Harvard Divinity School

Paganism to Christianity in Anglo-Saxon England

Author(s): William A. Chaney
Source: The Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 53, No. 3 (Jul., 1960), pp. 197-217
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Harvard Divinity School
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PAGANISM TO CHRISTIANITY IN
ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND
WILLIAM A. CHANEY
LAWRENCECOLLEGE
APPLETON,WISCONSIN

IN Anglo-Saxonas in Christianhistory, many roads lead to Rome.

This has been correctly and at times overemphasizedin matters
ranging from Augustine to Whitby, from numismatics to law,
from banners to Bede. Indeed the Roman road has been so broad
and so well markedwith recordedmiliariathat we may have missed
the growth-ridden Germanic by-paths which were actually trod
by the tribes in England. But surely the impact of culture on
cult is as important in history as the reverse, and the terms in
which the newly converted Anglo-Saxonsinterpretedthe Christian
religion were shaped by the tribal culture, impregnated,as it was,
by the heathenismof the old religion. Gregorythe Great's famous
letter to the Abbot Mellitus,1advising that pagan temples in England be used for the worship of the Christian God that the people
"ad loca quae consuevit, familiarius concurrat,"and that the sacrificial animals of heathenism be now devoted to Christian festivals, agrees with the responsa of the same pope to Augustine
concerning the choosing of local customs best suited to the conditions of the converted.2 In a way, this study is a scandalous
footnote to that wise anthropologicaladvice, with the intention of
setting forth some of the similarities of the old and new religion
which allowed a syncretic merging. Thus many features of the
Conversion period which have been interpreted post eventum as
Christian were undoubtedly seen with other - and familiar-overtonesby the Woden-sprungrulers and their people.
In the first place, although the Conversionof England transpired
'Ven. Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, I, 30.
2
Ibid., I, 27; on the genuineness of the responsa, cf. Wilhelm Levison, England
and the Continent in the Eighth Century (Oxford, 1946), p. 17, n. I; W. J. Moore,
The Saxon Pilgrims to Rome and the Schola Saxonum (Fribourg, Switzerland,
1937), P. 9, n. 3. M. Deanesly and P. Grosjean, "The Canterbury Edition of the
Answers of Pope Gregory I to St. Augustine," The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, X (1959), PP. 1-49, have recently examined the arguments against the authenticity and have concluded that, within limited distinctions not touching the responsa
cited above, "the libellus may be held to be Gregorian."

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with little violence and few dramaticstands by organizedheathenism, the opposition of tradition and embeddedculture can be seen
as the chief bulwarks against the triumph of the Cross. It is not
merely that the new theology was translatedinto terms of northern
life, with "the Chief of princes, the Ruler of all peoples" giving
mund to his fyrd from his high-seat in the wine-hall of Heaven,3
as Christ on earth had summonedhis thanes to him.' This often
startling imagery has frequently been commented upon, and I
have no desire to do so again.
But heathenismitself continued. In Kent King Eadbald, son of
the converted Aethelberht, returned to the older faith, leading his
people ad priorem vomitum.5 There is no evidence that it was
outlawed in Kent until A.D. 640, when King Eorcenberht,Aethelberht's grandson, "was the first of the kings of the English who
orderedby his supremeauthority that the idols in his whole realm
be abandonedand destroyed."' In the last surviving Kentish law
code, dating from the very end of the century, it is still necessary
for King Wihtred to forbid both freemen and slaves from making
offeringsto devils.' In the realm of the East Saxons, the three sons
of King Sabert, all of whom had remained pagan, "gave free
licence to the people subject to them to worship idols" after their
father's death, and, Bede tells us, the people could not be recalled
to faith in Christ even after Sabert's sons had been killed in battle
against the West Saxons.8 The apostasy of Redwald of East
Anglia, the fourth of Bede's bretwaldas,is perhaps too well known
to cite, with his attempt to serve both Christ and the old gods.' In
'

See, e.g., Christ, 514; Christ and Satan, 93, 219, 309; The Lord's Prayer II,
47-48. Line references to Anglo-Saxon poems throughout this paper are, unless
otherwise stated, from The Anglo-Saxon Records (ed. Krapp and Dobbie; New
York, 1931-1953). Cf. Jean I. Young, "Glaed waes ic gliwum - Ungloomy Aspects
of Anglo-Saxon Poetry," The Early Cultures of North-West Europe (H. M. Chadwick Memorial Studies, ed. by Sir Cyril Fox and Bruce Dickins; Cambridge, 1950),
p. 276.
4 "The mighty Lord, / The Prince of splendour, summoned His thanes, / The
well-loved band, to Bethany": Christ, transl. in C. W. Kennedy, Early English
Christian Poetry (New York, 1952), p. 98. Christ, 456-458.
SBede, Hist. Eccl., II, 5.
6 Ibid., III, 8.
' Wihtred c.
12, 13: F. L. Attenborough, The Laws of the Earliest English Kings
(Cambridge, 1922), p. 26; cf. p. 3 for dating of code.
8 Bede, Hist. Eccl., II, 5.
9 Ibid., II, I5.

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199

Wessex, the earliest law code, that of King Ine, a contemporary

of Wihtred of Kent, does not legislate against heathenism, but,
as Miss Whitelock has recently remindedus,1othis proves nothing
about the latter's survival, since we have these laws only in Alfred's
edition of them. Mercia, of course, remained staunchly heathen
at least until Penda's death in 654-11

Even before the reintroduction of paganism by the Viking invasions, the synod of Clovesho in 747 and the legatine report to
Pope Hadrian in 786 give evidence of the strength of a continuing
paganism.12 The numerous references to heathen practices in
Anglo-Saxon laws after the invasions - under Alfred, Edward
the Elder, Athelstan, Edmund, Aethelred the Redeless, and Cnut
- as well as in canonical collections13 stem undoubtedly largely from their reintroduction in an age when, as Pope Formosus
wrote to the bishops of the English in the 89os, "the abominable
rites of the pagans have sproutedagain in your parts."14 However
much the merging of the two strands complicates the problem of
survival,1"the latter is well attested - perhaps especially in the
Anglo-Saxon charms16- and the resulting syncretism at times
makes for a virtual neo-polytheism. "Woden wrought idols; the
Lord wrought the spacious skies," says a gnomic poem.7 That
the culture of the tribes and the old religion which helped form it
in their turn shaped Christianity, which was assimilated to them,
is in its principle surprising to no historian of the Conversion
1"Dorothy Whitelock, ed., English Historical Documents c. 500-1042 (London,
1955), P. 331. This volume has been used for many sources in this paper because of
its convenience to most readers.
" This is true even though one may hesitate to accept T. C. Lethbridge's explanation that this was probably the kingdom in which "the race of Angles remained
relatively free from a large admixture of British blood"; T. C. Lethbridge, Merlin's
Island (London, 1948), p. 129.
12 Whitelock, op. cit., pp. 75, 772.
~3References are collected in F. Grendon, "The Anglo-Saxon Charms," Journal
of American Folk-Lore, XXII (1909), pp. 140-142.
1 Whitelock, op. cit., p. 820.
In Wulfstan's "Sermon to the English," probably preached in 1014, for example,
1'
in discussing the presence of "wizards and sorceresses" in England, he uses the word
"valkyries" for the latter but apparently not in the customary Scandinavian sense
of the term; ibid., p. 859 and n. i.
1' F. Grendon,op. cit., pp. 123, 134; G. Storms,Anglo-SaxonMagic (The Hague,
1948), esp. pp. 27-48, 114-115, and, for the Christianization of the charms, 115-117.
Cf. the recorded forfeiture of an estate in the late tenth century because of the
practice of witchcraft: Whitelock, op. cit., p. 519'1 Maxims II, 132-133.

