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The Spread of Christianity

Like all cultures, that of the Anglo-Saxons changed over time. The early invaders were seafaring wanderers whose lives were bleak, violent, and short. Their pagan religion was marked by a strong belief in wyrd, or fate, and they saved their admiration for heroic warriors whose fate it was to prevail in battle. As the Anglo-Saxons settled into their new land, however, they became an agricultural people—less violent, more secure, more civilized.

Language History Wyrd Wyrd is the ancestor of our modern English word weird. The modern meaning—“of, or relating to, or suggestive of the preternatural or supernatural”—retains some suggestion of the original meaning—”fate.” Before arriving in Modern English, the word traveled through Middle English as werde.

The bleak fatalism of the Anglo-Saxons’ early beliefs may have reflected the reality of their lives, but it offered little hope. Life was harsh, it taught, and the only certainty was that it would end in death. Christianityopened up a bright new possibility: that the suffering of this world was merely a prelude to the eternal happiness of heaven.

No one knows exactly when the first Christian missionaries arrived in Britain, but by AD 300 the number of Christians on the island was significant. Over the next two centuries, Christianity spread to Ireland and Scotland, and from Scotland to the Picts and Angles in the north. In 597, a Roman missionary named Augustinearrived in the kingdom of Kent, where he established a monastery at Canterbury. From there, Christianity spread so rapidly that by 690 all of Britain was at least nominally Christian, though many held on to some pagan traditions and beliefs.

Monasteriesbecame centers of intellectual, literary, artistic, and social activity. At a time when schools and libraries were completely unknown, monasteries offered the only opportunity for education. Monastic scholars imported books from the Continent, which were then painstakingly copied. In addition, original works were written, mostly in scholarly Latin, but later in Old English. The earliest recorded history of the English people came from the clergy at the monasteries. The greatest of these monks was the Venerable Bede(c. 673–735), author of A History of the English Church and People. When Vikings invaded in the late eighth and ninth centuries, they plundered monasteries and threatened to obliterate all traces of cultural refinement. Yet Christianity continued as a dominant cultural force for more than a thousand years to come.