Western Civilization

willing to assimilate old pagan practices in order to

coax the pagans into the new faith:

We wish you [Abbot Mellitus] to inform him [Augustine]

that we have been giving careful thought to the affairs

of the English, and have come to the conclusion that the

temples of the idols among that people should on no

account be destroyed. The idols are to be destroyed, but

the temples themselves are to be aspersed with holy

water, altars set up in them, and relics deposited there.

For if these temples are well-built, they must be purified

from the worship of demons and dedicated to the service

of the true God.^5

Freed of their pagan past, temples became churches,

as one Christian commentator noted with joy: “The

dwelling place of demons has become a house of God.

The saving light has come to shine, where shadows

covered all. Where sacrifices once took place and

idols stood, angelic choirs now dance. Where God was

angered once, now God is made content.”^6 Likewise,

old pagan feasts were given new names and incorpo-

rated into the Christian calendar. The Christian feast

of Christmas, for example, was held on December 25,

the day of the pagan celebration of the winter

solstice.

As Roman Christianity spread northward in Britain,

it encountered Irish Christianity moving southward.

Roman Christianity prevailed, although the English

church, despite its newfound unity and loyalty to

Rome, retained some Irish features. Most important

was the concentration on monastic culture with special

emphasis on learning and missionary work. By 700, the

English clergy had become the best trained and most

learned in western Europe.

Following the Irish example, English monks jour-

neyed to the European continent to carry on the work

of conversion (see Map 7.3). Most important was

Boniface (ca. 680–755), who undertook the conver-

sion of pagan Germans in Frisia, Bavaria, and Saxony.

By 740, Saint Boniface, the “Apostle of the Germans,”

had become the most famous churchman in Europe.

Fifteen years later, he was killed while trying to con-

vert the pagan Frisians. Boniface was a brilliant exam-

ple of the numerous Irish and English monks whose

tireless efforts made Europe the bastion of the Roman

Catholic faith.

WOMEN AND MONASTICISM Women played an important

role in the monastic missionary movement and the

conversion of the Germanic kingdoms. Double monas-

teries, where monks and nuns lived in separate houses

but attended church services together, were found in

both the English and Frankish kingdoms. The monks

and nuns followed a common rule under a common

head. Frequently, this leader was anabbess rather

than an abbot. Many of these abbesses belonged to

royal houses, especially in Anglo-Saxon England. In the

kingdom of Northumbria, for example, Saint Hilda

founded the monastery of Whitby in 657. As abbess,

she was responsible for giving learning an important

role in the life of the monastery; five future bishops

were educated under her tutelage. For female intellec-

tuals, monasteries offered opportunities for learning

not found elsewhere in the society of their day.

Nuns of the seventh and eighth centuries also

played an important role in the spread of Christianity.

The great English missionary Boniface relied on nuns

in England for books and money. He also asked the

abbess of Wimborne to send groups of nuns to estab-

lish convents in newly converted German lands.

THE PATH OF CELIBACY The monastic movement enabled

some women to pursue a new path to holiness. Clois-

ters for both men and women offered the ideal place to

practice the new Christian ideal of celibacy. This new-

found emphasis on abstaining from sexual relations,

especially evident in the emphasis on virginity, created

a new image of the human body in late antiquity. To

many Greeks and Roman, the human body had been a

source of beauty, joy, and pleasure, an attitude evident

in numerous works of art. Many Christians, however,

regarded the body as a hindrance to establishing a spir-

itual connection with God. The refusal to have sex was

a victory over the desires of the flesh and thus an ave-

nue to holiness.

In the fourth and fifth centuries, a cult of virginity

also moved beyond the walls of monasteries and con-

vents. Throughout the Mediterranean world, groups of

women met together to learn about the importance

and benefits of celibacy. In Rome, a woman named

Marcella supported a group of aristocratic women in

their studies of celibacy.

Christianity and Intellectual Life

Many early Christians expressed considerable hostility

toward the pagan culture of the classical world. Tertul-

lian (ca. 160–ca. 225), a Christian writer from Carthage,

had proclaimed, “What has Jerusalem to do with Ath-

ens, the Church with the Academy, the Christian with

the heretic? ... After Jesus Christ we have no need of

speculation, after the Gospel no need of research.”^7

To many early Christians, the Bible (see Chapter 6)

160 Chapter 7Late Antiquity and the Emergence of the Medieval World

Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.

`ˆÌi`Ê܈̅Ê̅iÊ`i“œÊÛiÀȜ˜ÊœvÊ

˜vˆÝÊ*ÀœÊ*Ê

`ˆÌœÀÊ

/œÊÀi“œÛiÊ̅ˆÃʘœÌˆVi]ÊۈÈÌ\Ê