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period. As a result, the societal emphases in Anglo-Saxon Christianity may themselves be a test of the vexed problem of AngloSaxon paganism's similarities to the religion of early Scandinavia,
that "womb of nations," as Jordanes calls it. As a matter of fact,
the Sutton Hoo finds have revealed hitherto unsuspected connections between at least the East Anglian royal house and the Uppland district of Sweden.'8
Although no Anglo-Saxon work gives us full information on
pre-Christian religion in England, almost no poem from before
the Norman Conquest, no matter how Christian its theme, is not
steeped in it,'" and the evidences for pagan survivals and their
integration into the new faith go beyond even the literary sources.
Thus, as Lethbridge reminds us, "to say, 'this is a monument
erected in Christian times and therefore the symbolism on it must
be Christian,' is an unrealistic approach. The rites of the older
faith, now regarded as superstition, are practised all over the
country today. It did not mean that people were not Christian;
but that they could see a lot of sense in the old beliefs also."20
The rites of pre-Saxon gods in England, such as Helith at Cerne
Abbas and Gourmaillonat Wandlebury, survived the coming of
both the Anglo-Saxonsand Christianity,21and the Germanicprecursors of the Christian God seem to have been no less vigorous.
We shall examine this continuity from paganism to Christianity
primarily in two areas, theology and kingship, in relation to the
heavenly and earthly leaders of the folc.
The importanceof Woden for both is proverbial. The genealogies of the royal houses of Kent, Wessex, East Anglia, Mercia,
Bernicia, Deira, and Lindsey all record the descent of their kings
from Woden. The kings of Essex trace their lineage from SeaxIs F. P. Magoun, Jr., "Beowulf and King Hygelac in the Netherlands," English
Studies, XXXV (1954), pp. 203-204; for an extensive bibliography of SwedishEast Anglian connections, cf. Prof. Magoun's review of D. Whitelock's The Beginnings of English Society in Speculum, XXVIII (1953), P. 220.
19 Cf., e.g., Friedrich Brincker, Germanische Altertiimer in dem angelsichsischen
Gedichte "Judith" (Hamburg, 1898), p. 5, where this point is insisted upon, and
passim.
'
Lethbridge, Gogmagog. The Buried Gods (London, 1957), p. 136.
21 Ibid., esp. pp. 23, 81-82,
159 (in which the imaginative author tells of a May
ist night spent looking in vain for still surviving rites at the head of the fertile
Cerne Giant); cf. also Lethbridge, "The Anglo-Saxon Settlement in Eastern England. A Reassessment," Dark Age Britain. Studies Presented to E. T. Leeds (D. B.
Harden, ed.; London, 1956), p. II9.

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neat, a god known among the Saxons of the Continent, identified

both as a son of Woden and as the god Tiw (Tyr); only the
Sussex royal genealogy is not known but there is little reason to
believe that it too was not Woden-sprung.22 Divine descent was
a claim of Northern royalty, including that of the Angli, before
the settlement of England,23and its continuation along with that
of the Woden-cult is to be expected among a people which continued to identify itself by its ancestry. The importance of such
divine descent for Germanic kings is testified to not only by the
persistence with which it was clung to even after their conversion
but by the results of its loss; "scarce one of the ancient royal
kindreds survives,"Alcuin writes, "andby as much as their lineage
is uncertain, by so much is their power enfeebled."24 The name
of Woden continued in England in the "Nine Herbs Charm"and
in place-names such as Wansdyke (Woden's Dyke), but of more
importanceto us is the assimilation of his cult to the new religion,
since the culture of Woden-sprungkings and Woden-worshipdid
not allow the name or cult to perish. Indeed, even his animals the wolf and the raven-apparently continue in a sacral manner.25
As might be expected, he was, in the first place, equated with
the Christian Devil. Wansdyke, the great pre-Saxon earthwork,
for example,was also known after the introductionof Christianity
as the Devil's Ditch, and local tradition maintained in time that
it was built by the Devil on a Wednesday- which is, of course,
Woden's day.26 The burial-moundon the Wiltshire downs known
22
Whitelock, op. cit., pp. 12-13, with collected references on p. 12, n. IIi; for
recent and useful discussions, cf. Gordon Copley, The Conquest of Wessex in the
Sixth Century (London, '1954), PP. 38-39, 40 (references in Bede), 134 (Woden in
the West Saxon king-lists); E. Philippson, Die Genealogie der G6ltter in Germanischer Religion, Mythologie, und Theologie (Urbana, Ill., 1953), pp. 34 (Seaxneat), 88, n. 152 (bibliography); K. Sisam, "Anglo-Saxon Royal Genealogies,"
Proceedings of the British Academy, XXXIX (1953), pp. 288, 293, 309-314, 323.
' H. Munro
Chadwick, The Origin of the English Nation (Cambridge, 1924),
PP. 300-303.
24 Letter to Eanbald of
York; cf. Bishop Daniel's letter to Boniface, 719-722 A.D.
J. E. A. Jolliffe, The Constitutional History of Medieval England (New York, 1947),
P. 44.
'
Brincker, op. cit., p. 6; Ladislaus Mittner, Wurd. Das Sakrale in der Altgermanischen Epik (Bern, 1955),
p. 59.
' L. V.
Grinsell, The Ancient Burial-Mounds of England (2nd ed.; London,
1953), PP. 72, 79. For other place-names containing forms of Woden's name, cf.
Bruce Dickins, "English Names and Old English Heathenism," Essays and Studies,
XIX (1934), PP. 154-155.

