Hello all,
I'm currently reading 'The Anglo-Saxons. A history of the beginnings of England' by Marc Morris.
Right now, I've just finished a chapter regarding St Wilfird and his life. During Wilfird's life, paganism still existed (strongly) in areas of what is now England. Penda - the last great Anglo-Saxon King only died in 655.
Morris writes about how Penda's death opened the floodgates for the last major kingdom on the island to allow Christian preachers to flood in, mostly from Northumbria. We have plenty of documentation regarding this in addition to further evidence of priests being sent around the island to convert the remaining pagans, but my question regards the opposite of this movement.
We know people didn't convert easily. We also know that a lot of converts actually were quick to relapse to their pagan ways following any sign of real 'cosmic threat' - Morris specifically cites the great plague of 664 - where we have written records of Anglo-Saxons restoring their old pagan temples are reaffirming their belief in the old Gods to combat the devastating plague.
What I'm interested in is - do we have any evidence, at all, of pagan Kings sending out preachers to their Christian neighbours - particularly at times of hardship. We know these people clung to their beliefs far longer than the Church would have liked and it just seems odd to me that there seems to have been no real movement to 'bring the Christians back into the fold'.
I appreciate that we've only really got Christian written sources to look at but does anybody at all write about this? Bede maybe? Is there any record of this occurring in the Anglo-Saxon chronicles?
Cheers!
Not that I'm aware of, but we need to remember that we know VERY little about 'pagan' English religious practices, and we shouldn't just transpose Norse religious models onto England. Not all religions have a missionary culture (modern Judaism does not, for example, and in most cases you cannot 'convert' to Judaism). We don't know that Pagans would have necessarily wanted to bring Christians back into the fold! But more importantly than that, I think it's important to appreciate 'paganism' as a mish-mash of different elements. When Raedwald is introduced to Christ he simply tacks him onto his pre-existing pantheon, with an altar to the 'old Gods' alongside one to Jesus. So I think the idea of a unified 'paganism' that was in a position to force (or encourage) people to a certain specific way of thought, rather than sort of flexibly absorbing lots of elements, is unlikely.