Here are some facts about the Anglo-Saxons and Christianity.
- The early Anglo-Saxons were pagans and believed in many different gods, as well as being superstitious. Magic rhymes, stones or potions were thought to protect people from sickness and evil spirits.
The fullest account of Anglo-Saxon Christmas is given by Egbert of York (d. 766), a contemporary of Bede: ‘the English people have been accustomed to practise fasts, vigils, prayers, and the giving of alms both to monasteries and to the common people, for the full twelve days before Christmas’. The Vikings and Saxons gave thanks for all of the food they had to survive the winter, thanked Odin, and looked forward to the new year when Spring would make the crops grow again. It also became the date that was chosen to celebrate the birth of Jesus, Christmas, when the Saxons and then the Vikings changed their religion to become Christians. High-quality Anglo Saxon Greeting Cards designed and sold by artists. Get up to 35% off. Shop unique cards for Birthdays, Anniversaries, Congratulations, and more. The same way in the other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Anglo-Saxon Christmas The date of Christmas, 25th December, coincided with the Yule festival, so a number of traditions and practises carried over into the new, Christian celebration although, as we saw in Lesson 2, there is quite a bit of uncertainty as to which were originally Pagan and which were. The result was that Christmas amongst the Anglo-Saxon in Britain, and later amongst other Teutonic peoples, came to be celebrated with greater rejoicings than was the case amongst the Latin nations, for so 25th December had always been celebrated in pre-Christian days in the north, whereas the Church in Rome, had not at all whole-heartedly.
- Anglo-Saxon Britain became Christian around the end of the 6th century. The new beliefs originated in Ireland, and were also brought to Britain from Rome by St. Augustine of Canterbury.
- King Aethelberht was the first Saxon king to be baptized, in around 601 AD. The large kingdom of Mercia officially became Christian in 655 AD, following the defeat of King Penda in battle.
- St. Augustine chose Canterbury to be the seat of the Archbishop, as London had too many pagan tribes. St. Augustine is today considered to be the founder of the English church.
- During the 7th and 8th centuries, Anglo-Saxon Christianity was spread largely through the monasteries. Monks travelled through the surrounding area and preached to the villages.
- The Venerable Bede was one of the most well-known monks and writers of the Anglo-Saxon period. Bede wrote books about Christianity and history, composed hymns and is thought to have coined the phrases BC and AD.
- Wilfrid was one of the most important 7th century Bishops. He helped to bring Christianity to Sussex, built many churches and several monasteries and was made a saint after his death.
- Churches in Anglo-Saxon Britain were used for education as well as religion. Church officials carried out other tasks too, including advising the king and overseeing Church estates.
- Several fairly complete Anglo-Saxon churches can still be seen today in Britain, notably the 9th century Greensted Church in Essex. Many churches were made from brick or stone, whereas wood was the main building material for Anglo-Saxon houses.
- Anglo-Saxon Christianity was revived in Britain during the 10th century, following Viking invasions. The Vikings became Christians, and many new churches were built.
What next? Discover more facts about the Anglo-Saxons by visiting our resources page.
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle ponders some of the best of the Anglo-Saxon riddles from the Exeter Book
As I’ve remarked before, it’s a sobering thought that all of the Anglo-Saxon poetry that has survived is found in just four manuscripts which escaped the ravages of time, the pillaging of the Vikings, and the censorship of the Church: the Cotton manuscript (which is our sole source for the long heroic narrative poem Beowulf), the Vercelli book, a collection of manuscripts of the Bodleian Library at Oxford, and the Exeter Book. Of these, the Anglo-Saxon poetry found in half of these, the Vercelli and Bodleian manuscripts, is exclusively religious: indeed, it’s little more than dramatic paraphrases of Old Testament stories or of Saints’ lives, as Michael Alexander notes in his informative introduction to his translation of Anglo-Saxon verse, The Earliest English Poems (Penguin Classics). That leaves the Cotton manuscript (whose Anglo-Saxon poetry comprises Beowulf and nothing more) and the Exeter Book. And it’s the Exeter Book that yields a whole host of smaller masterpieces of Old English verse, from ‘The Dream of the Rood’ to ‘The Battle of Maldon’ to ‘The Ruin’ to ‘The Wanderer’ and ‘The Seafarer’ and the celebrated riddles.
The Anglo-Saxon riddles are especially interesting. Far from being idle brain-teasers to divert people for half an hour during their lunch break or provide a topic of conversation at Christmas dinner, the riddle, to the Anglo-Saxons, was a serious and enigmatic poetic form, designed to defamiliarise and alienate by depriving a thing of its name or giving an animal a ‘voice’ with which to speak to us. Many of the riddles in the Exeter Book bear this out (and I am indebted to Michael Alexander, and his excellent pocket translation of Anglo-Saxon verse, The Earliest English Poems (Penguin Classics), for this observation). But this is not to say that some of the riddles aren’t, quite frankly, bawdy and rude. And they are meant to be diverting, even if some of them clearly have a religious aspect (generally the less successful one) and are a tool for learning. It’s part of the fun of the Anglo-Saxon riddle that we’re not entirely sure what we’re going to get.
The fun also comes from the fact that the riddles in the Exeter Book didn’t come with their solutions printed (or rather handwritten) alongside the riddles themselves; like a dodgy puzzle book bought off a market stall for 20p, we have the puzzles but can only guess at what the answers were meant to be. In some cases, no satisfactory solution has been found.
The Anglo-Saxon riddles contained in the Exeter Book were probably written in the early eighth century. Below, I’ve included some of the best Anglo-Saxon riddles from the Exeter Book, followed by the most commonly proposed solutions. I’ve numbered them first, second, third, and so on, for the sake of matching riddle to solution, but in the Exeter Book they have different numbers.
First Anglo-Saxon riddle: what hangs down by the thigh of a man, under his cloak, yet is stiff and hard? When the man pulls up his robe, he puts the head of this hanging thing into that familiar hole of matching length which he has filled many times before.
Second Anglo-Saxon riddle: I am a wondrous thing, and to woman I am a thing of joyful expectation, to close-lying companions serviceable. I harm no city-dweller with the exception of my slayer. My stem is erect and tall – I stand up in bed – and I am whiskery somewhere down below. Sometimes a countryman’s attractive daughter will venture, bumptious girl, to get a grip on me. She assaults my red self and seizes my head and clenches me in a cramped place. She will soon feel the effect of her encounter with me, this curl-locked woman who squeezes me. Her eye will be wet.
Third Anglo-Saxon riddle: I saw a woman sit alone.
Fourth Anglo-Saxon riddle: The wave, over the wave, a strange thing I saw, thoroughly wrought, and wonderfully ornate: a wonder on the wave: water became bone.
Fifth Anglo-Saxon riddle: I saw two wonderful and weird creatures out in the open unashamedly fall a-coupling. If the fit worked, the proud blonde in her furbelows got what fills women.
Anglo Saxon Christianity In Britain
Proposed solutions: first riddle (key), second riddle (onion), third riddle (a mirror – although this one-line riddle remains one of the most contentious and other solutions are possible), fourth riddle (ice), fifth riddle (a cock and hen).
I am indebted to Michael Alexander’s wonderful The Earliest English Poems (Penguin Classics) for these riddles and many of the proposed solutions.
Anglo Saxon Christmas Decorations
Oliver Tearle is the author of The Secret Library: A Book-Lovers’ Journey Through Curiosities of History, available now from Michael O’Mara Books.