaching both penance and its possible continuation in the afterlife. The importance of the themes first laid out in the vision-narrative of the anonymous Life of Fursey in the period after the plague is indicated by the fact that Bede gives a shortened version of it in his Ecclesiastical History, making it one of the spiritual landmarks in his account of the introduction of Christianity


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to the Anglo-Saxons.262 In his abbreviated version of Fursey’s ‘vision’, Bede is less interested in the arguments about the continuation of penance in the afterlife than in the possibility of salvation for those who only repent in the hour of death. But he preserves the vision’s basis in the popular idea that a soul could leave the body, visit the other world, and return. Bede also relates a similar experience allegedly undergone by a Northumbrian named Dryhthelm, apparently in the 690s. Bede tells us that Dryhthelm fell seriously ill and died one night – but then, the next morning, his soul returned to his body and he came to life again, sitting bolt upright and terrifying most of the mourners who had gathered round his corpse. He had seen the afterlife and proceeded to narrate his remarkable experiences.263 The extent to which this story attempts to exploit popular conceptions of the possibility of the soul’s passing to the afterlife and returning again, can be seen not only by comparison not only with the assertions of Curma, dismissed by Augustine several centuries before, but also with other folk beliefs.264 What had Dryhthelm’s soul allegedly seen on its visit to the other world? He related that he had been led through a long valley by a person dressed in shining white robes. On one side were terrible flames, on the other hail and snow, so that he was flanked by extremes of heat and cold. On both sides, human souls were tossed hither and thither as if by a furious storm. This was not, as he first assumed, Hell: his guide led him on to see both the mouth of Hell and also a pleasant meadow peopled by men in white robes, which Dryhthelm at first mistook for Heaven. The angel explained that the meadow was the earthly paradise, where the souls of those who have been good but not perfect awaited the Last Judgement and their guaranteed admission to Heaven, while the valley with its fire on one side and icy cold on the other was . . . the place in which those souls have to be tried and chastened who delayed to confess and make restitution for the sins which they had committed until they were on the point of death . . . But because they did repent and confess, even though on their deathbed they will all come to the kingdom of Heaven on judgement day; and the prayers of those who are still alive, their alms and fastings and specially the celebration of masses help many of them to get free even before the day of judgement . . .265

Once again, Bede is concerned to highlight the problem of deathbed repentance, the problem that had preoccupied the author of the Penitential of UUinniau/ Finnian over a century earlier. But he now incorporates the idea advanced in the Life of Fursey, that there can be some continuation of penance/purgation in the life hereafter. And he also states that prayers and Masses offered by the living may free the souls of the dead from purgation before the Last Judgement. For another statement of the last idea, we can turn to the Dialogues. While the sections of the Dialogues based on authentic Gregorian texts contain Gregory I’s conventional Augustinian views on the relationship between repentance, death

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and the afterlife,266 these are then re-contextualized by other passages, which introduce newer developments. The power of the Eucharist to liberate souls from post-mortem suffering is stated in Book Four, Chapter 57, in the shape of a story concerning Justus, one of Gregory’s own monks who had sinned, but whose soul was released from flames in the next life after a set period of Eucharistic offering by Gregory himself. The Whitby Life repeats what is essentially the same story.267 In this way, the Anglo-Saxon Church sought to construct a version of the afterlife in which the living could, to a limited extent, have some influence over the fate of the souls of the dead, rather than being, as in Augustine’s doctrinal view of the afterlife, cut off from them until the end of time. However, traditional Anglo-Saxon beliefs about the dead, as their funerary arrangements suggest, also attributed a threatening and potentially destructive aspect to them. The literature produced by the Anglo-Saxon Church in the seventh and eighth centuries sought to deal with these fears, seeking to quiet qualms about revenants with the suggestion that these can be placated and dismissed by Eucharistic offering. Dialogues IV, 42 does this in the shape of a narrative concerning the Roman deacon Paschasius, who had supported Lawrence against Pope Symmachus in the papal schism which took place in the early part of the sixth century. It tells how, long after the deaths of both Lawrence and Symmachus, Germanus Bishop of Capua, on medical advice, visited the hot baths of Angulus (near Pescara), and was shocked to find the dead deacon serving there as an attendant. When Germanus enquired what he was doing there, Paschasius replied that this was his punishment for backing Lawrence against Symmachus. He asked the bishop to pray for him and when Germanus revisited the baths after a few days of assiduous prayer for the soul of Paschasius, the revenant-attendant had disappeared. The implication of this tale is that the Church could deal with revenants by prayer. A second narrative also tells of a revenant, the former owner of the bath-house. His unwelcome presence after his death in his own baths is banished by the offering of the Eucharist for a week, as well as by prayer and ‘tearful supplication’ by the Church.268 The text is careful to locate both revenants well away from any consecrated ground, and this passage might constitute one of the earliest suggestions that some older, non-Christian locations housing the dead were to be regarded as haunted and evil.269 The problem of the meaning and causes of death in time of plague is explicitly treated in a number of narratives: given the devastation wreaked by plague on some of the major Anglo-Saxon monastic communities, the monastic setting of many is probably significant. Book Four of the Dialogues contains the stories of the dream of Gerontius and the vision of Mellitus, both monks. The latter is specifically presented as having contracted plague: as they lay dying, both men were granted visions of a Heavenly list, a book of eternal life, in which their names and the names of others about to die were inscribed.270 The discourse


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promoted in the narrative suggests that if Christianity cannot save even religious men from death, their deaths are part of God’s purpose and a Heavenly reward is ensured. Bede tackles a related theme in his account of the double monastery of Barking in the Ecclesiastical History. It concerns a little boy called Esica, who was an oblate or nutritus there when plague struck: This child being taken with the aforesaid plague, when he came to his last moment, cried out three times upon one of the virgins consecrated to Christ, speaking to her as if she were present, by her own name. ‘Eadgyth, Eadgyth, Eadgyth’, and therewith ending the temporal life entered into life eternal. But that virgin which he called at his death, straightway in the place where she was, being there taken with the same sickness, the very same day that she was called was taken out of this life and followed him that called her to the kingdom of Heaven . . .271

This story graphically illustrates the fears to which the Anglo-Saxons were prey in time of plague, as well as their attempts to explain the disease. Eadgyth died the same day as Esica, suggesting to us that she is likely to have contracted plague in its particularly lethal primary pneumonic form as a result of inhaling infected droplets while caring for him. In our modern understanding of disease, young children may be particularly vulnerable and in turn infect their carers; in other ages and societies children, who must often have been the first to die in an epidemic, were to be feared because of their apparent malevolence. Bede attempts to provide some reassurance by insisting that Esica had called Eadgyth to Heaven, just as Mellitus in the Dialogues has foreknowledge of those who are also destined to die, but are destined for Heaven. Similar concerns are apparent in the Dialogues’ outlandish account of a young boy who dies of the plague. His soul then returns from Heaven, knowing the names of all who are about to die after him. The ‘proof ’ of his journey to Heaven is his ability to speak in languages which he did not know before – presumably a representation of fevered babblings.272 The tale takes an even more bizarre twist when it is recorded that the boy finally died biting his own hands and arms. The child has, in traditional understanding, returned from the dead and taken others after him, but like Bede, the Dialogues’ author seeks to present the subsequent deaths in a Christianized context. The striking detail of the bitten arms and hands also suggests that there may have been an earlier version of the tale in which he was portrayed as a revenant, and also that the Anglo-Saxons exhumed supposed vampires to deal with them. Un-decomposed ‘revenant’ bodies when disinterred are frequently found to have lost their nails and the skin on their hands, giving the impression that they have chewed them off.273 Book Two of the Dialogues attempts to find Christian methods of dealing with a related problem, again involving the sinister propensities of some dead children.

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The story tells of a little boy, a puerulus monachus in Benedict’s monastery, who had died when on a visit home to his parents and whose body was repeatedly expelled from the grave after burial. It is very likely that shallow burials were liable to be dug up by animals – but families and communities fearfully attributed the reappearance of the body to supernatural agency, and feared the ‘expelled’ child as a potential revenant.274 Benedict sends the parents a consecrated Host and instructs that the child be re-buried along with it, guaranteeing that he will then remain in his grave.275 Both before and after the composition of the Dialogues, church councils forbade the placing of the Host in the mouth of the deceased, but here we appear to see an awareness of popular revenant lore and popular practice through the use of the Eucharist instead of an amulet to prevent the return of the dead. We have no way of knowing how often this was actually done, as the consecrated Host would decay without trace in the grave, but it is possible that this practice was a useful weapon in the Church’s armoury of attempts to deal with popular beliefs. Elsewhere, even in later Anglo-Saxon cemeteries, we find amulets still buried with children in traditional fashion.276 The Dialogues also contain another story of revenants, in this case adult female religious, placated by the Eucharist – but this time, less contentiously, by its offering during Mass.277 In this narrative, the two nuns in question are excommunicated by Benedict himself when alive, only to rise from their tombs whenever the non-communicants were ordered to leave the Church. The nuns are typical of one kind of person popularly considered to be a potential revenant – the individual who was difficult or anti-social during her or his lifetime – and the offering of the Eucharist is presented as an alternative to non-Christian ways of dealing with them on their deaths. In complete contrast, a story from the Whitby Life has the spirits of four dead warriors killed at the battle of Hatfield Chase, and ‘undoubtedly baptized’, coming in splendour to visit their own bodies. The implication of this last tale would seem to be that these men had died as martyrs for Christianity and that their souls normally resided gloriously in Heaven. The place where they were buried was regarded as holy – the priest who saw the spirits wanted to found a monastery there – and their actions were represented as benevolent. There was no question of their becoming threatening revenants: their souls only made temporary visits to observe their bodies lying quietly where they had been buried.278 Some peoples fear the return of the souls of those who have been killed in war: by suggesting that those who had died on the Christian side in battle were martyrs and therefore would not return to haunt the living, the tale was designed to quiet fears of this kind.279 The Church also sought to suggest that the dead bodies of holy men and women could be stabilized miraculously, and that this was evidence of their sanctity. Bede records that eleven years after Cuthbert’s original burial, his body was moved to a sarcophagus above ground and found not to have decayed but to be


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. . . intact and whole as if it were still alive and the joints of the limbs flexible and much more like a sleeping than a dead man.280

Bede, no doubt aware of the popular fear of the un-decayed body, wrote of the ‘fear and trembling’ caused by the discovery of this ‘miracle’. He sought to persuade readers of the miraculous powers of the saint even in death, and devotes the last few chapters of the Life to the miracles performed at his tomb (and by secondary or contact relics such as his shoes). The Dialogues similarly give an account of the miraculous preservation of the corpse of the saintly Bishop Herculanus of Perugia.281 It is just possible that Cuthbert’s body had been subject to the natural process known as saponification. The anonymous Life of Cuthbert states that he was provided with a waxed shroud; this may have helped to conserve his body. But it is also possible that it had been preserved deliberately and artificially. Cuthbert’s translation was to a coffin sixty-five inches in length, implying that the monks were expecting – despite Bede’s protestations to the contrary – to find a body which was more or less intact; and Bede also refers to some sort of covering next to his skin (as opposed to outer garments). An account of a later translation of his remains (in 1104) suggests that it was tightly wrapped like a mummy, and may therefore have been embalmed.282 Bede names three other figures whose bodies were found to be incorrupt: Æthelthryth, Abbess of Ely, whose body was incorrupt at its translation sixteen years after her death from plague; Æthelburh, daughter of King Anna of the East Angles and Abbess of Faremoutiers in Francia, whose body was found to be incorrupt seven years after her death; and Fursey, whose body was still perfectly preserved after four years.283 These cases, or some of them, may indicate that the embalming of bodies was practised by the ecclesiastical elite in, or originating from, England. The process had probably been introduced to the Anglo-Saxons from Francia. Bede claims that when the body of Abbess Eorcengota of Faremoutiers, grand-daughter of King Anna of the East Angles and niece of Abbess Æthelburh, was translated to a place of honour three days after her burial, a sweet fragrance rose from her tomb.284 He also demonstrates some awareness of the process in his commentary on the Song of Songs, when he writes of myrrh and aloes that . . . the nature of these aromatics is that the bodies of the dead, when anointed with them do not decay . . .285

Dialogues IV, 27 also seems to allude to embalming when it insists that in the case of a dead aristocrat, a beautiful fragrance arose from his grave when it was opened and his body was found to be un-decayed.286 Judging both by the way neither Bede nor the Dialogues refer explicitly to mummification, and also by their presentation of preservation of the bodies as a miracle, the process may

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have been carried out clandestinely. It has been suggested that the ‘miraculous’ preservation of the bodies of dead holy men and women was, in the absence of an official process of canonization, a way of signifying that God regarded them as saints.287 But further layers of meaning may also surround these particular bodies. Cuthbert and Æthelthryth had both contracted plague – indeed Æthelthryth died of it – while Fursey and Faremoutiers are both associated in hagiographical literature with visits made by the souls of the living to the afterlife during periods of illness. Their incorruptibility, probably artificially and covertly obtained, was not only a marker of sanctity, but also a signifier of the Church’s version of the relationship between disease, death and the life to come, indicating the ultimate arrival of the soul of the saintly deceased in Heaven and the existence of a ‘good’ or ‘safe’ un-decayed body.

8

How Christian Was Anglo-Saxon England c.700?

How far had the Church succeeded in Christianizing the Anglo-Saxons by c.700? From the point of view of the popes in Rome, the young Church must have looked to be much more securely integrated into the Christian oikoumene than it had been in the early 660s. Easter was celebrated according to the Roman method of calculation and at the height of the Monothelite crisis the English Church had sent a profession of faith to Rome which, if perhaps just a shade too detailed, nevertheless held to the basic line which the Pope required. John, the Archcantor of St Peter’s, had not only tested the orthodoxy of the Anglo-Saxon Church’s teaching, but had also brought the liturgy of the Roman basilicas to Monkwearmouth. The calendar of the Anglo-Saxon Church drew on elements from various parts of the Christian West including Francia and southern Italy. Both Benedict Biscop and Wilfrid made several journeys to Rome in the second half of the seventh century, and in the early 700s Wilfrid arrived there once again to plead his case against his opponents – who also sent their representatives – before Pope John VI. On hearing Wilfrid’s plea, the Pope and his eastern advisers at first smiled and spoke in Greek amongst themselves; but despite this apparently unpromising start to the hearing, John upheld the decisions of earlier popes in Wilfrid’s favour and also confirmed the appointment of Berhtwald as Archbishop of Canterbury. The beginning of the development of a more extensive episcopal hierarchy by Theodore of Tarsus between 669 and 690s, his development of the practice of holding regular synods as a mechanism of Church government, and the final confirmation of peace between Wilfrid and his opponents at the Synod on the Nidd in 706, would all seem to indicate that the Anglo-Saxon Church was part of the orthodox Christian world.1 The view from Rome, however, is not always quite the same as the view that comes into focus on closer inspection. The need to include the Filioque in the creed may testify to basic difficulties in comprehending the nature of the Christian God and reveal tendencies towards syncretism, even in the period when the Church was beginning to develop a more coherent strategy for Christianization. More comprehensive ecclesiastical organization was not achieved swiftly: for example, even after Theodore’s division of the Northumbrian diocese, it seems that structures of pastoral care there were not entirely adequate. Writing to Ecgberht, Bishop of York, in 734, Bede highlights a number of deficiencies in the

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Northumbrian Church. There were at this stage three dioceses in Bernicia, but only one in Deira; and Bede writes that he has heard that . . . there are many of the villages and hamlets in particular where a bishop has never been seen over the course of many years performing his ministry and revealing the divine grace. But not one of these places is immune from paying the taxes that are due to that bishop. Not only does the bishop never appear in such places, to confirm the baptized by the laying-on of his hand, neither do they have any teacher to instruct them in the truth of the faith or to enable them to distinguish between good and evil deeds.2

His fundamental point is that centres of pastoral care were too widely spaced out – ‘it would take you more than the whole year on your own to go through them all and preach the word of God in every hamlet and field’ – and that Ecgberht therefore needs assistance to carry out the episcopal duties of confirming the baptized, consecrating priests, and maintaining religious discipline. Bede advocates the creation of twelve northern sees as envisaged by Gregory the Great over a century earlier; but despite his advice, no new dioceses were created, and it was only in 735 that York even became a separate metropolitan province, as Gregory had planned.3 It is likely that problems of a similar kind existed elsewhere. The kingdom of Mercia was now divided into several dioceses, but Leicester and Lichfield appear to have shared the services of Bishop Wor who died in 737, while Daniel of Winchester administered a large area including the Isle of Wight and the kingdom of the South Saxons, the last two kingdoms to accept Christianity. There, Wilfrid’s monastery had eventually been turned into a diocese, but this had been without a bishop for some time at the date when Bede completed his Ecclesiastical History.4 It is not, perhaps, surprising that Daniel could give the English monk Boniface, the apostle of Germany, some detailed advice on the best way of dealing with pagans, based, it would seem, on his own personal experience of trying to reason with those who still believed in the old gods.5 Even where there were not actual gaps in provision, one authority has remarked of the English episcopate that ‘What cannot be recognized is the sort of close-grained diocesan authority which bishops in Mediterranean Europe had exercised – at least at times – since the fourth century’ over their churches.6 In addition, deficiencies in training and practice must also have served to inhibit the firmer establishment of Christianity. Bede records that Bishop John of York, who died in 721, had been forced to tell one of his own clergy that he had not been properly baptized. John declared that If you were baptized by that priest you were not perfectly baptized, for I know that, when he was ordained priest, he was so slow-witted that he was unable to learn the office of catechism or baptism; for this reason I ordered him not to presume to exercise this ministry, because he could not perform it properly.7

H O W C H R I S T I A N WA S A N G L O - S A X O N E N G L A N D C . 7 0 0 ?

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And in his Letter to Ecgberht, Bede maintained that more attention should be paid to the spiritual welfare of the Northumbrian laity: too few of them, in his opinion, took communion regularly, and he attempted to insist that there should be higher standards on the part of the episcopate, which received tithes from its flocks. Bede, himself the author of homilies and commentaries, demanded attention to word and doctrine: the people should be taught both the Creed and also the Lord’s Prayer. The 747 Council of Clofesho would echo this concern, stipulating that priests should have a correct understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity, and teach this and the Creed.8 However, Bede’s other works, which evoke the Church’s attempts to manipulate rituals associated with the cult of relics and with visits to shrines and tombs, reveal the extent to which it was dependent on the imagistic mode of religion in its efforts to bring Christianity closer to the laity. That these practices, together with the celebration of feast-days, had the potential to create a lasting bond between Church and people is also recognized in the Penitential attributed to Theodore, which states clearly that ‘The relics of saints are to be venerated’.9 The Ecclesiastical History, the Lives of Cuthbert and the Dialogues, in an attempt to replace confidence in traditional pagan beliefs or ritual, all seek to demonstrate that Christian holy men and women and their relics could not only heal the sick, but also control nature and the harvest. The Church even proffered Christian alternatives to traditional spells and charms. One narrative in the Dialogues tells of a man who was taken captive and put in chains, and whose wife had Mass offered for him on certain days: when he returned years later, he described how his fetters had fallen from him at those times. Bede tells a very similar story in the Ecclesiastical History.10 In both cases, the offering of the Eucharist is presented by the Church as the alternative to a ‘loosing’ spell, analogous to the one we find in the first Merseburg charm, preserved in a tenthcentury manuscript from the continental monastery of Fulda.11 The Church’s reliance on the imagistic mode of religion was undoubtedly effective in creating links between Church and people. But was the initial acceptance of Christianity to some extent gendered? Notwithstanding the importance of royal nunneries such as Whitby and its introduction of the cult of the Virgin, the Church may have experienced difficulty in penetrating the domestic sphere, where female influence was at its strongest. There, customs or practices deriving from traditional beliefs – including the use of ‘loosing’ charms – still persisted; women may have been resistant to many of the Church’s teachings, ranging from its discouragement of concubinage to its marginalization of a number of traditional cures and remedies. And if the Anglo-Saxons had, as some recent work suggests, conceived of a third gender and invested some members of it with special abilities, Christianity was hostile to this outlook, offering only a dual model of gender and sexuality. In the long run, the progress of Christianization would gradually inhibit women’s role within the Church itself. As the Anglo-Saxon

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Church slowly took on a slightly more conventional organizational aspect and as the offering of the Eucharist for both the living and the dead became more frequent, women’s leading role in monasticism, which had so disconcerted Theodore of Tarsus, would begin to decline.12 Stephanie Hollis suggests that in Bede’s negative presentation of the Abbess Ælfflæd of Whitby in his re-working of the anonymous Life of Cuthbert, we can see a subtle attempt to downplay and undermine the role of the female head of the double house.13 Nevertheless, the dynastic and political concerns of Anglo-Saxon families continued to contribute to the embedding of Christianity in Anglo-Saxon society into the eighth century, even if this was manifested in ways that scandalized Bede. When he composed his Letter to Ecgberht, the performance of Christian instruction and pastoral care was identified so closely in his mind with the monastic model that he thought in terms of new Northumbrian dioceses being centred on suitable existing minsters. But there were also, in Bede’s view, some entirely unsuitable monastic establishments which could neither be used in the establishment of new dioceses, nor have bishops selected from among their members. The Letter condemns many of the monasteries set up in Northumbria since the beginning of the eighth century. It seems that there, aristocrats and their wives had succeeded in obtaining land-grants from rulers – Bede says in return for payment – and had created family monasteries on these estates. Such lands were assigned to them in hereditary right and were lost forever to royal control, thus, in Bede’s view, leaving nothing with which kings could reward their warriors. Bede is scathing on the subject of such foundations, suggesting that their heads lived as laypeople in family households, while at the same time calling themselves abbots and abbesses. He claims that they were filled with runaways from genuine religious houses and ‘religious’ who were in reality no more than tonsured servants; but as he also objects to laywomen acting as heads of communities and attempting to offer spiritual guidance to nuns, presumably he thought that at least some of the latter were genuine handmaids of Christ. What we seem to be seeing here parallels the way in which an aspirant Frankish nobility, in the early seventh century, had succeeded in creating family monasteries in an attempt to transform an aristocracy of service into an hereditary nobility.14 There, the tendency had been lent religious credibility by its association with Columbanus and his followers, who had endowed at least some of these houses with monastic rules, based on a mixture of Columbanian and Benedictine ideas, and thus with spiritual values; here it is presented by Bede as entirely unworthy and self-serving, tainted most of all by the continued sexual and family activities of its leaders. But even if such foundations were exploitative, ‘a way in which families enlarged their resources at the expense of kings’ (though there are grounds for thinking that Bede exaggerated the extent of their secularity), their existence, paradoxically, only serves to confirm the increasingly firm establishment of Christianity in the


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upper sectors of society.15 The repetition of Bede’s ideas by the 747 Council of Clofesho suggests a similar monastic pattern, and a similar degree of entrenchment of Christianity, south of the Humber.16 Arguably, the ground had been prepared for this development to a considerable extent by the Church’s success, not just in using the imagistic mode of religiosity as a bridge to the doctrinal, but also in influencing mortuary ritual and afterlife belief. If, as Pascal Boyer suggests, the spirits or ‘presences’ of the dead are the supernatural agents most commonly believed in throughout the world, then acceptance of Christian norms of funerary and mortuary ritual, with their accompanying set of beliefs about the afterlife and the souls of the dead, must represent an important step forward in the process of Christianization. Although it was probably as late as the tenth century that churchyard burial became a fact for most people in Anglo-Saxon England, it is agreed by both archaeologists and historians that the late seventh and early eighth centuries saw ‘the virtual disappearance of objects with human burial’.17 John Blair has estimated that . . . in normal lay cemeteries of c.670–720 some 45 per cent are unfurnished and 25 per cent have knives only; even among the remaining 30 per cent it is rare to find more than one or two complex grave-groups in any one cemetery . . . Around the 720s, the deposition of all non-perishable grave-goods, except occasional knives, finally ended.18

This, too, should be regarded as evidence of the way in which Christianity was taking root in Anglo-Saxon society. The functionalist explanation currently offered for this phenomenon, however, rejects the idea of religion as a catalyst for change. Instead, it has been argued that power structures had been consolidated and formalized over the earlier part of the seventh century and that there was, therefore, no longer any need by the end of the century to use grave-goods to signal status or aspirations. There were, it is contended, new ways of advertising or achieving membership of the elite, principally through investment in churches and monasteries. The older idea that the change to unfurnished burial had something do with the introduction of Christianity has been widely rejected, especially as it was partly based on the erroneous assumption that the Church must specifically have forbidden furnished burial.19 Even the later development of churchyards out of unfurnished cemeteries is discounted as evidence of the influence of religious change on burial practice. It has been proposed that the Church might have discouraged furnished burial not for religious reasons, but perhaps as an indirect consequence of the imposition of a – hypothetical – tax or grave-scot on burials.20 The variety of modes of inhumation practised in the seventh century, along with the continued marking of status difference by coffins and above-ground markers such as sculpted stones, when furnished burial had almost entirely ceased, have all also been offered as evidence that social rather

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than religious factors were decisive in Anglo-Saxon burial, and that the coming of Christianity was not an important factor in producing change in this area.21 This study argues that, on the contrary, the transition to unfurnished burial and to cemeteries containing only unfurnished (or virtually unfurnished) graves should be seen as a product of religious change. Blair’s recent review of the evidence contained in Anglo-Saxon burial-grounds leads him to remark merely that this phenomenon marks the emergence of a ‘new spiritual economy and new ways for the living to visualize the dead’.22 The observation is welcome; but we also need to take account both of the way in which two different sets of beliefs concerning death and the afterlife operated in Anglo-Saxon England for a considerable part of the seventh century; and also of the impact of the outbreak and cessation of plague. In response to earlier waves of the Justinianic pandemic, the Irish Church both at home and abroad had already made some tentative steps towards a limited accommodation of the traditional view of death as liminal. The evidence of Anglo-Saxon cemeteries strongly suggests that, coinciding chronologically with the outbreak of pestilentia in England described by Bede, there was a revival of traditional beliefs about the potentially dangerous dead and a consequent resort to traditional means to de-activate them. However, despite this initially disastrous reaction, from the Church’s point of view, the outbreak of epidemic disease may in the end have been crucial in helping it successfully to establish Christian norms. Plague focused ecclesiastical attention on questions relating to body, soul, burial and the afterlife, compelling churchmen to produce further thinking about these subjects, together with a stock of sermon material intended to shape a new Christian discourse on these topics. Such questions were sufficiently important not only for discussion about them to be enshrined in texts such as the Dialogues and the Whitby Life of Gregory the Great, with their wealth of appropriate exempla for preachers and teachers, but also for accounts of the ‘visions’ of Fursey, Dryhthelm and others to appear alongside narratives of the Gregorian mission, papal letters, royal baptisms, the Easter controversy and the performance of miracles, in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History.23 The prevalence, from the late seventh century onwards, of unfurnished burials and cemeteries might therefore be argued to testify to the intensity and effectiveness of the Church’s campaign not only to make Christian burial seem desirable to the elite, but also to persuade the general populace of the validity of Christian doctrine relating to soul, death and burial. The development of the idea of post-mortem purgation and of intercessory ritual did not mean the instantaneous or total abandonment of older beliefs about the marauding dead, as both archaeological evidence (including the placing of knives in otherwise unfurnished graves), as well as signs of later attempts to deal with vampires, all graphically indicate. Belief in ghosts would continue to satisfy the perennial intuition of the presence of the dead in the world of the living.24 Nevertheless, the potential attractions of the concept of


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post-mortem purgation of the soul and the practice of intercession for those who feared the return of the dead are illustrated by the words of one modern Berawan tribesman from Borneo. His people traditionally regarded death as liminal, and practised secondary rites of treatment of the body in order to ensure the safe passage of the spirit to the afterlife. As a convert to Catholicism, he developed a syncretistic understanding of Purgatory as the place to which the souls of dead Christians would go, ‘until their bones are dry’. He also maintained that conversion to Christianity was a morally responsible act as, in Purgatory, God would watch over the souls of the dead and keep them from coming back to haunt the living.25 It is not too difficult to imagine the emergence of similar beliefs as, in the wake of the panic caused by plague, the Anglo-Saxon Church worked hard to make its flock believe that it could restrain the malevolent dead; and that the souls of many of the dead would now undergo a liminal stage of temporary purgation of sin in the afterlife, commencing immediately after death, from which they could not return to haunt or harm the living. The validity of the Church’s teachings may well have been confirmed for many by the disappearance of plague in the 680s. Once firmly established, the concepts of post-mortem purgation and intercession for the dead would have a profound effect on the development of Western Christianity.26 Not only would monastic routine be altered significantly, with a proliferation of additional psalmody and ‘private’ Masses offered for the souls of the dead, but the payment of the faithful for these rituals would form an important part of monastic income across Europe in the period between the seventh and the eleventh centuries. All this would lead to the elaboration, by the twelfth century, of the developed doctrine of Purgatory. If any answer is possible to the question of how far the Anglo-Saxon Church had succeeded in Christianizing its peoples by c.700, we might say that while its ecclesiastical networks still retained traces reflecting their original ad hoc evolution; while its provision of pastoral care was by no means uniform or entirely effective; and while many traditional beliefs and practices still survived, not least in the domestic context, in adapting its teachings it had made considerable advances in coming to terms with the problems presented by mass Christianization. Some of the solutions it helped create would even play a significant role in shaping the development of Christian doctrine and practice over the centuries to come. This book has advanced many suggestions, and concludes with two more. The first and more specific of these is that an obvious avenue of further research lies in an attempt to achieve a greater level of understanding of the impact of the Justinianic plague on all these developments. While it has seemed reasonable, on the bases of both contemporary sources and modern research, to argue for its influence in general, advances in molecular biology may in the near future enable us to analyse the aDNA in remains buried in Anglo-Saxon cemeteries. Michael McCormick has already suggested that we should investigate what appear to be

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plague burial-pits from Christian southern Europe and the Byzantine Empire, in order to establish firmly the identity of the pathogen behind the Justinianic Pandemic. Although the acidic soil of sites such as Sutton Hoo has destroyed most of the skeletal evidence there, at others where the extent of bone preservation is greater, an examination of apparently immobilized remains and of those in ring-ditch graves might help us to a greater understanding both of the nature and of the impact of plague in Anglo-Saxon England. The second suggestion is a broader one: it is that we should not simply continue to approach both paganism and Christianization through the limiting lens of a modern Christian or post-Christian view (particularly, in the latter case, through a largely or exclusively functionalist interpretation of religion), but instead should make greater use of theories drawn from other disciplines, in particular that of cognitive anthropology. Such approaches, as this study has endeavoured to show, have the potential to help us understand both the nature of paganism and also the way in which non-Christians might have comprehended and interacted with Christianity when they first encountered it; and inter-disciplinary approaches should be applied not only to further and more in-depth study of the Anglo-Saxon ‘conversion period’ itself, but also to the Christianization of other groups and peoples in the Middle Ages.

