History of medieval Christianity in England

By the 6th century, Christianity had spread rapidly in Ireland. This spread originated with Saint Patrick

Saint Patrick

Saint Patrick was a Romano-Briton and Christian missionary, who is the most generally recognized patron saint of Ireland or the Apostle of Ireland, although Brigid of Kildare and Colmcille are also formally patron saints....

. During the sixth century Columba

Columba

Saint Columba —also known as Colum Cille , Colm Cille , Calum Cille and Kolban or Kolbjørn —was a Gaelic Irish missionary monk who propagated Christianity among the Picts during the Early Medieval Period...

 is credited with spreading Christianity to Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 and the north of England. With the Decline of the Roman Empire

Decline of the Roman Empire

The decline of the Roman Empire refers to the gradual societal collapse of the Western Roman Empire. Many theories of causality prevail, but most concern the disintegration of political, economic, military, and other social institutions, in tandem with foreign invasions and usurpers from within the...

 travel became nigh impossible. Celtic Christianity evolved in isolation for two centuries (circa 400 to circa 600). It developed its own liturgy, and church government. These were reconciled in a series of synods from the Synod of Whitby

Synod of Whitby

The Synod of Whitby was a seventh century Northumbriansynod where King Oswiu of Northumbria ruled that his kingdom would calculate Easter and observe the monastic tonsure according to the customs of Rome, rather than the customs practised by Iona and its satellite institutions...

 in 664 to the Synod of Cashel

Rock of Cashel

The Rock of Cashel , also known as Cashel of the Kings and St. Patrick's Rock, is a historic site in Ireland's province of Munster, located at Cashel, South Tipperary.-History:...

 in 1172.

Anglo-Saxon

Anglo-Saxons

Anglo-Saxon is a term used by historians to designate the Germanic tribes who invaded and settled the south and east of Great Britain beginning in the early 5th century AD, and the period from their creation of the English nation to the Norman conquest. The Anglo-Saxon Era denotes the period of...

 Religion: 597–1066

See also: Anglo-Saxon polytheism

Anglo-Saxon polytheism

Anglo-Saxon paganism, or as it has also been known, Anglo-Saxon heathenism,The religion has been referred to as "paganism" by most scholars, such as David M. Wilson and Martin Carver , but as "heathenism" by some others, like Brian Branston...

In 597 Gregory the Great sent a group of monks led by Augustine of Canterbury

Augustine of Canterbury

Augustine of Canterbury was a Benedictine monk who became the first Archbishop of Canterbury in the year 597...

 to evangelise Britain

Sub-Roman Britain

Sub-Roman Britain is a term derived from an archaeological label for the material culture of Britain in Late Antiquity: the term "Sub-Roman" was invented to describe the potsherds in sites of the 5th century and the 6th century, initially with an implication of decay of locally-made wares from a...

. Augustine landed in Thanet

Thanet

Thanet is a local government district of Kent, England which was formed under the Local Government Act 1972, and came into being on 1 April 1974...

, Kent and was well received by Ethelbert of Kent

Ethelbert of Kent

Æthelberht was King of Kent from about 580 or 590 until his death. In his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, the eighth-century monk Bede lists Aethelberht as the third king to hold imperium over other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms...

 who had already married a Christian wife. Before the end of the 6th century most of the Jutes

Jutes

The Jutes, Iuti, or Iutæ were a Germanic people who, according to Bede, were one of the three most powerful Germanic peoples of their time, the other two being the Saxons and the Angles...

 of Kent had been converted. Acting on instructions previously received, he went to Arles

Arles

Arles is a city and commune in the south of France, in the Bouches-du-Rhône department, of which it is a subprefecture, in the former province of Provence....

, France to be consecrated as a bishop. Frequent communications were exchanged with Rome, and in 601 Gregory sent Augustine the pallium

Pallium

The pallium is an ecclesiastical vestment in the Roman Catholic Church, originally peculiar to the Pope, but for many centuries bestowed by him on metropolitans and primates as a symbol of the jurisdiction delegated to them by the Holy See. In that context it has always remained unambiguously...

, the emblem of his authority as archbishop

Archbishop

An archbishop is a bishop of higher rank, but not of higher sacramental order above that of the three orders of deacon, priest , and bishop...

, directing him to consecrate other bishops and to set up his see in London. This was not then possible, and Canterbury

Canterbury

Canterbury is a historic English cathedral city, which lies at the heart of the City of Canterbury, a district of Kent in South East England. It lies on the River Stour....

 became the prime church of England. London, however, very shortly afterwards had its church.

In 1066 a more or less unified Christian system of belief under the authority of the Pope in Rome had been established.

Popular beliefs

In medieval England a Germanic paganism similar to Norse paganism

Norse paganism

Norse paganism is the religious traditions of the Norsemen, a Germanic people living in the Nordic countries. Norse paganism is therefore a subset of Germanic paganism, which was practiced in the lands inhabited by the Germanic tribes across most of Northern and Central Europe in the Viking Age...

, particularly after the official withdrawal of the Roman forces circa 400 A.D. When St. Augustine came as a missionary at the request of the Pope Gregory the Great to Canterbury, Roman Catholicism soon was taken up as the dominant religion. Unlike the religions of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, who invaded England before, the religion of Augustine came to England with 40 other monks and came as a peaceable religious interest.

Scholasticism

Scholasticism

Scholasticism

Scholasticism is a method of critical thought which dominated teaching by the academics of medieval universities in Europe from about 1100–1500, and a program of employing that method in articulating and defending orthodoxy in an increasingly pluralistic context...

 was a philosophical school that developed during the medieval university

Medieval university

Medieval university is an institution of higher learning which was established during High Middle Ages period and is a corporation.The first institutions generally considered to be universities were established in Italy, France, and England in the late 11th and the 12th centuries for the study of...

. Medieval theologians in the High Middle Ages

High Middle Ages

The High Middle Ages was the period of European history around the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries . The High Middle Ages were preceded by the Early Middle Ages and followed by the Late Middle Ages, which by convention end around 1500....

were usually scholastics who criticised other philosophical scholars.