medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On a slightly different and I hope not too meandering a tack, I am
interested in the prevailing notion that many English parish churches and chapels were
founded on pagan sites – this notion prevails in the popular mind more
strongly than in the academic, afaik. Richard Morris in _Churches in the
Landscape_ (London, 1989, 1997) asks
"The sheer novelty of Christianity prompts questions. How, for instance,
did early Christians look upon the sacred places of former centuries? Was the
map of sanctuaries and shrines wiped clean and religious topography suddenly
reinvented? … [T]he asking of [such questions] presupposes a unitary
character for the early Church which it did not actually possess. … The attitudes of
churchmen towards paganism, and paganism itself, differed from place to place…
.” (pp. 46-7)
He goes on to discuss how the Christian concept of a place of worship arose
and evolved. “One novelty,” he says (p. 48), “lay in the functional
character of a church.” A pagan temple was where the god lived, not where
congregations worshipped. But he also stresses what might be a more particularly
English point: that even where a church can be shown to have been built on pagan
foundations, it is not often possible to know – given the centuries which
may have elapsed between the Roman departure and the Christian hegemony – how
those foundations were viewed by the Christians. The people of Rome itself
presumably retained a strong memory of what it all stood for, but there is no
reason to believe the same of the Anglo-Saxon convert or indeed of the Celtic
Christian, whose experience of Rome would generally have been scant. (I can
imagine that a similar point holds elsewhere in the post-Roman world.) He
also notes that in whatever spirit they were built, not many English churches
can be shown to have pagan origins. Indeed his book is an account of the
many, varied and complex reasons why (English) churches are where they are.
Roman temples were hardly the only pagan sites available to early Christian
builders, of course; down here in west Cornwall, there were no Roman temples
at all. Most of the parish churches were founded a very long time ago
indeed, by English standards (from at least the sixth century on), and because
they have all been rebuilt at least twice since then, bigger each time, and on
the same ground, there is no easy way of knowing what stood there ‘originally’
. What is especially interesting, to me at least, is the paucity of pagan
structures close to these buildings (‘structure’ is not the best word, but I
hope it will do for now). West Cornwall is choc-a-bloc with Neolithic and
Iron Age ruins – the richness is staggering – but I know of only one instance
where there is anything remotely approaching a pagan structure in the close
vicinity of a church. Holy wells, which very probably are older than the
churches, are not sited near them, for example. Morris mentions how rare pagan
structures are near churches (in a reference I cannot now find).
My rare instance is at St Levan where, well inside the churchyard and a few
metres from the porch, is a large boulder, or rather two halves of one. The
legend is that St Levan himself (fl 650?) smote the boulder, causing it to
crack and declaring that “When with panniers astride / A pack horse can ride /
Through St Levan Stone / The World will be done.” Most observers these days
tend to believe that the stone was part of a pre-Christian fertility cult –
although I know one knowledgeable church historian who wonders whether it is in
fact merely 16th c building stone discarded when the Reformation caused
rebuilding to stop…
Howsomever that may be, is the presence of pagan ‘structures’ in
churchyards generally rare? And if so are there theories as to why?
Susan
[log in to unmask]
**********************************************************************
To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME
to: [log in to unmask]
To send a message to the list, address it to:
[log in to unmask]
To leave the list, send the message: leave medieval-religion
to: [log in to unmask]
In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to:
[log in to unmask]
For further information, visit our web site:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html
|