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in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle27as Woden's Barrow became in

time called Adam's Grave, although whether this Christianization
took place in our period or later is now impossible to say. Certainly many pre-Christian barrows became associated with the
Devil, showing a conversion of these sites from the gods of paganism. Post-Conquest though some of these may be, others date
from Saxon times, as the Scuccan hlaew (the Devil's barrow) of
Anglo-Saxon land-charters.28 As the gods - Woden or others were metamorphosedinto giants, barrows were named for them,
evidence for which dates from Saxon times,29but their association
with Woden is at the most tenuous.
Much more significant is the equating of Woden with Christ.
In the much discussed Anglo-Saxon "Nine Herbs Charm" the
Christian emendator of an originally pagan charm against poison
has added that the nine herbs, whose virtues are extolled in the
charm, were invented by Christ while He hung on the Cross.
"They were created by the wise Lord, holy in heaven as He hung
(on the cross); He set and sent them to the seven worlds, to the
wretched and the fortunate, as a help to all." Then the older god
appears: "These nine have power against nine poisons. A worm
came crawling, it killed nothing. For Woden took nine glorytwigs, he smote then the adder that it flew apart into nine parts."30
Othinn, the Norse Woden, had gained knowledge of runes by sacrificing himself to himself, hanging and fasting on the World-tree,
according to the Icelandic poem Havamal; 31 here, as WodenOthinn masters the magic runes of wisdom by hanging on his
Cosmic Tree, so Christ creates the magic herbs as He hung on
His Tree, the Cross. Many relationshipsare focused here: Woden
and Christ as the Hanging God; Yggdrasillthe World-treeand the
27 Sub annis 592 and 715. In the new edition by G. N. Garmonsway, The AngloSaxon Chronicle (Everyman's Library; London, 1953), the "Christianized" form
of Adam's Grave is, unfortunately, used; it is not in the Anglo-Saxon text.
28"Grinsell, op. cit., p. 79, with examples of long and round barrows associated by
tradition with the Devil.
29 Ibid., p. 78; the twelfth century "translation" of skeletons from barrows to
monasteries and into saints' relics is well recorded: ibid., pp. 8o, iio.
30 Storms, op. cit.,
p. 189, with Anglo-Saxon text on p. 188 and discussion of these
lines on p. 195. For the parallel of Woden and the Latin Mercurius, who also created
letters, cf. B. Dickins, op. cit., p. 154.
31Havamal 138 f.; cf. Storms, op. cit., p. 195; A. G. van Hamel, "Othinn Hanging On the Tree," Acta Philologica Scandinavica, VII (1932), pp. 261-262.

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redeeming Cross; the sacrifice of Woden to himself, as the priest

that offers and the victim that is offered, with the Sacrifice of
Christ, the victim and the priest; the Germanic casting of lots
with twigs marked by runes, reported by Tacitus (Germania, c.
xo), and the casting of lots associated with the Crucifixion; the
creative act in suffering and death displayed in Woden's mastery
of the runes of knowledge and Christ's creation of the herbs. Although the problem of Christian influence on the Havamal is undoubtedly insoluble, the existence of Woden's association with
runes in a partially Christianized charm still known among the
Christian Anglo-Saxonswill perhaps lead us to van Hamel's conclusion that "if a certain similarity should exist between the popular traditions of early christianity and pagan mythology, would
it not be more natural to accept a fundamental affinity than a
borrowing? . . . The christian God never supplanted the pagan

deities. He only proved the stronger one. This is an evolution

that leaves no room for the doctrine that a myth of Othinn should
have been influenced by a christian legend."32 There is at least
good reason to believe that the traditions are independent; if so,
this would lead a culture saturated with Woden-worshipto take
up with ease the cult of the new Hanging God when the old one literally "the old one," thone ealdan deofol, se ealda sceocca, as
Aelfric calls the Devil 33- proves less potent.
Furthermore, the genealogies of the Woden-sprungkings have
been assimilated to Christianity. In the familiar mythical lineage
of King Aethelwulf of Wessex in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle sub
anno 855, Woden is sixteenth in descent from "Sceaf, who is the
son of Noah and was born in Noah's Ark."34 Appropriateas it is
to have generated in the Ark one who in traditions recorded by
Aethelweard and William of Malmesbury had drifted as a child
in a boat to his future kingdom,35this "arcane" transition makes
the West Saxon rulers collateral relatives, as Professor Magoun
2 Ibid., p. 262.
~ Nelius O. Halvorson, Doctrinal Terms in Aelfric's Homilies (Iowa City, Iowa,
1932), p. 29.
" Thus in MSS. B and C; the Parker Chronicle omits three generations and has
Hrathra born in the Ark; cf. Sisam, op. cit., p. 315, on Bedwig as the ancestor in
the Ark.
SChadwick,
op. cit., pp. 256--267, in which the Scyld-Sceaf traditions are analyzed, and 272-276.

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has pointed out, with our Lord." If I may be permitted an excursus into wild Wales, this has its parallel in the court-pedigree
of Hywel the Good, who traced his descent from "Amalech, who
was the son of Beli the Great and his mother Anna, whom they
say to be the sister of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of our Lord
Jesus Christ";3 since Anna is probably Ana or Anu, a variant of
Danu, the Earth Mother, and Beli Mawr may be, but less likely,
the god Belenus, our Lord would be the nephew of the Mother of
the gods, and the assimilation of a royal genealogy to the new
religion would indeed be analogous to the Anglo-Saxontransition.
The absorptionof the other gods into Christianitycan be treated
more summarily. In the case of Thunor or Thor the Thunderer,
we may well ask if an Anglo-Saxonwarriorwould react as we do
to a land-grantof King Edwardthe Elder in A.D. 901 which opens,
"In the name of the High Thunderer, Creator of the world," or a
generation earlier (A.D. 872) to the phrase, "by the abundant
grace of God and the gratuitous gift of him who thunders and
rules."3 As late as William of Malmesbury, Athelstan the Glorious is described as being "like a thunderboltto rebels."3 These,
I believe, would be seen by northernersless in terms of Jupiter
Tonans or of the "sons of thunder" of Mark's gospel and more
in terms of northern religion. One of the panels of the Gosforth
Cross in Cumberlandhas recently been interpretedas Thor's fight
with the Midgard Serpent, a theme probably reintroducedduring
the later Norse settlement, as have three fragments of crosses in
Durham Cathedral as his battle with Mdkkurkalfi ("Cloud
Calf").40 Neither of these identifications can be accepted with
' F. P.
Magoun, Jr., "King Aethelwulf's Biblical Ancestors," Modern Language
Luke iii, 36-38 is the suggested source for the
Review, XLVI (I951), Pp. 249-250.
Biblical names.
" A. W.
Wade-Evans, Nennius's "History of the Britons" (London, 1938),
p. 102; N. Chadwick, ed., Studies in Early British History (Cambridge, 1954),
pp. 132, 196.
"
Whitelock, op. cit., pp. 499, 490; cf. p. 522, a grant of 977: "inspired with
speech of the Thunderer." For non-Anglo-Saxon parallels of God as "the Thunderer," cf. Hibernicus exul, MGH., Poet., I, p. 395, v. io ff., and Godeschalk, ibid.,
p. 94, no. 7 (in which the appelation refers to Christ); H. Fichtenau, The Carolingian Empire (transl., P. Munz; Oxford, 1957), pp. 47-48.
8 Ibid., p. 280.
'oBrian Branston, The Lost Gods of England (London, 1957), PP. 116-117,
120-12I.
However, cf. Christabel F. Fiske, "Old English Modification of Teutonic
Racial Conceptions," Studies in Language and Literature in Celebration of the 7oth

