Ecclesiastical History of the English People

Introduction.

possessed. The final destruction of the earth by fire could present no difficulties to those who had heard of Surtr a fire giant in Norse mythology and the Twilight of the gods, or of Allfather’s glorious kingdom, raised on the ruin of the intermediate divinities. A state of happiness or punishment in a life to come was no novelty to him who had shuddered at the idea of Nástrond the shore of corpses in Norse mythology: Loki or Grendel had smoothed the way for Satan The superscript 1 refers to the footnote citing Kemble.. Pope Gregorius saw this, and enjoined Augustinus not needlessly to shock the religious faith of his converts. They might still worship, he thought, the old objects under new names, and in the old temples newly consecrated. Those who had believed in runes and incantations were satisfied with the efficacy of the mass; a crowd of saints might be invoked in place of a crowd of subordinate divinities; the holy places had lost none of their sanctity; the holy buildings had not been levelled with the ground, but dedicated in another name; the pagan sacrifices had not been totally abolished, but only converted into festal occasions, where the new Christians might eat and drink, and continue to praise God; Hrethe and Eostre, Woden, Tíw and Fricge, Thunor and Sætere retained their places in the calendar of months and days; Erce was still invoked in spells; Wyrd still wove the web of destiny; and while Woden retained his place at the head of the royal genealogies, the highest offices of the Christian Church were offered to compensate the noble class for the loss of their old sacerdotal functions. How should Christianity fail to obtain access when Paganism stepped half-way to meet it, and it could hold out so many points of outward union to Paganism The superscript 2 refers to the footnote citing Ibid.?

Considerations such as these may help to account for the deep root which Christianity struck in England at once, and the rapidity with which it bore fruit.

¹ Kemble, Saxons in England, vol. i. p. 443.
² Ibid. p. 444.