Anglo-Saxon England by Stenton Frank M.;

Author:Stenton, Frank M.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Incorporated
Published: 2004-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

XIII

THE TENTH-CENTURY REFORMATION

THERE can be no question that the Danish invasions of the ninth century shattered the organization of the English church, destroyed monastic life in eastern England, and elsewhere caused distress and anxiety which made the pursuit of learning almost impossible.1 East Anglia, the eastern half of Mercia, and southern Northumbria were occupied and colonized by armies of heathen Danes. The bishoprics of Dunwich, Elmham, and Lindsey came to an end, and the see of York was reduced to a state of obscure poverty. Beyond the Tees, the sees of Hexham and Whithorn ceased to exist; the cathedral of Lindisfarne was abandoned, and for seven years its bishop with some of his younger clerks wandered from one insecure refuge to another, preserving the relics of St. Cuthbert from desecration until peace was so far re-established in the north that a new church could be built for them at Chester-le-Street. The continuity of ecclesiastical organization was never broken in the west midlands and the south, but innumerable ancient centres of religion must have perished in the repeated harryings of Wessex between 870 and 878, and the churches of the Severn valley, the safest part of England, must have suffered many evils when the Danes were abroad around the Wrekin or encamped at Gloucester. Throughout England the Danish raids meant, if not the destruction, at least the grievous impoverishment of civilization.

There is no evidence that the Danes who settled in England were fiercely antagonistic to Christianity. In 878 Guthrum and his leading followers were ready to accept the obligation of baptism as the price of a treaty with King Alfred. Guthfrith, the first known king of Danish Northumbria, was a Christian. Here and there among the Scandinavian place-names of the Danelaw it is possible to find traces of heathen cults and heathen practices. The great hill which projects from the north-western edge of Cleveland, and is now called Roseberry Topping, appears in the twelfth century as Othenesberg, and must once have been sacred to Othin, the Scandinavian counterpart of the West Saxon Woden. The village-name Ellough in Suffolk probably represents the Old Scandinavian elgr, ‘heathen temple’.1 Place-names such as Leggeshou, Kate-hou, and Granehou seem to commemorate the burial of Danish settlers in heathen fashion under haugar, or mounds, to which their names were permanently applied.2 But in view of the great extent of the region covered by the Danish settlements, the number of place-names which carry a suggestion of Danish heathenism is too small to prove an obdurate adherence to ancient ways of thought. Little is known about the process by which the conversion of the Danelaw was actually brought about.3 But the fact that no traditions of the work have survived suggests that it owed less to the labours of missionaries than to the example of the Christian social order of Wessex and English Mercia.

Nevertheless, to continental churchmen the Danish occupation of eastern England must have seemed a disaster of the first magnitude. Earlier Danish raids had brought destruction to many ancient churches in each of the Frankish kingdoms.

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