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certainty, however; he is, incidentally, never mentioned in the

Anglo-Saxon charms,41but he appears perhaps more often than
any other pagan deity in place-namesin England.42
Perhaps the most puzzling parallelisms,with virtually insoluble
problems, are those between the Devil and characters of northern
paganism, especially Loki, to whom I shall confine myself. This,
as R. E. Woolf has suggested, is partly because the Devil, like
Loki, is the archetype of "motiveless malignity," partly because
as the Devil is the evil-bringer,so Loki brings evil to the gods, and
partly because, in more general terms, Satan as the "faithless
retainer" and "eternal exile" would be understandableto AngloSaxon society.43 But the analogy goes beyond this. The bound
Satan of the Caedmonmanuscriptshas more relationshipwith the
bound Loki and bound gods of the pagan North than with any
Biblical source, in spite of the reference in Revelation (20, 2) to
the bound Satan; Loki and the otter have been suggested as an
interpretationof the Ramsey carving and, even more significantly,
as the bound figure on the Gosforth Cross, both of the Viking
Age.44
Two mutilated carved stones from Leeds also show a bound
figure who has been suggested as Weland the Smith because of the
presence of what seem to be smith's tools at its feet, although it
does not fit the known versions of the Weland story. I should
suggest the bound Loki, with the smith's tools as the symbols of
Birthday of James Morgan Hart (New York, 1910), pp. 282-285, on identification
of Thor with the Devil. Also, Peter Paulsen, Axt und Kreuz bei den Nordgermanen
(Berlin, p939),PP. 187-233, on relation of St. Olaf cult and Thor cult in the North.
41Storms, op. cit., p. 148.
42 Branston, op. cit., p. io5; Dickins, op. cit., pp. 155-156. For the identification
of eleven of his shrines in southern and eastern England, cf. Sir Frank Stenton,
"The Historical Bearing of Place-Name Studies," Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, XXIII (1940), PP. 1-24 and map.
" R. E.
Woolf, "The Devil in Old English Poetry," Review of English Studies,
IV, N.S. (I953), pp. 2-4, 6.
" H. R. Ellis
Davidson, "Gods and Heroes in Stone," The Early Cultures ...
pp. 132-133; this important article, pp. 123-139, has been used as the basis for the
following, even though the relationships of Christian Devil, Loki, and smith have
not been fully developed in it. For the Gosforth Cross, cf. Knut Berg, "The Gosforth Cross," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, XXI (19,58), pp.
27-43, in which the Cross panels are interpreted as scenes of Ragnarok, the twilight
of the pagan gods, on three sides and the Christian rebirth and victory of the Cross
on the east side; the bottom scene on the west side is interpreted as the bound Loki
(P. 35).

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that god; Loki, after all, is paraphrasedby the later Snorri Sturluson as "Forger of Evil" and "the Bound God,""4and the AngloSaxon Guthlac describes the devils as "smiths of woe.""6 This
would help to explain the puzzling presence of smith's tools on the
Halton Cross from Lancashire,which, even though here probably
connected either with the Sigurd or the Weland story, would have
further meaning because of its presence on a Christiancross, since
smith's tools are found elsewhere on scenes of the Crucifixion.
These have been suggested as symbols of the tortures of Christ,47
but I believe they are more readily explained as the triumph of
Christ over the "Forger of Evil," Loki, the fettered god, and, by
projection, over the bound Satan.48 The relations of these figures
to the animal-headedor bird-headedfigures on the Kirklevington
Cross and similar figures at the foot of a Lancaster Cross, in place
of the soldiers, with its probable relationship to a group on the
Franks Casket and the figure between two beasts on the pursemount from Sutton Hoo, serve to complicate the picture with possibilities of pre-Christian ritual,49but the possible translation of
Satan and lesser devils of Christianity into these terms remains
too strong to ignore. It may simply be noted here that a devil as
human form with animal characteristics- familiar to us in his
horns and tail - was known to Germanicpeoples before the coming of Christianity and continues in part - for example, in Aelfric's homiletic descriptionsof the Devil.50
May I now simply list other characteristics of Anglo-Saxon
paganism which were so much a part of the tribal culture and
outlook that the transition to Christianity was facilitated, even
though they translated the new religion into sometimes wondrous
forms? The Dream of the Rood, for example, important sections
of which are carved on the pre-Viking Age Ruthwell Cross (c.
A.D. 700) draws almost undoubtedly in its non-Biblical portrayal
of the Crucifixionupon the death of the god Baldur; here "the
"
Skaldskaparmal, c. 16; A. G. Brodeur, transl., The Prose Edda by Snorri
Sturluson (New York, 1916), pp. 114-115.
48 Guthlac, 205; cf. Jean I. Young, op. cit., p. 285.
, Davidson, op. cit., p. 1354s For the later Norse similarities between Loki and Satan, cf. E. A. Philippson,
op. cit., esp. pp. 48, 56, 71, 73.
"
Davidson, op. cit., pp. 127-129,
136-138, where these works are discussed.
0 Halvorson, op. cit., p. 30.

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207

young hero" mounts "the marvellous tree" and is wounded by

darts: "the warriors left me standing laced with blood; I was
wounded unto death with darts"- certainly an exaggeration of
the spear at the Crucifixionbut as Baldur was in the pagan myth,
when the sport of throwing darts at him turned into the cosmic
tragedy of the "bleeding god."5 Furthermore, the same poem
may relate not only Baldur to Christ but Frey as well to the Christian Lord. "Frey," which has become identified with "Lord," is
used for "the Lord": "geseah ic tha Frean mancynnes . . ." ("I

saw there the Frey of mankind"); this is found in a more general

sense in Beowulf, where "frea" is used seventeen times for
"lord,"52even though the goddess Freyja and her maidensnowhere
appear to be "converted"into the Virgin Mary and three (or nine)
Marys, as they are in the ScandinavianNorth.53 The possibility
of an early pagan trinity of gods in the North, based on the later
evidence of Odin, Tyr, and Thor as a trinity, Odin, Thor, and Frey
in Uppsala, and other trinities of Odin, Hbnir, and Lodur (Loki),
Odin, Wili, and We, and Har, Jafnhar, and Thrithi54 would aid
the assimilationof the ChristianTrinity.
However, in the Anglo-Saxon world-view, the Son tends to be
merged with the Father and appears often as the Creator. "When
Christ, the God of heavenly hosts, the Father almighty, the radiant
Creator, shall sit on his throne," states the poem Christ, "...
then on the right hand of Christ Himself the pure people shall be
gathered . . . and there the evil-doers shall be assigned to the

left hand in the Creator'spresence."Or again, in Christ and Satan,

"Lo!," Eve says, "Thou, Lord wert born into the world by my
daughter to aid men. Now is it manifest that Thou are God Himself, the eternal Author of all creatures." And in the Andreas,
reference is made to "the immortal Son of God ye call man, Him
who with hands wrought land and sea, heaven and earth, and the
"
raging waves." But examples are numerous; theological confu51Branston, op. cit., pp. 157-162; the use of baldor, "prince," in Judith relates
this god to ruler-cult: Brincker, op. cit., pp. 12-13.
52 Branston, op. cit., p. I37. Cf. Chadwick, Origin . ..,
pp. 243-267, on relation
of Frey, Freyja, Gefion, and the possible continuation of the cult in England.
*
Birger Pering, Heimdall (Lund, 1941), p. 173.
op. cit., pp. 14-15, 19, 36, 42-52, 67-68, 73, 76.
"Philippson,
Christ and Satan 439-440, Andreas 746-750. In the con'Christ, 1216-1227,
venient ed. by R. K. Gordon, Anglo-Saxon Poetry (Everyman's Library; London,