Notes

Notes to Chapter 1: Approaches to the Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons 1 John Hines, ‘Religion: the limits of knowledge’ in J. Hines (ed.), The Anglo-Saxons From the Migration Period to the Eighth Century. An Ethnographic Perspective (Woodbridge, 1997), 375–96, 376. 2 Hines, ‘Religion’, 396. The classic study of pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon religion is D. Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Paganism (London, 1992); see also B. Branston, The Lost Gods of England (2nd edn, London, 1974); G. R. Owen, Rites and Religions of the Anglo-Saxons (Newton Abbot and Totowa, NJ, 1981); R. Hutton, The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles: Their Nature and Legacy (Oxford, 1991); E. G. Stanley, The Search for Anglo-Saxon Paganism (Cambridge, 1975). H. R. Ellis Davidson, The Lost Beliefs of Northern Europe (London, 1993) and K. Dowden, European Paganism: the Realities of Cult from Antiquity to the Middle Ages (London, 2000), both deal with Anglo-Saxon religion. 3 Notably the major study by H. Mayr-Harting, The Coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England (London, 1972, 1990 and 1991). See also his Stenton Lecture of 1993: Two Conversions to Christianity. The Bulgarians and the Anglo-Saxons (Reading, 1994). B. Yorke, The Conversion of Britain, 600–800 (Harlow, 2006) devotes eleven pages out of over 270 to pre-Christian religion in Britain as a whole. In a study including a chapter on Anglo-Saxon England, C. M. Cusack, The Rise of Christianity in Northern Europe (London, 1998), discusses theories of conversion as well as paganism and the indigenization of Christianity. Other works on European conversion include L. E. von Padberg, Mission und Christianisierung. Formen und Folgen bei Anglesachsen und Franken im 7 und 8 Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 1995); P. Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom 200–1000: Triumph and Diversity (3rd rev. edn, Oxford, 1995); R. Fletcher, The Conversion of Europe: from Paganism to Christianity, 371–1386 ad (London, 1997); J. Muldoon (ed.), Varieties of Religious Conversion in the Middle Ages (Gainesville, FL, 1997); M. O. H. Carver (ed.), The Cross Goes North. Processes of Conversion in Northern Europe ad 300–1300 (Woodbridge, 2003); and A. Sanmark, Power and Conversion – A Comparative Study of Christianization in Scandinavia (Uppsala, 2004). For conversion across

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several continents and time-periods, see K. Mills and A. Grafton (eds), Conversion in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Rochester, NY and Woodbridge, 2003); idem, Conversion: Old Worlds and New (Rochester, NY and Woodbridge, 2003). R. Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York, 1984), 261. See ‘Zwischenbetrachtung’, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie I (Tübingen, 1947), 436–73, translated as ‘Religious rejections of the world and their directions’ in H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (eds), From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (London, 1948), 323–59; also M. Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (Tübingen, 1925), 225–356. G. Mensching, Volksreligion und Weltreligion (Leipzig, 1938). R. Firth, Rank and Religion in Tikopia (London, 1970). R. Horton, ‘African conversion’, Africa 41 (1971), 85–108; ‘On the rationality of conversion’, Africa 45 (1975), 219–35, 373–99. See Cusack, Rise of Christianity, 12–13, for criticism of Horton. R. Bellah, ‘Religious evolutions’, in idem, Beyond Belief. Essays on Religion in a Post-Traditional World (New York, 1976), 20–50, 24. Ibid., 45. For the last, see S. Atran, In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion (Oxford and New York, 2002). P. Boyer, Religion Explained. The Human Instincts That Fashion Gods, Spirits and Ancestors (London, 2002). Boyer, Religion Explained, 106–91. H. Whitehouse and L. H. Martin (eds), Theorizing Religions Past. Archaeology, History and Cognition (Walnut Creek, CA; Lanham; Oxford, 2004), 10. H. Whitehouse, Arguments and Icons. Divergent Modes of Religiosity (Oxford, 2000). Ibid., 1. See notes 14 and 15 above as well as H. Whitehouse, Inside the Cult: Religious Innovation and Transmission in Papua New Guinea (Oxford, 1995); H. Whitehouse, ‘Modes of religiosity: a cognitive explanation of the dynamics of religion’, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 14 (2002), 293–315; R. N. McCauley and E. T. Lawson, Bringing Ritual to Mind: Psychological Foundations of Cultural Forms (Cambridge, 2002); H. Whitehouse, Modes of Religiosity. A Cognitive Theory of Religious Transmission (Walnut Creek, CA; Lanham; New York; Oxford, 2004); H. Whitehouse and J. Laidlaw (eds), Ritual and Memory: Toward a Cognitive Theory of Religious Transmission (Walnut Creek, CA; Lanham; New York; Oxford, 2004); H. Whitehouse and R. N. McCauley (eds), Mind and Religion. Psychological and Cognitive Foundations of Religiosity (Walnut Creek, CA; Lanham; New York; Oxford, 2005); L. H. Martin and H. Whitehouse (eds), History, Memory and Cognition. Historical Reflections/Reflexions Historiques 31/2 (2005).

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19 A. L. Clark, ‘Testing the two modes theory: Christian practice in the later Middle Ages’ in Whitehouse and Martin (eds), Theorizing Religions Past, 125–42. 20 T. Vial, ‘Modes of religiosity and changes in popular religious practices at the time of the Reformation’, in Whitehouse and Martin (eds), Theorizing Religions Past, 143–56. 21 T. Vial, ‘Can memory fill in gaps of memory? Applications of the cognitive science of religion to the history of religions’, History, Memory and Cognition. Historical Reflections/Reflexions Historiques 31/2 (2005), 283–96. 22 T. Tremlin, ‘Divergent religion: a dual-process model of religious thought, behaviour and morphology’, in Whitehouse and McCauley (eds), Mind and Religion, 69–84; J. Sørensen, ‘Charisma, tradition and ritual: a cognitive approach to magical agency’, ibid., 167–86; D. J. Slone, ‘Why religions develop free will problems’, ibid., 187–206; I. Pyysiäinen, ‘Religious conversion and modes of religiosity’, ibid., 149–66. 23 Boyer, Religion Explained, 232–61, esp. 260. 24 R. Hertz, ‘Contribution à une etude sur la représentation collective de la mort’, L’Année Sociologique X (1907), 48–137. The translation used here is that of Rodney and Claudia Needham in Death and the Right Hand (London, 1960), with an introduction by E. E. Evans-Pritchard, explaining Hertz’s intellectual background; A. van Gennep, Les Rites de Passage (Paris, 1909) translated by M. B. Vizedom and G. L. Caffee, The Rites of Passage (London, 1960). 25 P. Barber, Vampires, Burial and Death: Folklore and Reality (New Haven, CT and London, 1988). 26 L. K. Little (ed.), Plague and the End of Antiquity. The Pandemic of 541–750 (Cambridge, 2007).

Notes to Chapter 2: Discourses of the Dead: Popular Intuitions, Christian Doctrines and Epidemic Disease 1 For the following, see principally Å. Hultkranz, Conceptions of the Soul Among North American Indians (Stockholm, 1953), abridged as Soul and Native Americans, R. Holland (ed.) (Woodstock, CT, 1997); idem, ‘Christian influence on Northern Algonkian eschatology’, Sciences Religieuses/Studies in Religion 9 (1980), 161–83; E. Arbman, ‘Untersuchungen zur primitiven Seelenvorstellungen mit besondere Rücksicht auf Indien’, Le Monde Oriental (1927), 20 (85–222) and 21 (1–185); J. N. Bremmer, The Early Greek Concept of the Soul (Princeton, 1983); idem, The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife (London, 2002), together with the bibliography given in all of these. 2 R. G. Thwaites (ed.), Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents (Cleveland, OH, 1901), vol. 10, 147–9.

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15 16 17 18 19 20 21

22 23 24

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Jesuit Relations, vol. 6, 179–81. See Hultkrantz, ‘Christian influence’. J-P. Vernant, Mythe et Pensée Chez les Grecs (Paris, 1981), vol. 2, 65–78. H. R. Ellis, The Road to Hel. A Study of the Conception of the Dead in Old Norse Literature (Cambridge, 1943), 65–120. J. M. C. Toynbee, Death and Burial in the Roman World (London, 1971), 33–9. H. R. Ellis Davidson, Myths and Symbols in Pagan Europe. Early Scandinavian and Celtic Religions (Manchester, 1988), 19–21 and 167–95. Iliad, xxiii, 72–6. See van Gennep, Rites, 146–65, ‘Funerals’. Hertz, Death, 44; van Gennep, Rites, 148: ‘The chief rite of this period consists of either removing the flesh or waiting until it falls off by itself.’ U. Volp, Tod und Ritual in den christlichen Gemeinden der Antike (Leiden and Boston, 2002), 41–4. Hertz, Death, 29–31. Hertz, Death, 7: for the full description, see Jesuit Relations vol. 10, 265–78. The Huron moved their settlements every few years and reburied their dead at regular, though widely spaced, intervals. See also J. McIntosh, The Origins of the North American Indians (New York, 1843) 163–7, for descriptions of analogous rites. Jesuit Relations, vol. 10, 143–4. Jesuit Relations, vol. 10, 85–6. P. Metcalf and R. Huntington, Celebrations of Death. The Anthropology of Mortuary Ritual (2nd edn, Cambridge, 1991), 85–97. Hertz, Death, 43. Hertz, Death, 42. Hertz, Death, 34–6. Boyer, Religion Explained, 232–61, ‘Why is religion about death?’ For ideas of pollution and fear of the spirit of the dead (mulo) amongst modern Roma, as well as for their funerary rites of transition, see J. Okely, The Traveller-Gypsies (Cambridge, 1983), 215–30. Barber, Vampires, 126–8. See, for example, Barber, Vampires, 21–8. See Bremmer, Rise and Fall, 56–70, ‘The development of the Early Christian afterlife’; M. Dunn, ‘Gregory the Great, the vision of Fursey and the origins of Purgatory’, Peritia 14 (2000), 238–54; eadem, The Emergence of Monasticism (Oxford, 2003), 186–90. Tertullian, Treatise on the Soul (De Anima), ANF vol. 3, A. Robertson and J. Donaldson (eds), (1885, reprinted Peabody, MA, 1999), 181–235, esp. 230–1, thought that only Christ himself could be in Heaven before the resurrection and Last Judgement, while the souls of martyrs would enjoy immediate admission to Paradise. The souls of the Christian dead would wait in Hades, located in the

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26

27

28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

38 39 40

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central part of the earth, until the general resurrection and Judgement. See, by contrast, Cyprian, On the Mortality, A. Robertson and J. Donaldson (eds), ANF vol. 5 (1885, reprinted Peabody, MA., 1999), 469–75. Enchiridion, P. Schaff (ed.), NPNF 1st ser., vol. 3 (1887, reprinted Peabody, MA, 1999), 237–76: ch. 109, 272 and chs 68–9, 259–60. See R. Atwell, ‘Aspects in St Augustine of Hippo’s thought and spirituality concerning the state of the faithful departed, 354–430’, in D Loades (ed.), The End of Strife (Edinburgh, 1984), 3–13, against J. Ntedika, Evolution de la Doctrine du Purgatoire chez Saint Augustine (Paris, 1966). See also City of God, NPNF 1st ser., vol. 2, P. Schaff (ed.), (1887, reprinted Peabody, MA, 1999), 1–521; in Book xx, ch. 25, 445–6, Augustine discusses the purification of certain souls at the very moment of judgement; in Book xxi, ch. 26, 473–5, he considers whether the fire of 1 Corinthians is an eternal fire, and states that it may be alleged that purification takes place between the death of the body and the ‘last day of judgment and retribution which shall follow the resurrection’ (474). See P. Ariès, The Hour of Our Death (London, 1981), 22–4 and 97–9, for popular belief in death as a state of dormancy. F. S. Paxton, Christianizing Death. The Creation of a Ritual Process in Early Medieval Europe (Ithaca and London, 1990) applies van Gennep’s schema of separation, liminality and incorporation to Christian funerary ritual, suggesting an increasing emphasis on the last by the eighth century. Quoted by G. Rowell, The Liturgy of Christian Burial (London, 1977), 21. Rowell, Liturgy, 22–5. Paxton, Christianizing Death, 39. I Corinthians 15, 21–54. C. W. Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200–1336 (New York, 1995), 94–104. Volp, Tod und Ritual, 176–185. Rowell, Liturgy, 23. Confessions, Book ix, ch. 12, in P. Schaff (ed.), NPNF, 1st ser., vol. 1 (1886, reprinted Peabody, MA, 1999), 139–40. Volp, Tod und Ritual, 247–63. Paxton, Christianizing Death, argues for the presence of some rituals of transition and incorporation in Christian deathbed and funerary rites – see, for example, 73–8. But these should be viewed in the context of a very different understanding of life, death and the afterlife from those to which van Gennep originally applied his tripartite analysis. Confessions, Book ix, ch. 12, 139–40; Atwell, ‘Aspects’, 4. For pagan Roman graveside feasts, see Toynbee, Death and Burial, 37; Volp, Tod und Ritual, 77–86. R. Krautheimer, ‘Mensa-coemiterium-martyrium’, Cahiers Archéologiques 11 (1960), 15–40.

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41 Reply to Faustus the Manichaean, P. Schaff (ed.), NPNF, 1st ser., vol. 4 (1887, reprinted Peabody, MA, 1999), 155–345, Book 20, ch. 21, 261. J. Quasten, ‘“Vetus superstitio et nova religio”: the problem of refrigerium in the ancient Church of North Africa’, Harvard Theological Review, 33 (1940), 253–66, suggests that the funerary feasts were a sign of solidarity with the dead rather than of paganism as such. 42 J. A. Jungmann, Missarum Solemnia, vol. 1 (Freiburg, 1952), 286; M. J. Johnson, ‘Pagan-Christian burial practices of the fourth century: shared tombs?’, Journal of Early Christian Studies 5 (1997), 37–59. 43 Johnson, ‘Pagan-Christian burial’, 43–5. 44 Quoted in Rowell, Liturgy, 10. 45 Rowell, Liturgy, 12–13; A. Angenendt. ‘Theologie und Liturgie der mittlelalterlichen Totenmemoria’, in K. Schmid and J. Wollasch (eds), Memoria (Munich, 1984), 79–199, argues that these Masses were originally simple commemorations, but that they were later seen as marking periods of time in a process of purification of the soul; see also Paxton, Christianizing Death, 66–9, for the Mass as rite of incorporation. 46 Confessions, Book 6, ch. 2, 90–1. 47 Letter xxii, P. Schaff (ed.), NPNF, 1st ser., vol. 1 (1886, reprinted Peabody, MA, 1999), 239–40; Quasten, ‘“Vetus superstitio”’. 48 City of God, Book 8, ch. 27, 164–5. 49 H. Delehaye, Le Culte des Martyrs (Brussels, 1933), 42. 50 Quasten, ‘“Vetus superstitio”’, 263. 51 Johnson, ‘Pagan-Christian burial’, 42. 52 Ibid., 57–8 and 50. 53 Ibid., 59. 54 Rowell, Liturgy, 14–16. 55 J. C. Lawson, Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion (Cambridge, 1910), 405–6. 56 Rowell, Liturgy, 17. The idea of angelic guides was also enshrined in the thirdcentury Visio Pauli, condemned by Augustine in his Tractatus in Joannem: see note 63 below. Later the Church would officially incorporate this idea into its liturgy with the inclusion of the antiphon, In Paradisum deducant te angeli: Rowell, Liturgy, 17 and 60–61. 57 Jesuit Relations, vol. 10, 147–9. 58 Jesuit Relations, vol. 10, 154–7. 59 A. I. Hallowell, ‘The spirits of the dead in Salteaux life and thought’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 70 (1940), 29–51, 30. 60 Treatise on the Soul, ch. 44, 223. 61 Ambrose, On the Decease of Satyrus: Book ii, On the Belief in the Resurrection, P. Schaff and H. Wace (eds), NPNF 2nd ser., vol. 10 (1896, reprinted Peabody,

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62 63 64

65

66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80

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MA, 1999), 159–97, ch. 127, 195–6; Augustine, City of God, Book 18, chs 17–18, 369–70. 2 Corinthians 12:2–4. Homilies on the Gospel of John, P Schaff (ed.), NPNF, 1st ser., vol. 7 (Peabody, MA, 1888, reprinted 1999), 1–452, 380. T. Silverstein (ed.), Visio Sancti Pauli (London, 1935), 5, comments that the work ‘offered a complete Baedeker to the other-world, embodying beliefs and legends already familiar to its readers from other current writing and giving information as to the fate of the soul, in a relatively straightforward exposition which avoided the subtleties of theology and stressed, with a concreteness that was readily comprehensible, the justice of God, Christ’s mercy and the simple relationship between earthly morality and the rewards and punishments of the life to come’. For the many medieval versions of this text, see L. Jiroušková, Die Visio Pauli. Wege und Wandlungen einer Orientalischen Apokalypse im Lateinischen Mittelalter (Leiden and Boston, 2006). For individual aspects of this text and its dating, and for further bibliography, see S. I. Johnston, ‘Working overtime in the afterlife; or no rest for the virtuous’, and K. B. Copeland, ‘The earthly monastery and the transformation of the heavenly city in late antique Egypt’, in R. S. Boustan and A. Y. Reed (eds), Heavenly Realms and Earthly Realities in Late Antique Religions (Cambridge, 2004), 85–100 and 141–58. On the Care to Be Had For the Dead, P. Schaff (ed.), NPNF 1st ser., vol. 3 (1887, reprinted Peabody, MA, 1999), 539–51, ch. 15, 546–7. See also Bremmer, Rise and Fall, 96–7, where it is argued that the element of the story in which it emerges that the wrong person had been summoned to the afterlife already enjoyed a literary existence and that either Curma or Augustine may have embellished the original experience. On the Care to Be Had For the Dead, ch.19, 548–9. Ibid., ch.17, 547–8. Ibid., ch.16, 546–7. Ibid., chs 18–20, 547–9. City of God, Book 1, ch. 13, 10. Bynum, Resurrection, 51–8. On the Care to Be Had For the Dead, ch. 8, 543. City of God, Book 1, ch. 12, 9. On the Care to Be Had For the Dead, ch. 3, 540. City of God, Book 1, ch. 12, 9. On the Care to Be Had For the Dead, ch. 5, 541; City of God, Book 1, ch.12, 9. On the Care to Be Had For the Dead, ch.22, 550–1. Confessions, Book ix, ch.13, 140. M. McCormick, Origins of the European Economy. Communications and Commerce ad 300–900 (Cambridge, 2001), 38–40. F. Dölger, ‘Antike Parallelen zum leidenden Dinocrates in der Passio Perpetuae’,

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Antike und Christentum, 2 (1930), 1–40; Bremmer, Rise and Fall of the Afterlife, 56–70; idem, ‘Perpetua and her diary’, in W. Ameling (ed.), Märtyrer und Märtyrerakten (Stuttgart, 2002), 77–120; B. Shaw, ‘The Passion of Perpetua’, in R. Osborne (ed.), Studies in Ancient Greek and Roman Society (Cambridge, 2004), 286–325. Enchiridion, chs 68–9, 259–60. Enchiridion, ch. 110, 272–3. Ibid. Ibid. See G. R. Edwards, ‘Purgatory: birth or evolution’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 36 (1985), 634–46, esp. 639–40. For earlier evidence of similar concerns, see Dölger, ‘Antike Parallelen’. M. McLaughlin, Consorting with Saints: Prayer for the Dead in Early Medieval France (Ithaca and London, 1994), 192. P. Jay, ‘Le purgatoire dans la prédication de saint Césaire d’Arles’, Revue de Théologie Ancienne et Médievale, 24 (1957), 5–14; Sermons 167 and 179 in Saint Cæsarius of Arles, Sermons, vol. 2, trans. Sister M. M. Mueller, Fathers of the Church, vol. l47 (Washington DC, 1963), 402–9, 449–56. Jay, ‘Purgatoire’, 8. See also ibid., 10–12 for Cæsarius on the fate of the souls of the very good and very bad. Dunn, Emergence, 98–107. Bynum, Resurrection, 1–58. D. T. Reff, Plagues, Priests and Demons. Sacred Narratives and the Rise of Christianity in the Old World and the New (Cambridge, 2005), 70–1. On the Decease of Satyrus, Book ii: On the Belief in the Resurrection, P. Schaff and H. Wace (eds), NPNF, vol. 10, ch. 50, 181 and ch. 65, 184. Ibid., ch. 50, 181. Ibid. chs 54–7, 182–3; Bynum, Resurrection, 19–104. City of God, Book 21, ch. 5, 481–2. G. Clark, ‘Translating relics: Victricius of Rouen and fourth-century debate’, Early Medieval Europe, 10 (2001), 161–76 at 168. 386 ce is also the date of the two imperial rulings, issued at Constantinople, which reaffirmed that bodies were not to be buried or cremated inside the city walls, even if the purpose was to associate them with a martyr-shrine; entombed bodies were not to be disturbed, and it was not lawful to move, dissect or sell the bodies of martyrs. See also N. B. McLynn, Ambrose of Milan. Church and Court in a Christian Capital (Berkeley; Los Angeles; London, 1994), 209–19; P. Brown, The Cult of the Saints (Chicago, 1981), 1–49. The ‘blood’ was bottled and some of it sent off to other cities along with other relics: McLynn, Ambrose, 284. See Gregory of Tours, Glory of the Martyrs, trans. R. van Dam (Liverpool, 1988), chs 46, 69, for an attempt to explain why there was blood; Ambrose seems to suggest there were only bones and blood.

