Christianity in Roman Britain
Christianity was one of several religions introduced to Britain from the eastern part of the empire, others being those dedicated to certain deities, such as Cybele, Isis, and Mithras.
[11] The archaeologist Martin Henig suggested that to "sense something of the spiritual environment of Christianity at this time", it would be useful to imagine India, where Hinduism, "a major polytheistic system", remains dominant, and "where churches containing images of Christ and the Virgin are in a tiny minority against the many temples of gods and goddesses".
[13] Around 200, the Carthaginian theologian Tertullian included Britain in a list of places reached by Christianity in his work, Adversus Judaeos.
The accuracy of these statements can be questioned given that both writers had a strong rhetorical aspect to their work, which was designed to glorify what was still an illegal and underground religious movement.
It is possible that Saints Alban, Julius and Aaron, three Romano-British martyrs mentioned in early medieval sources, were killed at this time.
[21] The British bishops in attendance were Eborius from Eboracum (York), Restitutus from Londinium (London), and Adelfius from Lindum Colonia (Lincoln).
[22] The presence of the three bishops indicates that by the early 4th century, the British Christian community was organised on a regional basis[23] and held a distinct episcopal hierarchy.
However, the council records do not indicate any British bishops were present; for this reason, historian Richard Sharpe argued that Athanasius was inaccurate.
[31] Martin Henig suggested that by the end of the 4th century, "a large proportion of British society, however materially impoverished," was Christian.
Archaeologists tend toward the view that this transition from Romano-British to Anglo-Saxon culture was piecemeal and gradual, rather than the result of a sudden conquest.
[40] Textual sources suggest that the Christian communities established in the Roman province survived in Western Britain during the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries.
[43] The first to challenge this assumption was Jocelyn Toynbee, who argued that Romano-British Christianity was in fact the parent of what she termed "the so-called Celtic Church" of Western Britain.
[43] In the late sixth century, the Pope ordered that Augustine of Canterbury lead the Gregorian Mission to convert the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity.
[46] Church buildings would have required an altar at which the Eucharist could be celebrated, a place from where readings could be made, space for the offertory procession, and room for the congregation.
[47] Comparisons from other parts of the Roman Empire indicate that Romano-British examples likely also had a cathedra chair where the bishop would sit, and a vestibulum, or room where the unbaptised could withdraw.
[50] There is a long-standing tradition in London that St Peter upon Cornhill church was founded by King Lucius after his conversion in 179 AD.
Interestingly, the church altar is sited directly above the potential location of a pagan shrine room, of the great Roman London basilica.
[54] That many of these items, such as those from the Water Newton hoard, were lavish, suggests that the Christian community might depend on its wealthier members for their ceremonial material.
[59] Alban is the only Romano-British martyr whose cult definitely survived the termination of the Roman imperial administration among an enclave of British Christians.
[63] The arrival of Christianity was later discussed by Bede, an Anglo-Saxon monk based in the Kingdom of Northumbria, in his eighth-century Ecclesiastical History of the English People.
[64] The next early medieval source to discuss Romano-British Christianity was the ninth-century Historia Brittonum, later attributed—perhaps mistakenly—to the Welsh monk Nennius.
[64] In the high and later Middle Ages, historical accounts continued to be produced which discussed the establishment of Christianity in Roman Britain.
[64] Another twelfth-century writer, William of Malmesbury, added the claim that Joseph of Aramathea had arrived in Glastonbury in his Gesta Regum Anglorum.
[64] There was a revived interest in Romano-British Christianity in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, where it occurred against a backdrop of the arguments between adherents of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism.
[65] An Italian writer, Polydore Vergil, came to England in 1501 and befriended King Henry VIII; he wrote the Historiae Anglicae, which dealt with the arrival of Christianity.
[65] Following the English Reformation, in which the Church of England switched its allegiance from Roman Catholicism to the Protestant-influenced Anglicanism, there were a growing number of English theologians who turned to the first arrival of Christianity in Britain to argue that the island had preserved an older, purer form of Christianity separate from that which had been corrupted by the Church in Rome.
It was investigated by the antiquarian William Stukeley, who noted its Christian symbolism but who thought that it had likely originated in France and been brought to England by fifteenth-century soldiers.
[67] In another instance, a Romano-British beaker decorated with Biblical scenes was discovered in a child's grave within the Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Long Wittenham, Oxfordshire during excavations led by John Yonge Akerman in the 1850s.
[69] By the latter half of that century there was sufficient material available that archaeologists could discuss Christianity in Roman Britain independently of the historical record.
[70] Following Toynbee, the most important contribution to the subject was Charles Thomas' Christianity in Roman Britain to AD 500; published in 1981, it discussed historical, archaeological, and linguistic evidence.