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HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

sion reigns even more completely when the Three Persons are
merged, as in the Christ: "The third leap, the bound of the heavenly King, was when He, the Father, the Comforter, was raised
on the cross.""5 This is not Roman or Mediterranean in origin,
but Germanic. To a people accustomed to conceiving of god or
the gods as immanent in nature, this refusal to distinguish a
transcendent Father from an immanent Son is perhaps not surprising. Its influence continues, as in a letter from Boniface to
King Ethelbald of Mercia57and the dooms of Alfred the Great; 58
indeed, I should have suspected Anglo-Saxondeterminationin this
matter in the Norman Anonymous, had not the President of the
American Society of Church History removed him firmly from
York to the archepiscopalpalace of Rouen; 59 the Scandinavian
home of the Normans, however,was also full of the creating Christ.
Parallels of Heaven and Valhill, and of Hell and the Germanic
regions of Niflhel, abound in poems such as the Anglo-Saxon
Judith; 6o wyrd, fate, becomes Christianized among the AngloSaxons; 61 heavenly Grace appears in Beowulf as Christianized
mana; 62 the monsters of paganism become absorbed into the new
faith also, as Grendelturns into the seed of Cain; 63 the possibility
of a Flood story in the North independentof the Christian importation of Noah's Flood appears,64as does the possible use of the
word husel (related to the Gothic hunsl, a sacrifice) before the
Conversion for a sacrificial victim and after Anglo-Saxon Chris1926), pp. 171, 146, 214, respectively; other examples on pp. 144 (Christ and Satan,
160 (Christ, 659-660), 206, 213, 215 (all from Andreas, 324-328,
700oo-703,
786-787). In the Gnomic Verses of the Cottonian MS., we find "God alone knows
it, our Father the Savior": A. S. Cook and C. B. Tinker, Select Translations From
Old English Poetry (revised ed.; Boston, 1926), p. 68; cf. pp. 80, 82-83, 87, 99, 123.
A. S. Cook, "King Oswy and Caedmon's Hymn," Speculum, II (1927), p. 71I,n. 2,
on reference in 7th-8th century Voyage of Bran to Christ as Creator.
Gordon, ed., op. cit., p. 161; Christ, 726-728.
* E.
Emerton, tr., The Letters of St. Boniface (New York, 1940), p. 126.
8 F. Liebermann, ed., Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen (Halle, 1903), I, pp. 26 f.
9 George H. Williams, The Norman Anonymous of iioo A.D. (Harvard Theological Studies, XVIII; Cambridge, Mass., 1951), p. 130o.
0 Brincker, op. cit., pp. io-II.
6 Mittner, op. cit., esp. pp. 85-95, 99; cf. Brincker, op. cit., p. 8.
62 Francis P. Magoun, Jr., "On Some Survivals of Pagan Belief in Anglo-Saxon
England," Harvard Theological Review, XL (1947), PP. 33-46.
' Beowulf, 102-108.
6
Branston, op. cit., pp. 32, 35-37.
201-204),

PAGANISMTO CHRISTIANITY

209

tianization for the sacrifice of the Mass; "5 but perhaps the point
is now clear. A violent conversion to the new religion was unnecessary when the old provided so many parallelisms that the tribal
culture could absorb the conqueringGod without disruptingmany
of its basic preconceptions; only in time were these to give way
before an ecclesiastical conquest.
Not only in concepts of theology but in those of rulershipas well
was a syncretism between pagan culture and Christian cult possible, and it is to this that I turn in conclusion. At the beginning
it may be well to emphasize an important point; in northern paganism, not only was Woden or Odin the god of the ruler,66 but
the ruler was the leader of the tribal cult."7 The king's god was
the people's god, and the king as heilerfiillt stood between his tribe
and the tribal gods, sacrificing for victory and plenty, "making"
the year. Tied into temporaland cosmic history by divine descent,
he represented and indeed was the "luck" of his people. It is in
this Germanictradition that the Anglo-Saxon ruler is to be seen;
"just within the shadow at which the records of English history
fail," as Jolliffe says, "stands the sacrificialking."
1s
Consequently the conversion of the folc stemmed from the conversion of the king to the more powerful deity, since it was the
king's relationshipwith the gods which "saved"his people as much
as did the gods themselves; this royal function, when translated
into Christian eschatology, was to be part of medieval rulership
throughout the Middle Ages. It is this factor also that dominates
the character of the Germanic conversion; inasmuch as English
kings were converted without violent incident, by so much is tribal
conversion without great external drama; when politico-cultural
opposition is greater, as often occurred in Scandinavia, as under
Olaf Tryggvason and Olaf the Holy, by so much is religious op'

Halvorson, op. cit., pp. 61-62.

e.g., Axel Olrik, Nordisches Geistesleben in Heidnischer und Friihchristlicher Zeit (Heidelberg, 1908), pp. 41, 96; Pering, op. cit., pp. 116-119.
8 Hans Naumann, "Die Magische Seite des Altgermanischen K5inigtums und Ihr
Fortwirken in Christlicher Zeit," Wirtschaft und Kultur. Festschrift zum 7o. Geburtstag von Alfons Dopsch (Baden bei Wien, 1938), pp. 1-12, esp. pp. 2-3. For
the role of kings in the migration period and the pre-invasion development of
Anglo-Saxon kingship, cf. H. M. Chadwick, op. cit., pp. 146-148, 284, 289-292,
295-303.
"
Jolliffe, op. cit., p. 42.
SCf.,