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99 Ambrose, Letter xxii, in P. Schaff and H. Wace (eds), NPNF, 2nd series, vol. 10 (1896, reprinted Peabody, MA, 1999), 436–40. 100 Whitehouse, Arguments and Icons, 1. 101 McLynn, Ambrose, 158–219. 102 McLynn, Ambrose, 284. 103 See Boyer, ‘Reductionistic model’, 17f. 104 G. Clark, ‘Victricius and Vigilantius’, Journal of Early Christian Studies, 7 (1999), 365–99, at 67; A. Rousselle, Croire et Guérir. La Foi en Gaule dans l’Antiquité Tardive (Paris, 1990), 231–50. 105 D. G. Hunter, ‘Vigilantius of Calagurris and Victricius of Rouen: ascetics, relics, and clerics in late Roman Gaul’, Journal of Early Christian Studies 7 (1999), 401–30. 106 Jerome, Against Vigilantius, H. Wace and P. Schaff (eds), NPNF, 2nd ser., vol. 6 (1893, reprinted Peabody, MA, 1999), 417–23, ch. 6, 419. 107 Ibid. 108 Against Vigilantius, ch. 4, 418. 109 City of God, Book 22, chs 8–9, 484–91. 110 City of God, Book 22, ch. 9, 491. 111 City of God, Book 22, ch. 10, 491–2. 112 On the Care to Be Had For the Dead, ch. 20, 540. 113 On the Care to Be Had For the Dead, ch. 22, 550. 114 P. Brown, ‘Enjoying the saints in Late Antiquity’, Early Medieval Europe, 9 (2000), 1–24, esp. 16. Here, Brown revises to some extent the functionalist approach of his Cult of Saints. But whether he fully addresses ‘the deeper, more implicit imaginative structures that explained not only how the saints worked . . . but why the saints worked’, must remain open to question. Brown finds Augustine ‘gloriously unspecific’ (12) about exactly how each individual saint was to be imitated by the faithful – perhaps because Augustine was ultimately more concerned with what people should not do. 115 P. Brown, Relics and Social Status in the Age of Gregory of Tours, Stenton Lecture, 1976 (Reading, 1977). 116 G. Demians d’Archimbaud, ‘Les fouilles de l’abbaye Saint-Victor de Marseille’, Comptes-rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres séances de l’année 1971, Janvier-Mars (Paris, 1971), 87–117. 117 Canon 18 of the Council of Braga, 561: C. W. Barlow (ed.), Martini Episcopi Bracarensis Opera Omnia (New Haven, 1950), 113–14. 118 Synod of Auxerre, canons 13 and 14 in C. de Clercq (ed.), Concilia Galliae A. 511–A. 695 (Turnhout, 1963), 267. 119 B. Effros, ‘Beyond cemetery walls: early medieval funerary topography and Christian salvation’, Early Medieval Europe 6 (1997), 1–23, esp. 5–8; see also Ariès, Hour of Our Death, 32–3. 120 Gregory of Tours, Glory of the Martyrs, ch. 88, 112–13.

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121 Gregory of Tours, Glory of the Martyrs, ch. 33, 53. 122 Synod of Auxerre, canon 12; de Clercq (ed.), Concilia, 267. 123 A. Simmer, ‘Le Nord du Departement de la Moselle à l’époque mérovingienne, Revue Archéologique de l’Est et du Centre-Est, 38 (1987), 333–96, esp. 360–2, for Kirschnaumen, where a probable contemporary of Clovis, of very high rank and possibly of Gallo-Roman origin, is buried in a magnificently furnished tomb. 124 B. K. Young, ‘Paganisme, christianisation et rites funéraires mérovingiens’, Archéologie Médievale, 7 (1977), 5–81, 65. 125 Ibid., 66. 126 See ibid., and also B. Effros, Merovingian Mortuary Archaeology and the Making of the Early Middle Ages (Berkeley; Los Angeles; London, 2003); eadem, Caring For Body and Soul. Burial and the Afterlife in the Merovingian World (University Park, PA, 2002), 41–3, for the questionable late-nineteenth-century idea of the legal obligation to deposit the deceased’s goods in their grave. 127 For a functionalist approach to grave-goods in a study of some of the cemeteries of this region, see G. Halsall, Settlement and Social Organization. The Merovingian Region of Metz (Cambridge, 1995), 75–163, as well as Effros, Merovingian Mortuary Archaeology. 128 Halsall, Settlement, 110–74, esp. 162–3; Young, ‘Paganisme’, and also B. Effros, ‘Beyond cemetery walls’. 129 McCormick, Origins of the European Economy, 38–40. 130 Gregory of Tours, Libri decem historiarum, or Historia Francorum IV, 5, trans. L. Thorpe as History of the Franks (Harmondsworth, 1974), 199–200; idem, Liber vitae patrum, 17.4, E. James, Life of the Fathers (Liverpool, 1985), 39–40. See L. K. Little, ‘Life and afterlife of the first plague pandemic’, in Little (ed.) Plague, 3–32. 131 Historia Langobardorum, 2.4, ed. E. Peters, trans. W. D. Foulke, History of the Lombards (Philadelphia, 1974), 56–8. 132 Jennifer Boyle has drawn my attention to possible evidence of the epidemic’s reaching this area in the 540s: see B. K. Young’s review of Hantute’s study of the Merovingian cemetery at Neuville-sur-Escaut, American Journal of Archaeology, 96 (1992), 196–7. 133 Little, ‘Life and afterlife’, Little (ed.), Plague, 3. 134 Libri decem historiarum IX, 6, History of the Franks, 485; A. J. Stoclet, ‘Consilia humana, ops divina, superstitio; seeking succour and solace in times of plague with particular reference to Gaul in the Early Middle Ages’, Little (ed.), Plague, 135–49, at 137–8. 135 Libri decem historiarum IV, 5, History of the Franks, 200. 136 Libri decem historiarum IV, 31, History of the Franks, 225–7. 137 Barber, Vampires, 5–38. 138 Barber, Vampires, 7. 139 Barber, Vampires, 57. 140 Barber, Vampires, 5–38, 102–19.

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141 Barber, Vampires, 46–81, 154–77. 142 Simmer, Audun, 103, points out the lack of traces of wood to accompany the nails in most cases. Cf. Halsall, Settlement, 160: ‘Simmer’s suggestion that there was a ritual of throwing nails into burials for phylacteric purposes is surely not to be taken seriously’. 143 Graves 48 and 120. 144 Halsall, Settlement, 161, indicates that we should view this with extreme caution as graves are either disturbed or there could have been a disturbed stone covering. But he adds that two cases (graves 123 and 160) seem genuine. Cf. Simmer, Audun, 143–9. 145 Simmer, Audun, 97–202, estimates the proportion at 45 per cent. 146 Simmer, Audun, 99. 147 L. M. Danforth, The Death Rituals of Rural Greece (Princeton, 1982), 45 and in general. See also C. N. Seremetakis, The Last Word: Women, Death and Divination in Inner Mani (Chicago, 1991), esp. 177–212. 148 Danforth, Death Rituals, 35–69. 149 Barber, Vampires, 62. 150 Paxton, Christianizing Death, 98. 151 Libri decem historiarum, X, 1, History of the Franks, 543–7. 152 Sacramentarium Veronense, ed. L. C. Mohlberg; Rerum ecclesiasticarum documenta, series maior, fontes I (Rome, 1956), nos 1141 and 1145. 153 T. M. Charles-Edwards, ‘The social background to Irish peregrinatio’, Celtica II (1976), 43–59; idem, Early Christian Ireland (Oxford, 2000), 82; V. W. Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (1969). L. J. Taylor, ‘Stories of power, powerful stories: the drunken priest in Donegal’, in E. Badone (ed.), Religious Orthodoxy and Popular Faith in European Society (Princeton, NJ, 1990), 163–84, esp. 179–84, discusses an extreme example in which modern priests, ‘silenced’ by the bishop and thus effectively marginalized or liminalized, were popularly thought to possess exceptional powers. 154 See H. Whitehouse, Inside the Cult. Religious Innovation and Transmission in Papua New Guinea (Oxford, 1995); J. Sørensen, ‘Charisma, tradition and ritual; a cognitive approach to magical agency’, in Whitehouse and McCauley (eds), Mind and Religion, 167–86. 155 M. Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, trans. and ed. A. M. Henderson and T. Parsons (London; Edinburgh; Glasgow, 1947), 141. 156 M. Dunn, ‘Columbanus, charisma and the revolt of the monks of Bobbio’, Peritia 20 (2006–7), 1–27. 157 For a discussion of the powers of druids and holy men in Irish culture in the conversion period, see Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 182–240. 158 J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, The Frankish Church (Oxford, 1983), 63–4. 159 G. S. M. Walker (ed.), Sancti Columbani Opera Scriptores Latini Hiberniae II (Dublin, 1957, reprinted 1970), 60–114. See also C. Stancliffe, ‘The thirteen sermons

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167 168 169

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attributed to Columbanus and the question of their authorship’, in M. Lapidge (ed.), Columbanus. Studies on the Latin Writings (Woodbridge, 1997), 93–202. Stancliffe suggests, 199, that the sermons were composed in the later, Italian, stages of Columbanus’ career, for his monks. D. Bullough, ‘The career of Columbanus’, ibid., 1–28, at 24 suggests that they might have been preached either at Bobbio or at Milan. Dunn, Emergence, 150–1; R. A. Greer, ‘Pastoral care and discipline’, in A. Casiday and F. W. Norris (eds), Constantine to c.600, Cambridge History of Christianity, vol. 2 (Cambridge, 2007), 567–84, esp. 580–2. For a discussion of the idea that although pagan in origin, native Irish law might be ‘naturally’ good, see Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 197. T. O. Clancy and G. Márkus, Iona. The Earliest Poetry of a Celtic Monastery (Edinburgh, 1995), 44–53: the poem itself stresses the activity of God and the divinity of Christ, presumably in an attempt to counter any possible misunderstandings of the nature of the Christian God. Paxton, Christianizing Death, 51–2; Cæsarius, sermons 60 and 61, trans. Sister M. M. Mueller, Saint Cæsarius of Arles, Sermons, vol. 1, Fathers of the Church, vol. 31 (New York, 1956), 295–303. Penitential of Finnian, 34, in J. T. McNeill and H. Gamer (eds), Medieval Handbooks of Penance (New York, 1938), 94; Paxton, Christianizing Death, 87. Walker (ed.), Sancti Columbani Opera, 98–9. O. J. Benedictow, The Black Death 1346–1353. The Complete History (Woodbridge, 2003), 236–7 gives a survival period of one day or less on average for primary pneumonic plague and three days for the more usual secondary pneumonic plague; at 25–6 he gives a survival rate of 20 per cent for plague in its bubonic form and 0 per cent for the primary bacteraemic type, with practically 0 per cent for the secondary bacteraemic form. See the discussion of this and subsequent outbreaks in Little, ‘Life and afterlife’, 10–11 in Little (ed.), Plague. Cyprian, On the Mortality, 469–70. Ionae Vitae Columbani Abbatis Discipulorumque Eius Libri II, in B. Krusch (ed.), Vitae Sanctorum Columbani, Vedastis, Iohannnis, Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum in Usum Scholarum ex Monumentis Germaniae Historicis Separatim Editis (Hannover and Leipzig, 1905), Book i, ch. 5, 161. For the death of Sisetrude, cellaress of Faremoutiers, see Krusch (ed.), Ionae Vita Columbani Liber II, ch.11, 257–9; translation in J. A. McNamara, J. E. Halborg, E. G. Whately, Sainted Women of the Dark Ages (Durham and London, 1992), 162–3; also Ionae Vita Columbani Liber II, ch. 15, 264–6, and Sainted Women, 166–7, for the incident of the soul of the dead adolescent who manages to win extra time for her mother to make full penance before death. For Eustasius, see Krusch (ed.), Ionae Vita Columbani Liber II, ch. 10, 256–7.

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171 Ibid., chs 11–15, 257–66. 172 B. Raftery, Pagan Celtic Ireland. The Enigma of the Irish Iron Age (London, 1994), 89, 179–99. 173 Dunn, ‘Gregory the Great, the vision of Fursey’; M. Brown, The Life of St Fursey: What We Know; Why It Matters, Fursey Occasional Papers No. 1 (Norwich, 2003); M. Dunn, The Vision of St Fursey and the Development of Purgatory, Fursey Occasional Papers No. 2 (Norwich, 2007).

Notes to Chapter 3: Gregory the Great and the English Mission 1 B. Colgrave, text, trans. and notes, The Earliest Life of Gregory the Great by an Anonymous Monk of Whitby (Lawrence, KS, 1968), ch. 9, 91. 2 Ibid., ch. 10, 91–2. 3 HE II, 1. 4 Moralia, XXVII, XI, 21, ed. M. Adriaen; S. Gregorii Magni, Moralia in Iob, CCSL vol. CXLIIIB (Turnhout, 1985), 1346; R. Markus, Gregory the Great and His World (Cambridge, 1997), 186 n. 99 suggests the reference is to the much earlier Christianization of the Welsh. 5 Ep. XI, 36: cuius amore in Brittannia fratres quaerimus, quos ignoramus, cuius munere, quos nescientes quaerebamus, invenimus. D. Norberg (ed.), S. Gregorii Magni. Registrum Epistularum Libri VIII–XIV, CCSL, vol. CLXa (Turnhout,1982) (henceforward Registrum, 2), 925. 6 Moralia, XXIX, XXXI, 72, CCSL vol. CXLIIIB, 1484–5; R. Markus, ‘Gregory the Great’s pagans’ in R. Gameson and H. Leyser (eds), Belief and Culture in the Middle Ages. Studies Presented to Henry Mayr-Harting (Oxford, 2001), 23–34. See also H-D. Kahl, ‘Die ersten Jahrhunderte des missionsgeschichtlichen Mittelalters’, in Kirchengeschichte als Missionsgeschichte, Band 2, Die Kirche des frühen Mittelalters, ed. K. Schäferdiek, [Erster Halbband] (München, 1978), 11–76, esp. 42–4. 7 Markus, ‘Gregory the Great’s pagans’, 33–4. 8 Ibid., 33. 9 See the English translation by H. Sweet, St Gregory the Great: Pastoral Care (Westminster, 1950). 10 E.g. Ep. IX, 38, in Registrum, 2, 597. 11 Ep. I, 34, in D. Norberg (ed.), S. Gregorii Magni. Registrum Epistularum Libri I–VII vol. 1, CCSL vol.CLX (Turnhout, 1982) (henceforward Registrum, 1), 42. 12 Moralia II, XXXVI, 59, ed. M. Adriaen, CCSL vol. CXLIIII (Turnhout, 1979), 96; my translation. 13 Ep. I, 45, Registrum, 1, 59. 14 Markus, Gregory the Great, 82. 15 Ep. IV, 26, Registrum, 1, 244–6; Ep. IX, 205, Registrum, 2, 764, my translation.

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Ep. VIII, 19, Registrum, 2, 538. Ep. III, 59, Registrum, 1, 207–8. Ep. IV, 25, Registrum, 1, 245. Ep. IV, 27, Registrum, 1, 246, my translation. Ibid. Ep. IV, 29, Registrum, 1, 247–8. In general, see now C. Chazelle and C. Cubitt (eds), The Crisis of the Oikoumeme. The Three Chapters and the Failed Quest for Unity in the Sixth Century Mediterranean (Turnhout, 2007). S. C. Fanning, ‘Lombard Arianism reconsidered’, Speculum 56 (1981), 41–58. Ep. I, 17, Registrum, 1, 16–17. Ep. II, 2, September, 591 to Praiecticius, Bishop of Narni, Registrum, 1, 90–1; Ep. IX, 103, January, 599 to Venantius of Luni, Registrum, 2, 655. Markus, Gregory the Great, 40. Ep. V, 58–60, Registrum, 1, 354–62; Ep., VI, 5, ibid., 372–3. Ep. VI, 10, Registrum, 1, 378–9. B. Yorke, Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England (London, 1990), 16–17. HE I, 25; M. Werner, ‘The Liudhard medalet’, Anglo-Saxon England 20 (1992), 27–41. For example, A. M. Luiselli Fadda, ‘The vernacular in Anglo-Saxon missionary activity’, in P. Holtrop and H. McLeod (eds), Missions and Missionaries, Studies in Church History, Subsidia 13 (Woodbridge, 2000), 1–15. I. Wood, ‘The mission of Augustine of Canterbury to the English’, Speculum 69 (1994), 1–17, 10: ‘Since it was the Angles rather than the Pope who were prime movers in the mission . . .’. Ibid, 9, for the contrary suggestion that it was Gregory who took the initiative: ‘In 596 he [Gregory] effected a revolution in Merovingian attitudes.’ HE II, 5. See A. Woolf, ‘Community, identity and kingship in early England’, in W. O. Frazer and A. Tyrrell (eds), Social Identity in Early Medieval Britain (London, 2000), 91–111; Ep. VI, 60 to Brunichildis, July, 596, Registrum, 1, 433. Ep.VI, 53, Registrum, 1, 426. Wood, ‘Mission’, 5: ‘Gregory’s interest in the Angles cannot be separated from his concern about the Frankish Church.’ Ep. VI, 54, Registrum, 1, 427. Ep. VI, 52, Registrum, 1, 425. Ep. VI, 55, Registrum, 1, 428. Ep. VI, 56, Registrum, 1, 429. Ep. VI, 59, Registrum, 1, 432. Ep. VI, 51, Registrum, 1, 423–4. Ep. VI, 50, Registrum, 1, 423.

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45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53

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56

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60 61 62 63

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Ep. VI, 58, Registrum, 1, 431. Ep. VI, 60, Registrum, 1, 433. Ep. VI, 51, Registrum, 1, 423–4, my translation. Ibid., my translation. Wood, ‘Mission’, 4, rejects the idea that the deficient priests e vicino might have been Welsh. Ibid. Ep. IX, 223, Registrum, 2, 794–7. Ep. XI, 48, Registrum, 2, 946–7. Ep. XI, 51, Registrum, 2, 950–1. Ep. XI, 35, Registrum, 2, 923–4. P. Meyevart, ‘Bede’s text of the Libellus Responsionum of Gregory the Great to Augustine of Canterbury’, in England Before the Conquest: Studies in Primary Sources Presented to Dorothy Whitelock (Cambridge, 1971), 15–33, 31, suggests that Bede knew the letter though he does not reproduce it. HE I, 25. The reception accorded to a churchman by a king could be, in the construction of a hagiographer, of crucial importance to their future relationship. Adomnán of Iona, Life of St Columba, trans. and ed. R. Sharpe (Harmondsworth, 1995), Book II, ch. 35, 184, claims that when King Bridei of the Picts failed to have the gates of his fortress opened quickly enough for St Columba, the holy man opened them himself by a miracle. The king and his council promptly came out to greet him and treated him with respect ‘for as long as he lived’. HE, Preface; and for the problems associated with this, see J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People. A Historical Commentary (Oxford, 1988), 30–1 and 38–9, and the references given there. Ep. VIII, 29, Registrum, 2, 550–3. Ep. XI, 36, Registrum, 2, 925–9. See the discussion in W. D. McCready, Signs of Sanctity: Miracles in the Thought of Gregory the Great (Toronto, 1989), 20–32. McCready treats the Dialogues and the repeated/similar miracle stories in the Gospel Homilies as part of the genuine Gregorian oeuvre. HE I, 29. See HE at 104–5, n. 3; Wallace-Hadrill, Historical Commentary, 43–4. Ep. XI, 37, Registrum, 2, 929–32. Ep. XI, 56, Registrum, 2, 961–2.

Notes to Chapter 4: Anglo-Saxon Paganism and the Living 1 The Penitential does not claim to be Theodore’s own compilation, but presents itself as the work of a ‘Disciple of the Northumbrians’, who writes in the preface that a priest named Eoda had questioned Theodore and was given several rulings

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and that Theodore had also approved of the judgements of an Irish penitential, generally thought to be that of Cummean: T. M. Charles-Edwards, ‘The Penitential of Theodore and the Iudicia Theodori’, in M. Lapidge (ed.), Archbishop Theodore (Cambridge, 1995), 141–74; ibid., M. Brett, ‘Theodore and the Latin canon law’, 120–40; A. J. Frantzen, The Literature of Penance in Anglo-Saxon England (New Brunswick, NJ, 1983), 62–9 and idem, ‘The tradition of penitentials in AngloSaxon England, Anglo-Saxon England 11 (1983), 23–56 at 27–30. References here are to the English translation by J. T. McNeill and H. Gamer, Medieval Handbooks of Penance (New York, 1938), 179–215. Other texts of disputed date contain rulings attributed to Theodore – the Capitula Dacheriana, the Capitula Sancti Gregorii Papae, the Iudicium de penitentia Theodori episcopi and the second part of the Sangallenses tripartitum; see Frantzen, ‘Tradition’, 28. Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Paganism, 5–6. His first chapter provides an extensive discussion of toponymic evidence; see also M. Gelling, ‘Place-names and AngloSaxon paganism’, University of Birmingham Historical Journal 8, 1961, 7–25. Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Paganism, 13, 116–17, 146–9; Branston, Lost Gods, 74, adds two more. M Gelling, Signposts to the Past. Place Names and the History of England (London, 1978), 158–61; Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Paganism, 11–12; R. North, Heathen Gods in Old English Literature (Cambridge, 1997), 233. D. W. Rollason, The Mildrith Legend. A Study in Early Medieval Hagiography in England (Leicester, 1982), 11; North, Heathen Gods, 238–40. Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Paganism, 12; C. Behr, ‘The origins of kingship in early medieval Kent’, Early Medieval Europe 9 (2000), 25–52. Owen, Rites and Religions, 10; Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Paganism, 201; and see the reservations of Gelling, ‘Place-names’, 14. Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Paganism, 21. See also C. Fell, ‘Paganism in Beowulf: a semantic fairy-tale’, in T. Hofstra, L. A. J. R. Houwen and A. A. MacDonald (eds), Pagans and Christians. The Interplay between Christian Latin and Traditional Germanic Cultures in Early Medieval Europe, Germania Latina II (Groningen, 1995), 9–34, esp. 18–19. H. R. Ellis Davidson, ‘Scandinavian cosmology’, in C. Blacker and M. Loewe (eds), Ancient Cosmologies (London, 1975), 172–97, 173. See A. Hultgård, ‘Old Scandinavian and Christian eschatology’, in T. Ahlbäck (ed.), Old Norse and Finnish Religions (Stockholm, 1990), 344–57, which discusses the extent of possible Christian influence on works such as Gylfaginning; see also in the same volume, 328–43, M. Görman, ‘Nordic and Celtic religion in Southern Scandinavia during the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age’. North, Heathen Gods, 124–31. Owen, Rites and Religions, 13, associates the god she calls Odin/Woden with Valhalla; North, Heathen Gods, 105–6.

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13 Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Paganism, 3. 14 For early approaches of this type, see H. M. Chadwick, The Origins of the English Nation (Cambridge, 1907) and E. A. Philippson, Germanisches Heidentum bei den Angelsachsen (Leipzig, 1929). See also Branston’s Lost Gods; North’s detailed linguistic and literary study in Heathen Gods; and Owen, Rites and Religions. 15 Owen, Rites and Religions, pl. 3 facing 19. 16 North, Heathen Gods, 323–30. 17 Owen, Rites and Religions, 11. 18 Tacitus, Germania, ch. 40: translation in North, Heathen Gods, 19–20, n. 59. 19 For more detail on these theories and arguments, see North, Heathen Gods, 1–25; Branston, Lost Gods, 127–56; Chadwick, Origins of the English, 234–302. 20 See North, Heathen Gods, 1–110, 204–72, and Chadwick, Origins, 234–68. North also suggests that the cult of Anglian kingship was based originally on legends of a god who married a fertility goddess and was then ritually sacrificed. 21 He also appears as Ida’s ancestor in later versions of this list – Vespasian B. vi and Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (A), as Ingibrand and Inguic. See D. Dumville, ‘The Anglian collection of royal genealogies and regnal lists’, Anglo-Saxon England 5 (1967), 23–50; North, Heathen Gods, 43; Branston, Lost Gods, 127–56. 22 North, Heathen Gods, 78–110, 304–42; Behr, ‘Origins of kingship’. 23 HE II, 12; Life of Gregory, ch. 16, 98–101. 24 North, Heathen Gods, 304–42. 25 North, ibid., suggests that Bede’s description of the pagan priest Coifi’s casting of a spear over the pagan temple at Goodmanham in Deira when he renounces paganism characterize Coifi as a follower of Woden. This is suggested to him by a later description of Odin’s starting a war amongst the Norse gods – Æsir and Vanir – with a similar gesture. North proposes that there was a now-lost Anglian poem on a similar theme and detects what he believes to be further allusions to the Vanir, amongst whom he counts the fertility god Ingui, in Bede. However the shrine at Goodmanham is likely to have been associated not with Ingui, but with Woden himself. Note the remarks of C. Fell, ‘Paganism in Beowulf ’ esp. 10, and also R. I. Page, ‘Anglo-Saxon paganism: the evidence of Bede’, in T. Hofstra, L. A. J. R. Houwen and A. A. MacDonald (eds), Pagans and Christians. The Interplay between Christian Latin and Traditional Germanic Cultures in Early Medieval Europe, Germania Latina II (Groningen, 1995), 99–129 esp. at 111 and 128–9. 26 Owen, Rites and Religions, 11: ‘Seven Anglo-Saxon royal houses include Woden, son of Frealaf, among their ancestors: the Anglian dynasties of Bernicia, Deira, East Anglia, Lindsey and Mercia; Kent; and the Saxon kingdom of Wessex. Recent study of the genealogies suggests that Woden was originally adopted as a forebear by an Anglian line, one of a group of pseudo-ancestors absorbed by Kent and Wessex during a period of Anglian supremacy, perhaps on the occasion of a dynastic marriage in each case.’ See also Dumville, ‘Anglian collection’ and idem, ‘Kingship,

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genealogies and regnal lists’, in P. H. Sawyer and I. N. Wood (eds), Early Medieval Kingship (Leeds, 1977), 72–104; North, Heathen Gods, 26–77. See North, Heathen Gods, 44–77, for late reflexes of the pre-Christian cult of Ingui. Philippson, Germanisches Heidentum, 117–19; W. Chaney, The Cult of Kingship in Anglo-Saxon England (Manchester, 1970), 133. There may be a later identification between Seaxnet and Tyr. Yorke, Kings and Kingdoms, 16. Chadwick, Origins, 234–302; Chaney, Cult of Kingship, 88–9. De Temporibus liber secundus, ch. 15, in Bede: The Reckoning of Time, trans. F. Wallis (Liverpool, 1999), 53–4. For a highly cautious evaluation of Bede’s information see R. I. Page, ‘Anglo-Saxon paganism: the evidence of Bede’. For a positive evaluation of Bede’s remarks on months and gods, see A. Meaney, ‘Bede and Anglo-Saxon paganism’, Parergon 3 (1985), 1–29; cf. Owen, Rites and Religions, 34. North, Heathen Gods, 204–72, esp. 227. C. Tolley, ‘Oswald’s tree’, in Hofstra, Houwen and MacDonald (eds), Pagans and Christians, 149–73. HE III, 2. H. R. Ellis Davidson, Myths and Symbols in Pagan Europe. Early Scandinavian and Celtic Religions (Manchester, 1988), 21–7; Branston, Lost Gods, 175–7 for Yggdrasil, Irminul and maypoles. Ellis Davidson, ‘Scandinavian cosmology’, 175; Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Paganism, 17–18; 115–6; 118–22; 142–6; 150–1; 159. Branston, Lost Gods, 174; K. L. Jolly, Popular Religion in Late Saxon England. Elf Charms in Context (Chapel Hill, 1996), 106–7; 125–7. H. R. Ellis Davidson, Lost Beliefs, 69. Branston, Lost Gods, 175; A. Hultgard, ‘Old Scandinavian and Christian eschatology’, in T. Ahlbäck (ed.), Old Norse and Finnish Religions and Cultic Place-Names (Åbo, 1990), 343–57. A. Becker, Franks Casket. Zu den Bildern und Inschriften des Runenkastchens von Auzon (Regensburg, 1973). Becker, Franks Casket, 95–115. For alternative interpretations of all or parts of the casket by an art historian, see A. L. Vandersall, ‘The date and provenance of the Franks Casket’, Gesta 11 (1972), 9–26 and the numerous references contained therein to other approaches. She suggests, at 14, that the burial scene relates at least in part to the Sigurd-legend, but notes that Schneider thinks the subject is Baldr. See also C. Neuman de Vegvar, ‘The travelling twins: Romulus and Remus in Anglo-Saxon England’, in J. Hawkes and S. Mills (eds), Northumbria’s Golden Age (Stroud, 1999), 259–67, who suggests (266–7, n. 14) that Becker’s reading of

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the casket as casting a spell is problematic because the Christianized elite would have found the use of magic ‘repugnant or at least inappropriate’. Becker, Franks Casket; I. N. Wood, ‘Ripon, Francia and the Franks Casket in the Early Middle Ages’, Northern History, 26 (1990), 1–19; L. Webster, ‘The iconographic programme of the Franks Casket’, in Hawkes and Mills (eds), Northumbria’s Golden Age, 227–46; ibid., J. Lang, ‘The imagery of the Franks Casket’, 247–55; Neuman de Vegvar, ‘Travelling twins’, places it in the first half of the eighth century. J. Bradley, ‘Sorcerer or symbol? Weland the smith in Anglo-Saxon sculpture and verse’, Pacific Coast Philology 25 (1990), 39–48. Neuman de Vegvar, ‘Travelling twins’, 265; for examples of dual kingship in the seventh century, see Yorke, Kings and Kingdoms, 49. B. Lincoln, ‘The Indo-European myth of creation’, History of Religions 15 (1975), 121–45; J. Puhvel, ‘Remus et frater’, History of Religions 15 (1975), 146–57. Vandersall, ‘Date and provenance of the Franks Casket’; and see especially the perceptive review of Becker by R. Frank in Speculum 52 (1977), 120–2, which is an excellent introduction to the whole topic. A notable exception is Becker, but as Frank observes he fails to grasp the significance of the later comparators or to acknowledge the possibility of a later date. Wood, ‘Franks Casket’, 7, acknowledges that the iconographic scheme of the Casket has no parallels in the period to which he assigns it. J. B. T. Christie, ‘Reflections on the legend of Weland the smith’, Folklore 80 (1969), 286–94. Boyer, Religion Explained, 160; B. Meyer, ‘Beyond syncretism: translation and diabolization in the appropriation of Protestantism in Africa’, in C. Stewart and R. Shaw (eds), Syncretism: Anti-syncretism. The Politics of Religious Synthesis (London, 1994), 45–68, at 53; see also J. S. Mbiti, Concepts of God in Africa (London, 1970). K. Armstrong, A Short History of Myth (Edinburgh, 2005), 20. Branston, Lost Gods, 75. J. Trinkunas (ed.), Of Gods and Holidays. The Baltic Heritage (Vilnius, 1999), 62–3. The Annals of Tacitus, ed. H. Furneaux, vol II (Oxford, 1907), 228: sed bellum Hermunduris prosperum, Chattis exitiosius fuit, quia victores diversam aciem Marti ac Mercurio sacravere, quo voto equi viri, cuncta [victa] occidioni dantur. Branston, Lost Gods, 74. Ibid. Letter of Bishop Daniel of Winchester to St Boniface in C. H. Talbot (ed.), The Anglo-Saxon Missionaries in Germany (London, 1954), 75–8, 77. HE II, 15: atque in eodem fano et altare haberet . . . et arulam . . . For syncretism see Stewart and Shaw (eds), Syncretism: Anti-syncretism and R. M. Karras, ‘Pagan survivals and syncretism in the conversion of Saxony’, Catholic Historical Review 72 (1986), 553–72.

