This groundbreaking work treats the Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons as a process of religious change and is the first to establish the importance of Christian doctrines and popular intuitions about death and the dead in the transition, focusing on the outbreak of epidemic disease between 664 and 687 as a crucial period for the survival of Christianity in Anglo-Saxon England. It analyzes Anglo-Saxon conceptions of the soul and afterlife as well as traditional mortuary rituals, re-interpreting archaeological evidence to argue that the change from furnished to unfurnished burial in the late seventh and early eighth century demonstrates the success of the church's attempts to counter popular fears that the plague was caused by the return of the dead to carry off the living. The study employs ethnographic comparisons and anthropological theory to further our understanding of pagan Anglo-Saxon deities, ritual and ritual practitioners, and also considers the challenges confronting the Anglo-Saxon church, as it faced not only popular attachment to traditional values and beliefs, but also gendered responses to, or syncretistic constructions of, Christianity.

Auteur

Marilyn Dunn is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Glasgow, UK.

Contenu

Introduction - Approaches to the Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons \ 1. Discourses of the Dead: Popular Intuitions, Christian Doctrines and Epidemic Disease \ 2. Gregory the Great English Mission \ 3. Anglo-Saxon Paganism and the Living \ 4. Anglo-Saxon Paganism and the Dead \ 5. The Diffusion of Christianity and the Establishment of the Anglo-Saxon Church \ 6. Christianization: Problems and Responses \ 7. How Christian was England in c. 700?