Augustine's Mission to England

Augustine's Mission

• Gregory the Great was struck by the sight of fair-haired, light-skinned boys being sold as slaves in Rome.
• He learned they were from Northumbria and called Angels.
• Gregory was shocked that such fine young men were ignorant of the Word of God.
• Gregory decided to send missionaries to convert the English after becoming Pope.
• Augustine led about forty monks from Rome and landed on the Isle of Thanet, Kent, in 597.
• Ethelbert, the King of Kent, had a Christian wife named Bertha, a Frankish princess.
• Ethelbert, still a pagan, agreed to meet Augustine in the open air, believing it would prevent magic.
• Ethelbert was surprised by the monks' appearance in Benedictine robes, but trusted them.
• He gave them food, shelter in Canterbury, and allowed them to preach.
• With Queen Bertha's permission, the monks used the old Roman church of St Martin.
• Before the year's end, Ethelbert and thousands of his people were baptized as Christians.
• More converts were gained in Essex and East Anglia.
• Gregory made Augustine Archbishop of Canterbury and gave instructions on organizing the English Church.
• Augustine was advised to change pagan temples into churches, replacing idols with altars.
• Gregory suggested turning old heathen sacrifices into Christian festivals.
• Christmas replaced the winter feast of Yule, and Easter remains named after the Saxon goddess Eostre.
• The Roman mission suffered setbacks but eventually took root in England.
• Gregory died in 604, and Augustine died around the same time.
• There was a return to paganism in parts of south-eastern England.
• King Redwald of East Anglia kept two altars in the same temple, one for Christ and one for heathen gods.
• The conversion of Edwin, King of Northumbria, was a bright spot.
• Edwin married Ethelbert's Christian daughter in 625, and was baptized in two years.
• Disaster struck in 632 when Edwin was killed by the pagan king of Mercia.
• The Queen fled to Kent, many people returned to heathen ways, and the northern English were brought back to Christianity by others and not Roman Missionaries.

Christianity from Ireland

• Throughout the Anglo-Saxon settlement, the Christian faith was kept alive in western Britain.
• Ireland became a stronghold of Christianity through St Patrick who traveled throughout Ireland preaching and baptizing.
• After about 30 years, Ireland became a Christian country, after his ministry.
• A century later in 563, Columba sailed to convert the Picts, set up a monastery on Iona with twelve monks.
• They cleared land, planted crops, and began converting the Picts in Highlands.
• When Columba died in 597, the English were the only people in the British Isles who had not heard the teachings of Christ.
• Iona remained an important center of the British or Celtic Church.
• Christianity came back to northern England after King Edwin's death in 632.
• Oswald, the then next Northumbrian king had been Edwin's rival and spent years in exile on Iona learning Christian teachings from Columba's followers.
• He turned to Iona for help restoring the faith among his people.
• A small company of Irish monks led by Aidan arrived in 635 and built their monastery on Lindisfarne.
• Aidan and his companions traveled on foot all over northern England, preaching, setting up monasteries, and training monks.
• Some monks later traveled south to the peoples of Mercia, East Anglia, and Essex.
• Although King Oswald was killed in battle in 642, the work of Aidan and his monks went on encouraged by the new King Oswy.
• Lindisfarne was called 'Holy Island' due to its fame as a place of God.

The Synod at Whitby

• Christianity came to the English by two separate routes.
• Roman missionaries converted many in the South, bringing them into the Roman Catholic Church.
• Celtic Christians from Iona led the conversion of the North and Midlands.
• These Celts had been cut off from the rest of the Christian world for over 200 years.
• They had developed their own baptism practices, Easter date, and didn't follow the Pope.
• Celtic monks had a different tonsure (haircut), shaving a semicircular patch in front instead of the crown.
• These differences caused confusion in the Northumbrian court.
• King Oswy followed Celtic practices, while his queen (Edwin's daughter) followed the Roman ways.
• Easter was celebrated twice in their household leading Oswy to bring all English Christians together.
• In 663 he called a synod, or council, of the Northumbrian Church at Whitby, inviting Christian leaders from all over the country.
• The main business was to agree on the dating of Easter and whether Celtic Christians would accept the Roman Church's leadership.
• Wilfred of Ripon spoke for the Roman side, arguing that their Easter customs were observed everywhere except by "these Scots and their obstinate supporters, the Picts and Britons."
• Wilfred's arguments convinced Oswy, and the Roman Church won.
• All present agreed with the King, except a few Celtic monks who went back to Iona.
• English bishops were in touch with Rome and other parts of Europe, after this decision.
• Gradually during the next century, Celtic Christians in Scotland, Ireland, and Wales accepted Roman customs.