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61 Boyer, Religion Explained, 160–73. 62 B. Meyer, ‘Beyond syncretism’, 53. 63 See Davidson, Lost Beliefs, 107–26, for a general discussion of such beings and, on Norse goddesses, E. Mundal, ‘The position of the individual gods and goddesses in various types of sources – with special reference to the female divinities’, in Ahlbäck (ed.), Old Norse and Finnish Religions, 294–313. 64 A. H. Leonowens, The English Governess at the Siamese Court. Recollections of Six Years in the Royal Palace at Bangkok (1870, reprinted London, 1980), 166. 65 For all these points, see A. Hall, Elves in Anglo-Saxon England. Matters of Belief, Health, Gender and Identity, Anglo-Saxon Studies 8 (Woodbridge, 2007). 66 Hall, Elves, 148–55. 67 Boyer, Religion Explained, 264. There are numerous discussions of ritual, from many different perspectives, notably ibid., 262–302; C. Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (Oxford, 1992); eadem, Ritual Perspectives and Dimensions (Oxford, 1997). See also J. Beatie, ‘On understanding ritual’, in B. R. Wilson (ed.), Rationality (Oxford, 1970), 240–69; S. J. Tambiah, A Performative Approach to Ritual (London, 1979); T. Ahlbäck (ed.), Ritualistics (Åbo, 2003). The best-known older works are van Gennep, Rites of Passage; V. W. Turner, The Drums of Affliction (Oxford and London, 1968); idem, Dramas, Fields and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society (Ithaca, NY and London, 1974); V. W. and E. Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture (New York, 1978). See in addition F. Bowie, The Anthropology of Religion (2nd edn, Oxford, 2006), 138–73; and for cognitive approaches, R. McCauley and E. T. Lawson, Bringing Ritual to Mind. Psychological Foundations of Cultural Forms (Cambridge, 2002); H. Whitehouse and J. Laidlaw (eds), Ritual and Memory. 68 Boyer, Religion Explained, 277–8; C. Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (London, 1975), 147–8. 69 Dowden, European Paganism, 169–70, discusses sacrifice both as reinforcing communal identity and as an offering to divinity. 70 B. C. Alexander, ‘Ritual and current studies of ritual: overview’, in S. D. Glazier (ed.), Anthropology of Religion: A Handbook (Westport, CT, 1997) 139–60, 139. 71 HE I, 30. 72 The continued practice of animal sacrifices to the pagan gods well into the period of Christianization is attested by Penitential of Theodore I, xv, 1 and 5, 198. 73 De Temporibus liber secundus, ch. 15 in Wallis, Bede: The Reckoning of Time, 53–4. 74 In Danish, November was called Slagtemaaned and in Old Swedish, Blotmånad or Slagtmånad; see Meaney, ‘Bede and Anglo-Saxon paganism’, 5. 75 De Temporibus liber secundus, ch. 15 in Wallis, Bede: The Reckoning of Time, 53–4. 76 Meaney, ‘Bede’, 6. 77 For these classifications, see McCauley and Lawson, Bringing Ritual to Mind, 1–37 and also E. T. Lawson, ‘Ritual form and ritual frequency: from ethnographic

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80 81

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reports to experimental findings’, in Whitehouse and McCauley, Mind and Religion, 57–68. McCauley and Lawson, Bringing Ritual To Mind, 122. Ibid., 26, 30–1, 123–4. They disagree with Whitehouse in that they think it takes not just infrequency and terror but also an intuition of importance of ritual to create a permanent memory. Whitehouse, Arguments and Icons, 31 and passim. Tacitus, Germania, ch. 39, H. W. Benario (ed.), Tacitus. Germany (Warminster, 1999), 50–1: Vetustissimos se nobilissimosque Sueborum Semnones memorant. fides antiquitatis religione firmatur. stato tempore in silvam auguriis patrum et prisca formidine sacram omnes eiusdem sanguinis populi legationibus coeunt caesoque publice homine celebrant barbari ritus horrenda primordia. Ibid.: eoque omnis superstitio respicit, tamquam inde initia gentis, ibi regnator omnium deus, cetera subiecta atque parentia. adicit auctoritatem fortuna Semnonum: centum pagi iis habitantur magnoque corpore efficitur ut se Sueborum caput credant. B. Lincoln, Death, War and Sacrifice. Studies in Ideology and Practice (Chicago and London, 1991), 12–13. Est et alia luco reverentia: nemo nisi vinculo ligatus ingreditur, ut minor et potestatem numinis prae se ferens. Si forte prolapsus est, attolli et insurgere haud licitum: per humum evolvuntur. Dowden, European Paganism, 274–90. See ibid., 287, for what may be similar rites amongst the pagan Lithuanians. Sidonius, Poems and Letters vol. II, trans. W. B. Anderson (London and Cambridge, MA, 1965), Book 8, vi, 430–3. Tacitus, Germania, ch. 9, Benario (ed.), Tacitus. Germany, 22–3: Deorum maxime Mercurium colunt, cui certis diebus humanis quoque hostiis litare fas habent. Herculem et Martem concessis animalibus placant. pars Sueborum et Isidi sacrificat: unde causa et origo peregrino sacro, parum comperi, nisi quod signum ipsum in modum liburnae figuratum docet advectam religionem. E.g. Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Paganism, 34. Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Paganism, 34; Chaney, Cult of Kingship, 117 ff.; Tolley, ‘Oswald’s tree’, 167–8. HE IV, 13. L. Honko, ‘Riter: en klassifikation’, in Nordisk folktro. Studier tillägnade CarlHerman Tillhagen (Lund, 1976), 70–84, suggests a tripartite classification of rites – rites of passage; calendar rites; and crisis rites. Bell, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions, 94, proposes six categories, though notes there may be a degree of overlap: rites of passage and ‘life crisis’ rituals; calendar and commemorative rites; rites of communion and exchange; rites of affliction; feasts, fasts and festivals; political rituals.

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92 B. Hope-Taylor, Yeavering, An Anglo-British Centre of Early Northumbria (London, 1977), 97–116, 325–32; Meaney, ‘Bede and Anglo-Saxon paganism’, 9–12. 93 Branston, Lost Gods, 74, adds Tislea (now lost) and Tifield, both originally in South Saxon territory. 94 Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Paganism, 42. 95 For these, see Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Paganism, 1–21 and also idem, ‘A note on O. E. hearg and weoh as place-name elements representing different types of pagan worship sites’, Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 4 (1985), 179–83. 96 Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Paganism, 10. 97 M. O. H. Carver, Sutton Hoo. A Seventh-Century Princely Burial Ground and Its Context (London, 2005), xl, 347, 459. 98 A. W. Smith, ‘The luck in the head: a problem in English folklore’, Folklore 73 (1962), 13–24. 99 Aldhelm, Letter V: to Heahfrith, in M. Lapidge and M. Herren, Aldhelm. The Prose Works (Cambridge; Totowa, NJ, 1979), 160–2. 100 Ibid., 254–6. 101 For sacred geography in a medieval Indian context, see N. Lahiri, ‘Archaeologicial landscapes and textual images: a study of the sacred geography of late medieval Ballabgarh’, World Archaeology 28 (1996), 244–64. 102 Ibid., 257. 103 See also A. Rouselle, Croire et Guérir. La Foi en Gaule Dans L’Antiquité Tardive (Paris, 1990), 30–107, for pagan shrines in Gaul in late antiquity. 104 Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Paganism, 7–8, 17. 105 The concept of Germanic sacral kingship has divided scholars – see the contrasting approaches of Chaney, Cult of Kingship; J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, Early Germanic Kingship in England and on the Continent (Oxford, 1971); and D. H. Green, Language and History in the Early Germanic World (Cambridge, 1998), 121–40. On the possible existence of regular assemblies of the gens Anglorum, see A. Woolf, ‘Community, identity and kingship’, esp. 106–7. 106 Tacitus, Germania, ch. 10, Benario (ed.), Tacitus. Germany, 22–5: . . . publice aluntur isdem nemoribus ac lucis candidi et nullo mortali opere contacti . . . nec ulli auspicio maior fides, non solum apud plebem sed apud proceres, apud sacerdotes: se enim ministros deorum, illos conscios putant. This chapter also refers to the custom of predicting the outcome of war by observing captives in combat. 107 Carver, Sutton Hoo, 283, 287–8; V. I. Evison, An Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Great Chesterford, Essex, CBA Research Report 91 (York, 1994), 29–30 and 67–70; Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Paganism, 101. 108 Tacitus, Germania, ch. 10, Benario (ed.), Tacitus. Germany, 22–5; Cicero, De Divinatione, I, 85, in R. Giomini (ed.), M. Tulli Ciceronis, De Divinatione. De Fato. Timaeus (Berlin, 1975), 51. For an attempt at a typology of forms of divination, see Å. Hultkrantz, ‘Divinationsformer: en klassifikation’, in Nordisk folktro, 49–70.

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109 Life of Gregory the Great, ch. 15, 98–9. 110 W. James, The Listening Ebony: Moral Knowledge, Religion and Power Among the Uduk of Sudan (Oxford, 1988); Boyer, Religion Explained, 80. 111 Tacitus, Germania, ch. 10, Benario (ed.), Tacitus. Germany, 22–5: Auspicia sortesque ut qui maxime observant. sortium consuetudo simplex. virgam frugiferae arbori decisam in surculos amputant eosque notis quibusdam super candidam vestem temere ac fortuito spargunt. mox, si publice consultetur, sacerdos civitatis, si privatim, ipse pater familiae, precatos deos caelumque suspiciens ter singulo tollit, sublatis secundum inpressam ante notam interpretatur. 112 Jolly, Popular Religion, 125–8. 113 Owen, Rites and Religions, 12; Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Paganism, 39. 114 North, Heathen Gods, 86. 115 HE I, 11. 116 Boyer, Religion Explained, 315. 117 Ibid., 316. See also Firth’s distinction between priests on one hand and ‘spirit mediums’ on the other: Rank and Religion, 27–63, 261–96. 118 Å. Hultkrantz, ‘The shaman and the medicine man’, Social Science and Medicine 20 (1985), 511–15. ‘Medicine-men’ resort to magic and invoke spiritual aid and might even go into a light trance when healing the sick, but also employ practical knowledge and traditional medical lore (‘ethnomedicine’). See also his Shamanic Healing and Ritual Drama (New York, 1992), 17–21 and A-L. Siikala, ‘Singing of incantations in Nordic tradition’, in Ahlbäck (ed.), Old Norse and Finnish Religions, 191–205. 119 A. L. Meaney, Anglo-Saxon Amulets and Curing Stones, BAR British Series 96 (Oxford, 1981), 249–62; T. M. Dickinson, ‘An Anglo-Saxon cunning woman from Bidford-on-Avon’, in M. Carver (ed.), In Search of Cult, University of York Archaeological Papers (Woodbridge, 1993), 45–54. 120 Penitential of Theodore II, x, 5, 208. 121 Penitential of Theodore I, xv, 4, 198. 122 See M-L. Keinänen, ‘Re-reading Finno-Ugrian religions from a gender point of view’, in T. Ahlbäck (ed.), Approaching Religion, vol. II (Åbo, 1999), 131–53. 123 This canon is partly based on Canon 24 (sometimes numbered as 23) of the Council of Ancyra, 314, which itself does not make any reference to somnia. See also the Excarpsus Cummeani ‘De Canone Anchiritano 24’, F. W. H. Wasserschleben, Die Bussordnungen der abendländischen Kirche (Graz, 1958, reprint of 1851 edn), 482. On the attribution of canons 20–25 to the Council of Ancyra, see S. Parvis, ‘The canons of Ancyra and Caesarea (314): Lebon’s thesis revisited’, Journal of Theological Studies, n.s. 52 (2001), 625–36. I. Moreira, ‘Dreams and divination in early medieval canonical and narrative sources’, Catholic Historical Review 89 (2003), 621–42, considers the interpretation of dreams in the sense of ‘passive divination’, where the dream is involuntary rather than induced through drugs

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or trance. However, the article does bring out the difference between late antique prohibitions, which are not concerned with dreams, and those of later penitentials, which associate dreams with divination and incantation. The apparent involvement of clerics in these latter activities, and the severe penalties laid down for them, suggest something more than the simple interpretation of dreams. The original canon of the Council of Ancyra prescribes five years’ public penance, the last two years marking a step towards readmission to communion. For routine female divination of dreams and involvement in ritual funerary laments in modern Greek rural society, see C. N. Seremetakis, The Last Word: Women, Death and Divination in Inner Mani (Chicago, 1991), 56–63, 95–169. The classic study is that of M. Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (London, 1964), but note the criticisms of Hultkrantz, ‘Shaman and medicineman’ and also Shamanic Healing, 19. See also C. Ginzburg, Ecstasies. Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath (London, 1990); R. Hutton, Shamans (London and New York, 2001); and for problems of definition, regional variation and both scholarly and popular approaches, J. M. Atkinson, ‘Shamanisms today’, Annual Review of Anthropology 21 (1992), 207–30. Hultkrantz, ‘Shaman and medicine-man’, 512. Firth, Rank and Religion, 261–96. M. R. Godden, ‘Anglo-Saxons on the mind’, in M. Lapidge and H. Gneuss (eds), Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England: Studies Presented to Peter Clemoes on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday (Cambridge, 1985), 271–98. S. O. Glosecki, Shamanism and Old English Poetry (London and New York, 1989), 69, 197. Glosecki, Shamanism, 99–102; Hall, Elves, 130–7. C. Knüsel and K. Ripley, ‘The berdache or man-woman in Anglo-Saxon England and Early Medieval Europe’, in W. O. Frazer and A. Tyrrell (eds), Social Identity in Early Medieval Britain (London and New York, 2000), 157–91. Germania, ch. 43, Benario (ed.), Tacitus. Germany, 54–5. D. G. Mandelbaum, ‘Transcendental and pragmatic aspects of religion’, American Anthropologist, n.s. 68 (1966), 1174–91. Hall, Elves, 147–8. Hultkrantz, Shamanic Healing, 19. Firth, Rank and Religion, 263. HE II, 13. Page, ‘Anglo-Saxon paganism’, 119, suggests ‘bishop’ for pontifex. HE II, 13. Had Coifi consulted or ‘tested’ the old gods? Cf. J. H. Aðalsteinsson, Under the Cloak. The Acceptance of Christianity in Iceland with Particular Reference to the Religious Attitudes Prevailing at the Time (Uppsala, 1978). Barber, Vampires, 31, for the origins of the term coiffe; M. Summers, The Vampire in Lore and Legend (Mineola, 2001), originally published as The Vampire in Europe

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(New York, 1961), 302–3, for the term né coiffé. North, Heathen Gods, 333, thinks that Coifi is a name deriving with i-mutation from the Latin cofium or cofia, ‘hood’. Hall, Elves, 154, suggests that Bede’s account could be viewed as an invention, but the association of the name Coifi with a ritual specialist is itself highly credible. Barber, Vampires, 1; Summers, Vampire, 302–3; C. Ginzburg, The Night Battles. Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, trans. J. and A. Tedeschi (Baltimore, 1992), 1–16. Quoted in Summers, Vampire, 303; cf. Hultkrantz, Shamanic Healing, 35. Life of Wilfrid, ch. 13, J. F. Webb, The Age of Bede (Harmondsworth, 1998),120–2. See Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Paganism, 175–6. J. Blair, The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society (Oxford, 2005), 184–5.

Notes to Chapter 5: Anglo-Saxon Paganism and the Dead 1 For an introduction to some of this, see the discussion in S. Lucy, ‘Burial practice in Early Medieval eastern Britain: constructing local identities, deconstructing ethnicities’, in S. Lucy and A. Reynolds (eds), Burial in Early Medieval England and Wales, Society for Medieval Archaeology Monograph 17 (London, 2002), 72–87. 2 H. Williams, Death and Memory in Early Medieval Britain (Cambridge, 2006), 6–9; S. Lucy and A. Reynolds, ‘Burial in Early Medieval England and Wales: past, present and future’, in Lucy and Reynolds (eds), Burial in Early Medieval England and Wales, 1–23. For a general overview of archaeological approaches to death and burial, see also M. Parker Pearson, The Archaeology of Death and Burial (Stroud, 1999). 3 A. L. Meaney, A Gazetteer of Early Anglo-Saxon Burial Sites (London, 1964), 15–21. 4 Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Paganism, 180. 5 H. Williams, Death and Memory, 9–11. 6 For example, Lucy and Reynolds, ‘Burial in Early Medieval England and Wales’, in Lucy and Reynolds (eds), Burial in Early Medieval England and Wales, 3; D. Hadley, ‘Equality, humility and non-materialism? Christianity and Anglo-Saxon burial practices’, Archaeological Review from Cambridge 17 (2), 2000, 149–78. 7 H. Williams, ‘Cremation rites in Anglo-Saxon England’, in N. S. Price (ed.), The Archaeology of Shamanism (London and New York, 2001), 193–212. 8 S. Crawford, ‘Votive deposition, religion and the Anglo-Saxon furnished burial ritual’, World Archaeology 36 (2004), 87–102. See also W. Filmer-Sankey and T. Pestell, Snape Anglo-Saxon Cemetery: Excavations and Surveys 1824–1992 (Ipswich, 2001), 262–4, for an interpretation which stresses the religious significance of cremation and inhumation rites. 9 S. Mithen, The Prehistory of the Mind (London, 1996), 174.

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10 For an example of a continental Saxon Reihengräberfriedhof, dating from the seventh century and later, placed by Bronze-Age burial mounds and containing cremations, inhumations, and four- and five-post structures, see F. Laux, ‘Der Reihengräberfriedhof in Oldendorf, Samtgemeinde Amelinghauses, Kr. Lüneburg/ Niedersachsen’, Hammaburg 5 (1980), 91–147. 11 H. Williams, ‘Remains of pagan Saxondom? – the study of Anglo-Saxon cremation rites’, in Lucy and Reynolds (eds), Burial in Early Medieval and Wales, 47–71. S. Lucy, The Anglo-Saxon Way of Death: Burial Rites in Early England (Stroud, 2000), 106. For attempts at tracing the origins of cremation rites see ibid., 119–22. 12 Williams, ‘Cremation rites’, 195. 13 Meaney, Gazetteer, 15–16. 14 Williams, ‘Remains of pagan Saxondom?’. 15 Filmer-Sankey and Pestell, Snape, 252–5; Hertz, Death, 42–3, for a discussion of final rites in cremation. 16 Lucy, Way of Death, 105–8. 17 See Williams, ‘Cremation rites’, passim. 18 A. Down and M. Welch, Chichester Excavations VII: Apple Down and the Mardens (Chichester, 1990), 25–33 and 202–5. Lucy, Way of Death, 117–19. See also Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Paganism, 58. 19 Metcalf and Huntington, Celebrations of Death, 147, fig. 11, for a modern example of a mausoleum on stilts. 20 See Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Paganism, 54, for a possibly similar structure – or at least a structure with a similar purpose – at Spong Hill; it also features in J. I. McKinley, The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Spong Hill Part VIII: the Cremations, East Anglian Archaeology Report No. 69 (Gressenhall, 1994), fig. 5 as enclosure 581. 21 J. I. McKinley, ‘Bone fragment size in British cremation burials and its implications for pyre technology and ritual’, Journal of Archaeological Science 21 (1994), 339–42; Lucy, Way of Death, 104–6. For the difficulties of cremation, see Barber, Vampires, 75–8, 168; techniques and problems, McKinley, Spong Hill, 72–86. For the practice of draining body fluids before cremation in Thai royal funerals, see Metcalf and Huntington, Celebrations of Death, 136–7 and Leonowens, English Governess, 158–9. For largely unrealistic descriptions of cremation from later in the Christian Anglo-Saxon period, see G. R. Owen-Crocker, The Four Funerals in Beowulf and the Structure of the Poem (Manchester and New York, 2000), 43–60. 22 McKinley, Spong Hill, 79. 23 McKinley, Spong Hill, 72–81, for a description of modern British cremation along with ethnographic and historical parallels, and 82–105 for cremation at Spong Hill. See also C. J. Arnold, An Archaeology of the Early Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms (2nd edn, London, 1997), 63. 24 McKinley, Spong Hill, 78–9. 25 Barber, Vampires, 76.

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26 Filmer-Sankey and Pestell, Snape, 243–4; Williams, Death and Memory, 130–1. 27 Down and Welch, Chichester Excavations VII, 25–33; Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Paganism, 57. 28 B. Philp, Excavations in West Kent, 1960–70 (Dover, 1973), 169–72; Wilson, AngloSaxon Paganism 49–51. 29 Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Paganism, 53; B. Green, A. Rogerson, S. B. White, The AngloSaxon Cemetery at Morning Thorpe, Norfolk (Norfolk, 1987), 42. See also Laux, ‘Reihengräberfriedhof ’. 30 Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Paganism, 51–2. 31 Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Paganism, 55. 32 See Down and Welch, Chichester Excavations VII, 7, 18; Williams, Death and Memory, 124–5; Filmer-Sankey and Pestell, Snape, 75, 77–9; Lucy, Way of Death, 77–8. 33 E.g. Great Chesterford; see Evison, Great Chesterford, 43, table 13. 34 Metcalf and Huntington, Celebrations of Death, 101; see also J. Moore and E. Scott (eds), Invisible People and Processes: Writing Gender and Childhood into European Archaeology (London, 1997). 35 See S. Lucy, ‘Early medieval burial at Yeavering: a retrospective’, in P. Frodsham and C. O’Brien (eds), Yeavering. People, Power, Place (Stroud, 2005), 127–44. 36 Lucy, Way of Death, 92–4. 37 S. Crawford, ‘Children, death and the afterlife in Anglo-Saxon England’, AngloSaxon Studies in Archaeology and History 6 (Oxford, 1993), 83–92; eadem, Childhood in Anglo-Saxon England (Stroud, 1999), esp. 75–91; D. J. Watts, ‘Infant burials and Romano-British Christianity’, Archaeological Journal, 146 (1989), 372–83 suggests at 380 that ‘the presence of . . . neo-natal burials is one reliable guide to identifying Christian cemeteries from the fourth century to the end of the Roman period’. However, there have been arguments against Watts, summarized in E. Scott, The Archaeology of Infancy and Infant Death, BAR International Series 819 (Oxford, 1999), 114: there are regional and local variations in the proportion of infants recovered and it is still lower than one would expect from demographic models. See also Evison, Great Chesterford, esp. 50. Arguments for the disintegration of the bones of young infants as a possible cause of their invisibility in pagan Anglo-Saxon cemeteries does not account for their visibility in Christian burials – see Crawford, ‘Children’, 84. Scott, Archaeology of Infancy, 109, notes work suggesting that perinatal and neonatal bones should survive better than the bones of older infants. 38 Crawford, ‘Children’, 84–6; S. Lucy, ‘Children in early medieval cemeteries’, Archaeological Review from Cambridge 13 (2), 1994, 21–34; Scott, Archaeology of Infancy, 121–3. 39 J. D. Richards, The Significance of Form and Decoration of Anglo-Saxon Cremation Urns, BAR British Series, 166 (Oxford, 1987), 124.

