Peter Heather Lecture

[Anton]

I enjoyed listening to Peter Heather on Rome and Christianity so I thought I'd post a link.  Always something new with him.  I hadn't realised the significance of Ambrose of Milan's pronouncement on Christian marriage.  It helps explain why that happy state remained a secular legal matter in Irish and Welsh law.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yB42ZAktfE8

[Imperial Dave]

thanks Stephen

[Jim Webster]

I enjoyed listening to Peter Heather on Rome and Christianity so I thought I'd post a link.  Always something new with him.  I hadn't realised the significance of Ambrose of Milan's pronouncement on Christian marriage.  It helps explain why that happy state remained a secular legal matter in Irish and Welsh law.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yB42ZAktfE8

Interesting, I watched the follow up as well.
What you have to remember is that the New Testament doesn't do anything about Christian marriage. Paul specifically assumes legitimate marriages between Christians and Non Christians
I think one reason the church got involved is that marriage among the elites is that they were contracts involving land and power and thus needed formalising and recording.
Even with the Church of England, we got landed with the job of doing marriages that meant that the clergy became almost legal officers in that regard. But this was as much to the benefit of the state that got the paperwork done free.

[Anton]

I've got that Jim.

What interests me is the date of Ambrose's pronouncement.  The conversion of Britannia had already taken place by then.

I had initially thought that the Brythons and the Irish had just continued with existing law regardless of the Christian imperatives.  What Heather is saying made me realise that those imperatives did not exist at the time of the conversion.  That seems to me to have been the crucial moment when Christianity had maximum leverage in Britannia and Ireland  as the Imperial Cult.

I should say I buy Koch's early date for St. Patrick which is why I mention Irish law too.

[Jim Webster]

There are various issues that have to be remembered. Firstly scripture was still largely what people remembered. Apparently some have calculated that there probably wasn't the equivalent of a full bible in Britain until the 4th century. They were awfully expensive
In the Edict on Maximum Prices in 301AD there is a price for scribes. It was 25 denarii per 100 Stichoi. A Stichoi is a 'line' of prose, the Iliad and other works were known lengths

We have early manuscripts of the New Testament with the number of Stichoi pencilled in at the end of the book

          Stichoi   Denarii
Matthew     2600           65000
Mark    1600       40000
Luke     2900           72500
John    2000     50000
Tota1   9100           227500
Letters of Paul    5000   125000

      Total 352500

The highest limit set at the time was on one pound of purple-dyed silk, which was set at 150 000 denarii

[Anton]

Yes, I see that Jim.  An expensive business altogether.

Heather's point was that Christianity itself was mutating as a consequence of it being adopted as the Imperial Cult.  That Rome changed Christianity as much as Christianity changed Rome if you like. Christianity as a work in progress sort of thing.

My revelation was that becoming Christian didn't require a change in laws regulating interaction between the sexes for the Brythons and the Irish because that was not at the forefront of the Christian package at the time of conversion.

[Jim Webster]

Yes, I see that Jim.  An expensive business altogether.

Heather's point was that Christianity itself was mutating as a consequence of it being adopted as the Imperial Cult.  That Rome changed Christianity as much as Christianity changed Rome if you like. Christianity as a work in progress sort of thing.

My revelation was that becoming Christian didn't require a change in laws regulating interaction between the sexes for the Brythons and the Irish because that was not at the forefront of the Christian package at the time of conversion.

It never was until a lot later. Jesus had far more to say on Hypocrisy than he ever had on sex. Part of this would be that he was in small town Judea rather than Corinth (as Paul was) but even then, his attitude is perhaps summed up in the woman caught in adultery.
Looking back, you can see as Christianity spreads, it takes over stuff, absorbs the elites, and then slowly slowly the peasantry join. Then the peasantry become literate, actually get to read the book, and at that point the elites wonder if the whole Christianity thing is an entirely good idea 

Looking at it in our period, for large chunks of it, a lot of Christians would have had only a very hazy idea about what Christianity actually taught, they couldn't read. But some have pointed out that a lot of areas where Monophysite or Arian Christianity held sway quite rapidly became Muslin after the conquest and the suggestion was that they could have seen Islam as an extension of the view that Christ was fully human.
For the elites it was a big deal one way or another, but for the peasantry and those in the countryside who, in the 6th century, were nominal Christians, the shift to being nominal Muslims was probably no big deal