Theodore and Boniface

• The Pope had appointed a new Archbishop of Canterbury, choosing Theodore, a scholarly Greek monk living in Rome, after the meeting.
• Theodore arrived in England in 669 and continued uniting both Celtic and Roman Christians into one Church.
• The decision taken at Whitby was only a first step and Theodore then held regular councils of bishops from both sides to help sort out the many differences that remained.
• The Celtic Church was based on monasteries, but the Roman Church was organized differently.
• Countries were divided into large districts called dioceses, each under a bishop with a cathedral church.
• Dioceses were sub-divided into parishes, each with a priest to serve the religious needs of the people.
• Theodore increased the number of dioceses and appointed many new bishops and saw that schools were set up for training the much needed parish priests.
• This a long took as even 300 years later there were still some villages with no regular priest and no church.
• Church building was costly and most people did without a parish church until a wealthy lord built one.
• In the meantime, monks or priests set up large crosses in the open air, and villagers gathered round for services.
• Theodore gave priests special permission to hold the service of mass `in the field'.
• Some of these 'wayside crosses' were made of rough wood and others were built of stone and delicately carved.
• Before the last pagans had been converted at home, English monks began preaching on the Continent in the homelands of their ancestors.
• Willibrord, a Northumbrian monk, sailed to Frisial in 690 and for almost fifty years, he worked to convert the people, and founded monasteries and churches.
• The Pope made Willibrord bishop over the part of Frisia had brought into the Church.
• Boniface was a monk from Wessex in 718 he left England, and traveled deep into the heart of heathen Germany, personally converting thousands of people.
• His progress was closely followed in Rome, and he often wrote to English friends for help and advice.
• Boniface eventually became an archbishop and set about organizing the first Christian Church in Germany.
• Englishmen became abbots of new monasteries, priests and even bishops.

Bede - Scholar of Northumbria

• Most knowledge of the English conversions comes from the History of the English Church and People, completed in 731 by Bede.
• Bede grew up in Northumbria at the time of Archbishop Theodore.
• His parents entrusted him to the care of monks at Wearmouth, a Benedictine monastery, when he was seven.
• The abbot, Benedict Biscop, spent years studying and traveling in Italy and France.
• Biscop brought stonemasons and other craftsmen from the Continent to build Wearmouth and founded a second monastery nearby at Jarrow.
• Biscop returned from Rome with books.
• Bede's History was almost the last of a long series of books, which earned him "Venerable" and "the father of English learning".
• Bede's writings were explanations of the Scriptures and textbooks for monastery school pupils.
• Bede considered himself mainly a teacher with education in monasteries.
• Nearly all books were in Latin, the language of the Scriptures and church services.
• York became the home of a second archbishop in 735, the year of Bede's death.
• The York cathedral school became the main centre of learning in Northumbria with with the best library in Western Europe.
• Alcuin, master of the school for fifteen years, went to the court of Charlemagne and helped spread Northumbrian standards of education on the Continent.
• Educated people were in parts of England, including southerners who helped Bede and wrote the Boniface in Germany.
• Archbishop Theodore set up a cathedral school at Canterbury which taught Greek and Latin.
• The Christian conversion helped to civilize the English.
• Bede and Alcuin became famous for their faith and learning.
• Irish missionaries taught Northumbrian monks beautiful writing and book decoration with coloured inks.
• The Lindisfarne Gospels is a decorated copy of the four Gospels made at about AD 700 with gold, silver and jewels set in the cover.

The Vikings and Alfred the Great

• In June 793, monks on Lindisfarne noticed strange ships with carved figureheads and brightly colored sails coming towards them.
• Warriors wearing shirts of chain-mail and metal helmets attacked the surprised monks, ransacked and burned the monastery and its church, and slaughtered cattle to restock their ships.
• They sailed away with their plunder before help could come from Northumbria.
• These sea-raiders came from the Scandinavian lands and in the Northmen language Viking meant a pirate.
• The Anglo-Saxons Undefended monastery churches were obvious targets for these heathen pirates and Jarrow was ransack next year and then the St Columba's monastery on Iona.

