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Medieval Religion in England:


Good or Bad
Jason Simpson

The World: Antiquity to 1500


Professor Spencer
29 January 2015

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Beginning with its occupation by Rome, Britain has experienced changes that have drawn
out the true potential of the people. For centuries Britain has been considered a Christian country,
but has this always been the case? How did England go from a little island in the North Atlantic
Ocean to the British Empire that spread out over the globe, and was Christianity the religion that
became the stepping stone for Britains rise to a world empire during the 16th century? Beginning
with ancient times, Britain has maintained an incredible amount of piety towards the god, or
gods, whom they served. Whether this was directed towards the Roman gods under the Roman
General Magnus Maximus, or the animistic gods under the Neolithic Druids, Britains had a
reputation for reliability and stability with their religions. By the time of the Crusades,
Christianity had embedded itself into the very core of life in the villages and citadels of Medieval
Britain, but did the Christian church add support and unity to daily life? Going to Mass every
week, having regular confessions, and giving alms to the poor were part of the Christian duty.
These weekly rites of religion contributed to the daily order of life, maintained stability during
the changes between the 10th and 15th centuries, was the basis for, and ultimately led to the
Crusades to regain the Holy Land. The Christian religion became the footstool for Britains
leap into the scene of world power and prestige.
When the Roman armies conquered Britannia, they introduced their Roman gods into
the culture of the villages, but few truly left their own gods to worship the gods of Rome. After
the departure of the Roman armies, and subsequent conquering by the Normans, A missionary
appeared on the shores of Kent, an early medieval kingdom. The missionary was soon to be
called Augustine of Canterbury. According to Pope Gregory I, more than ten thousand Angli are
reported to have been baptized. This action, and that of Patricius, or Saint Patrick, led to the full
conversion of the British Isles.

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With the launch of missionaries into the British Isles by Gregory the Great, a new age had
begun for the British. The departure of the Romans had left a gaping hole in the fabric of life of
society. Taxes, which had funded multiple public services, were nonexistent; leadership was at a
minimum; and the people were constantly fighting. In Ireland and Wales, Christianity left behind
a culture that was making do with scraps of books. In England, kings were dividing up land and
setting up their kingdoms. When Augustine of Canterbury landed on the shores of Kent in
Southern England, the Christian idea had already become a small part of life on the islands, but
still battled with the ancient druids and their pagan religion. When the Saxons, Angles, and Jutes,
led by the Saxon brothers Hengest and Horsa, were invading England, the elected leader,
Vortigern, became anxious enough to consider the command of the druids to sacrifice a child, but
no one knows if he did indeed follow through. As Susan Bauer puts it, There was no British
Kingdom and no British high king, no shared religion, no idea of nationhood. At the beginning of
the sixth century, to be British was to not be Saxon.1 This statement accurately conveys the
disunion of the states in England, including the religions; but by the time of the unification of
England, Christianity would become the main religion of the state, and would set the stage to
profoundly affect the history of this small growing island.
At the very end of the sixth century, Pope Gregory the First sends a monk named
Augustine to England to recover those lost to the pagan religions of the druids. After returning,
complaining and being sent back to England, Augustine was welcomed on the east shores of
Kent by King Ethelbert, whose wife was already a convert. Eventually, Ethelbert and much of
southern England were converted and baptized into the Christian faith. So many had been
converted that Augustine was sent more priests were sent to the island to help the monk. King
Ethelbert gave the ruins of Canterbury, in the easternmost part of Kent, to Augustine to be a base

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from which he could send out missionaries to convert the rest of the country. Augustine again
complained to Pope Gregory asking if his priests needed to live among the converts in England
or if they could return to Rome. The Pope replied with the command to institute a society based
on the churches of the early Christian church. You ought not to live apart from your clergy in
the church of AngliInstitute that manner of life which in the beginning of the church was that
of our Fathers.2 Pope Gregory was now seeing the Angli Church as part of the body of
believers in Rome, and wished them to be treated as such. This idea of the English Church being
a part of the Roman Church was later exploited by Pope Urban II when calling for soldiers to
recapture Jerusalem from the hands of the Muslims.
When the Saxons originally invaded Britain, they brought with them an assorted
collection of very pagan beliefs. These pagans, who considered themselves enlightened in the
ways of the spiritual world, considered a foreign religion to be similar to a foreign good. It was
something to be admired and collected to put on the shelf at home. As a result, the Celtic
Christianity that had survived since Roman era Britain was merely humbled into a quiet religion
that rarely affected the Saxons as they reached farther into the lands of the Britons. At the time of
Augustines landing in Kent in the late sixth century, Christians were still making trips to
Christian martyrs tombs to worship. Christianity was still alive in England, and the Saxons
knew about it. They had suppressed the overzealous long enough to lead to the submission of the
people. They cared little about whether a few believers still refused to worship their god. When
Augustine landed, the Saxons had to deal not with the question of whether the knowledge of
Christ would spread, because it was already there. They became worried about the conversion to
Christianity and whether they would still be able to control the population.

