Christianity in Roman Britain to AD 500

A very scholarly study of a subject I know very little about – the early history of the Christian church in the British Isles. The basic history is Christianity was introduced to the Roman province of Britannia at some indeterminate time in the first few centuries AD; then came the withdrawal of Roman troops and the Anglo-Saxon invasions, which re-introduced Germanic paganism; then came missions headed by St. Augustine in England and St. Patrick in Ireland. The questions author Charles Thomas is addressing are (1) how extensive was early, “Roman” Christianity and (2) was Christianity completely extinguished by the pagan invasions or did some Christians remain. Thomas combines documentary and archaeological evidence; the former is show more rather sparse, with latter legends and hagiographies clouding the subject. Archaeological evidence is also sparse but more compelling, including things like objects engraved with the “Chi-Rho” symbol and a mosaic pavement with the head of Christ. Thomas devotes a whole chapter to cemeteries, refuting the popular myth that Christian burials could be identified because the graves were oriented toward the east, so that when the dead arose on the Last Day, they would be facing Jerusalem (in fact, that’s just what “oriented” means). There are also chapters discussing churches, baptistries, and other evidence. Thomas ranks these by quality of evidence, and provides a series of choropleth maps suggesting that the Anglo-Saxon invasions did reduce the practice of Christianity in eastern England but left it more or less intact in the west.

I stress I’m not even remotely a scholar in this field, although I find it quite interesting. It was a difficult read for me, since Thomas provides copious references for everything, almost always to authors I had never heard of; however the writing style was easy enough – Thomas developed the book from a series of lectures he’d given, and the prose often seems “conversational”, as if he were chatting with you in person. Extensive illustrations, with line drawings in the texts and a plate section; lots of maps, always a plus for me. show less

A good history of an obscure period. A very good section about St Patrick.