[Imperial Dave]

Christianity became the mechanism of control in the later Roman period both for the masses and the elites, especially in the Heroic Age and the emergence of British/Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms

[Jim Webster]

Christianity became the mechanism of control in the later Roman period both for the masses and the elites, especially in the Heroic Age and the emergence of British/Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms

Certainly the question has to be asked how many people actually were Christian. St Germanus of Auxerre seems to spend a lot of time preaching and baptising, which seems to indicate that like Gaul, the move to expand out to the countryside was just starting.
Obviously it would become a way of differentiating between Briton and Saxon, at least until the Saxons started converting. I can see from the control point of view it could mark US as opposed to THEM

[DBS]

There is the theory that the "eccles" element in some place names denotes a Roman village with a church - the interesting bit being that there are not more of them, which perhaps suggests that a village with a church, as opposed to a villa or posh town house with a chapel, was a tad unusual for the incoming Germanic heathens, and thus worthy of note.

[Imperial Dave]

convert the nobility under the premise of recognized by god etc and then all the under layers convert.

[Nick Harbud]

Not sure that this theory is entirely supported by evidence in bricks and mortar.

For example, the church of St Nicholas in Arundel is divided into separate sections for catholic and protestant worship.  It appears that the bulk of the peasantry and townsfolk decided to follow the Church of England.  However, the Dukes of Norfolk, who are the leading catholic family in England and who own Arundel Castle, insisted that the church's chancel, as the family's mausoleum, should remain a place of catholic worship.

More details can be found here.

[DBS]

In a less extreme version, but still involving the Duke of Arundel, my parish church was, in the Tudor and Stuart period, somewhat akin to Sandringham church today, as it was the parish next door to Nonsuch Palace.  The dominant family was the Lumleys, with Thomas the son in law of the good Duke, and with a senior management role at the palace.  The tombs and memorials of his family, including Norfolk's daughter, are in the Lumley chapel, which is the old chancel of the church, preserved when the Victorian demolished the old Saxon/Norman church which was judged beyond sensible repair.

Anyway, the parish remained throughout notably High Church and very catholic in its practices: Henry of course favoured catholic liturgy, just not Papal intransigence over his marital flexibilities, Elizabeth clearly tolerated it because she tolerated Norfolk, and one of the rectors under James I was the saintly Lancelot Andrewes, Anglo-Catholic extraordinaire, but also prolific anti-Papist propagandist, especially after Guy Fawkes.

During the Civil War, the rector, John Hackett, was arrested by Parliament for his Papist and Laudian proclivities, though Charles II compensated him by making him a bishop.  Also, some Royalist cavalry seemed to have been chased there in 1643, perhaps during an over ambitious raid south of London, and left their wounded in the care of the parish - at least three later died and were buried there, including a Polish soldier.

My point is that the parish remained devoutly Anglo-Catholic (to this day) because, well, no one asked the opinion of the mass of the laity.  Which is basically an argument in favour of Holly, but also, in a sense, in favour of Nick, because it was effectively a compromise but one heavily weighted towards Norfolk and Lumley.

[Anton]

There is the theory that the "eccles" element in some place names denotes a Roman village with a church - the interesting bit being that there are not more of them, which perhaps suggests that a village with a church, as opposed to a villa or posh town house with a chapel, was a tad unusual for the incoming Germanic heathens, and thus worthy of note.

My take is that the eccles of Ceint/Kent support the Hengist/Vortigern tradition.  Hengist considers himself a legitimate ruler and so leaves the natives their eccles as long as they pony up the taxes.  Ceint remains Kent too, unusual.

[DBS]

Of course, with Kent there is always the possible Frankish factor - given they were rather ahead of the Angles et al in adopting Christianity, and certainly seem to have tolerated it from their earliest days in the Low Countries - the new management in Kent may have been influenced by their closest semi-brethren across the Channel.  Clovis may not have been baptised until 496, but he was married to a Catholic, and had supposedly been interested in Arianism before that, and, IIRC, Guy Halsall has a suspicion that Childeric had begun his career as a Aetian officer, which if so would probably have led to a degree of Romanisation even if he remained a formal pagan.