Masters of the Seas

• All over the country people prayed: 'From the fury of the Northmen, Good Lord deliver us'.
• For more than 200 years no part of the coasts of western Europe was safe from the Vikings, inspiring terror.
• The Viking’s skill as sailors and the excellence of their ships made them deadly enemies; they struck without warning along thousands of miles of coastline.
• Viking ships were a great improvement on the rowing galleys that carried the English settlers to Britain.
• They had a proper keel, or backbone, made of oak giving sufficient strength to stand the strain of a mast and a large square sail.
• The steer-board, or rudder, was shaped like the blade of an oar and fixed on the right-hand side of the hull where, near the stern.
• This side of a ship is still called the starboard (from steer-board).
• A few well preserved Viking ships have been discovered like the 'Gokstad ship' found in 1880, under a burial mound at Gokstad, near Oslo, which was buried about A.D 900 which rode the great Atlantic waves.
• Though with a sail the main power came from sixteen oars on each side, which fitted through holes in the oak hull.
• The total crew was about forty or fifty-all warriors as well as oarsmen.
• The seaworthiness of these graceful vessels was proven in when an exact copy of the Gokstad ship was sailed across the Atlantic, from Norway to Newfoundland in 1893.
• Under sail, speeds of ten or eleven knots were reached, and the crossing took only 28 days.
• The Vikings were more advanced than their southern neighbours and could steer directly across open sea.
• They set their course by the position of the sun, or the pole-star after dark, and if they met storms or fog, they drifted aimlessly until they could assess where they were.
• These skillful and adventurous men were among the greatest sailors the world has known.

The Voyages of the Norsemen

• The three main Viking races – Norwegians, Danes and Swedes.
• Sea-raids on Europe were by Norwegians and Danes.
• Swedes were mainly interested in trade as Swedish merchants traveled up the rivers of Asia and eastern Europe.
• Some settled round the shores of the Black Sea and traded with the Byzantines and Arabs, and these peoples called them Rus, and that is how Russia got its name.
• The earliest raids on Britain were made by the Norwegians or 'Norsemen' starting in the spring and returning for autumn.
• Plunder was not their only aim but they searched for new places to live due to lack of farming land in mountainous Norway.
• About the year 800, Norsemen began settling on the treeless islands north and west of Scotland (the Shetlands, Orkneys, Faroes and Hebrides), brought their families and lived by farming, fishing and seal-hunting, and for attacks on Ireland.
• By 820, according to an Irish chronicle, `...there was not harbour or landing-place...without fleets of Vikings'.
• Norse farmers from Ireland settled in the Isle of Man and parts of north-western England, and some married Celtic women who converted to Christianity.
• Lonely Iceland was the next place to be settled and had grassy regions for cattle/sheep.
• By about 950 a large Viking colony had grown up there.
• Present-day Icelanders are descended from settlers and the Irish women and slaves they took.
• Later sagas further describe voyages across the Atlantic Ocean and in 982, Eric the Red killed a man and was banished from Iceland for three years.
• He spent that time exploring a snow-covered land to the west, and when Eric returned to Iceland, he called his new country 'Green Land'.
• Eric went back to Greenland followed by shiploads of settlers, and archaeologists unearthed stone dwellings, thickly covered with turf.
• Written in the twelfth century a saga details Bjarni losing his way while sailing to Greenland in 986 and sighted trees there.
• Bjarni went on, without landing, until he found his destination.
• Bjarni was the first white man to see the American continent 500 years before Columbus.
• About A.D. 1000 Leif Ericsson went and explored this new country.
• Leif came to a land covered with dense forest, where then, sailing southwards into warmer regions, he came to a pleasant spot where grape-vines grew wild. There was no frost during the winter, and Leif named the country after them calling it Vinland (Wineland).
• Several expeditions followed, and landings were made along much of the North American coast however settlement failed due to the people called Skraelings who were probably Red Indians.

Danish Attacks

• Archaeologists found a group of dwellings in Newfoundland, with evidence of iron-making dated to the eleventh century.
• The Vikings spread panic around the British Isles, France, Germany and eastern England.
• At first they plundered coastal villages and monasteries, then sailed up the Rhine, Seine and Loire, bringing destruction deep into the countryside with the Frankish town mostly destroyed by 845.
• (859-62) a mixed band of Vikings sailed rounded Gibraltar and raided the Mediterranean coast as far as Italy.
• The first big Danish attack on England was in 835, when they plundered the Isle of Sheppey, in the Thames estuary.
• Summer 865, the fertile soil of England was invaded with a Danish 'Great Army' landed in East Anglia.
• The Great Army' invaded in 871 and rounded up horses and conquered E England, massacred the ruling families of Northumbria/East Anglia and destroyed monasteries.
• The Great Army set up Wessex as a base
• If the West Saxons were defeated the whole country would be at the mercy of the Danes.