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I, xiv, 30, 198. Scott, Archaeology of Infancy, 90–123. Scott, Archaeology of Infancy, 117. Hertz, Death, 84; A. Richardson, The Anglo-Saxon Cemeteries of Kent, vol. 1, BAR British Series 291 (Oxford, 2005), 99, suggests on the basis of inhumations from this region that the first birthday marked a social threshold after which the infant became a fuller member of society. Crawford, Childhood, 27–32. See also J. Pentikäinen, The Nordic Dead-Child Tradition: Nordic Dead-Child Beings, A Study in Comparative Religion (Helsinki, 1968); idem, ‘The dead without status’, Temenos, 4 (1969), 92–102; idem, ‘Child abandonment as an indicator of Christianization’, in Ahlbäck (ed.), Old Norse and Finnish Religions, 72–91. H. Williams, ‘Monuments and the past in early Anglo-Saxon England’, World Archaeology 31 (1998), 90–109, 90. For a functionalist approach, see also the studies in P. Geary, Living With the Dead in the Middle Ages (London, 1994). Hultkrantz, Shamanic Healing, 16, points out the prevalence of horrifying ghost stories amongst Native American peoples who have not developed a strong ancestor cult. Ellis, Road to Hel, 65–120, esp. 83ff. Quotations from Williams, ‘Monuments’, 96. Williams does not discuss liminality here, merely referring to associations with ‘the supernatural’ in this context. Hultkrantz, Shamanic Healing, 15, 27. HE II, 13. T. A. Shippey, Beowulf (London, 1978), 23. Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Paganism, 11–13. Hertz, Death, 58–9. Carver, Sutton Hoo, 391. Ibid., 285. See also 489–503, ‘Sutton Hoo in context’. Ibid., 153–99, 303–6. Ibid., xl, 347, 459. Ibid., 304. See A. Sandwall (ed.), Vendeltid (Stockholm, 1980); M. Müller-Wille, ‘Boat-graves in Northern Europe’, International Journal of Nautical Archaeology, 3 (1974), 187–204. Carver, Sutton Hoo, 305–6. P. Vitebsky, The Shaman (London, 2001), 44; O. Crumlin-Pedersen and B. Munch Thye (eds), The Ship as a Symbol in Prehistoric and Medieval Scandinavia (Copenhagen, 1995); A-L. Siikala, Mythic Images and Shamanism. A Perspective on Kalevala Poetry (Helsinki, 2002); P. Jordan, Material Culture and Sacred Landscape. The Anthropology of the Siberian Khanty (Walnut Creek; Lanham; New York, CA; Oxford, 2003), 227–8. Carver, Sutton Hoo, 498.

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62 Hertz, Death, 37–76; Metcalf and Huntington, Celebrations of Death, 90–7; Leonowens, English Governess, 158–65. 63 The Old English Orosius, Early English Text Society, S.S. 6 (Oxford, 1980), J. Bately (ed.), I, 1, 17. 64 J. Shephard, ‘The social identity of the individual in isolated barrows and barrow cemeteries in Anglo-Saxon England’, in B. C. Burnham and J. Kingsbury (eds), Space, Hierarchy and Society. Interdisciplinary Studies in Social Area Analysis, BAR International Series 59 (Oxford, 1979), 47–79. 65 A. Dooley, ‘The plague and its consequences in Ireland’, in Little (ed.), Plague, 215–28; see also W. Bonser, ‘Epidemics during the Anglo-Saxon period’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association 3rd series, 9 (1944), 48–66. 66 See Chapter 2 above. 67 Ibid. 68 Barber, Vampires, 75–8, 168. 69 Barber, Vampires, 181. 70 On inability to cross water, see M. Haavio, ‘A running stream they dare na cross’, Studia Fennica 8 (1959), 128–42. 71 Shephard, ‘Social identity’, 48–9. 72 Carver, Sutton Hoo, 483–6. 73 Carver, Sutton Hoo, 499. 74 See E. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, 1993); Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice, 74; B. Lincoln, ‘On ritual, change and marked categories’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 68 (2000), 487–510. 75 For revisions and re-contextualizations of Hope-Taylor’s dating of the burials and monuments referred to here, see: C. J. Scull and A. F. Harding, ‘Two early medieval cemeteries at Milfield, Northumberland’, Durham Archaeological Journal 6 (1990), 1–29; C. J. Scull, ‘Post-Roman Phase I at Yeavering: a reconsideration’, Medieval Archaeology 35 (1991), 51–63; R. Bradley, ‘Time regained: the creation of continuity’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association 140 (1987), 1–17; idem, Altering the Earth: The Origins of Monuments in Britain and Continental Europe (Edinburgh, 1993), 91–119; J. Blair, ‘Anglo-Saxon pagan shrines and their prototypes’, in Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 8 (1995), 1–28; L. Alcock, ‘Quantity or quality: the Anglian graves of Bernicia’, in V. I. Evison, ed., Angles, Saxons and Jutes – Essays Presented to J. N. L. Myres (Oxford, 1981), 168–86; idem, Kings and Warriors, Craftsmen and Priests in Northern Britain ad 550–850 (Edinburgh, 2003), 242–4; and see Frodsham and O’Brien (eds), Yeavering, especially the essays by S. Lucy, ‘Early medieval burial at Yeavering: a retrospective’, 127–44, and S. T. Driscoll, ‘Ad Gefrin and Scotland: the implications of the Yeavering excavations for the north’, 161–73. 76 Hope-Taylor, Yeavering, 249.

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77 Bradley, Altering the Earth, 115; idem, ‘Creation of continuity’. Hope-Taylor suggested a chronology for the Anglo-Saxon buildings and inhumations at Yeavering very tightly linked to events singled out in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History: the conversion of Eadwine, Paulinus’ baptisms in the River Glen, the harrying of Northumbria after Eadwine’s death in battle. Since the 1990s, the pitfalls of this approach have been demonstrated by Scull, Alcock and Driscoll – see n. 75 above. 78 Lucy, ‘Burial at Yeavering’, 141, suggests that this may actually have been a case of earlier ritual re-use in the sub-Roman period. 79 Blair, ‘Shrines’; see also idem, Church, 54–7. 80 Blair, ‘Shrines’, 21. 81 Lucy, ‘Burial at Yeavering’, 140–1, argues that the replacement of the stone circle by wooden structures could be sub-Roman. Blair, Church, 57, acknowledges that even the Eastern Ring-Ditch Cemetery is not self-evidently Christian, though argues that the known history of the site encourages such an interpretation. 82 HE II, 13. 83 The Yeavering wooden enclosure is not necessarily Anglian: see Lucy, ‘Burial at Yeavering’, 141. 84 North, Heathen Gods, 78–132 and 304–42. 85 But also see Hutton, Shamans, 50–1, for evidence of specialization and division of functions amongst Siberian shamans. 86 Glosecki, Shamanism, 22–3. 87 Williams, ‘Cremation rites’, 205–7. 88 Life of Wilfrid, ch. 13, 120–2. 89 See Hope-Taylor, Yeavering, 67–9; Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Paganism, 176–7; Meaney, ‘Bede and Anglo-Saxon paganism’, 19–21. 90 P. Barber, Vampires, 31. 91 For example A. Rozwadowski, ‘Sun gods or shamans?’, in N. S. Price (ed.), The Archaeology of Shamanism (London and New York, 2001), 65–86; Glosecki, Shamanism, 97–8. 92 Hope-Taylor, Yeavering, 15, 67–9; Blair, Church, 56. 93 Williams, ‘Cremation rites’, 197. 94 HE III, 21. 95 Driscoll, ‘Ad Gefrin and Scotland’; Alcock, Kings and Warriors, 254.

Notes to Chapter 6: The Diffusion Of Christianity and the Establishment of the Anglo-Saxon Church 1 HE I, 26. 2 Horton, ‘On the rationality of conversion’.

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Horton, ‘African conversion’. HE I, 26 and II, 5. HE II, 5. See Yorke, Kings and Kingdoms, 15–19 for a discussion of the nature of the earliest Anglo-Saxon kingship. HE II, 5. For brides as ‘peace weavers’, see S. Hollis, Anglo-Saxon Women and the Church: Sharing a Common Fate (Woodbridge, 1992), 153–61, 231–2 and 238–41. Doubts have been expressed concerning the authenticity of clauses in the law-code attributed to Æthelberht that legislate to protect the Church. See H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles, Law and Legislation from Æthelbert to Magna Carta (Edinburgh, 1966), 1–12, together with the discussion at 231–44, following P. Lendinara, ‘The Kentish laws’, in Hines (ed.), Anglo-Saxons From the Migration Period, 211–30. HE II, 3. HE II, 5. HE II, 15. HE II, 4–5. HE II, 4–6. Yorke, Kings and Kingdoms, 29. HE II, 12. HE II, 9. HE II, 12. Yorke, Kings and Kingdoms, 78. HE II, 10. HE II, 11. C. Nolte, ‘Gender and conversion in the Merovingian era’, in Muldoon (ed.), Varieties, 81–99. HE II, 16. H. Geake, The Use of Grave-Goods in Conversion-Period England c.650–c.850 BAR British Series 261 (Oxford, 1997), 129–34. For the political implications of baptismal sponsorship in general, see A. Angenendt, Kaiserherrschaft und Königstaufe: Kaiser, Könige und Päpste als geistliche Patrone in der abendländischen Missionsgeschichte (Berlin, 1984), esp. 176–96 and J. H. Lynch, Godparents and Kinship in Early Medieval Europe (Princeton, NJ, 1986), esp. 242–50. I have been unable to consult his Christianizing Kinship; Ritual Sponsorship in Anglo-Saxon England (Ithaca, 1998). HE II, 16. See Chapter 7, note 38, below. HE III, 7; Lynch, Godparents, 244. C. Stancliffe, ‘Oswald, most holy and most victorious king of the Northumbrians’, in C. Stancliffe and E. Cambridge (eds), Oswald: Northumbrian King to European Saint (Stamford, 1995), 33–83, 57, esp. n. 45.

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29 HE III, 21. 30 HE III, 22; HE IV, 13. 31 H. Mayr-Harting, ‘St Wilfrid in Sussex’, in M. J. Kitch (ed.), Studies in Sussex Church History (London, 1981), 1–17, 5. 32 Geake, Use of Grave-Goods, 133. 33 HE IV, 13. 34 HE IV, 15; Mayr-Harting, ‘Wilfrid in Sussex’, 7. 35 Life of Wilfrid, ch. 42; HE IV, 15. 36 Against the traditional identification of the former with Caedualla of Gwynnedd, see A. Woolf, ‘Caedualla rex Brettonum and the passing of the old north’, Northern History 41 (2004), 5–24. 37 HE III, 1. 38 HE II, 15–16. 39 HE II, 14. 40 HE II, 14. 41 HE II, 14. 42 HE II, 16. 43 ‘paucitas . . . sacerdotum’, HE III, 21–2. 44 HE IV, 13 and 15. 45 HE III, 3. 46 For a different point of view, see Chaney, Cult of Kingship, 256–73, who stresses the royal role in conversion. 47 Blair, Church, 57, though arguing in favour of the Christianization of the ritual site; idem, ‘Anglo-Saxon pagan shrines’. 48 HE III, 21. 49 HE III, 8; ibid., II, 15. 50 Gelling, Signposts to the Past, 159. 51 Clancy and Márkus, Iona, 44–53; HE IV, 24. 52 Bede, HE III, 1–2, suggests that Oswald’ s army was small but composed of Christians; by contrast Adomnán, Life of Columba I, 1, 110–11, claims that only twelve of his followers had been baptized. I. Wood, ‘Constantinian crosses in Northumbria’, in C. E. Karkov, S. Larratt Keefer and K. L. Jolly (eds), The Place of the Cross in Anglo-Saxon England (Manchester, 2006), 3–13, suggests that Bede reflects eighth-century developments rather than seventh-century traditions. See, however, Tolley, ‘Oswald’s tree’. 53 For this and what follows, see Stancliffe, ‘Oswald’, 67–8 and the references given there. 54 Life of Columba I, 1, 110–11. 55 HE III, 18; C. Stancliffe, ‘Kings who opted out’ in P. Wormald, with D. Bullough and R. Collins (eds), Ideal and Reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Society (Oxford, 1983), 154–76.

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56 HE IV, 2 and IV, 11. 57 HE V, 7. 58 HE V, 19. See also J. M. Wallace Hadrill, ‘Bede’, in Early Germanic Kingship in England and on the Continent (Oxford, 1971), 72–97. 59 P. Sims-Williams, Religion and Literature in Western England 600–800 (Cambridge, 1990), 75–85. 60 See Mayr-Harting, Coming of Christianity, 36–8. 61 HE II, 2. The narrative is thought to have passed through the hands of both Welsh and English redactors and is therefore often accepted as substantially true: SimsWilliams, Religion and Literature, 78. 62 HE II, 20. 63 N. Brooks, ‘From British to English Christianity: deconstructing Bede’s image of the conversion’, in C. E. Karkov and N. Howe (eds), Conversion and Colonization in Anglo-Saxon England (Tempe, AZ, 2006), 1–30, 7–10, has it that Bede’s account is ‘almost solely’ one of missionary work at the courts of the Anglo-Saxon kings. This is to underplay Bede’s discussion of saints and the afterlife. 64 Brooks, ‘From British to English Christianity’, 12. 65 Brooks, ‘From British to English Christianity’, 13. 66 Yorke, Kings and Kingdoms, 7; eadem, Conversion, 44–5; Mayr-Harting, Coming of Christianity, 30–8; see also Woolf, ‘Community, identity and kingship’, 98–9. 67 Lucy, ‘Burial at Yeavering’; Yorke, Conversion, 44. 68 See Stancliffe, ‘Oswald’, 76–8. 69 Mayr-Harting, Coming of Christianity, 33; K. Cameron, ‘“Eccles” in English placenames’, in M. Barley and R. P. C. Hanson (eds), Christianity in Britain, 300–700 (Leicester, 1968), 177–92; G. W. S. Barrow, The Kingdom of the Scots (Edinburgh, 1973), 7–68; Gelling, Signposts to the Past, 82–3; 96–9; C. Thomas, Christianity in Roman Britain to ad 500 (London, 1981), 262–6; D. Watts, Christians and Pagans in Roman Britain (London, 1991); L. Quensel-von Kalben, ‘The British Church and the emergence of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms’, in Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 10 (1999), 89–97; Brooks, ‘From British to English Christianity’, 14–19. 70 Brooks, ‘From British to English Christianity’, 14–19, 30. 71 HE I, 26, 33; Brooks, ‘From British to English Christianity’, 20–30. 72 Life of Wilfrid, ch. 17, 126. 73 HE III, 7. 74 HE III, 3. 75 Ibid. 76 HE III, 3. 77 HE III, 14. 78 HE III, 25. 79 HE III, 17.

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80 HE IV, 2. 81 See C. Stancliffe, Bede, Wilfrid and the Irish (Jarrow, 2003), 5; cf. Mayr-Harting, Coming of Christianity, 130–9; A. Thacker, ‘Bede’s ideal of reform’, in Wormald, Bullough and Collins (eds), Ideal and Reality, 130–53. 82 HE III, 25. 83 HE III, 25 84 Life of Wilfrid, ch. 47, 156–8. 85 HE III, 28. 86 Life of Wilfrid, ch. 15, 123; HE IV, 2–3. 87 HE III, 26. 88 HE IV, 5. 89 Stancliffe, Bede, Wilfrid and the Irish, esp. 12–17. 90 See J. Maddicott, ‘Plague in seventh-century England’, in Little (ed.), Plague, 171–214, reprinted with minor changes from Past and Present, 157 (1997), 7–54; R. Sallares, ‘Ecology, evolution and epidemiology of plague’, in Little (ed.), Plague, 231–89. 91 Bede, Life of Cuthbert, in B. Colgrave (ed.), Two Lives of St Cuthbert (Cambridge, 1985), 142–307, ch. 8, 180–5. 92 Maddicott, ‘Plague’, 176. 93 Maddicott, 189, suggests that Eosterwine’s giving of the kiss of peace to his monks as he lay dying was ‘innocently lethal’. As he himself survived for about a week, according to Bede, Lives of the Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow, ch. 8, in J. F. Webb, The Age of Bede (Harmondsworth, 1998), 187–210, 195, it appears that he must have had bubonic plague but passed on the disease through droplet infection: it could then spread as primary pneumonic plague which kills many of its victims within twenty-four hours. For the transmission of the disease as well as the cultural practices that spread it, see Benedictow, Black Death, 24–34, and Sallares, ‘Ecology’. 94 Maddicott, ‘Plague’, 179. 95 HE III, 30. 96 Firth, Rank and Religion, 309. 97 Ibid. 98 HE III, 22. 99 Yorke, Kings and Kingdoms, 46–7. 100 HE III, 23. 101 Yorke, Kings and Kingdoms, 48. 102 HE III, 30. 103 HE III, 7. 104 For the importance of loyalties to a local chief ’s religious allegiance and for the nature of re-conversion in Tikopia, see Firth, Rank and Religion, 337–42, ‘Apostasy and its sequels’. Firth points out the way in which religious loyalties were

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complicated in Tikopia by the conjoint authority system of chieftainship operating there. Firth, Rank and Religion, 339. Ibid. Maddicott, ‘Plague’, 176. HE IV, 27 (cf. Bede, Life of Cuthbert, ch. 9, 184–7). Ibid. Maddicott, ‘Plague’, 205–14. HE IV, 1. For Theodore’s career and writings, see the essays in M. Lapidge (ed.), Archbishop Theodore (Cambridge, 1995). HE IV, 2. HE IV, 5. See M. Brett, ‘Theodore and the Latin canon law’, in Lapidge (ed.), Archbishop Theodore, 120–40; Mayr-Harting, Coming of Christianity, 130–9. HE IV, 5. Life of Wilfrid, chs 17, 125–6 and 21, 129–30. Life of Wilfrid, ch. 21, 129–30. Wilfrid also left a quarter of his treasure to the abbots of Ripon and Hexham so that they could buy the friendship of kings and bishops (ch. 63, 177–8). See Firth, Rank and Religion, 27; M. W. Helms, Craft and the Kingly Ideal. Art, Trade and Power (Austin, 1993), 164–7. See C. Cubitt, ‘Wilfrid’s “usurping bishops”: episcopal elections in Anglo-Saxon England c.600–c.800’, Northern History 25 (1989), 18–38. See Cubitt, ‘Wilfrid’s “usurping Bishops”’ and eadem, ‘Finding the forger: an alleged decree of the 679 Council of Hatfield’, English Historical Review 114 (1999), 1217–48, at 1217–21. See also M. Gibbs, ‘The decrees of Agatho and the Gregorian plan for York’, Speculum 48 (1973), 213–46, who argues that what was at issue was Gregory I’s original scheme for the organization of the English Church under two metropolitans, one at London, the other at York. HE IV,12. Blair, Church, 79. HE I, 29. HE IV, 6. HE IV, 12. HE IV,12. Dunn, Emergence of Monasticism, 146–50. M. Tosi, ‘I monaci colombaniani del secolo VII portano un rinnovamente agricoloreligioso nella fascia littorale Ligure’, Archivum Bobiense xiv (1992), 5–106; Dunn, ‘Columbanus, charisma’. C. Etchingham, Church Organization in Ireland ad 650 to 1000 (Maynooth, 1999), 239–318; also 363, where he ‘suggests that ecclesiastical subjects – typically identified either as monachi/manaig, “lawful laity” or repentant converts from the

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ways of the world – were the primary beneficiaries and financiers of the church’s regular pastoral ministration’. See also R. Sharpe, ‘Some problems concerning the organization of the Church in early medieval Ireland’, Peritia 3 (1984), 230–70; and for a different view, D. Ó’Crónin, Early Medieval Ireland 400–1200 (London, 1995), 167, who is sceptical about some recent approaches to the concept of pastoral care. For Cædmon HE IV, 24. Anonymous Life of Cuthbert, IV, 10 in B. Colgrave (ed.), Two Lives of St Cuthbert (Cambridge, 1985), 60–139, 126–9; Bede, Life of Cuthbert, ch. 34, ibid., 260–5. For discussion of other such centres, see Blair, Church, 212–20. For a discussion of penitents, conversi and ‘paramonasticism’, see Etchingham, Church Organization, 290–318. Cusack, Rise of Christianity, 110. Blair, Church, 75. Ibid., 86. Yorke, Kings and Kingdoms, 91. HE IV, 13. Maddicott, ‘Plague’, 209–10. Ibid., 207–9 See Dunn, ‘Columbanus, charisma’ and eadem, ‘Asceticism and monasticism II: western’, in Casiday and Norris (eds), Constantine to c.600, 669–90. II, vi, 8, 204. See S. Foot, Veiled Women vol. I (Aldershot, 2000), 35–56. B. Yorke, Nunneries and the Anglo-Saxon Royal Houses (London and New York, 2003), 16–46. See HE IV, 23 and III, 24 for Hild and Ælfflæd. Yorke, Nunneries, 16–46. S. Hollis, ‘The Minster-in-Thanet foundation story’, Anglo-Saxon England 27 (1998), 41–64; eadem, ‘The Old English “Ritual of the admission of Mildrith” (London, Lambeth Palace 427, fol. 210)’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology 97 (1998), 311–21. J. M. H. Smith, ‘Introduction: gendering the early medieval world’, in L. Brubaker and J. M. H. Smith (eds), Gender in the Early Medieval World. East and West, 300–900 (Cambridge, 2004), 1–19, 17. HE III, 19. Life of Wilfrid, ch. 6, 113–14. HE IV, 13. Blair, Church, 67–70. HE III, 17. E.g. I, ix, 4 and 10. Blair, Church, 82.

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Notes to Chapter 7: Christianization: Problems and Responses 1 North, Heathen Gods, 116. 2 HE II, 13. 3 Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 309–10; A. Thacker, ‘Some terms for noblemen in Anglo-Saxon England’, ASSAH 2 (1981), 201–36. 4 Wallace-Hadrill, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, xx–xxi. 5 For drunkenness and its positive meaning for warriors, see Shippey, Beowulf, 9; Penitential of Theodore, I, i, 5, 184. 6 Ibid., I, iv, 1, 6, 184. 7 Ibid., I, iv, 5. 8 There is a very extensive bibliography on the Ruthwell Cross and its poem: see principally E. Ó Carragáin, Ritual and the Rood. Liturgical Images and the Old English Poems of the Dream of the Rood Tradition (London and Toronto, 2005). See also F. Orton and I. Wood with C. A. Lees, Fragments of History. Rethinking the Ruthwell and Bewcastle Monuments (Manchester, 2007); E. Ó Carragáin, ‘Liturgical innovations associated with Pope Sergius and the iconography of the Ruthwell and Bewcastle crosses’, in R. T. Farrell (ed.), Bede and Anglo-Saxon England, BAR British Series 46 (Oxford, 1978), 131–47; idem, The City of Rome and the World of Bede (Jarrow, 1994); idem, ‘The necessary distance: imitatio Romae and the Ruthwell Cross’; and F. Orton, ‘Northumbrian sculpture (The Ruthwell and Bewcastle monuments): questions of difference’, in Hawkes and Mills (eds), Northumbria’s Golden Age, 191–203 and 216–27; R. Woolf, ‘Doctrinal influences on The Dream of the Rood’, Medium Aevum 27 (1958), 137–53. On Anglo-Saxon crosses in general, see Karkov, Larratt Keefer and Jolly (eds), The Place of the Cross. 9 HE III, 22 10 Stancliffe, ‘Oswald’, 41; B. Yorke, ‘The reception of Christianity at the Anglo-Saxon royal courts’, in R. Gameson (ed.), St Augustine and the Conversion of England (Stroud, 1999), 152–73, 166. 11 HE IV, 5. 12 M. C. Ross,‘Concubinage in Anglo-Saxon England’, Past and Present 108 (1985), 3–34. Traditional marriage customs on the continent were also attacked by the English missionary Boniface in the eighth century, when he had Bishop Clement condemned by a papal synod in 745 for (among other things) accepting the Old Testament ruling that a man could marry his brother’s widow: C. H. Talbot, The Anglo-Saxon Missionaries in Germany (London and New York, 1954), 110. The problem of kinship and marriage is dealt with in the so-called Libellus Responsionum – Gregory I’s replies to Augustine of Canterbury about a number of problems, reproduced by Bede in HE I, 27, but this section of the text is now characterized as an interpolation: see P. Meyvaert, ‘Le libellus responsionum à Augustin de Cantorbéry’, in J. Fontaine, R. Gillet and S. Pellistrandi (eds), Grégoire le Grand (Paris, 1986), 543–50.

