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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 an abbess 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 7 Late Antiquity and the Emergence of the Medieval World
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