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By the time of Edwy All-Fair in 955 BC, monasteries had been established in enough
number as to require an archbishop to oversee the religious developments of the country. William
of Malmesbury illustrates that Edwy deprived the monks and abbots of the revenue for their
monasteries and destroyed their power to defy the king. Edwy quickly lost the support of the
archbishop of Canterbury and Dunstan, the English bishop. The church soon put their support
behind Edwys brother Edgar, who won the throne within two years then gave the church back
the power to rule their own lands. When giving power to the church, Edgar shrewdly pulled them
under his own control, creating the beginning of a long battle of power between the king and the
church. With the Christian church firmly planted in the lives of the English, the start of Christian
influences could commence. The monks and abbots of early Britain had already established
themselves in the kings court and were significant figures of the lives of everyone from peasants
to noblemen.
By the year 1290, most, if not all, of England had converted to the religion of Rome. The
numbers of monasteries and abbeys was multiplying at a rate that astounds historians. One
survey puts the number of Christian religious house at nearly 15,000, and the number of clergy
between 27,200 and 32,700 including monks, canons, friars Templars, Hospitallers, and female
clergy in the British Isles. The total amount of wealth accounted to the church was approximately
167,510. Of the number of parishes, two thirds were English and one fifth were Irish. Scottish
parishes were worth the most, followed by English parishes. Irish and welsh parishes were poor
compared to those of Scotland and England. The Highest value per diocese in the British Isles
were Lincoln, for England; Glasgow, for Scotland; Dublin, for Ireland; and St Davids, for
Wales. Lincoln alone was estimated to be of higher value than all of the diocese in Scotland; and
of the dioceses of Lincoln, York, and Norwich, each separately had a higher tax value than

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Ireland. The diocese of Armagh, in Ireland, maintained the smallest value in the British Isles at
less than 11 in 1291.
Geoffrey Chaucer wrote one of the most well known fictional works of the medieval
period. His The Canterbury Tales has been considered both a classic among fictional pieces
along with a significant insight into the lives of average people of medieval England. Chaucer
frequently makes references to the Bible and people of religious prominence, such as Saint John
and Samson. Along side these religious people, he speaks highly of Socrates, Hercules, and
Pompey, among others. In this work, calling to the Moon or Mars was as common as asking for
the grace of Christ. The medieval man appears to perceive his Christian religion as the
culmination of other religions, and the result of centuries of the addition of religions to each
other resulting in the daily speech of common Britons. In the prologue of the Monks tale, the
host describes his wife going to church, is not bowed to, and returns home to complain. Chaucer
describes going to church as merely another way to flaunt status at those of lower class. Spread
through the book, Chaucer lists multiple accounts of times where the actions of a member of the
group were frowned upon by one of the clergy, or even by all in the case of the drunken miller.
Fictional tales are not the only primary sources available. Celtic prose has been preserved since
before the unity of the kingdoms of Briton. Pelagius was one writer of early religious prose, but
was fought by Augustine as heresy. Pelagius advocates the following of God through acts of
kindness, mutual love, and total righteousness in life. Even this early in time, religion was
digging into the backbones of life and society.
Long before the Crusades, art began to weave itself into the fabric of life by depicting life
and fantasy. Stained glass, statues, buildings, paintings, and carvings have survived a millennium
to portray the lives of people and their imaginations. Religion was one of the foremost thoughts

