Fabrizio,
You are right that conversion of the Anglo-Saxons is a hot topic
with lots of literature on it. What the dialogue often needs, however,
is a more carefully nuanced treatment of what conversion means and how
it is represented in various ways.
This means looking carefully at the sources (Bede, for example) and
contextualizing them. How much does Bede really know or reveal about
so-called paganism? What else can we know about the beliefs systems
from which these peoples converted? While we can establish quite a bit
about Christianity in this period from its self-designated
spokespersons, we need to be careful even with that evidence.
Another angle on this question has to do with historiography. How
have later notions of "paganism," Christianity, and conversion colored
the way that historians write about these events? To what extent do we
read our later notions of what Christianity is supposed to be back into
the record and then separate "real" Christianity from something we think
of as less than fully Christian (unorthodox, heterodox, heretical,
pagan, magic, etc)?
This latter happens to be my own area of interest in terms of
popular religion in the later Anglo-Saxon period--the degree to which
our view of "orthodoxy" is colored by the dominant sources of the period
(AElfric, for example) and view other practices as not-quite-Christian
by comparison. I think we need a broader view of how Christianity and
conversion functioned, particularly in the earlier ages.
You might start with Mayr-Harting's classic book _The Coming of
Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England_, then move forward to more recent
works, for example Valerie Flint's _The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval
Europe_ which will point you to most of the important sources (although
I don't quite agree with her definitions of terms). An interesting
review essay on this issue is Alexander Murray, "Missionaries and
Magic in Dark Age Europe," _Past and Present_ 136 (1992): 186-205.
You might also find of interest Peter Brown's works on similar
issues in Late Antiquity: _Authority and the Sacred_ and most recently,
_The Rise of Western Christendom_, which does get into the early
medieval conversion experiences. His approach to conversion and the
sources is subtle and compelling.
The literature on conversion and paganism is VAST, and I haven't
noted more than a handful of prominent scholars, but I hope this gets
you started on some ideas.
Karen Jolly
--
Dr. Karen Jolly
Associate Professor, History
University of Hawai`i at Manoa
[log in to unmask]
http://www2.hawaii.edu/~kjolly
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