SYNTHESIS AND ACCOMMODATION IN POST-CONVERSION ENGLAND

All pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon religious ideas and practices, it seems, pertained to what today would be called popular religion. Their chief purpose, one can assume, would have been to help people maintain a propitious relationship with the unseen powers of the universe.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to express my gratitude to Dr Catherine Hills of the University of Cambridge for helpful discussions we have had concerning recent developments in Anglo-Saxon archaeology.

NOTES

1. On the nineteenth-century search for Anglo-Saxon paganism, cf. Stanley (1975) and Williams (2005). Modern misconceptions about the pre-Christian religion of the Anglo-Saxons have been in circulation since at least 1605, when some fanciful ideas on that topic, complete with illustrations of supposed Saxon idols, were published by the expatriate English antiquarian scholar Richard Verstegen, whose Restitution of Decayed Intelligence in Antiquities was published in Antwerp in 1605, with many later editions.

2. The Anglo-Saxons spoke of customary law (ae), of sacrifice, of numinous powers, and so forth, but “religion” as a categorical term was not in their vocabulary.

3. Note Hines (1997) on the religious pluralism of the Anglo-Saxons, and compare in the Old Norse context Bertell (2006) and, in a still wider northern context, DuBois (1999).

4. The term “Lowland Britain”, adopted from Kearney (2006), denotes that part of the island of Britain that lies, roughly speaking, to the south-east of an imaginary line curving from the river Tyne (in Northumberland) to the river Tamar (in Devon).

5. For a succinct account of the origins of the English (a subject on which much has been written), see Hills (2003), a book that usefully supplements such other studies as Hodges (1989), Higham (1992) and Hunter Blair (2003).

6. Aduenerant autem de tribus Germaniae populis fortioribus, id est Saxonibus, Anglis, lutis, Historia ecclesiastica 1.15; Colgrave & Mynors (1969: 50-51; their translation), cited hereafter as Ecclesiastical History.

7. For discussion, see Niles (2007: 39-49, 111-18, 119-40), with reference to the high-status Goths of history and the enigmatic Geatas of Beowulf.

8. On the place of Christianity in Britain under the Romans, see Thomas (1981). On the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons, the classic account (that of Mayr-Harting 1991) follows the Venerable Bede in emphasizing the accomplishments of the Gregorian mission of ca. 597 CE; cf. however Brooks (2006). One recent account, that of Yorke (2006), adopts a nuanced view of the interrelations of Irish, Pictish, British/Welsh and Anglo-Saxon churches and speaks freely of the reintroduction to Britain of technologies and systems that were part of the legacy of Rome. Blair (2005) offers a magisterial social history of the Christian Church in Anglo-Saxon England.

9. Three comprehensive studies should be mentioned from the start: Philippson (1929), Owen-Crocker (1981) and D. Wilson (1992). Other general studies include Chaney (1960) and, of a popular orientation, Branston (1974).

10. The Anglo-Saxons’ epigraphic use of runes will be mentioned below. The Irish used ogham characters and the Picts produced picture stones of an enigmatic kind, but neither of these forms of inscription could be called continuous verbal records.

11. See Rives (1999).

12. In his work De excidio Britanniae (On the Ruin of Britain), Gildas writes about the English conquerors as a pagan scourge upon the land but has nothing to say about their religion per se.

13. The reliability of Bede’s information about Anglo-Saxon paganism is discussed by Meaney (1985), Page (1995) and Church (2008).

14. In eodem fanuo et altare haberet ad sacrificium Christi et arulam ad uictimas daemoniorum·, Ecclesiastical History 2.15; Colgrave & Mynors (1969: 190-91).

15. Ecclesiastical History 2.13; Colgrave & Mynors (1969: 182-5). The present translation is slightly adapted from that source.

16. Cf. Wallace-Hadrill (1988: 71): “Despite this glimpse into the mind of a pagan high-priest, Bede has no time for the content of paganism and indeed may have known little about it.”

17. Hope-Taylor (1977, esp. pp. 277-8). Some have thought this royal compound to be one and the same place as King Edwin’s royal seat as mentioned by Bede.

18. Old English hengist, also spelled hengest, is a poetic word for “steed”; OE horsa is the normal name of that animal. Neither of these words was otherwise in use as a proper name. A leader named Hengest, who is mentioned four times in one of the inset stories of Beowulf (at lines 1080-1159), as well as in the same story as told in the fragmentary poem The Fight at Finnsburg, is reasonably construed as the same man as the Hengist named by Bede, though portrayed at an earlier stage of his career.

19. C. W. Jones (1943: 212-13).

20. For discussion of this phenomenon within the Germanic context as a whole, see D. H. Green (1998: 13- 29, with additional discussion at 357-73).

