fire, blood, and heavenly immanence

early British saints pt.2: an overview of the historical context and the medieval worldview

Today’s post is a follow-up to my last post, which introduced a new series on the lives of early saints of the British Isles that I will be releasing over the next year. In it I will outline a brief overview of the period from a historical perspective, and offer a few notes on the worldview of early medieval Christians.

Before we begin, I would like to reiterate that this series is not intended as an exercise in early medieval history, I studied history for my undergraduate degree, but I am not a historian, let alone an expert on the early medieval period. There are many things in the stories of these saints lives that will seem impossible to a modern reader, and that cannot be “proved” by modern historical research. I am not going to attempt to prove them. To quote Orthodox theologian Eugenia Scarvelis Constantinou, writing about the ancient Tradition of the Church that the Theotokos dwelt in the Holy of Holies, “Trying to historically or rationally justify it is pointless, and it is ultimately of no importance whether it is historically defensible. The question for us always is: What spiritual lesson is the Church presenting for us?”¹ The lives of these saints contain deep spiritual value beyond their literal historical meaning. However, historical context is important and illuminating, so I thought it would be helpful to give a very brief overview of the period to help readers contextualise the world in which these saints lived. This is necessarily a simplified summary, and should be understood as such. There are vigorous debates amongst historians about almost everything we know about this period. I have relied heavily on Early Medieval Britain: c. 500 - 1000 by Rory Naismith, which I recommend for anyone who wishes to gain a more comprehensive understanding of this period.

Early medieval Britain is a relatively obscure and little known period of history. The six and a half centuries from the end of Roman rule in c. 410 to the Norman Conquest of 1066 used to be disparagingly referred to as the Dark Ages, because of the lack of contemporary written sources for the period and the perceived lack of scientific and cultural advancement. It was a period of change and upheaval, accompanied by significant political and religious transformation.

The End of Roman Britain: 383-449

In 400 AD, large parts of Britain were part of a Roman Empire that, although increasingly beleaguered, still stretched from the Irish Sea to the river Euphrates. During the relatively stable 350 years of Roman rule, a network of roads, military bases, and towns were built by Roman legions, initially to facilitate the movement and supply of Roman troops.² Trade and industry flourished, and Roman culture, including the Latin language, became widespread, at least amongst the social elites. Christian legionaries and merchants introduced Christianity,³ which seems to have been well established in Romano-British⁴ culture by the end of the fourth century. Roman rule extended far into the northern parts of what is now England and Scotland, with the Antonine Wall representing the northernmost limit of Roman control. Roman influence was not exerted uniformly, and Naismith notes that “Western parts of the Roman province such as what is now Cornwall and central and north Wales were less integrated into the cultural and economic networks of the empire…the comparative development of Roman Britain came at the cost of a more intensely exploited rural population, who had to satisfy the demands of landlords and imperial taxes.”⁵

Britain detached itself politically from the empire during the fifth century, and entered a century of upheaval. It is commonly thought that the Roman empire withdrew its legions and left Britain, but this is not entirely accurate. During the fourth century the soldiers stationed in Britain nominated various usurpers who challenged the central authorities, with three usurpers appearing in quick succession in 406. The last of these, Constantine III, took many of the remaining British legions to campaign in Gaul, where he was eventually defeated and killed. By this point the Britons had also turned against Constantine and decided to rely on their own resources. Naismith writes that “Roman withdrawal from Britain, then, in the form of Constantine and other rebels denuding the province of armed forces, therefore needs to be kept distinct from the end of central Roman rule in Britain: the latter seems to have been a local action, and was not a conscious decision by the imperial administration to abandon one of its provinces.”⁶

The early part of the fifth century in Britain saw the disappearance of a standing army, the collapse of provincial bureaucracy, and cultural and economic decline. Post-Roman Britain remained predominantly Christian, and seems to have retained many Roman practices in law, learning and the structure of society, albeit in less centralised ways. It would not remain so for long, and the following century saw the arrival of Germanic peoples who became known as the Anglo-Saxons.

The Anglo-Saxon Settlement: 449-597

The first enemies of the newly-independent Britons were Irish raiders from the west and Picts from the north. However, they were not the last. The English origin story is famously told by Bede in his The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, which was completed in 731. Bede records that in 449 warlike tribes he calls the Angles, Saxons and Jutes arrived by sea from what is now northern Germany and Denmark, on the invitation of British King Vortigern, who intended for them to repel the Irish and Picts. According to Bede, they soon turned on the Britons, and “scattered and destroyed the native peoples”.⁷ The pagan newcomers established kingdoms across the southern and eastern parts of Britain, pushing the remaining Christian Romano-British population to more remote regions further west and north, Cornwall, Wales, and Scotland. Bede drew heavily on an earlier source from the late fifth or sixth century, On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain. This was written by a British deacon named Gildas, who regarded the coming of the Saxons as a divine punishment on his countrymen for their sin. Both Bede and Gildas tell a story of violent invasion by the Saxon peoples, who established their kingdoms using fire and blood. Modern historians have challenged this depiction, however there is no doubt that the material culture of Britain changed dramatically during the fifth century, suggesting that what D. N. Dumville calls ‘cultural genocide’⁸ occurred, even if mass slaughter was limited. Regardless of how they arrived, by 500 the Germanic speaking newcomers had settled deep into Britain and established kingdoms.

