Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
The new inhabitants practiced Anglo-Saxon paganism, a polytheistic religion in which multiple gods were worshipped, among them Woden, Thor, and Tiw. Woden was the king of the gods, and early English kings traced their ancestry back to him (see Anglo-Saxon royal genealogies). [8] Christianity survived in the Brittonic kingdoms of the west and north.
The Christianisation of Anglo-Saxon England was the process starting in the late 6th century by which population of England formerly adhering to the Anglo-Saxon, and later Nordic, forms of Germanic paganism converted to Christianity and adopted Christian worldviews.
Anglo-Saxon paganism, sometimes termed Anglo-Saxon heathenism, Anglo-Saxon pre-Christian religion, Anglo-Saxon traditional religion, or Anglo-Saxon polytheism refers to the religious beliefs and practices followed by the Anglo-Saxons between the 5th and 8th centuries AD, during the initial period of Early Medieval England.
Folio 3v from the St Petersburg Bede. The Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Latin: Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum), written by Bede in about AD 731, is a history of the Christian Churches in England, and of England generally; its main focus is on the conflict between the pre-Schism Roman Rite and Celtic Christianity.
The Anglo-Saxon local saint was a development in a wider and older Roman tradition. [3] The cult of saints had become a centrally important aspect of Christianity from at least the fourth century, when it was criticised by the final pagan Emperor of the Roman Empire, Julian the Apostate. [4]
The Saxon invasions of Britain destroyed most of the formal church structures in the east of Britain as they progressed, replacing Christianity with a form of Germanic polytheism. There seems to have been a lull in the Saxon westward expansion traditionally attributed to the Battle of Badon but, with the Yellow Plague of Rhos caused by the ...
It was against this background that Pope Gregory I decided to send a mission, often called the Gregorian mission, to convert the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity in 595. [13] [14] The Kingdom of Kent was ruled by Æthelberht, who had married a Christian princess named Bertha before 588, [15] and perhaps earlier than 560. [16]
The new inhabitants, the Anglo-Saxons, introduced Anglo-Saxon paganism, and the Christian church was confined to Wales and Cornwall. In Ireland, Celtic Christianity continued to thrive. [2] The Christianisation of the Anglo-Saxons began in 597 when Pope Gregory I dispatched the Gregorian Mission to convert the Kingdom of Kent.