21. This was originally a compound word made of the elements weoh + bed, i.e. “place of rest of something sacred”. The word altar (from the Latin plural noun altaria, referring to things raised up on high) did not come into general use until after the Norman Conquest.

22. That word survived in English up until recent times in the form housel. The word eucharist, of Greek origin, did not come into English until ca. 1400.

23. The noun baptism and the verb to baptize are first attested in English ca. 1300.

24. The verb cursian “to curse” was likewise adopted by the Church in the sense “to excommunicate”, as was the verb amansumian, a word that may originally have meant “to mark out as pertaining to crime (man)”.

25. The noun “sacrifice” (from Latin sacrificium) and the corresponding verb “to sacrifice” were not borrowed into English until after the Conquest.

26. The Scandinavian word troll was not borrowed into standard English until the nineteenth century.

27. On aspects of Old English onomastics with a bearing on pre-Christian religion, see, in general, Dickens (1934) and Gelling (1962).

28. D. Wilson (1992: 11-13) cites these examples and a number of others, mapping their geographical distribution. Additional place-names that have been thought to point to sites of pagan worship involve the elements ealh “holy place”, os or es “a god” or Grim (one of Woden’s by-names). The place-name element -lea is difficult to construe, in part because of changes in the extent of woodland over time. If it did not mean “woodland clearing”, then it seems to have denoted either a sacred grove or a meadow.

29. Examples are drawn from D. Wilson (1992: 6-11); the following summary is based on his analysis. Nineteenth-century excavations at Harrow Hill, Sussex, uncovered a great mound of ox skulls, an apparent sign of cultic sacrifice (Meaney 1995: 31).

30. Lucy (2000) offers a judicious synthesis of current scholarship, though with few comments on pre- Christian religious ideas. See also Hills (1979), Hamerow et al. (2011), and the many particular studies cited below. Still invaluable is the information compiled in Meaney (1964), together with her introduction.

31. See Hinton (2005: esp. 21-74).

32. These are from Benty Grange (Sheffield), Sutton Hoo (East Anglia) and York.

33. A four-volume report that is itself monumental is available (Bruce-Mitford 1975-83), as are more concise guides (e.g. Evans 1986). Werner (1992: 10-20) has valuable remarks on the assemblage of feasting equipment, which could have provided a banquet fit for a king. The original treasures are in the British Museum; a life-size reconstruction of the treasure chamber and its contents is on exhibit at the National Trust visitor centre at Sutton Hoo.

34. Enright (2006) has argued that this was an Irish import. Sacral kingship during the Anglo-Saxon period is discussed by Chaney (1970).

35. Hinton (2005: 66). A colour image is included in Webster & Backhouse (1991: 22).

36. For discussion of examples from the British Museum, see Page (1964: 67-79).

37. This trend is represented by Semple (1998) and Williams (2006), as well as by Carver’s recent work.

38. For text and discussion, see Meaney (2004: 477); my translation of the last provision differs from hers.

39. My translation (as are the others in this section). See Dobbie (1942: 116-18) for the text, which is known as /Ecerhot “Field Remedy”, and cf. Niles (1980) for discussion of it as an essentially Christian document that pertains to the realm of popular religion.

40. “Maxims I” (“The Exeter Gnomes”) 132-3; Krapp & Dobbie (1936: 161).

41. Lacnunga charm 76; Pettit (2001:1. 60-69).

42. Lacnunga charm 127b; Pettit (2001: I. 90-95). Sometimes rather disarmingly called “Against a Sudden Stitch”, this charm is meant to relieve severe internal pain.

43. For discussion from different points of view, see Jolly (1996: 138-40) and Hall (2007: 1-2, 108-17).

44. See further C. Davis (1992), with references to earlier scholarship.

45. See the discussion in Fulk et al. (2008: Ixvii-lxxix), with references.

46. The term “cultural paganism” is borrowed from Jesch (2004). This subject and related problems in cultural history are treated from a different perspective by North (2006).

47. See in particular the chapters in this book on Germanic (Chapter 22; Rudolf Simek), Celtic (Chapter 21; Karen Bek-Pedersen) and Old Norse (Chapter 24; Nastrom) pre-Christian religion.

SUGGESTED READING

Hines, J. 1997. “Religion: The Limits of Knowledge”. In The Anglo-Saxons from the Migration Period to the Eighth Century: An Ethnographic Perspective, J. Hines (ed.), 375-401. Woodbridge.

Owen-Crocker, G. R. 1981. Rites and Religions of the Anglo-Saxons. Newton Abbot.

Wilson, D. 1992. Anglo-Saxon Paganism. London.

(Clunies Ross 1994: 32).