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D. Whitelock (ed.), English Historical Documents c.500–1042 (London, 1955), 362. Life of Gregory, ch. 15, 96–7. I, xiv, 1–3, 195–6; I, ii, 1–22, 184–6; I, vii, 1, 190; I, xiv, 18–23, 197. HE IV, 23. S. Gruzinski, The Conquest of Mexico. The Incorporation of Indian Societies into the Western World, 16th to 18th Centuries (Cambridge, 1993), 174. Nolte, ‘Gender and conversion’, 87; Penitential II, xii, 18–19. I, xv, 2, 198. A. L. Meaney, ‘Anglo-Saxon idolaters and ecclesiasts from Theodore to Alcuin: a source study’, ASSAH 5 (1992), 103–25. I, xv, 4, 198. Whitelock, English Historical Documents, 363. Meaney, ‘Idolaters’, 105, refers to burnt grain found in burials, but admits the possibility of a domestic context. Ibid., I, xiv, 15 and 16, 196–7. HE I, 27; R. Meens, ‘A background to Augustine’s mission to Anglo-Saxon England’, Anglo-Saxon England 23 (1994), 5–18; idem, ‘Ritual purity and the influence of Gregory the Great in the eighth century’, in R. N. Swanson (ed.), Unity and Diversity in the Church, Studies in Church History 32 (Oxford, 1996), 31–43. I, xiv, 17–18, 196–7. See also Dialogues I, 10, for another example of an apparently strict approach in matters of ritual purity. I, xiv, 17, 197. HE V, 19; Life of Wilfrid, ch. 56, 170; M. Clayton, The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge, 1990), 122–32; Ó Carragáin, Ritual and the Rood, 79–119, 237–57. Stoclet, ‘Consilia humana’, 139. Bede, Lives of the Abbots, ch. 6, in Webb, Age of Bede 190–1; ch. 9, 194. Ó Carragáin, Ritual and the Rood, 79–119. Orton, Wood and Lees, Fragments of History, 191: but the need for an abbot to persuade one (male) monastic community to observe the Virgin’s cult is hardly decisive. S. Benko, The Virgin Goddess: Studies in the Pagan and Christian Roots of Mariology (London, 1993), 229–65. I, ii, 2, 4–6, 185. Lynch, Godparents, 116–40. Ibid., 242. See also B. D. Spinks, Early and Medieval Rituals and Theologies of Baptism. From the New Testament to the Council of Trent (Aldershot, 2006), 126–33. HE I, 27. I, xiv, 28–30, 197; II, iv, 5–11, 202; C. Cubitt, Anglo-Saxon Church Councils c.650–c.850 (London and Cranbury, NJ, 1995), 122. See also S. Foot, ‘“By water in

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the spirit”: the administration of baptism in early Anglo-Saxon England’, in J. Blair and R. Sharpe (eds), Pastoral Care Before the Parish (Leicester, 1992), 171–93. Lynch, Godparents, 242, suggests that the Anglo-Saxons practised same-sex baptismal sponsorship, so Theodore II, iv, 10, 202, may be attempting to establish cross-gender sponsorship against prevalent norms. Whitelock (ed.), English Historical Documents, 372. For the social dimension of baptism in the Carolingian Empire, see S. A. Keefe, Water and the Word. Baptism and Education of the Clergy in the Carolingian Empire, 2 vols (Notre Dame, IN, 2002), vol. 1, 3: ‘Charlemagne took advantage of baptism as an exchange of lords. The name acquired by baptism, “fidelis”, was the name for a vassal . . .’ See Lynch, Godparents, 219–57. D. Hurst (ed.), Bede, In Marci Evangelium Expositio, CCSL 120 (Turnhout, 1960), Book 2, ch. 7, verse 29, 525; Lynch, Godparents, 243. I, xiv, 28–30, 197–8. Whitelock, English Historical Documents, 364. Life of Wilfrid, ch. 18, 126–7. See Nolte, ‘Gender and conversion’, 85, for the possibility that decisions about baptism were made by the mother and not by the father alone. Spinks, Early and Medieval Rituals, 120–1, for a baptismal ordo possibly written by the Englishman Alcuin, c.789, and which may reflect earlier Anglo-Saxon practice to some extent. For modern customs and beliefs relating to baptismal water, see Ü. Valk, ‘The significance of baptism in Estonian folk belief ’, Folklore 5, http:// haldjas/folklore.ee/folklore/vol5/ylorist1.htm. HE II, 14. I, xiv, 28–9, 197. Crawford, ‘Children, death and the afterlife’, 88. E. Emerton, The Letters of St Boniface (New York, 1940), 190. See the suggestions for a later conversion period of A-S. Gräslund, ‘The role of Scandinavian women in Christianization: the neglected evidence’, in Carver (ed.), The Cross Goes North, 482–96, 492. I, xiv, 26, 197. Aðalsteinsson, Under the Cloak, 81; Pentikäinen, The Nordic Dead-Child and ‘Child abandonment’, discusses exposure for economic reasons and also the way in which the unbaptized dead child could be experienced supernaturally when old customs were criminalized. Gregory of Tours, Libri decem historiarum V, 44, 310–12, shows the Catholic Frankish ruler Chilperic struggling with the concept of the Trinity. Meyer, ‘Beyond syncretism’, 53. See also P. C. Johnson, Secrets, Gossip and Gods. The Transformation of Brazilian Candomblé (Oxford, 2002), 7, for active syncretizing. HE IV, 24. See also D. P. O’Donnell, Caedmon’s Hymn. A Multi-Media Study Edition and Archive (Woodbridge, 2005) and E. G. Stanley, ‘New formulas for

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old: Cædmon’s hymn’, in Hofstra, Houwen and MacDonald (eds), Pagans and Christians, 131–48. HE IV, 17–18. H. Chadwick, ‘Theodore of Tarsus and monothelitism’, in H. C. Brennecke, E. L. Grasmück and C. Markschies (eds), Logos. Festschrift für Luise Abramowski (Berlin and New York, 1993) 534–44; eadem, ‘Theodore, the English Church and the monothelite controversy’, in Lapidge (ed.), Archbishop Theodore, 88–95; M. Lapidge, ‘The career of Archbishop Theodore’, ibid., 1–29; B. Bischoff and M. Lapidge (eds), Biblical Commentaries from the Canterbury School of Theodore and Hadrian (Cambridge, 1994), 143–6. See also Penitential I, v, 6. Ó Carragáin, Ritual and the Rood, 80, 262. C. Cubitt, ‘Pastoral care and conciliar canons: the provisions of the 747 Council of Clofesho’, in Blair and Sharpe (eds), Pastoral Care, 193–211, 196. Bede, Life of Cuthbert III, 160–5. Boyer, Religion Explained, 159. See R. M. Hayden, ‘Antagonistic tolerance. Competitive sharing of religious sites in South Asia and the Balkans’, Current Anthropology 43 (2002), 205–31. Letter V: to Heahfrith, in M. Lapidge and M. Herren, Aldhelm. The Prose Works (Cambridge and Totowa, NJ, 1979), 160–2. R. Morris, Churches in the Landscape (London, 1989), 52–7. Blair, Church, 187. HE III, 2; Tolley, ‘Oswald’s tree’; C. Cubitt, ‘Sites and sanctity: revisiting the cult of murdered and martyred Anglo-Saxon royal saints’, Early Medieval Europe 9 (2000), 53–83. It should, however, be noted that Adomnán of Iona, in his Life of St Columba, I, 1, ed. Sharpe, 110–11, makes no mention of any cross. Instead, he asserts Columban agency, insisting not only that the ‘whole of England was darkened by the shadow of heathendom and ignorance, except for King Oswald himself and twelve men who had been baptized with him in exile among the Irish’, but also that victory was promised and delivered to Oswald by a vision of St Columba. HE III, 9; Tolley, ‘Oswald’s tree’. See also J. M. Howe, ‘The conversion of the physical world: the creation of a Christian landscape’, in Muldoon (ed.), Varieties, 63–80. D. Rollason, Saints and Relics in Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 1989), 12–145. HE I, 7; Stancliffe, ‘British Church’, 121–2; M. Deanesly and P. Grosjean, ‘The Canterbury edition of the answers of Pope Gregory I to St. Augustine’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 10 (1959), 1–49. See J. M. McCulloh, ‘The cult of relics in the letters and Dialogues of Pope Gregory the Great: a lexicographical study’, Traditio 32 (1976), 145–84; Rollason, Saints and Relics, 10–11. HE I, 29. HE III, 30. Rollason, Saints and Relics, 29 and fig. 2.1; Museum of London Archeology Service,

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75 76 77 78

79 80 81

82 83 84 85 86

87 88 89 90 91

92

93

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The Prittlewell Prince. The Discovery of a Rich Anglo-Saxon Burial in Essex (London, 2004), 26–7. Meaney, Anglo-Saxon Amulets, 181–9; Geake, Use of Grave-Goods, 34–5. See also Blair, Church, 170–1. McCulloh, ‘Cult of relics’. See also McCormick, Origins of the European Economy, 283–318, for changing patterns of relic distribution in the early medieval West. Life of Wilfrid, ch. 34, 144; ch. 39, 148–9. For a modern context, see J. Dubisch, ‘Pilgrimage and popular religion at a Greek holy shrine’, in Badone (ed.), Religious Orthodoxy, 113–39. For an interesting early medieval comparison see P. Hill, Whithorn and St Ninian. The Excavation of a Monastic Town, 1984–91 (Stroud, 1997), 19–20: could Whithorn possibly have been a pre-Christian healing site or was its development part of a Christian appropriation of a general tradition? Life of Wilfrid, ch. 55, 169–70; McCulloh, ‘Cult of Relics’; Rollason, Saints and Relics, 23–4. Bede, Life of Cuthbert, ch. 42, 290–5; Rollason, Saints and Relics, 49–51. Bede, Life of Cuthbert, chs 42–5, 290–301; A. Thacker, ‘Lindisfarne and the origins of the cult of St Cuthbert’, in G. Bonner, D. Rollason and C. Stancliffe (eds), St Cuthbert, His Cult and Community to ad 1200 (Woodbridge, 1989), 103–22, 119. Bede, Life of Cuthbert, ch. 4, 288–91; ch. 46, 300–5. HE IV, 3; C. Thomas, Bede, Archaeology and the Cult of Relics (Jarrow, 1973), 10. HE IV, 19. See Cubitt, ‘Sites and sanctity’. HE III, 12. V. A. Gunn, ‘Bede and the martyrdom of St Oswald’, in D. Wood (ed.), Martyrs and Martyrologies, Studies in Church History 30 (Oxford, 1993), 57–66, argues for Oswald’s being presented by Bede as a king-saint rather than, as other scholars have assumed, a martyr. HE III, 11, 13. HE III, 13. HE III, 2. HE III, 14. HE II, 2, 9–13; A. Thacker, ‘Membra disjecta: the division of the body and the diffusion of the cult’, in C. Stancliffe and E. Cambridge (eds), Oswald. From Northumbrian King to European Saint (Stamford, 1995), 97–127. Life of Gregory, ch. 19, 102–5; HE II, 20. Cubitt, ‘Sites and sanctity’, argues for a popular cult at the place of Eadwine’s death. But the way in which the priest who sought the body – as a result of a series of divinely inspired visions – only found it after several attempts might suggest a different interpretation. J. Crook, ‘The enshrinement of local saints in Francia and England’, in A. Thacker and R. Sharpe (eds), Local Saints and Local Churches in the Early Medieval West (Oxford, 2002), 189–224.

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94 Rollason, Saints and Relics, 53–9. 95 Ó Carragáin, Ritual and the Rood, 286. 96 K. L. Jolly, ‘Tapping the power of the cross: who and for whom?’, in Karkov, Larratt Keefer and Jolly (eds), Place of the Cross, 58–70, 70–1. 97 HE IV,16. 98 T. J. Talley, The Origins of the Liturgical Year (New York, 1986), 79–102. 99 C. Cubitt, ‘Unity and diversity in the early Anglo-Saxon liturgy’, in Swanson (ed.), Unity and Diversity, 45–57. 100 Rollason, Saints and Relics, 60–82. 101 Boyer, Religion Explained, 79–84; J. Barrett, ‘Cognitive constraints on Hindu concepts of the divine’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (1998), 608–19; eadem, ‘Theological correctness: cognitive constraint and the study of religion’, in Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 11 (1999), 325–39. 102 Ó Carragáin, Ritual and the Rood, 296. 103 Ó Carragáin, Ritual and the Rood, 291. 104 Ó Carragáin, Ritual and the Rood, 126–36, 261. 105 Ó Carragáin, Ritual and the Rood, 127–8. 106 Bede, Lives of the Abbots, ch. 6, 192–3. 107 Luiselli Fadda, ‘The vernacular’. 108 Bede, Life of Cuthbert, ch. 9, 186–7. 109 HE I, 31. 110 Life of Gregory, ch. 4, 78–80. 111 Thomas, Bede, Archaeology, 1–5; A. M. Luiselli Fadda, ‘Constat ergo inter nos verba signa esse: the understanding of the miraculous in Anglo-Saxon society’, in K. Cooper and J. Gregory (eds), Signs, Wonders, Miracles. Representation of Divine Power in the Life of the Church, Studies in Church History 41 (Woodbridge, 2005), 56–66. Thanks to Brenda Bolton for drawing my attention to this article. 112 HE IV, 13. 113 Ibid. 114 Life of Wilfrid, ch. 26, 134. 115 Life of Gregory, ch. 20, 104–9. 116 T. Vial, ‘Can memory fill in gaps of memory?’. 117 Life of Gregory, ch. 21, 108–11. 118 Life of Gregory, ch. 22, 111–5. 119 Life of Wilfrid, ch. 13, 120–2. 120 Life of Gregory, ch. 15, 96–9. 121 A. de Vogüé (ed.), Grégoire le Grand. Dialogues, Books I–III, SC 254 (1978), 260 (1979); Book IV, SC 265 (1980). This treats the Dialogues as an authentic work by Gregory. The English translation used here is that of O. J. Zimmermann, Saint Gregory the Great. Dialogues (Washington DC, 1959). 122 F. Clark, The Pseudo-Gregorian Dialogues, 2 vols (Leiden, 1987); idem, The

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‘Gregorian’ Dialogues and the Origins of Benedictine Monasticism (Leiden, 2003). Clark’s thesis has been questioned but not disproved: see, for example, R. Godding, ‘Les Dialogues de Grégoire le Grand. À propos d’un livre récent’, Analecta Bollandiana 106 (1988), 201–29; P. Meyvaert, ‘The enigma of Gregory the Great’s Dialogues: a response to Francis Clark’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 39 (1988), 335–81; P-P. Verbraken, ‘Les Dialogues de saint Grégoire le Grand: sont-ils apocryphes? À propos d’un ouvrage recent’, Revue Bénédictine 98 (1988), 272–7; A. de Vogüé, ‘Grégoire le Grand et ses “Dialogues” d’après deux ouvrages récents’, RHE 83 (1988), 281–348; idem., ‘Les Dialogues, oeuvre authentique et publiée par Grégoire lui-même’, in Gregorio Magno e il suo tempo (Rome, 1991), vol. 2, 27–40. See also S. Boesch Gajano, ‘Dislivelli culturali e mediazione ecclesiastiche nei Dialoghi di Gregorio Magno’, Quaderni Storici 41 (1979), 398–415; eadem, ‘La proposta agiografica dei Dialoghi di Gregorio Magno’, Studi medievali (3rd series), 21 (1980), 623–64; eadem, ‘“Narratio” e “expositio” nei Dialoghi di Gregorio Magno’, Bullettino dell’ Istituto Storico Italiano 88 (1974), 1–35; eadem, ‘Teoria e practica pastorale’, in Fontaine, Gillet, Pellistrandi (eds), Grégoire le Grand, 171–80. In partial support of Clark, see Dunn, Emergence of Monasticism, 131–3; eadem, ‘Asceticism and monasticism II’, 684. See Dunn, Emergence of Monasticism, 131, and the references given there. Wroclaw, Bibl. Uniwersytecka. Akc. 1955/2 and 1969/430; see D. Yerkes, ‘An unnoticed omission in the modern critical editions of Gregory’s Dialogues’, Revue Bénédictine 87 (1977), 178–9. See Clark, Pseudo-Gregorian Dialogues vol. II, 580–627, ‘Old tales in new guise’ and the references given there, principally de Vogüé, Grégoire le Grand. Dialogues; idem, Vie de Saint Benoit (Bégrolles-en-Mauges, 1982); A. Dufourcq, Étude sur les Gesta Martyrum Romains, 5 vols (Paris, 1900–88); J. Petersen, The Dialogues of Gregory the Great in Their Late Antique Classical Background (Toronto, 1984). See also the discussion in C. Pilsworth, ‘Dating the Gesta Martyrum: a manuscript-based approach’, Early Medieval Europe 9 (2000), 309–24. Dialogues, I, 4. J. Wortley (trans.), The Spiritual Meadow of John Moschos (Kalamazoo, 1992), 122–4; Clark, Pseudo-Gregorian Dialogues vol. II, 608–27; Dufourcq, Étude, vol. III, 76–9. Dunn, Emergence of Monasticism, 132–7; eadem, ‘Reading the Dialogues’, Studia Patristica 39 (2006), 355–61. Dialogues, II, 8. Dialogues, I, 9; III 29–32. Dialogues, II, 8. See Maddicott, ‘Plague’, 184. See Chapter 6 above and Firth, Rank and Religion, 309. Adomnán of Iona, Life of St Columba II, 46, 203–4, attributes the sparing of the Picts and Dalriadan Scots from the plague of the seventh century to the protection of Columba. See

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138 139 140 141 142 143 144

145 146 147 148 149

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J-M. Picard, ‘Adomnán’s Vita Columbae and the cult of Colum Cille in continental Europe’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 98 C, 1 (1998), 1–23, for the folkloric attribution to Colum Cille of power against those twin harbingers of plague, thunderstorms and rats. The pagan shrine at the summit of Monte Cassino allegedly destroyed by Benedict is said to have been dedicated to Apollo, but the actual temple on this site was dedicated to Jupiter. Dialogues, II, 4. Dialogues, II, 30, translating cornu et tripedica ferens as ‘carrying a bow and a three-legged stool’ rather than the ‘medicine horn’ and ‘triple shackle’ of the English translation by Zimmerman, 97. For mulomedicus as horse-doctor, see D. P. Charpentier and G. P. Henschel (eds), Du Cange, Glossarium Mediae et Infimae Latinitatis vol. 5 (Niort, 1885), 539. E.g. I, 4. V. I. J. Flint, The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe (1991), places religion and magic on different points on a spectrum. Against this approach, see R. Kieckhefer, ‘The specific rationality of medieval magic’, AHR 99 (1994), 813–36 and A. Murray, ‘Missionaries and magic in Dark-Age Europe’, Past and Present 136 (1992), 186–205. Dialogues, I, 5. Dialogues, I, 7. Dialogues, I, 9. Dialogues, II, 21. Dialogues, III, 37. Dialogues, III, 15. Dialogues, II, 8. Cf. Anonymous Life of Cuthbert, Book III, ii–iv, 96–101; Bede, Life of Cuthbert, chs 17–20, 215–25: ch. 19 makes explicit comparison with the deeds of Benedict in Book II of the Dialogues as well as with the Life of Antony. Bede, Life of Cuthbert, chs 18–21, 216–28; the Anonymous Life deals with these themes in Book II, ii–v, 77–87. Dialogues, II, 32–3. Dialogues, III, 36. Dialogues, IV, 5. Clark, Pseudo-Gregorian Dialogues II, 536, also for difficulties experienced by commentators in understanding this passage; for related problems, see M. van Uytfanghe, ‘Scepticisme doctrinal au seuil du moyen age? Les objections du diacre Pierre dans les Dialogues de Grégoire le Grand’, in Fontaine, Gillet and Pellistrandi (eds), Grégoire le Grand, 315–26; for multiple souls, see Bremmer, Early Greek Conception of the Soul, 13–69; also Hultkrantz, Conceptions of the Soul, passim. Jesuit Relations, vol. 10, 141. Dialogues, II, 22. Meyer, ‘Beyond syncretism’, 61.

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153 See W. Rowe and V. Schelling, Memory and Modernity. Popular Culture in Latin America (London and New York, 1991), 122–7. 154 Bremmer, Early Greek Conception of the Soul, esp. Appendix 2, ‘The wandering soul in Western European folk tradition’. 155 H. Hecht (ed.), Bischof Wærferth von Worcester. Übersetzung des Dialoge Gregors des Grossen (Leipzig, 1900), 147–50; Godden, ‘Anglo-Saxons on the mind’. 156 Ellis Davidson, ‘Scandinavian cosmology’, 187. 157 R. North, ‘End time and the date of Voluspá: two models of conversion’, in Karkov and Howe (eds), Conversion and Colonization, 213–36. 158 Hultkrantz, ‘The problem of Christian influence’, 167–8, quoting from Jesuit Relations vol. 6, 161. Religious segmentation amongst Native Americans led to belief in the existence of wandering ghosts of Christian converts who had been admitted neither to the Christian nor the native afterlife. See also P. Gose, ‘Converting the ancestors’, in Mills and Grafton (eds), Conversion, 140–74, 164, for the assumption, in South America, that the souls of Andeans and Christians went to different places. 159 HE II, 3 and 5. 160 G. Halsall, Early Medieval Cemeteries (Skelmorlie, 1995), 33. 161 Museum of London, Prittlewell Prince; V. Bierbrauer, ‘The cross goes north: from Late Antiquity to Merovingian times south and north of the Alps’, in Carver (ed.), The Cross Goes North, 429–42. 162 See also Blair, Church, 228–30. 163 HE II, 15. Various occupants of Mound 1 have been suggested over the years including Rædwald, by H. M. Chadwick, ‘Who was he?’, Antiquity 53 (1940), 76–87; J. Werner, ‘Das Schiffgrab von Sutton Hoo, Forschungsgeschichte und Forschungsstand zwischen 1939 und 1980’, Germania 60 (1982), 193–228; Halsall, Early Medieval Cemeteries, 33. Sigeberht: I. Wood, The Merovingian North Sea (Alingsås, 1983), 14. Sigeberht or Eorpwald: I. Wood, ‘The Franks and Sutton Hoo’, in I. Wood and N. Lund (eds), People and Places in Northern Europe 500–1600: Essays in Honour of Peter Hayes Sawyer (Woodbridge, 1991), 11; Rægenhere: B. Arrhenius, review of Bruce-Mitford, 1975, Medieval Archaeology 22 (1978), 189–95; Æthelhere: F. M. Stenton, ‘The East Anglian kings of the seventh century’, in P. Clemoes (ed.), The Anglo-Saxons: Studies in some Aspects of their History and their Culture presented to Bruce Dickins (London, 1959), 43–52; Sæberht of Essex: M. Parker Pearson, R. van de Noort and A. Woolf, ‘Three men and a boat: Sutton Hoo and the East Anglian kingdom’, Anglo-Saxon England 22 (1993), 27–50. 164 Carver, Sutton Hoo, 503. 165 This is one of the principal suggestions of Carver, Sutton Hoo, 503. 166 A. Boddington, ‘Modes of burial, settlement and worship: the Final Phase reviewed’, in E. Southworth (ed.), Anglo-Saxon Cemeteries: a Reappraisal (Stroud, 1990), 177–99; Geake, Use of Grave-goods; D. Hadley, ‘Equality, humility and non-materialism?’.

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167 For all these points, see S. Crawford, ‘Votive deposition’; Blair, Church, 30–3, 228–45, and H. Geake, ‘Persistent problems in the study of conversion-period burials in England’, in Lucy and Reynolds (eds), Burial in Early Medieval England, 144–55, esp. 147–8. 168 Blair, Church, 230. 169 Seremetakis, Last Word, 64–7; M-L. Keinänen, ‘Religious ritual contested. Antireligious activities and women’s ritual practice in rural Soviet Karelia’, in Ahlbäck (ed.), Ritualistics, 92–117, esp. 106–8. 170 Seremetakis, Last Word, 126–7. 171 C. J. Clover, ‘Regardless of sex: men, women and power in early Northern Europe’, Speculum 68 (1993), 363–87, 382. See also H. Geake, ‘The control of burial practice in middle Anglo-Saxon England’, in Carver (ed.), The Cross Goes North, 259–70. 172 Geertz, Interpretation of Cultures, 142–69. 173 For the gradual nature of the move from traditional cemeteries where ancestors were buried in Ireland as well as the shift towards a Christianized discourse in northern Britain, see T. M. Charles-Edwards, ‘The pastoral role of the Church in the early Irish laws’, in Blair and Sharpe (eds), Pastoral Care, 63–80; E. O’Brien, ‘Pagan and Christian burial in Ireland during the first millennium ad: continuity and change’, in N. Edwards and A. Lane (eds), The Early Church in Wales and the West. Recent Work in Early Christian Archaeology, History and Place-Names (Oxford, 1992), 130–7, esp. 133–7; S. T. Driscoll, ‘The relationship between history and archaeology: artefacts, documents and power’, in S. T. Driscoll and M. R. Nieke (eds), Power and Politics in Early Medieval Britain and Ireland (Edinburgh, 1988), 162–87; also the comments of Blair, Church, 64–5. 174 HE II, 5. 175 HE III, 23–4; Blair, Church, 62–3, 229. Bede records that Oethelwald of Deira wished to be buried in the church at Lastingham but it is not clear whether this actually took place. 176 D. C. Munro, Translations and Reprints from the Original Sources of European History (Pennsylvania, 1900) vol. VI, no. 5, 2–4. 177 Jesuit Relations, vol. 10, 301–2. 178 Jesuit Relations, vol. 60, 31–41; A. Greer, ‘Conversion and identity. Iroquois Christianity in seventeenth-century New France’, in Mills and Grafton (eds), Conversion: Old Worlds and New, 175–98, 184. 179 Firth, Rank and Religion, 403. 180 Adomnán, Life of St Columba, III, 6, 210, and note 364; Paxton, Christianizing Death, 84–7. 181 Blair, Church, 58–65; 228–40. 182 Hope-Taylor, Yeavering, 78–85; ibid., 95–116; ibid., 244–7; Blair, ‘Anglo-Saxon pagan shrines’; Lucy, ‘Early medieval burial at Yeavering’. 183 Ibid., 139.

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184 Ibid. 185 II, i, 3–4, 199. 186 D. Bullough, ‘Burial, community and belief in the early medieval West’, in Wormald, Bullough and Collins (eds), Ideal and Reality, 177–201, 189. 187 Blair, Church, 237. 188 II, v, 1–4, 202–3; A. Angenendt, ‘Theologie und Liturgie’, for the emerging view of these Masses as marking periods of time in a process of purification of the soul; see also Paxton, Christianizing Death, 66–9. 189 II, v, 6–10, 203. 190 For an attempt at a similar initiative in Francia, see Gregory of Tours, Glory of the Martyrs, ch. 88, 112–13. 191 Bede, Life of Cuthbert, ch. 15, 203–7; cf. Anonymous Life, II, 8, 90–3. 192 Blair, Church, 241, does not make this distinction. 193 Dialogues IV, 55. 194 Blair, Church, 229, for discussion of the possible burials of sub-kings of the Magonsæte and Hwicce in minsters. 195 H. Geake, ‘Persistent problems’, 144–55, doubts that males were buried in unfurnished graves. 196 Blair, Church, 242. 197 See the discussion in Clark, Pseudo-Gregorian Dialogues vol. II, 534–5. 198 Dialogues IV, 37. 199 Bremmer, Early Greek Concept of the Soul, 132–3; P. Dinzelbacher, Die Jenseitsbrücke in Mittelalter (Vienna, 1973); Hultkrantz, ‘Christian influence’, 172–4. 200 Hultkrantz, ‘The problem of Christian influence’, 174 and n. 75. 201 See also Gregory of Tours, Libri decem historiarum IV, 33, 227–8, for another Christian variant on this theme. 202 Dialogues, IV, 19. 203 Dialogues, IV, 17. See also the Life of Wilfrid, ch. 18, 126–7, where the boy brought back to life by Wilfrid is baptized by him but later dies of plague: the author asserts that baptized, he has inherited a life of unending happiness in Heaven, but this is because as a consequence of the baptism he had lived in the service of God, as part of Wilfrid’s community. 204 Dialogues, IV, 40. See Gregory the Great. Forty Gospel Homilies, trans. D. Hurst, Cistercian Studies Series 123 (Kalamazoo, 1990), where similar or identical stories to those in the Dialogues can be found in Homilies 10, 74–5; 11, 83–5; 12, 91–2; 35, 308–9; 36, 324–5; 37, 334–6; 38, 352–5; and 40, 383–5. There are also two inserted stories on similar themes in 34, 297–8; and 39, 366–7, which do not appear in the Dialogues. 205 The theme of souls being carried to Heaven by angels is an important component of the third book of Adomnán’s Life of St Columba: see, for example, III, 6–7, 210–11; 9–14, 212–16.