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HARVARDTHEOLOGICAL
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position greater." Thus, the new ChristianGod - "the Almighty,

the Lord of great kings," as the Anglo-SaxonChrist calls him70
was seen in these terms of the god of the king, and the latter continued to "make the year." "In the king's righteousness,"wrote
Alcuin to King Aethelred in A.D. 793, "is the common weal, victory in war, mildness of the seasons, abundanceof crops, freedom
from pestilence. It is for the king to atone with God for his whole
people."71 In these Christiantranslationsthe earlierpagan "luck"
of the Anglo-Saxonking is heard in not too transposeda key. The
fate of the folc is related to the fate of its prince; "let us all in
common urge the aforementionedking to reform himself with his
people," wrote Boniface to the priest Herefrith concerningAethelbald of Mercia, "that the whole nation, with its prince, may not
perish here and in the future life, but that, by amending and reforming his own life, he may by his example guide his own people
back to the way of salvation."72 If the leaders do not serve God,
Aelfric preaches in one of his homilies, "God will manifest to them
their contempt of him either by famine or by pestilence."73 Further, "peace and joy among the people, fruitful years, and victory
over their foes" were given "by the aid of God" to King Ecgfrith
and Queen Aethelthryth, rulers of Deira and Bernicia, as long as
they were obedient to Bishop Wilfrid, but when the king was no
longerat one with the bishop, his "luck"left him.74Here, of course,
unlike the old religion in which there was no powerful priesthood
to be equated with the Divine Will and the principes themselves
performedpriestly functions,7"the possibility of division between
two functions of the pagan Anglo-Saxon royal persona mixta appears, which in time will transform the Folklore Kingship of the
69Helmut de Boor, "Germanische und Christliche Religiosidit," Mitteilungen
der Schlesischen Gesellschaft fiir Volkskunde, XXXIII (1933), Pp. 26-51; F. W.
Buckler, "Barbarian and Greek - and Church History," Church History, XI (1942),
p. 22.

Gordon, ed., op. cit., p. 166. God is often described as a king;

70 Christ, 941-942;
cf. p. 316: "Then the Ruler of heaven radiant as the sun shall sit on the high throne
glorified with his crown" (from Doomsday).
nQuoted in Jolliffe, op. cit., p. 43.
72 Whitelock, op. cit., p. 757.
7 Ibid., p. 853; cf. pp. 783 (letter of Alcuin to Offa of Mercia), 784 (letter of
Alcuin to Eardwulf of Northumbria).
74 Eddius Stephanus, Life of Bishop Wilfrid, c. 19 in ibid., p. 694.
7 Naumann, op. cit., pp. 7-9.

PAGANISMTO CHRISTIANITY

211

post-Conversion period into the Liturgical Kingship of a later

period. But that is another story. Suffice it here to add that
apostasy from the Christian faith was regardedas bringing about
the loss of kingdom and on occasion the deletion from the line of
Woden-sprungmonarchs who had made the proper sacrifices, in
this case to the God who had conquered Woden. Thus, when
Cenwealh succeeded his father, Cynegils of the West Saxons,
Bede reports that he "refused to accept the faith and sacraments
of the heavenly kingdom and not long after lost even the power
over his earthly kingdom." When he was converted in East Anglia, however, he was restored to his realm.76 And both Bede and
the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle assign an extra year to King Oswald
of Northumbria "on account of the heathen practices which had
been performed by those who had reigned the one year between
him and Edwin," i.e., Osric of the Deirans and Eanfrid of the
Bernicians.77 However, when Eadbald of Kent apostacized after
the death of his father Aethelberht, he was not removed from the
king-lists, even though his subjects followed him,78 nor was Sighere of the East Saxons when he returned "with his part of the
people" to his ancestral gods during the great plague of A.D. 664665.79 In both cases, however, they returned to the faith; this
cannot be said, though, of Redwald of East Anglia, whose temple
to the old gods, whom he worshipped along with Christ, was still
rememberedin Bede's day,so and who was still listed as a bretwalda. Thus, while the tribal culture was still strong enough after
the Conversion to bring royal apostacy, both the old and the new
religions related the fate of the kingdomto the cult of the king.
It is, consequently, not surprising that the old concept of the
king as bringer of victory also continues. The Christian God,
"king of victories," gave triumph to the earthly rulers who served
7 Bede, Hist. Eccl., III, 7. Later also, when his kingdom lacked a bishop, "he
understood that a province forsaken by its prelate was rightfully forsaken also by
divine help."
7 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle sub anno 634 (MS. E) ; Bede, Hist. Eccl., III, i, which
adds that the British King Cadwallon slew them both without delay iusta ultione.
Peter Hunter Blair, "The Moore Memoranda on Northumbrian History," The Early
Cultures . . ., pp. 248-249, discusses this and suggests Anglo-Saxon familiarity with
the Roman custom of damnatio memoriae.
78 Bede, Hist. Eccl., II, 5; A.-S. Chronicle sub anno 616.
9 Bede, Hist. Eccl., III, 30.

8oIbid., II, 15.

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HARVARDTHEOLOGICAL
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him, as Edwin, for example, "in omen of his receiving the faith
and the heavenly kingdom, received increased power also in his
earthly dominion.""s Aelfric cites Alfred, Athelstan, and Edgar
as three kings victorious through the help of God,s2 and many
battles are won by Christiankings "Christaiding."s3 On the other
hand, in a British source, Nennius reportsthat the pagan Penda of
Mercia "was victorious (at Maserfelth) by diabolical agency."84
So much is the royal person associated with victory in battle and
royal devotion to God or the gods a part of maintainingthe kingdom's "luck" that Sigbert, King of the East Angles, who had retired to a monastery,was forced to come forth to lead the fyrd into
battle against Penda; however, "ipse professionis suae non immemor," he--like

the priests of Anglo-Saxon paganism-

refused

to carry a weapon but, with only a little rod in his hand, went into
battle and was slain.85
The frequent examples of sainthood bestowed upon kings who
die violent deaths may well be regardedas a Christian substitute
for the ritual king-slaying of paganism. Not only were northern
kings sacrificed to get good crops, as the Ynglingar Domaldi and
Olaf Tretelgia of Sweden,8sbut kings were worshippedafter their
death.87 So in England kings such as Edwin and Egfrid of Northumbria and Edmund of East Anglia, who fell in battle against the
heathen, Oswini of Deira, who was murdered by King Oswiu,
Aethelberht of East Anglia, beheaded by Offa of Mercia, and
others who died unjust and violent deaths become popularsaints.8"
l Ibid., II, 9.
Judges; Whitelock, op. cit., p. 854.
S E.g., A.-S. Chronicle sub anno 937 at Brunanburh; at Ashdown in 871 A.D.
Aethelred remained praying at Mass - occupying himself with blot - and refusing
to leave for the battle until worship was concluded, and "the faith of the Christian
king availed him much with God": Florence of Worcester, Chronicon ex Chronicis
(Rolls Series), I, p. 83.
s4 Wade-Evans, op. cit., p. 83.
SBede, Hist. Eccl., III, 18.
s Ynglingasaga, c. 18 and 47; H. M. Chadwick, op. cit., pp. 236, 301-302;
Andrew Rugg-Gunn, Osiris and Odin. The Origin of Kingship (London, 1940),
pp. 116-117; Vigfusson and Powell, eds., Corpus Poeticum Boreale (Oxford, 1883),
I, pp. 409-41o.
Vigfusson and Powell, op. cit., I, pp. 414-415; H. M. Chadwick, op. cit., p. 301
s7
" A.-S. Chronicle sub anno
633; Bede, Hist. Eccl., IV, 26; A.-S. Chronicle sub
annis 870, 65o/651, and 792 (794), respectively. H. A. Wilson, ed., The Calendar
of St. Willibrord from MS. Paris. Lat. 10o837 (Henry Bradshaw Society, LV; London,
1918), dating from the first quarter of the eighth century, commemorates Edwin,
s2 From

