Thanks to Karen Jolly for in interesting and helpful reply to FAbrizio's
question. Along those lines, I'd wonder whether Robert Markus's model in
"The End of Ancient Christianity" might provide some help in the
Anglo-Saxon context. Markus argues that Christians drew the boundaries of
the sacred much more widely, and construed a great number of practices as
religious when their forebears simply saw them as the way things had always
been done, with no particular religious commitment involved. By swallowing
the sacred into the secular, Christians were able to identify a broad
range of practices as "pagan", because they were not explicitly Christian,
and then regulate and suppress them.
I'd love to know whether this model works in the Anglo-Saxon context.
Jo Ann McNamara wrote, "Britain was a Christian country under the
Romans." I wonder if that's putting the matter a little to baldly?
Certainly there were Roman Christians in Britain, but how many of the
Romans were Christians (and at what point in time), and to what extent did
they gain converts among the native population? How much Christianity
survived in Britain as Roman power waned, and in what parts? And what does
one mean by "Britain" in this context? How many Christians did Augustine
and his companions find in Britain? Did much of an ecclesiastical
structure survive? I agree that one cannot assume that there were no
Christians left at all. These would be important questions to approach as
one considered the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons.
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Patrick J. Nugent
Earlham College
Richmond, Indiana 47374 USA
(765) 983-1413
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