242 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215

216 217 218 219 220 221 222

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227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234

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Dialogues, II, 34; ibid., IV, 11; Life of Gregory, ch. 17, 100–1. Dialogues, II, 35; Hultkrantz, Conceptions, 260–1. Jesuit Relations, vol. 10, 30–1. Jesuit Relations, vol. 1, 289–91, quoted by Hultkrantz, ‘The problem of Christian influence’, 166. Dialogues, IV, 30; ibid., IV, 46. Hultkrantz, ‘The problem of Christian influence’, 166. Dialogues, IV, 31. Firth, Rank and Religion, 316. P. Gose, ‘Converting the ancestors’. See Geary, Living With the Dead, 36–40, who also points out that around the time of Radbod’s death in 719 some Frankish nobles began to construct a church over ancestral graves at Flonheim in the Rhineland, in an apparent attempt to ensure that continuity with the ancestors was not interrupted by the fact of baptism or lack of it. Life of Gregory, ch. 29, 126–9. See PL, LXXV, col. 105. Life of Gregory, 162, n. 122. Talbot, Anglo-Saxon Missionaries, 115. Dialogues, IV, 34. Shippey, Beowulf, 43. Lucy, Way of Death, 75. By contrast, Meaney, Gazetteer, 18, draws attention to the ancient practice of corpse mutilation, noting that it was designed to keep the corpse from walking. See also Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Paganism, 92–5. I, xv, 3, 198. Meaney, Gazetteer, 68–9. Lucy, Way of Death, 75–6; Meaney, Gazetteer, 18. Hertz, Death, 52, notes that this is sometimes determined by convention: some Southern American peoples leave a rope protruding from the grave and when this has decayed or frayed, the soul is deemed finally to have left the vicinity of the body. N. Reynolds, ‘The structure of Anglo-Saxon graves’, Antiquity 50 (1976), 140–4. Meaney, Gazetteer, 16–7; Lucy, Way of Death, 102. Barber, Vampires, 80. Meaney, Gazetteer, 20; Barber, Vampires, 79. Lucy, Way of Death, 78–80 and Wilson Anglo-Saxon Paganism, 77–86, for ‘live’ and prone burials. Discussion of these two burials can also be found in Williams, Death and Memory, 97–9. See Medieval Archaeology 35 (1991), 157–8. L. Wilkinson, ‘Problems of analysis and interpretation of skeletal remains’,

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236 237 238 239 240 241

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Anglo-Saxon Cemeteries 1979, BAR British Series 82 (Oxford, 1980), 221–32, 230. Three decapitated burials were also found at this site. A. L. Meaney and S. C. Hawkes, Two Anglo-Saxon Cemeteries at Winnall, Winchester, Hampshire (London, 1970), 29–33. See also A. J. Reynolds, Anglo-Saxon Law in the Landscape. An Archaeological Study of the Old English Judicial System, unpublished PhD Thesis, University College, London (1998), 105–14, on deviant burials and variations in their patterns; and M. Harman, T. I. Molleson, J. L. Price, ‘Burials, bodies and beheadings in Romano-British and Anglo-Saxon cemeteries’, Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History) Geology Series 35 (3), 145–88. Barber, Vampires, 29–38; Firth, Rank and Religion, 378–9. Anonymous History of Abbot Ceolfrith, ch. 14, in Webb, Age of Bede, 218. Meaney and Hawkes, Winnall, 29–31. Ibid., 30. Carver, Sutton Hoo, 71–87. Carver, Sutton Hoo, 315–59; Reynolds, Anglo-Saxon Law in the Landscape, esp. 100–2. See also Geake, Use of Grave-Goods, 5. It should be noted that the term cwealmstow, or execution site, used by modern commentators in relation to these cemeteries, has as its root cwealm, which apart from meaning death also has the more specialized meaning of plague or pestilence. Carver, Sutton Hoo, 348. One way of bringing these burials into line with what we know of ‘execution cemeteries’ in general would be to compress the radiocarbon dates (but see below). Ibid., 348–9. The sequence of burials proposed (see 344) is: 53; then 44, 45, 51, 50, 42/3 and 48; next 41, 46, 49 and 54 in quarry pits, and perhaps 52; 55 is added in a Mound 6 quarry pit to the south. The reasons for suggesting a possible degree of continuity between mound cemetery and ‘execution cemetery’ (347–8) are that one of the Group 2 burials (Burial 53) looks as if it has been placed in a freshly dug quarry pit which had provided some of the material for Mound 5. Another quarrypit inhumation (Burial 49) cannot date to more than a decade or two after the raising of Mound 5; the same may apply to Burial 53. This would suggest that these bodies were buried not too long after the early part of the seventh century, which is the period of the cremation burial of Mound 5: so Burial 49 could then date to the mid-seventh century. Such findings are not contradicted by radiocarbon analysis: the extent of bone survival is very poor, and radiocarbon dating could indicate a date for some inhumations as early as mid-seventh century. One piece of wood remaining in a post-hole from the ‘gallows’ around which Group 1 burials are clustered yields a possible earliest date of 690 (331–2). See Barber, Vampires, 54–5, for restraint of bodies, and 46–56 for techniques identical or comparable to those which might have been used here. Carver, Sutton Hoo, 334–43. Ibid., 331.

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247 Ibid. 248 J. J. Wymer, Barrow Excavations in Norfolk 1984–88, East Anglian Archaeology Report, No. 77 (Gressenhall, 1996), 58–89. The Goblin Works cemetery at Leatherhead in Surrey follows a similar pattern: R. Poulton, ‘The former Goblin Works, Leatherhead: Saxons and sinners’, London Archaeologist 5 (1987), 311–17. 249 See A. C. Hogarth, ‘Structural features in Anglo-Saxon graves’, Archaeological Journal, 130 (1973), 104–19, for discussion of St Peter’s, Broadstairs, Kent, a cemetery containing post-holes, penannular ditches, a ring-ditch, and kerb-slots round graves, in a pattern similar to Polhill. Blair, Church, 233, characterizes such ditches as above-ground markers and, where grave-goods are not profuse, representing a phase in the transition to unfurnished burial. 250 For Kentish cemeteries in general, see A. Richardson, The Anglo-Saxon Cemeteries of Kent, vol. 1, BAR British Series 391 (Oxford, 2005). 251 Behr, ‘The origins of kingship’. 252 J. Willson, ‘Rescue excavations on the Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Eastry, 1989’, Kent Archaeological Review 100 (1990), 229–31; see also L. E. Webster and J. Cherry, ‘Kent: Updown, Eastry’, in Medieval Archaeology 21 (1977), 209. If these graves were covered by barrows, no traces seem to have remained. 253 S. C. Hawkes and G. Grainger, The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Finglesham, Kent, Oxford University School of Archaeology Monograph No. 64 (Oxford, 2006). See 31 and 157–60 for the ditches. They are described as if each surrounded a barrow, though no traces of mound-material have been found and one of the graves, along with the area enclosed within its ditch, was covered by a layer of hard-packed chalk, as were two ring-ditch graves situated slightly further to the north. 254 Does the Mildrith Legend’s story of the murder of two young princes by a royal steward, Thunor, also reflect the depredations of plague at Eastry in the 660s? The name Thunor, the association between thunderstorms and plague, the burial of the two bodies without Christian rites at Eastry, and their later exhumation might all suggest so. The vanquishing of Thunor at a place called Thunores hleaw by their sister Eafe, as he attempted to thwart her attempts to obtain land for the foundation of Minster-in-Thanet, suggests a contest between Thunor and Christianity. The Legend exists only in a complex of later texts, and the story that Eafe was given land for the foundation of her minster as wergild by the king could possibly be a later explanation of how the land was obtained: one of those named in the earliest version as advising Egbert to exhume the bodies in a preliminary to its payment is Deusdedit, Archbishop of Canterbury, but according to Bede he had died on the same day in 664 as Egbert’s father, King Eorceberht. For the Legend and its numerous versions and layers, see D. W. Rollason, The Mildrith Legend. A Study in Early Medieval Hagiography in England (Leicester, 1982). Blair, Church, 144, highlights the way in which much of the Legend consists of an amalgam of folklore and history, while Cubitt, ‘Sites and

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255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267

268 269

270 271 272 273

274 275 276 277 278 279 280

245

sanctity’, discusses the manner in which this account contains topoi characteristic of one type of Anglo-Saxon hagiography. See also Hollis, Anglo-Saxon Women, 259–60. A. Boyle, D. Jennings, D. Miles, S. Palmer, The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Butler’s Field, Lechlade, Gloucestershire (Oxford, 1998), 133–4; Blair, Church, 231–3. Maddicott, ‘Plague’, 36; Sallares, ‘Ecology’, in Little (ed.), Plague, 259. Hope-Taylor, Yeavering, 100–2 and 244–5. Ibid.; Lucy, ‘Early medieval burial at Yeavering’, 129–30. Maddicott, ‘Plague’, 199–202. Hope-Taylor, Yeavering, 114, 246. M. McCormick, ‘Towards a molecular history of the Justinianic pandemic’, in Little (ed.), Plague, 290–312. HE III, 9. HE V, 12. See Chapter 2 above. HE V, 12. E.g. Book IV, 24, 26, 29. Life of Gregory, ch. 28, 124–7. See also Wortley, Spiritual Meadow, 165–6, for a similar, but not identical, story. The textual history of this work is highly complex, but it may be that the tale told here inspired the one found in the Dialogues. Dialogues, IV, 57. For the increasing demonization of places of pagan worship, including some burial barrows, from the eighth century onwards, see S. Semple, ‘A fear of the past: the prehistoric burial mound in the ideology of middle and later Anglo-Saxon England’, World Archaeology 30 (1998), 109–26. Dialogues, IV, 27; similar narratives in IV, 36. HE IV, 8. Dialogues, IV, 27. Barber, Vampires, 109–10; eadem, ‘Forensic pathology and the European vampire’, in A. Dundes (ed.), The Vampire. A Casebook (Madison, WI and London, 1998), 109–42, 121–2. For discussion of the causes of the ‘expulsion’ of children from graves and as potential revenants, see Barber, Vampires, 154–7; Crawford, ‘Children’, 85. Dialogues, II, 24. Crawford, ‘Children’, 89. Dialogues, II, 23. Life of Gregory, ch. 19, 104–5. Thanks to Jennifer Boyle for drawing my attention to this episode. Jesuit Relations, vol. 10, 147. Bede, Life of Cuthbert, ch. 42, 290–5. There is a shortened version of his account in HE IV, 30.

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281 Dialogues, III, 13. A child’s body in the same tomb has decomposed: this alters significantly the original narrative of the Gesta Martyrum on which this incident in the Dialogues is based. See Dufourcq, Étude sur les Gesta, vol. III, 69–71; Clark, Pseudo-Gregorian Dialogues, vol. II, 612–14; Petersen, Dialogues of Gregory the Great, 76–80. 282 See the Anonymous Life of Cuthbert, IV, 13–14, 130–3; Bede, Life of Cuthbert, ch. 42, 290–5. Barber, Vampires, 108, suggests saponification; but Thomas, Bede, Archaeology, 10, considers the possibility that the monks were aware that Cuthbert’s body had been embalmed. Reginald of Durham’s account of the twelfth-century inspection of the body is in C. F. Battiscombe, The Relics of St Cuthbert (Oxford, 1956), 109, and is also quoted by Rollason, Saints and Relics, 38–9. 283 HE IV, 18; HE III, 8; HE III, 19. 284 HE III, 8. 285 Rollason, Saints and Relics, 39. 286 Also inserted in Gregory’s Gospel Homily 36 in Hunt (ed.), Forty Gospel Homilies, 324–5. 287 Rollason, Saints and Relics, 39.

Notes to Chapter 8: How Christian Was Anglo-Saxon England c.700? 1 Life of Wilfrid, chs 45–61, 152–76; Cubitt, Anglo-Saxon Church Councils, 24. 2 J. McClure and R. Collins (eds), Bede. The Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Oxford, 1994), 343–57, 347. 3 Cubitt, Anglo-Saxon Church Councils, 114. 4 Ibid. 5 Talbot (ed.), Anglo-Saxon Missionaries, 75–8. 6 Blair, Church, 117. 7 HE V, 6. 8 Cubitt, ‘Pastoral care and concilar canons’, 196. 9 II, i, 7, 199. 10 Dialogues IV, 59, repeated as an insertion in the Gospel Homilies of Gregory the Great, 37, 334–6; HE IV, 22. 11 See C. Edwards, The Beginnings of German Literature (Woodbridge, 2002), 97–114, for the suggestion that the ‘loosing’ of the Merseburg charm, carried out by female supernatural beings, should be seen in a medical rather than a military context. 12 For discussion of some of the issues surrounding this change see Foot, Veiled Women, vol. I, 35–56, 62–7; Yorke, Nunneries, 189–90. 13 Hollis, Anglo-Saxon Women and the Church, 179–207. 14 See G. Halsall, ‘Social change around ad 600: an Austrasian perspective’, in M. O. H. Carver (ed.), The Age of Sutton Hoo. The Seventh Century in North-Western

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15 16 17

18 19 20 21

22 23

24

25 26

247

Europe (Woodbridge, 1992), 265–78, though this also subscribes to the functionalist interpretation of grave-goods as vehicles for status display. P. Wormald, Bede and the Conversion of England: the Charter Evidence (Jarrow, 1984), 23. See Wormald, Bede and the Conversion, and Blair, Church in Anglo-Saxon Society, 100–18. Hadley, ‘Burial practices in northern England’, 210; see also Blair, Church in AngloSaxon Society, 228–45; S. Lucy and A. Reynolds, ‘Burial in Early Medieval England and Wales’, 12. Blair, Church, 240. Boddington, ‘Models of burial, settlement and worship’. Geake, Use of Grave-Goods, 135. M. O. H. Carver, ‘Kingship and material culture in early Anglo-Saxon East Anglia’, in S. Bassett (ed.), The Origins of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms (Leicester, 1989), 141–58; eadem, ‘Burial as poetry: the context of treasure in Anglo-Saxon graves’, in Treasure in the Medieval West, ed. E. M. Tyler (York, 2000), 25–48, esp. 26; D. Hadley, ‘Equality, humility and non-materialism?’. But see also Crawford, ‘Votive deposition’, and Filmer-Sankey and Pestell, Snape Anglo-Saxon Cemetery, 262–4, for interpretations stressing the significance of religion. Blair, Church, 245. See in addition to the references to these in earlier chapters, HE V, 13 and 14, and the early eighth-century vision attributed to a monk at Wenlock translated in Emerton, Letters of St Boniface, 25–31. For a late eleventh-century vampire outbreak in England and the methods employed to deal with it, see R. Bartlett (ed.), Geoffrey of Burton: Life and Miracles of St Modwenna (Oxford, 2003), 196–9. For ghosts, R. C. Finucane, Appearances of the Dead. A Cultural History of Ghosts (London, 1982), esp. 49–8, and J-C. Schmitt, Ghosts in the Middle Ages. The Living and the Dead in Medieval Society (Chicago and London, 1998). Metcalf and Huntington, Celebrations of Death, 96. For the alternative concepts offered by the seventh-century Visio Baronti, see Dunn, ‘Gregory the Great, the vision of Fursey’.


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Index

Ad Caprae Caput (Gateshead) 75, 99, 111, 112, 147 Adda, priest 110 aDNA 180, 193 Adomnán of Iona 112 ælf, ælfe 69–70 Ælfflæd, Abbess of Whitby 133, 190 Æthelberht, ruler of Kent 49–51, 54–6, 68, 101–3, 111, 137, 164–6 Æthelburh, wife of Eadwine of Northumbria 78, 104–5, 110, 143 Æthelburh, East Anglian princess, Abbess of Faremoutiers 185 Æthelfrith, ruler of Northumbria 61, 104, 107, 109 Æthelred, ruler of Mercia 130 Æthelthryth, Abbess of Ely 123, 175, 185–6 Æthelwealh, ruler of the South Saxons 107, 132 Æthelwold, ruler of the East Angles 125 afterlife 2, 6, 8–24, 29, 34–5, 38–42, 86, 90–9, 142–4, 162–3, 169–74, 180–6, 191–3 see also bosom of Abraham, Heaven, Hell, Last Judgement, Purgatory, refrigeria, receptacula Agatho, Pope 145 Agatho, priest 118 Agilberht, Bishop of the West Saxons 109–10, 118–21, 141 Agilulf, Lombard ruler 47 Aidan, Bishop of Northumbria 110, 112, 115–17, 120, 122, 133–5 Alcuin 161 Aldhelm 75, 97, 118, 147 Alfred, King 161 Alhflæd, wife of Peada 106

Alhfrith, ruler of Deira 106, 117–19, 123–4, 129 alms 16, 23, 181 Altus Prosator 38, 111 Alvediston 175 Ambrose, Bishop of Milan 16, 19, 25–7 amulet, amulets 59, 79, 127, 148–9, 179, 184 ancestors 3, 14, 61–2, 66, 67, 72, 91–3, 97–8, 135, 164–5, 167, 169, 171–4, 180 Angli 51–3, 55, 60–1 Anna, ruler of the East Angles 106, 132–3, 185 Annals of Clonmacnoise 159 annat 131 Annwyn 9 Anonymous Life of Cuthbert 131, 132, 155, 189, 190 Antiphonary of Bangor 145 Antonine Plague 25 Apocalypse of Paul 19 see also Visio Pauli Apostolic Constitutions 13, 15 Apple Down 87–9 Arians, Arianism 26, 47–8, 145, 159 Arigius, patrician of Gaul 52 Arnegundis, wife of Frankish ruler 30 arum 78 Audun-le-Tiche 34–5, 180 augury, augurers 72, 78, 139, 157, 160 Augustine, Bishop of Hippo 13–29, 41, 141, 158, 168, 169, 181, 182 Confessions 22 City of God 16, 20–2, 28 Enchiridion 22–3 On the Care to be Had for the Dead (De Cura Pro Mortuis Gerenda) 20–2, 27, 29

270

INDEX

Augustine, Bishop of Canterbury 50–6, 57, 101–3, 111, 113, 114, 116, 139, 141, 148, 155 Austrasia 51–2 Authari, Lombard ruler 47 Auxerre, Council of 17 Bamburgh 110, 134, 150 Bangor Iscoed, monastery 113 baptism, adult 141–2 baptism, infant 141–4, 170 baptism, ministry of 47, 55, 108, 113, 115, 116 125, 134, 141, 156, 172, 188 baptism, Ruthwell Cross imagery 154 baptism, validity of 117–8, 121–2 ‘baptism by tears’ 172–3 baptism of Christ 153 baptism of kings 3, 55, 62, 68, 101–4, 105–7, 108–12, 125, 135, 192 baptismal ritual 142 baptismal sponsorship 105–6, 141–2 Barbaricini, tribe in Sardinia 46–7 Bardney, monastery 133, 150–1 Barking, monastery 123, 183 Barrett, Justin 154 barrows 58, 82–3, 92–3,95–9, 147, 164–5, 176–8 see also burial mounds Basil, Bishop of Cæsarea 13 basilicas 26, 29, 30, 140, 153, 167, 187 Bede 155, 175–6 Ecclesiastical History 43, 49–50, 54–6, 57, 60–1, 64–5, 68, 73, 75, 81–2, 92, 97–9, 101–25, 127–30, 132–4, 135–8, 140–4, 147–8, 151, 156, 159, 160, 163, 165–6, 175, 179–81, 183, 184–5, 189, 192 Letter to Ecgberht 187–9, 190–1 Lives of Cuthbert 146, 150, 155, 160, 168, 170, 184–5, 189, 190 Lives of the Abbots 154–5 On Time 62–3, 69, 71, 138, 153 Homily on the Gospel of Mark 143 Bellah, Robert 3 benandanti 82 Benedict Biscop 132, 140, 149, 153–4, 187 Benedict of Nursia 158, 159, 160, 161, 184 Benty Grange 80, 165 Beowulf 64, 93, 173

Berawan 10, 193 Berhtwald, Archbishop of Canterbury 187 Bernicia 61, 74, 89, 96–9, 104, 107–11, 114, 127, 129, 133, 188 Bertha, wife of Æthelberht of Kent 49, 51, 54–5, 102, 105, 114, 166 Besingahearh 75, 77 Betti, priest 110 Bidford-on-Avon 79 Birinus, Bishop of the West Saxons 106, 109, 115, 153 Bisi, Bishop of the East Angles 129 Black Death 39, 124, 127, 132 Blair, John 97, 147, 191, 192 Blodmonath 71 Bobbio, monastery 36, 40, 109, 115, 131 Boisil, prior of Melrose 123 body soul, body souls 7–8 Boniface V, Pope 78, 104–5, 109, Boniface, St 68, 173, 188 Boniface-Berhtgisl, Bishop of the East Angles 124 Boniface, Bishop of Ferentino in Dialogues 160 Bosa, Bishop of York 122 bosom of Abraham 13, 17, 20, 28 Boss Hall 164 Boyer, Pascal 3, 6, 27, 70, 78, 81, 146, 154, 191 Bradley, Richard 97 Bradwell-on-Sea 125, 134 Brighthampton 174 British Church, churches, churchmen, monasteries, shrines 37, 44, 113–15, 117–18, 119–23, 124, 139, 148, 153 Brixworth 152 Brown, Peter 29 Brunichildis, Frankish ruler 48–53, 105 Buddhism 2–3 Burgh Castle 169 Burgundy 51–2 burial, burials 9–11, 13, 15–17, 21–2, 29–35, 41, 65, 79, 81, 83, 85–100, 105, 111, 125, 132, 133, 148, 149, 162–70, 174–80, 184–5, 191–2 see also barrows; burial ad sanctos; burial mounds; cemeteries; exposure of bodies; furnished burial; horse burials;

INDEX

infant burials; inhumation; secondary burial; unfurnished burial burial ad sanctos 29–30, 168 burial mounds 9, 58, 82–3, 92–3, 96, 111, 162, 163–4, 166, 176–8 Bynum, Caroline Walker 25 Cædmon 111–12, 131, 144 Caedualla, British ruler 107–8 Cædwalla, ruler of the West Saxons 107, 113, 126 Cæsarius, Bishop of Arles 23–4, 37–8 Camerton 175, 176 Campania 153, 160 Campodunum 108 Candidus, papal rector in Francia 48–50, 52 Canterbury 49, 119, 133, 134, 152, 166, 169 diocese/archdiocese 55–6, 102–3, 109–10, 119, 125, 128–30, 134, 179, 187 Carthage, Council of 17 Carver, Martin 96 Catterick 108 caul 82, 98–9 Cedd, Bishop in Deira and of the East Saxons 110, 122–3, 125 134, 136–7 Celts 9, 38, 73, 77, 86, 97 cemeteries 10–11, 15–16, 26, 30–1, 34–5, 77, 79, 81, 85–96, 111, 147, 150, 164–9, 174–80, 184, 191–3 see also Alvediston; Audun-le-Tiche; Apple Down; barrows; Brighthampton; Burgh Castle; burial mounds; Camerton; Canterbury; Chadlington; Eastry; Empingham; Faversham; Finglesham; Frilford; Great Chesterford; Hartlepool; Hereford; Lechlade; Littleton; Loveden Hill; Lyneham; Minster-in-Thanet; Mitcham; Monkwearmouth-Jarrow; Melbourn; Morning Thorpe; Nazeingbury; Polhill; Prittlewell; Sancton; Saxonbury; Sewerby; Snape; Spong Hill; Sutton Hoo; St Peter’s, Broadstairs; Reihengräberfriedhöfe; Repton; ring-ditches; Tranmer House; Waltham; West Heslerton; West Lane, Kemble; Winchester; Winnall; Winterbourne Gummer; Yeavering

271

Cenred, ruler of Mercia 113 Cenwealh, West Saxon ruler 106, 109–10 Ceolfrith, Abbot of Jarrow 123, 132, 176 Chad, Bishop of York and Mercia 110–11, 119–20, 123–4, 127–8, 130, 150 Chadlington 174 Chaney, William A. 77 Charibert, Frankish ruler 49 charisma, charismatic 36, 132 Charm for a Sudden Stitch 59 charms 189 Childebert II, Frankish ruler 48–55 Chilperic, Frankish ruler 49 Chlothar I, Frankish ruler 30 Chlothar II, Frankish ruler, 49, 53–5, 103 Clover, Carol 165 Christ 2, 12, 14–15, 19, 23–4, 28, 39, 46, 102, 118, 136, 140, 145, 151, 153, 154, 155, 159–60, 172, 173–4 Christianity 1–8, 12, 20–1, 26, 28–31, 35–40, 42, 46–8, 51, 54–8, 62–4, 67, 73, 77, 82, 92, 100–1, 103–13, 115, 117–19, 121–31, 135–8, 143, 146, 148–54, 156–64, 167, 170, 172, 176, 179–80, 183–4, 188–94 Christianization 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 36, 44, 47, 48, 49, 61, 62, 67, 105, 108, 109, 111, 112, 113, 114, 130, 131, 135–86, 187, 189, 191, 194 Chrodechildis, wife of Clovis 30 Chrysaorius, in Dialogues 170 Clark, Anne L. 4 Clark, Francis 158 Clofesho Council of, 747, 146, 189, 191 Clovis, Frankish ruler 30 Cnobheresburg 41, 134 Codex Amiatinus 132 cognitive anthropology 3–4, 6, 67, 194 Coifi 82–3, 98–9 Coldingham, monastery 133 Colman, Bishop of Northumbria 116–20 Columba of Iona 36, 112, 118, 131 Columbanus 36–40, 131, 190 concubinage 137–9, 189 Constantius of Ancona in Dialogues 160 Crawford, Sally 86, 143, 170 creator god 2, 38, 67–9, 107, 111–12, 144 see also supreme being

272

INDEX

creed 37, 187, 189 see also NiceneConstantinopolitan Creed, Filioque cremation 9, 11, 31, 41, 57, 86–9, 93–9, 166, 174–7 ‘crisis rites’ 73–4 cross, crosses 112, 147–8, 152, 163, 165 see also Ruthwell Cross Curma 20, 169–70, 181 Cusanweoh 75 Cuthbert, St, Bishop of Lindisfarne 117, 122–3, 127, 146, 150–1, 160, 168, 175, 184–6 see also Anonymous Life of Cuthbert, Bede Lives of Cuthbert Cuthbert Coffin 132, 140 cwealmstow 178 Cwichelm, son of Cynegisl 106 Cynegisl, West Saxon ruler 106 Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage 13, 22, 39 Cyriacus, abbot 47, 50 Daedalus 66 Dagobert I, Frankish ruler 30 Dalfinus, Archbishop of Lyon 116 Damian, Bishop of Rochester 123 Daniel, Bishop of Winchester 68, 143, 188 decomposition of body 9, 11, 33, 35, 174 Deiws 67 Deira 82, 89, 98, 104–10, 117, 122, 123, 125, 129, 133, 188 Denisesburn 112, 147 Deor 65 Desborough 164 Desiderius, Bishop of Vienne 52 Deusdedit, Archbishop of Canterbury 109, 119, 121–3 Dievas 67 Dievs 67 Dialogues attributed to Gregory I 157–85, 189, 192 disarticulation of bodies 95, 176 Diuma, Bishop of Mercia and the Middle Angles 110 Dives and Lazarus 20–1 divination 72, 76–80, 139, 160 doctrinal mode of religiosity 4–6, 17, 26–7, 36–7, 39, 42, 46, 55, 101, 115, 152, 182, 191