The kingdoms and peoples of Britain following the Saxon invasion.

Both Bede and Gildas record how the Britons successfully counter-attacked under Ambrosius Aurelianus, ‘the last of the Romans’. It’s during this early period that the figure of Arthur – possibly completely legendary – emerges. A record made three centuries later credits him with 12 battles, from Scotland to the south coast. Only the last, in about 500, is confirmed in earlier sources – but it makes no mention of Arthur. This British victory halted the Saxon advance for half a century.

In independent kingdoms across the north and west, the British also resisted the repeated onslaughts of the peoples who were later called ‘English’. But by the 650s, almost all the lowlands were under English control.

Consolidation and Conversion: 597-800

Christianity in the eastern parts of Britain was almost wiped out, although it survived in the western British kingdoms.⁹ The church in these regions, sometimes referred to as Celtic Christianity, developed in isolation from the rest of Western Christendom, under the influence of missionaries from Ireland.¹⁰ The remaining Britons seem to have made no attempts to evangelise the Saxons, which is perhaps understandable. Bede recordes how the pagan Saxon kingdoms were eventually converted to Christianity after Pope Gregory the Great sent a missionary team headed by St Augustine (not to be confused with St Augustine of Hippo) to evangelise the Anglo-Saxons in 597. King Æthelberht converted to Christianity and gave St Augustine permission to preach freely and land to establish a monastery. St Augustine became the first bishop of Canterbury, and founded the Anglo-Saxon church in the south of England. Bede, who was himself Northumbrian, also records how Irish missionaries played an important role in the conversion of the northern Saxons, especially in Northumbria. St Aidan of Lindisfarne, who died in 651, established a monastery on the island of Lindisfarne, served as its first bishop, and travelled tirelessly across Northumbria spreading the Gospel to men, women and children from all classes of society, from nobility to slaves.¹¹

Kingdoms of Britain, circa 800 AD

The process and speed of conversion varied by region, and kingdoms often reverted to paganism after their first Christian king, but by the beginning of the seventh century the Anglo-Saxons had well established kingdoms and a vigorous Christian culture. The seventh and eighth centuries saw an era of consolidation, with the kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia and Wessex establishing a three-way balance that lasted until the Viking invasions led to the carving up of the kingdom of Northumbria in the ninth century.

The creation of a unified Christian culture was not instant. Eleanor Parker notes in Winters in the World that in the early medieval period, “religious conversion was frequently a collective rather than an individual process, and it marked a profound cultural shift”¹². A key feature of this was the introduction of a shared liturgical calendar, observed by the whole of society. The liturgical calendar that developed during the six centuries of the Anglo-Saxon period was “among the most enduring aspects of English life…through more than a thousand years of religious, political and social upheaval the basic pattern of the festival year remained a stable part of life.”¹³ As previously noted, the Celtic church that had developed in isolation from Roman Christendom held to several distinctive practices, notably a different way of calculating the date of Easter. St Augustine of Canterbury failed to persuade the Celtic bishops to reconcile with their Anglo-Saxon neighbours, or to give up their distinctive practices. The first meeting near Gloucester was unsuccessful, and the second, the Synod of Chester, was disastrous. St Augustine, failing to heed the advice of Pope Gregory against pride, deeply offended the Celtic bishops when he did not do them the common brotherly courtesy of rising to greet them on their arrival, instead electing to remain seated in the manner of a Roman magistrate, signifying his superiority over them. Differences in practice between the Roman and Celtic branches of the British church persisted, and it wasn’t until the Synod of Whitby in 664 that the ongoing controversy between Roman and Celtic Christianity over how the date of Easter ought to be calculated was settled. Christianity flourished in the seventh and eighth centuries, energising early medieval British societies from top to bottom. These centuries were also the golden age of monastic foundation, with hundreds of monasteries set up and a major transfer of land and wealth from the aristocracy to the religious houses. An interesting feature of early Anglo-Saxon monasticism is the appearance of ‘double monasteries’ that housed both men and women, normally with strict separation of the sexes. These double monasteries, which included famous institutions like Whitby and Barking, were often headed by a female abbess, usually a woman drawn from an aristocratic or even royal background. Monasteries were integral to the cultural and spiritual life of wider society, and although some sought solitude as hermits, many monks and nuns were deeply involved with the world around them, providing an exemplary model for the spiritual life within society rather than a complete withdrawal. Many of the saints that we will encounter were monastics, and even secular historians note that holy men and women are “one of the most conspicuous legacies of the early Middle Ages.”¹⁴

The Codex Aureus (‘Golden Book’) of Stockholm contains the four Gospels, written and illuminated to the highest standards in eighth-century England.