Alfred versus Guthrum

• King Ethelred and his brother Alfred led the men of Wessex straight into the attack.
• They failed to storm the Danish stronghold at Reading and advanced into open country and defeated them in a great battle on the Berkshire Downs.
• Ethelred died suddenly in April 871 and the kingdom was left in the hands of his brother Alfred, with Wessex had lost its last ally after the Danes attacked Mercia.
• By 876, they had shared a large area of Northumbria and settled down to farm and land and others were in an storm and it failed and now decided to avoid an open battle which forced Gutherm to move.
• Gurthrem then raided, and Alfred retaliated by taking over settlements and establishing new ones after which a stronghold, on the 'island' of Athelney, a patch of dry ground rising above the surrounding swamps and thickets was established.
• Peace was made and the Danes promised to leave Wessex for good after the invasion.
• Guthrum was baptized a Christian, with Alfred as his godfather.
• Guthrum led his men across the country settling peacefully to plowing and crops.
• Alfred was now the real ruler of all Englishmen living outside the Danish settlements.
• Alfred and Guthrum made another pact in after 886, which fixed a frontier between the English lands and the Danelaw where Danish law was followed
• `Alfred and Guthrum's Pact' also forbade the cattle stealing and had a set price for each human.
• Most Danes cleared new land for themselves instead of driving the English from their homes.
• The names of Danish settlements have endings such as orpe (meaning village) and -toft (homestead), those are important towns.
• Some burhs were built at places where the remains of old Roman walls could be patched up, even though the thread of Great Army was over.
• But burhs were not the main focus which went to boats and that allowed re-organised his army so in future, only half the total force had to fight.
• In 892 an army tested these defenses of Wessex and Alfred soon put sent people to the Danelaw and the French.
• After a while the French King King realised a deal was in order and the Duke Normandy started.

The Kingdom of All England

• Alfred the Great is respected and remembered as the king who saved England from the Danes, military achievements were only parts of life's work.
• Just like Charlemagne, Alfred believed that studying/praying and making good laws were just as important as winning battles as a schoolmaster.
• Alfred invited Bishops to tell of past where Churches filled with treasures/books were burned
• Alfred sent a letter to each bishop, asking questions about then
• Alfred wrote of learning how to speak and read only in his years forty to write better
• Laws in books needed to be read so Kings had to write to give more advice
• Alfred decided to make the books and then had to learn Latin, as his only want
• Alfred became the translated Gregory's Pastorial as way to do just that
• In which all parts were translated so Alfred took over his world and it was his "words"
• This work meant for the people was all and well, Monasteries were founded and records were made

Athelred to Witan

• A lot was recorded as a king with great armies who sent around for a lot
• Athelread dies and his books were found
• Athelred son got England in 980s
• London also had an issue, where people had died and so ships were attacked
• It was getting worse so bad that the king had to keep fighting

The Danelaw's Conquest and Shires, Hundreds and Towns

• Alfred's kingdom passed to his son, Edward 'the Elder' had to get the Danelaw's
• Edward and Ethelfleda invaded the land in small stages and then used the Burghs
• The invaders were able to win
• By 92 the Danes were converting to Christianity,
• Athelstan carried on where King had left and took firm control of northern England
• According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a great battle had happened, in 937, and his name was now Rex titles Britannia
• Then slowly the Anglo-Saxon's rose and got Wessex's
• Destroying them and the Scottish made England.
• Once Danelaw was conquered it was divided into shires based on Derby etc.
• Sussex Kent was not included and nowadays they became local counties in A-S times
• In each shire there was law for court, and the Kings were well respected and followed and the king's name was written far and
• The shires was how the Kings controlled and the hundred man was how the king's was obeyed"

City Structure

• In the middle of the cities was moots with Ed. Ethelfeda
• They wanted trade more, so they kept places safer for shop to grow
• London for example was large by boat
• This would strike the A-S around 300 church"
• The town's are still up for debate
• The king's treasure was in Winchester which was a large palace to hold meetings

The return of the Vikings

• Back to peace but then, the dragons,
• The people were being attacked, with ships
• Athelred came who was now very weak
• In return he came who was know as a pirate
• Before they were going around and they got a lot
• They decided it was not the right thing to do so England was saved by Swin a Danish pirate to conquer England and then collapsed
• Athelred soon came in but Athelred dead
• The English agreed with Cnut was was a great
• Cnut was respectful when he was kind and just.
• Cnut didn's want a big family which meant, he was the first blood
• To help keep his army moving he kept peace by killing people
• He called for nobles to make the country a better place and help with Christian Faith"
• Most of the time, it meant. he was a god
• His house died and everyone was angry
• King Cnut was the reason we are good"""