PAGANISMTO CHRISTIANITY

213

On the other hand, these early English king-saints were not represented in the early dedications of churches, which were predominantly Roman in character, except for a church of St. Cuthbert
and St. Oswald near the spot where King Elfwald of Northumbria
was murdered." I suggest that the Church regardedit as dangerous to strengthen royal cults by official dedications of churches,
in spite of its apparent blessing of these saints and the popular
cult, since their localization might lead analogously to the local
"high places" and sanctuaries of heathenism. In spite of the general adoption of Pope Gregory's advice, the ecclesiastical organization, wary of royal saints, preferred Roman dedications. The
continuation of earlier attitudes toward ritual king-slaying is
further evidenced, however, in the commemoration in an early
eighth century Anglo-Saxon calendar of the very Osric of Deira
who was excised from the king-lists of Northumbria for returning
to the old gods; 90 his violent slaying by Cadwallon placed him,
heathen though he was, among the commemorationsof Christianized royal sacrificial victims, the saints. Here indeed we see the
enshrinementin the new religion of kings "sacrificed"by violence,
as we see the royal nature of mediatorship with God in the fact
that most Anglo-Saxonsaints belong to royal families.91
As pagan priest-kings staved off tribal calamity by offering blot
-

even themselves -

to the gods, so Anglo-Saxon kings of the

new dispensationorderedreligious duties to be fulfilled by the folc

for the same reason; King Edgar was the first to do so in his fourth
code (A.D. 962-963),

which was issued as a result of a pestilence

which the king related to sin and the non-payment of tithes.92
Egfrid, and Oswini, besides Oswald; cf. introd., p. xxii. Another early eighth century calendar, in P. Romuald Bauerreiss, "Ein angelsdichsisches Kalendarfragment
des bayrischen Hauptstaatsarchivs in Miinchen," Studien und Mitteilungen zur
Geschichte des Benediktinerordens und Seiner Zweige, LI (1933), P. 179, commemorates Egfrid and King Osric of Deira, the latter remarkable in view of his
excision from the king-lists as an apostate, slain by Cadwallon. Whitelock, op. cit.,
p. 31, believes the early cult of St. Edmund of East Anglia "is understandable only
on the assumption that something other than his death in battle took place;" in the
light of the evidence concerning Egfrid, Osric, et al. and the entire concept of the
"sacrificed" king, I see no difficulty in this cult.
'
Levison, op. cit., p. 36.
o See above, n. 88.
91 F. Liebermann, Die Heiligen Englands (Hanover, 1889), passim.
92 A. J. Robertson, The Laws of the Kings of
England from Edmund to Henry I
(Cambridge, 1925), P. 29.

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Church dues were a subject of royal dooms previously, although

never as an equivalent for blot to end the anger of the Deity. The
dating of these ecclesiastical requirements is interesting. When
the fourth doom of Ine of Wessex states that "Churchdues shall
be renderedat Martinmas,"9 it should be noted that St. Martin's
Day was (and is) November IIth, the great feast day closest to
the old Winter's Day festival of November 7th, on which the king
sacrificed for a good year, and that November in pagan England
was blotmonath, the month of sacrifice." The popularity of the
feast of St. John the Baptist (June 24th) is undoubtedly a continuation of the Midsummer observance of paganism.95 Reflecting the mixed characterof this dating, tithes in the second code of
King Edgar are due at Pentecost, the equinox, and Martinmas.96
Nor do the festivals of the two religions alone relate the king to
the transition from paganism to Christianity. The sacredness of
the king continues in a persistent traditionof royal "divine"names,
in the charactermixtus of the English ruler, and in sanctuary connected with the king's person. Of the first, the prefix "Os-," probably signifying "divine," occurs in the names of twelve Northumbriankings. Margaret Murray finds comfort for her theory of
the Divine King in England in the fact that all but two of these
died violent deaths and so are, to her, royal sacrificial victims.97
We need not go this far, since in seventh and eighth century
Northumbria,it was difficultnot to become a royal sacrificialvic9"Attenborough, op. cit., p. 37; in the Welsh laws of Hywel Dda, "every freeman
between the feast of All Saints and the feast of St. Martin" - i.e., between November ist and November IIth - "is to pay the lord what he is bound to pay": Melville Richards, The Laws of Hywel Dda (Liverpool, I954), pp. 84, 136.
9 On the three annual great festivals of Scandinavia, cf. H. M. Chadwick, op.
cit., pp. 227-228, 248, and on November as sacrificial month in England, p. 228;
Jolliffe, op. cit., p. 42: "The three high feasts of English heathendom were Winter's
Day (November 7), Midwinter's Day (December 25), and Summer's Day (May 7).
... These, in the pagan North, were the great ceremonial feasts when the king
sacrificed for the people, on Winter's Day for a good year, at Midwinter for good
crops, and on Summer's Day for victory in battle." Cf. Vigfusson and Powell, op.
cit., I, pp. 404-405, 414. Cf. Storms, op. cit., pp. 9, go, on the blessing of herbs in
Anglo-Saxon England at three Masses on Midwinter's Day.
5 Storms, op. cit., p. 9; one only wishes one could know whether the former
custom of visiting Silbury Hill in Wiltshire, the largest artificial mound in Europe,
on Palm Sunday and feasting there extended back into Saxon times, if in other
forms: Grinsell, op. cit., p. 81.
SRobertson,
op. cit., p. 21.
SMargaret Murray, The Divine King in England (London, 1954), PP. 45-46, 218.