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in the Middle Ages, and thus one of the many scenes preserved in the arts. Several paintings help
in deciphering to what capacity the clergy served in the Middle Ages. One painting depicts Christ
on a throne giving a key to the pope of the Church and a sword to the emperor. Based on this, the
assumption is that the Church is in charge of the peoples personal and spiritual welfare and the
emperor is meant to protect their lives and interests from a secular viewpoint. When the emperor
was crowned, he wore a crown with a cross on it, and held an orb topped with a cross. The kings
and emperors were supposedly not chosen by the people, but were appointed by god and held to
the divine right of kings. During coronation, the ruler was anointed by oil and was, in form, a
type of priesthood in that the king had to keep in line with the holy laws set forth by God and the
leaders of the church. Another painting shows the separation of classes into the merchants and
nobles, the warriors, and the peasants and workers. This separation kept the clergy from
becoming ungodly, and the nobles from stealing power from the clergy. The king held power
over his kingdom, but was guided by the church. A painting of Edward I and his parliament
during the 13th century includes the king on his throne, the King of Scotland, the Prince of Wales,
and two bishops, all of whom influenced the kings decisions. Even with this separation of
church, state, and workers, overlapping occurred often. Nobles children were often sent to
monasteries to learn, and some even became clergy through this process. The monks, friars, and
priests were able to teach the masses philosophy, writing and reading, and other languages. They
became the teachers and scholars of the Middle Ages. They king sought after them as his
mentors, just as he sought after seasoned knights as war counselors.
With the development of the knight into a professional soldier hired by the king, a code
of conduct was developed and included many laws that bind the clergymen. Elaborate rituals,
strong Christian values and convictions, and honor preceded knights and monks alike, even

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though both served god for different reasons. With the call to arms by Pope Urban II, the
Crusades had begun. The siege of Antioch was the starting point for the assault on Palestine to
regain Jerusalem. Richard the Lionheart, the famous English king, led the Britons next to the
Franks, Spaniards, Germans and countless other groups to regain the Holy Land. Religion was
the one reason that caused men to leave their homes and travel thousands of miles to capture a
city with no or little wealth to gain. Religion would later lead the British to secure an empire that
would cover the globe.
Beginning with the introduction of Christianity into the lives of Britons by the Romans,
England has developed the religion of Christianity into a religion of state and life. With the
departure of the Romans, the British Isles were left in shambles, and soon after, when the Angles
and Saxons invaded, the original structure crumbled under the oppression of the Saxon rule.
When Augustine came to southern England to convert the Angli, he started a movement that
would cement the Britons into the books of time. This religion allowed the stability of England
to be maintained, even during invasion, war, conquering, and more war. As time progressed, the
Crusades called Christians to fight for the Holy Land. The English began to realize they have the
potential to do more than survive by being conquered, and began to build themselves up
technologically, spiritually, and culturally. The art with which they defined themselves, the
weapons they became famous for, and the religious advances which would define the entire
world of Christianity were based in the amount of detail that was imbedded into the lives of
medieval English. As the history of England progressed through the Middle Ages, the British
became stronger and smarter, simply because they did not have to battle through the same
amount of religious troubles of other countries during this time.

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Notes
1.

Susan Wise Bauer, he History of the Medieval World (New York: W. W. Norton,

2010), 177
2.

Ibid., 159

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Bibliography
Primary Sources
Bartlett, Robert, ed. Medieval Panorama. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2001.
Bauer, Susan Wise. The History of the Medieval World. New York: W. W. Norton, 2010.
Brown, Peter. The Rise of Western Christendom. 2nd ed. N.p.: Blackwell, 2003.
Campbell, Bruce M. S. Benchmarking Medieval Economic Development: England, Wales,
Scotland, and Ireland, c.1290. Economic History Review 61, no. 4 (November 2008):
896-906. Accessed October 18, 2011. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0289.2007.00407.x.
Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales. 1385-1389.
Davies, Oliver, and Fiona Bowie, eds. Celtic Christian Spirituality. New York: Continuum, 1995.

Secondary Sources
Bruce, Steve. The Pervasive World-View: Religion in Pre-Modern Britain. The British Journal
of Sociology 48, no. 4 (1997): 667-680. Accessed October 17, 2011. doi:10.2307/591602.
Parker, Thomas M. Religion and Politics in Britain. Journal of Contemporary History 2, no. 4
(1967): 123-135. Accessed October 17, 2011. JSTOR.
Reece, Richard. Town and Country: The End of Roman Britain. World Archaeology (1980):
77-92. Accessed October 17, 2011. JSTOR.

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