Dorchester-upon-Thames 106 double houses 132–3, 190 Dryhthelm 181, 192 Ducklington 164 Dunwich (Domnoc), diocese of 129 Dyaus 67 Dynamius, papal rector in Francia 48 Eadbald, ruler of Kent 102–4, 137 Eadgyth, nun of Barking 183 Eadhæd, Bishop in Lindsey 122 Eadwine, Northumbrian ruler 61, 74, 77, 78, 81–2, 92, 98–9, 104–5, 107–8, 110, 112, 114, 116, 118, 132–3, 135, 137, 142–3, 151, 169 Ealdwulf, ruler of East Angles 111 Eanfled, daughter of Eadwine 104, 116, 133, 153 Eanfrith, ruler of Bernicia 107–8 Earconberht, ruler of Kent 122 East Angles 61, 68, 101, 103, 104, 105–6, 108, 111, 112, 125, 129, 133, 164, 176, 180, 185 East Anglia 41, 55, 93–4, 105, 109, 124, 125, 132, 169, 176, 180 East Saxons 55–56, 62, 101–3, 106, 110, 113, 124–7, 136, 163, 179 Easter, date and celebration of 113–21, 128, 137, 153, 187 Eastry 178–9 Eata, abbot and bishop 117, 119, 122 eccles 114 Ecgfrith, ruler of Northumbria 129–30, 168 Edda, Prose and Poetic 58–9 Ely 133, 150 embalming, 11, 30, 185 see also mummification Empingham 174 Elmet 114 elves see ælf, ælfe Elysian Fields 9 Eorcenberht, ruler of Kent 111 Eorcenwold, Bishop of London 130 Eormenric, father of Ætheleberht 49 Eorpwald, ruler of the East Angles 105, 108, 164 Eostre 62–3, 71 Eosturmonath 62, 71

INDEX

Equitius, abbot in Dialogues 158, 159 Erkenwald 173 see also Eorcenwold Esica, oblate at Barking 183 Etherius, Bisop of Lyons 52 Eucharist 14, 15, 17, 23, 31, 37, 103, 121, 134, 154, 157, 182, 184, 189, 190 euhemerization 61, 135 Eulogius, Patriarch of Alexandria 55 Eustasius, Abbot of Luxeuil 40 Ewe, African people 67, 69 exhumation 26, 35, 177, 183 exorcism 26–7, 102, 142, 151 exposure of bodies 9–11, 88–89, 94–5, 176–8 exposure of infants 142–3 fana 56, 74–5, 97–8, 124, 127 see also shrines Fang, African people 67 Faremoutiers 40–1, 185–6 Faversham 169 feasts, feasting 56, 62, 70–1, 74, 92, 136, 147 see also funerary feasting Felix, Bishop of the East Angles 109 ‘Field Ceremonies’ 71 Filioque 145, 187 Finan, Bishop of Northumbria 110, 116, 125 Finglesham 178–9 Firth, Raymond 2, 80, 81, 124, 126, 172, 175 ‘flashbulb memory’ 72 four- and five-post structures 87–8, 176, 178 Franks 30–4, 39–40, 42, 49 Franks Casket 65–7 free soul 7–8, 92, 170 Frig 58, 63 Frilford 175 functionalism 3, 31, 70, 80, 86, 91, 94, 191, 194 funerary feasting 10, 15–16, 89, 94, 166 funerary/mortuary rites, ritual 6, 8–17, 21–2, 30–5, 42, 85–90, 92, 91–100, 139, 162–9, 170, 174–80, 191–3 furnished burial 41, 86, 89–90, 91, 93, 96–7, 163–6, 169, 178–9, 191–2 see also gravegoods Fursey 41, 132, 134, 180–1, 185–6, 192 fylja 80

273

gast 161–2 Geertz, Clifford 70, 165 Gefion 62 Geraint, ruler of Dumnonia 118 Germanus, Bishop of Capua in Dialogues 182 Gerontius in Dialogues 182 Gervasius and Protasius, martyrs, relics of 26–8 Gesta Danorum 58 Gesta Martyrum 158 Gildas 114 Gilling, monastery 123 goat, goats 87, 99 goddesses 58–60, 62–3, 67, 69–71, 73, 81, 138–41, 162 Gododdin 114 Goodmanham 82–3, 98, 111, 147 grave-goods 30–1, 81, 85, 86, 87, 89, 93, 105, 163, 165–6, 178, 191 see also furnished burial Great Chesterford 7, 90, 98 Greek Orthodox Church 34–5 Gregory, Bishop of Tours 30, 32, 35, 39, 95 Gregory I, Pope 35–6, 43–56, 57, 70–1, 74, 104–5, 109, 111, 118, 130, 139, 141, 147, 148–9, 155, 157, 160, 163, 170, 181–2, 188 Gospel Homiles 170 Moralia 44–5 Regula Pastoralis 45 Grim, Grim’s Dyke 58 Gruzinski, Serge 138 gummeninga hergae 75 Guntram, Frankish ruler 30 Gylfaginning 58, 60 Hades 9 Hadrian, abbot 128, 153 Halegmonath 71 Harford Farm 164 Harrough Pightle 75, 93, 178 Harrow Hill 75 Harrowden 75 Harrowdown 75 Harrowdownhulle 75 Harrow-on-the-Hill 75, 111, 125 Hartlepool 132–3, 169

274

INDEX

Hatfield, Council of 130, 145 Hatfield Chase, battle of 107, 151, 184 healing, healers 26–7, 68, 76–82, 98, 102, 139, 148–51, 154–6, 159 hearg, hearh 75–7, 93, 178 Heaven 2, 8, 13, 19, 29, 38, 40, 41, 54, 112, 118, 144, 162, 169–74, 181, 182, 183, 184, 186 ‘Heavenfield’ see Hefenfelth Hefenfelth 64, 76, 112, 147–8, 151 Heimskringla 58 Hel 162 Hell 8, 13, 20, 23, 24, 39, 144, 162, 169–74, 181 Hengest and Horsa 66 Herculanus, Bishop of Perugia in Dialogues 185 Hereford 140, 169 diocese of 130 Hertford, Council of 121, 128–9, 137 Hertz, Robert 9, 10, 11, 91, 93 Hexham, diocese 122–3, 129, 134 monastery 134, 140, 148, 151–2 Hild, abbess of Whitby 118–19, 133, 138, 144 Hildmaer 168 Hippo, Council of 17 Historia Brittonum 61 Hlothere, ruler of Kent 132 Honorius I, Pope 109, 115, 149 Honorius, Archbishop of Canterbury 109 Hope-Taylor, Brian 97 horse burials 77, 87, 93, 98 Horton, Robin 2–3, 101 Hretha 62–3, 71 Hrethmonath 62, 71 Hultkrantz, Åke 79–80, 170 human sacrifice 71–4 Huron 8, 10, 17, 89, 166, 171 Hwicce 107, 113 Iceland 58, 60, 64, 68, 80, 143, 162 Ida, Bernician ruler 61 ‘idols’ 46, 56, 78, 80, 98, 104, 111, 138, 155 Iliad 9, 11 imagistic mode of religiosity 4, 6, 8, 26–7, 29, 36–7, 46, 55–6, 101, 151–2, 155, 189, 191

infant burials 90–1, 178 Ing, Ingui 60–1, 63, 82, 146 Inguec 61 Ingui-Freyr 60–1, 146 Ingvæones 60–1 inhumation 14, 15, 29, 30–1, 34, 40, 86, 88, 89–90, 93–9, 163–9, 174–80, 191 in Trullo, Council 17 Iona 36, 110, 112, 117, 131 Ireland 32, 36, 38–9, 41, 95, 111, 118, 120, 122, 131, 146 Irish Church, churchmen, monasteries 36–41, 106, 109, 112–13, 115–22, 129, 131, 139, 145, 147, 151, 153, 154, 156, 167, 169, I92 see also Columba, Columbanus, Iona, Luxeuil, Bobbio, Faremoutiers Irminsul 64, 112 Islam 2–3, 101 Island of Women 9 Ithamar, Bishop of Rochester 109 Iurminburh, wife of Ecgfrith 149 Ixworth 164 James, deacon in York 110, 116 Januarius, Bishop of Cagliari 46–7 Jarrow, monastery 123, 150, 176 see also Monkwearmouth-Jarrow Jaruman, Bishop of Mercia 110, 124, 126–7 Jerome, St 13, 28 Jews, Judaism 45–6 John, Archcantor of St Peter’s 145, 152–3, 187 John, Bishop of York 188 John the Deacon 173 John IV, Pope 115 John VI, Pope 187 Jolly, Karen 152 John Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople 13 John Moschos, Spiritual Meadow 158 Jonas of Bobbio, Life of Columbanus, 36–42 Jovis 67 Julianus Pomerius 23 Justinianic Plague 6, 32–5, 39, 95–6, 99, 110, 123–5, 127, 132, 140, 150, 159, 174–80, 182–6, 192–3

INDEX

Justus, bishop of Rochester 56, 103–4 Justus, monk in Dialogues 182 Kent 47, 49–51, 53–4, 59, 62, 68, 74–5, 88, 93–5, 99, 101–5, 110–11, 114, 116, 121–2, 126, 128, 130, 132–3, 137, 139, 141, 147–8, 163–5, 169, 178–9 Kingston Down 164 Lagny 42 Last Judgement 13–4, 22–4, 25, 36, 42, 155, 181 Lastingham 110, 120, 122, 125 leah 74–5 Lechlade 90, 179 Leonownens, Anna 69 Leuthere, Bishop of the West Saxons 110, 129 Lichfield 123, 150 diocese of 129–30, 140, 188 Life of Antony 153 Life of Gregory the Great 43, 49, 50, 61, 77, 132, 137, 155, 170, 172–3, 182, 184, 187, 192 Life of Martin of Tours 153 Life of Paul the First Hermit 153 Life of Wilfrid 82–3, 99, 114–15, 117, 118, 119, 132, 140, 142, 149, 155–7, 160 Limbo 9 liminality 6, 9, 11, 17, 33, 36, 39–42, 86, 89–91, 94, 99, 174, 180, 192–3 Lindisfarne 110, 115–17, 119, 122–3, 125, 129, 130, 132, 134, 150, 153, 168 Lindisfarne Gospels 132, 153 Lindsey 108, 110–11, 122, 129–30 Litha 63 Littleton 175 liturgy 13, 17, 24, 30, 34–5, 36, 133, 152–3, 167, 176, 187 Liudhard, bishop 49–51, 55 Lombard, Lombards 32, 47–50, 163 London 114 diocese of 56, 102–3, 109–10, 124–6, 128–30, paganism in 102–3, 111, 125–6 Lord’s Prayer 189 Loveden Hill 174

275

Luni, diocese of 47 Luxeuil 36, 40, 131 Lyneham 175 macrocosm and microcosm 3, 101–3, 105, 107 Magi 65 Magonsæte 113, 130 Maelgwyn, ruler of Gwynedd 95 malaria 22, 31, 41, 179 Malay peoples 10 Mannus 66 marriage, Christian 104, 121, 125, 128, 137–9, 142, 146 marriage, royal 49, 56, 102, 132, 166 Marseilles 29, 32, 39, 52, 95 martyrs 13, 16, 21–2, 25–9, 39, 70, 114, 148–50, 152, 184 Maserfelth 64, 147–8, 150 Mass 15–16, 32, 35–6, 151, 158, 167, 168, 174, 181, 184, 189, 193 matres 63 see also goddesses, Modranecht, mother goddesses matronae 63 see also goddesses, Modranecht, mother goddesses McCormick, Michael 193 Meaney, Audrey L. 85, 138 Melania the Elder 12 Melbourn 174 Mellitus, Bishop of London, Canterbury 56, 70, 103, 109, 124 Mellitus monk in Dialogues 182–3 Melrose 117, 122, 123 memoriae 26 mensa 15 Mensching, Gustav 2 Meonware 107 Mercia 73, 105–7, 109, 110, 111, 113, 114, 120, 123–6, 128–30, 133, 150, 169, 188 Mercury 60, 68, 73 Metcalf, Peter 10 Milan 16, 19, 25–6, 28 Mildrith Legend 57 see also Minster-inThanet Milton Regis 164 Minster-in-Thanet 133, 169

276

INDEX

miracle, miracles 26–8, 36, 55, 64, 101–2, 146, 148, 150–1, 154–7, 160, 185, 192 Mitcham 174 modes of religiosity 4–5, 26, 36, 48, 154 see also doctrinal mode, imagistic mode, nondoctrinal religion Modranecht 63, 69, 71, 138, 153 Monkwearmouth, monastery 123, 132, 152, 153, 154, 187 see also Jarrow, Monkwearmouth-Jarrow Monkwearmouth-Jarrow 123, 131, 132, 149, 169, 176 Monothelite, Monothelitism 109, 128, 145, 187 Montagnais 8, 162 Morning Thorpe 88 mother goddesses 63, 138–41 Mount Harry 75 Much Wenlock, monastery 133 Mul, brother of Cædwalla of the West Saxons 126 mummification 11, 172, 185 Mundal, Else 69 mutilation of corpses 33–4, 179 Naharvali 81 Narni, diocese of 47 Nativity 65, 140, 153 Navajo 161 Nazeingbury 169 Nechtansmere, battle of 130 Nerthus 61–3, 73, 81 Neustria 51, 53–4, 103 Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed 26, 145 Nidd, Synod on the 187 Niðstong 73 Nine Herbs Charm 64, 78 Njörðr 60, 81 non-doctrinal religion 47–8, 56, 69, 76, 147–8 Nolte, Cordula 138 Nonnosus, prior in Dialogues 160 North Elmham, diocese 129 North, Richard 59, 61 Northumbria 43, 61, 73–4, 97, 99, 105–22, 123, 124, 125, 129–30, 131–3, 137, 141, 146, 147, 149, 153, 157, 169, 179, 187–90 Nothelm 55

oak tree 75, 150 Oakleigh 75 Oakley 75 Ockley 75 Odin 58–60, 66, 68, 81, 99, 162 Oethelwald, ruler of Deira 110 Offa, son of Sigehere 113 Oftfor, Bishop of the Hwicce 133 Oisc 62 Old English Rune-Poem 63 Orvanne 53 Osric, ruler of Deira 107–8 Oswald, Northumbrian ruler 64, 73, 106, 108, 110, 112, 115, 117, 132, 147–8, 150–2, 155, 169 Oswiu, Northumbrian ruler 106, 110, 113, 116–19, 133, 148 paganism 1, 2, 5, 167, 173, 194 paganism, Anglo-Saxon 1, 2, 57–83, 85–100, 102, 110, 111, 138, 154, 173, reversion to 102, 106, 108, 179 paganism, Germanic 60–1, 72–4, 76–8, 81 paganism, Irish 41 paganism, Italian 45–6 paganism, Lombard 47–8 paganism, Scandinavian 58–9, 164 pallium 31, 48, 53 parousia 12–13 Patchway 75 Paul the Deacon 32 Paulinus, Bishop of Northumbria and of Rochester 56, 61, 104 108–11, 116, 134, 141, 157, 170 Paschasius, deacon in Dialogues 182 Passion of Perpetua 22, 41 Peada, ruler of the Middle Angles 106, 110 Pelagius, Bishop of Lyons 52 penance, penances 24, 35–42, 79, 90, 112, 120, 121, 131, 136–42, 180–1 Penda, ruler of Mercia 73, 106–7, 109–10, 112 penitent, penitents 14, 37–41, 131, 139, 168 Penitential of Finnian (UUinniau) 38–9, 181 Penitential of Theodore 57, 63, 77, 79, 90, 134, 136, 138, 139, 141–3, 167, 168, 174, 189

INDEX

Peper Harrow 75 Peru 172 pestilentia 122–5, 175, 179, 192 Peter, deacon of Gregory I 50 Peter, deacon in Dialogues 160, 171 Picts 108, 115–16, 129–30 place-name, -names 57–8, 68, 75–6, 77, 92–3, 99, 114, 131 plague 6, 13, 22, 33, 34, 41, 95, 169–70, 182–3, 194 see also Antonine Plague, Black Death, Justinianic Plague, pestilentia Polhill 88, 178 polytheism, polytheists 3, 67, 144 post-processualism 85 prayer 32, 112, 145, 147, 150, 160, 189 prayer for the dead 13, 14, 22–4, 28, 166, 173, 181–2 Price, Neil 86 priests, Christian 27, 32, 38, 48, 49, 53, 72, 101, 110, 115–18, 125–6, 133–4, 142, 155, 167, 168, 184, 188–9 priests, non-Christian 60, 72, 76–83, 98–100, 157 Prittlewell 149, 163–4, 175 processual archaeology 85 Protasius, Bishop of Aix 52 purgation of sin, post-mortem 22–4, 41–2, 181, 192–3 Purgatory 6, 193 Putta, Bishop of Rochester 129 Pyysiäinen, Ikka 5 Quartodecimans 116–21 Radbod 172–3 Rædwald, ruler of the East Angles 61, 68, 103–5, 111, 164 Ragnarök 65 receptacula 13 Reculver, monastery 132 refrigeria (afterlife) 13 refrigerium (meal) 15 Reihengräberfriedhöfe 31, 34 relics 5, 25, 26–9, 35, 37, 52, 101–2, 104, 120, 122, 133, 144, 146–52, 157, 185, 189 religions, ‘folk’ 2–3

277

religions, ‘world’ or ‘universal’ 1–4, 37 religions, ‘world accepting’ 2, 3, 8 religions, ‘world rejecting’ 1–2, 3, 37 Rendlesham 134 Repton 169 resurrection of the body 13–14, 19, 21, 25, 28–9, 30, 42 revenant, revenants 12, 31–4, 82, 95, 98, 165, 174–80, 182–4 Rheged 114 Ricberht, ruler of East Angles 105 Ricula, sister of Æthelberht 56 ring-ditches 95–7, 174, 178–80 Ringerike style 66 Ripon, diocese of 129 monastery 117, 121, 122, 123, 134, 147, 152 ritual, rituals 4–5, 65, 67, 70–6,77, 78, 80–3, 91, 92, 97, 103, 112, 124, 131, 138–9, 142, 146, 148, 189, 191, 193 see also ‘crisis rites’; funerary/mortuary ritual; ritual specialists; seidhr; shamans, shamanism; ‘special agent’ rituals; ‘special patient’ rituals ritual purity 139–40 ritual specialists 54, 76–83, 98–9, 111, 159 see also shamans, shamanism, spirit-mediums Rochester, diocese of 102–3, 109–10, 114, 123, 129–30 Romula and Redempta, in Dialogues 170 Romulus and Remus 65–6 Roundway Down 164 Rufinus of Aquileia 12 Rule of St Benedict 132, 157, 190 runes 60, 65, 78, 136 Ruthwell Cross 136, 140, 145, 152, 153–4, 159 ‘sacral kingship’ 77 sacrifice, sacrifices 56, 62, 66–8, 70–7, 86, 87, 98, 112, 139 see also human sacrifice Sæaxa brother of Sæberht 163 Sæbbi, ruler of the East Saxons 113, 125 Sæberht, ruler of the East Saxons 56, 102–4, 124, 163 Sæxwulf, Bishop of Lichfield, Middle Angles, Mercia 130 Saintes, Bishop of 52

278

INDEX

saints, cult of 5, 25, 26–30, 42, 56, 146–53, 154, 169, 186, 189 see also relics; shrines, Christian Salteaux 18 Samain 9 Sancton 87 Sanctulus of Norcia in Dialogues 160 Sarre 164 sawl 162 Saxo Grammaticus 58 Saxonbury 174 Scheldt 32, 95 Scholastica, sister of Benedict in Dialogues 170 Scyld Sceafing 62 Seafarer 80 Seaxnet 62, 103, 146 secondary burial 9–10, 34, 87–9, 94–5, 177, 193 seidhr 69, 80–1 Selsey, monastery 123, 132, 134, 151 Semnones 66, 72–3, 76 Serapion, Bishop of Thmuis 13 Serenus, Bishop of Marseilles 52 Severinus of Noricum 130 Sewerby 175 sexual intercourse, Church rulings on 137–9 sexuality, Church rulings on 141 shamans, shamanism 64, 69, 79–83, 86, 92, 94, 98–9, 139, 159 shrines, Christian 37, 102, 147–52, 189 shrines, pagan 56, 68, 70, 74–6, 77–8, 82, 93, 98, 103–5, 111, 124–5, 127, 147–9, 158 Sidonius Apollinaris 73 Sigeberht, ruler of East Angles 105, 109, 112–13, 164 Sigeberht, ruler of East Saxons 106, 125, 132, 136–7 Sigehere, ruler of East Saxons 113, 124–7 Silbertswold Down 164 Sisetrude 40–1 Skaði 60 sky god, sky father 67–8 slametan, Javanese ritual meal 70 Sledd, East Saxon dynast 56, 102 Slone, Jason 5

Snape 87–9 Snorri Sturluson 58–60, 68 Solmonath 63, 71 Solomon and Saturn 60 soul, soul-beliefs, 6–24, 25, 28–30, 33, 35–42, 54–5, 80, 85–6, 89–99, 142–4, 160–2, 167, 168–74, 180–6, 191–3 see also spirit, free soul, body soul, body souls ‘special agent’ rituals 72 ‘special patient’ rituals 71–2 Spes, abbot in Dialogues 170 spirit 3, 6, 9, 11, 13, 17, 54, 80–2, 90–1, 142–4, 160–2, 175, 184, 191, 193 spirit-mediums 80–1 Spong Hill 87 St Alban 114, 148 St Denis, near Paris 30 St Geneviève, Paris 30 St Marcel, Chalon 30 St Martin, Canterbury 49, 114 St Médard, Soissons 30 St Michael 147 St Paul’s, London 56 St Peter’s, Broadstairs 89 SS Peter and Paul, Canterbury 166 St Sixtus 114, 148 St Victor, Marseilles 29 Stephen, hagiographer of Wilfrid 83, 116–20, 140, 155–7, 160 see also Life of Wilfrid Stephen, in Dialogues 169–70 supreme being 2, 3, 38, 56, 67–8, 69, 101, 103, 144 Sutton Hoo 75, 77, 80, 93–6, 98, 149, 163–4, 176–8, 179, 194 Swallowcliffe Down 164 Swithhelm, East Saxon ruler 125 Swithfrith, East Saxon ruler 125 Syagrius, Bishop of Autun 52–3 syncretism 34, 68, 103–4, 111, 135, 142–6, 159, 161, 187, 193 Tacitus 60–1, 66–8,72–3, 76–8, 81 Taplow 163 Terra Mater 60 Terracina 45–6, 161 Tertullian, On the Soul 19

INDEX

Thai, Thais 69 Thanet 58 thegn, thegns 57, 92, 127, 135–7, 142 Theodore, in Dialogues 170 Theodore of Tarsus, Archbishop of Canterbury 109–11, 119–21, 127–34, 145, 153, 158, 187, 190 Penitential 57, 63, 77, 79, 90, 136–43, 167–8, 174, 189 Iudicia Theodori 120–1 Thor 58–9 Three Chapters see Tricapitoline Schism Theudebert, Frankish ruler 51–3 Theudelinda, Lombard queen 47, 105 Theuderich, Frankish ruler 51–3 Thunderfield 74 Thunderley 75 Thundersley 75 Thunor 57–9, 62, 74–6, 93 Thunoreshlæw 58, 93 Thunresfield 74 Thunreslea 75 Thunreslau 93 Tikopia 2, 80, 81, 124, 126, 166, 172 Tilbury 125, 134 Tiree 131 Tiw 57–8, 67–8, 74, 76 Tiwaz 67–8 Trajan 172 Tranmer House 96 Tremlin, Todd 5 Tricapitoline Schism 41, 47 Trinity 3, 27, 44, 104, 144–6, 189 Trumhere, Bishop of Mercia 110 Tuda, Bishop of Northumbria 119, 122, 123 Tuesnoad 74 Tuisto 66 Tunberht, Bishop of Hexham 122–3 Tyesmere 74 Tyndaris, diocese of 46 Tysoe 74 Uduk, Sudan 78 unfurnished burial 97, 164–5, 176, 179, 191–2 Valhalla 9, 59, 91, 162 valkyrie 59

279

Valsgärde 93 vampires 6, 33–5, 82, 95, 175, 183, 192 see also revenants van Gennep, Arnold 9 Vendel 93 Verona Sacramentary 35 Vial, Theodore 4–5 viaticum 17, 168 Victricius, Bishop of Rouen 27–9 Vigilantius of Calagurris 27–8 Virgilius, Bishop of Arles 48, 52 Virgin Mary, cult of 140–1, 189 Visio Pauli 19, 41 Vitalian, Pope 148 Voluspá 162 Waden Hill 75 Wærferth, Bishop of Worcester 162 Wallace-Hadrill, J. Michael 37, 135 Waltham 169 Wanderer 80 Wansdyke 58, 74 Weber, Max 1–2, 36 Wednesbury 58, 74 Wednesfield 74 Weedon 75 Weedon Lois 75 Weland (Wayland) the Smith 65–6 Wensley 58 Weoley 75 weoh 75–6 Wessex 62, 106–7, 109–10, 114, 130, 142, 169 West Heslerton 174 West Lane, Kemble 175 West Saxons 104, 106–7, 109, 113, 115, 124, 126, 129, 141 Whiligh 75 Whitby, monastery of 131–3, 144, 151, 189 Synod of 118–19, 122, 127 see also Hild, Ælfflæd Whitehouse, Harvey 4–5, 26 Wigheard, archbishop-designate of Canterbury 119, 123, 128 Wight, Isle of 107, 122, 130, 188 Wihtred, ruler of Kent 137, 139

280

INDEX

Wilfrid, Bishop 73, 82–3, 99, 107, 113, 115–24, 128–30, 132, 134, 140, 142, 145, 147–52, 153–7, 158, 160, 187–8 see also Life of Wilfrid Willey 75 Wilson, David 75, 85 Winchester, 169 diocese of 109, 129, 188 Wine, Bishop of Winchester and London 109–10, 119, 124, 126, 128 Winfrith, Bishop of Mercia 110, 129, 130 Wing 152 Winnall 175, 176 Winterbourne Gummer 174 Winwaed, battle of 106 Woddesgeat 74 Woden 58–62, 67–8, 73–4, 76, 78, 81, 93, 98–9, 101, 103–4, 107, 135, 146, 178–9 Wodenaz 67–8 Wodensbeorg 93 Wodenslawe 93 Wodnesdene 74 Woodnesborough 58, 93, 178 Wor, Bishop of Leicester and Lichfield 188

Worcester, diocese of 129 world-tree 64–5, 73, 112 wuldor 59, 69, wuldortanas 78 Wulfhere, ruler of Mercia 106–7 126, 130 Wulfram, Bishop of Sens 172 Wulfstan 94 Wy 75 Wyfordby 75 Wyham 75 Wysall 75 Wyville 75 Yeavering 74, 96–9, 105, 108, 111, 134, 147, 167, 179–80 Yggdrasil 64 Ymir 66 York 98, 108, 110, 116, 151 diocese of 56, 119, 120–2, 124, 128–30, 187–8 Yorkshire 66, 83, 114, 175 Young, Bailey K. 31 Ythancæstir (Bradwell-on-Sea) 125 Zeus 67

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The Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons, c. 597-700: Discourses of Life, Death and Afterlife

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The Afterlife Experiments : Breakthrough Scientific Evidence of Life After Death

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