PAGANISMTO CHRISTIANITY

215

tim; nonetheless, the names are not without significance for the
penetrationof the heilerfiillt king of paganisminto Christiantimes.
The "Os-" prefix has also been suggested as a reminiscenceof the
Aesir, spirits of the North and a word applied in Icelandic to all
the gods but who appear only once in Anglo-Saxon, in a charm
against rheumatism, in which they are combined with elves and
hags.98 But harking back to an age when elves were larger, one
may well conjecturethat the syllable "Os-"rang bells in an AngloSaxon head that it does not in ours.
Secondly, a culture imbued with priest-kings would receive its
new cult in those terms, so that the "mixed character"of the ruler
would continue. It is in that light that we may see the AngloSaxon king speaking as a homilist, as he does in the laws, attending assemblies primarily lay, primarily clerical, and intermediate,
and signing a charter at the head of the bishops and at the head of
the princes."9 The problem of the Eigenkirche, with the king as
lay lord of monasteries, lay abbot, and perhaps even bishop (if
Henry of Huntingdon is correct in describing the ninth century
King Aethelwulf as Bishop of Winchester),100is too complicated
to enter into here, but it may be regarded,I believe, as influenced
by pagan background, as Stenton suggests in discussing the ownership of heathen shrines.101
Thirdly, the question of asylum is intimately linked with the
transition from the old to the new religion in the light of tribal
culture; the "peace" of certain places and the right of asylum, so
common in Anglo-Saxon law, stem here not from constitutional
but from sacral realms.102 We know from Bede's story of Coifi
"

Storms, op. cit., pp. 50, 142-143, 147; the northern smith also makes his appearance in this charm: pp. 140-141, 146-147 (in which he is related to Weland the
Smith). K. Helm, Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte (Heidelberg, 1913), p. 217.
" F.
Liebermann, The National Assembly in the Anglo-Saxon Period (Halle,
1913), p. I7; the charter is Birch 201B.
10 T. Arnold, ed., History of the English, by Henry, Archdeacon of Huntingdon
(Rolls Series, LXXIV), p. 141; Corvoc was king and bishop of Ireland: J. W. Ab
Ithel, ed., Brut Y Tywysogion (Rolls Series, XVII), p. i9.
101F. M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England (2nd ed.; Oxford, 1947), pp. 101-102,
538-539; H. Boehmer, "Das Eigenkirchentum in England," Texte und Forschungen
zur Englischen Kulturgeschichte (Halle, 1921), esp. pp. 338-339; Whitelock, op. cit.,
PP. 77, 83, 543, 719, 741-743, 764-765, 839, 852, and on Eadberht Praen, a priest
who was made king in Kent, pp. 27, 794; cf. p. 246, on King Osred tonsured at York
and deposed.
102 Ortwin Henssler, Formen des Asylrechts und ihre Verbreitung bei den Germanen (Frankfurt-am-Main, 1954), PP. 54-55.

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defiling the pagan temple that priests of the Angli were forbidden
to carry arms and that weapons were banned from their temples,
as they were in Scandinavia.103 This priestly peace is continued
in Christiantimes in the same area of the North in the Law of the
Northumbrian Priests: "If a priest comes with weapons into the
church, he is to compensate for it."'o4 Icelandic saga informs us
that an outlaw was not permitted by the god Frey even in the
vicinity of his temple; 105 this and the early northern notion that
the area surroundingthe king was mikill grithastathr ("a place of
great peace") 106 are undoubtedly based on the premise that one
who enters a sacred area becomes himself heilerfiillt.?07This continues in Anglo-Saxonlaw, where we read in IV Aethelstan 6 that
"if (a thief) seeks the king, or the archbishop,or a holy church of
a royal asylum grantGod, he shall have respite for nine days,"'08os
ed also in the eleventh century laws Be Grithe and be munde.'?9
In the latter, however, this right, which is granted also to an archbishop or a prince, can be extended beyond the nine days - or
rather nine nights here - by the king. In yet another law, the
king's peace is said to extend from his burh-gate"III mila and III
furlang and III aecera braede and IX fota and IX scaeftamunda
and IX berecorna."110 Here the pagan North breaks througheven
more; the length of a grain of barley as one of the measures of the
king's grith combines with the number nine, found also in the
other two laws of royal asylum, which is the magic number of the
north, related to fertility, magic, and royal cult."'1 And with these
o10Bede, Hist. Eccl., II, 13; cf. H. M. Chadwick, op. cit., pp. 302-303;
Henssler,
op. cit., p. 74; Vigfusson and Powell, op. cit., I, p. 407.
o10Whitelock, op. cit., p. 437.
10"Bertha Phillpotts, "Germanic Heathenism," Cambridge Mediaeval History
(New York, 1913), II, p. 493.
106 H. M. Chadwick, op. cit., pp. 302-303.
1" Henssler, op. cit., pp. 71-73.
1osAttenborough, op. cit., p. 149.
1ooLiebermann, Die Gesetze . .., I, p. 470.
10 From Pax, dating c. 9Io-c. io6o A.D., in Liebermann, Die Gesetze ...,
I,
p. 390 (with Latin text of Quadripartitus, p. 391). For scaeftamunda, the origin of
which is unclear but which was apparently a measure of about six inches, cf. J.
Bosworth and T. Toller, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (Oxford, 1898), p. 821.
11 This complicated problem, which I plan on treating elsewhere, is also related
to the "Nine Herbs Charm," above, but more largely to the whole problem of the
"king's number." For the ecclesiastical "mile" of asylum at Ripon and Beverley,
connected with King Aethelstan, cf. Whitelock, op. cit., p. 42. Edward the Confessor's shrine granted asylum to a thief even before the king was canonized, but

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overtones of sacred number, fertility cults, barley and sacrifices

for good crops, sanctuary and the king's person, we must draw this
to a not very Christianclose.
If I plead that the break between pagan and Christian England
has been overemphasized,this thesis has, of course, been put forward in extreme form by Margaret Murray in The Divine King in
England; I do not myself detect covens of witches everywhere
nor regard Charles I as a royal sacrificialvictim of the old religion.
One need not go so far, however, to see more heathenism lurking
behind the manuscripts and artifacts than is visible to the twentieth century eye. To become an Anglo-Saxon,pagan or Christian,
is impossible, but we divorce too much, I think, Anglo-Saxon
Christianity from the culture, shaped by paganism, which formed
and even warped it. Our view of both politics and religion is consequently influenced. I do not think, for example, that one can
understandKing Oswald, "the most holy and very victorious king
of Northumberland,"as Bede calls him, without considering the
relation of the Cross which he erected at Rowley Water and northern pillar cult, the hand and knee as sacral objects, Germanictree
cult and its connections with Heimdall and Christ, pillars of light
above Anglo-Saxon royal saints, royal protection against pestilence, division of the king's body after the battle of Maserfelth
with dismembermentof kings to protect their realm, the hanging of
sacrifices to Woden, King Oswald as a Bavarian and Tyrolean
lord of the weather, and the raven of Woden and Oswald as a
sacral bird. If only some of these make sense, a dimensionis given
to the wars of Northumbria and Mercia. And if, to move from
example to thesis, culture and cult are related, a dimension is
added in the past-enmeshed Conversion story in the transition
from paganismto Christianityin Anglo-SaxonEngland.
then the Confessor was heilerfiillt almost at birth, since he was presented on the
altar at Ely by his parents while still in his cradle; cf. F. E. Harmer, Anglo-Saxon
Writs (Manchester, 1952), pp. 13, n. 2, 222. Indeed, the holiness of altar and throne
is apparently reflected in the word "gifstol," which has the meaning of both places;
cf. Arthur E. Dubois, "Gifstol," Modern Language Notes, LXIX (1954), PP. 546-549.