[Sca-cooks] Saxons and Pagans

[Kirsten Houseknecht]

a rather long, but fairly well researched, artical on the survival of pagan
religion and customs in Eastern England and Saxn controlled territories.

particular attention is being paid to grave finds and pottery, so it would
likely be of interest to potters as well...(and some references to food)

this would be of interest to a modern day pagan,
but also for anyone taking on a persona of this time period in the SCA.

please forward to anyone you know with a persona from the right time and
place, or period pottery makers, as i will likely miss a few.....
----Original Message Follows----


Lifted directly from here...

http://www.britarch.ac.uk/ba/ba44/ba44feat.html

Tolerating pagans for the sake of trade
Paganism may have survived for centuries after the arrival of
Christianity, says Paul Blinkhorn

The spread of Christianity has long been a favourite subject within
Anglo-Saxon research. Cemeteries have been excavated and mapped, with
grave-goods and the orientation of burials minutely studied, to produce an
image of the seemingly inexorable progress of the new religion across the
land from the 7th century AD.

The survival of paganism, however, has received far less attention. This
is odd, because the historical literature makes it clear that paganism
continued to flourish in Saxon-controlled areas throughout the 7th, 8th
and even 9th centuries. Now, in a new development, 7th-8th century pottery
is beginning to be recognised in eastern England that may have been
designed specifically for use in pagan ceremonies. The evidence perhaps
suggests a greater de facto tolerance of paganism in this period than is
suggested by church pronouncements alone, or by a literal reading of
historians such as Bede.

The early church certainly went to some lengths to absorb paganism into
its own ceremonies, as if in recognition of the strength of popular
feeling. Bede, in his Ecclesiastical History, quotes Pope Gregory's letter
to Abbott Mellitus, an envoy sent to join Augustine in England in AD601,
in which the pope demanded that altars were set up in pagan shrines, and
pagan sacrifices and feasts replaced by Christian festivals.

Many scholars regard Christmas as one example of replacement, seeing it as
perhaps a memory of an earlier winter-solstice celebration.

We also know from Bede that idols continued to be destroyed in Kent
decades after the conversion of Aethelbert at the beginning of the 7th
century. Moreover, the traditional robes of the Christian cleric may
reflect an adoption of the costume of pagan priests, according to
archaeologist Tim Taylor in his book, The Prehistory of Sex. They,
according to Tacitus, dressed as women - at least in Germany.

This strategy of conversion by stealth cannot have been entirely
successful, because the church later turned to the use of law - and force
- to stamp out pagan survivals. The later 7th century Penitentials of
Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury, proscribed practices including
`sacrificing to devils', augury, eating food offered as sacrifice and
burning grain for the wellbeing of the dead. Interestingly, burnt grain is
occasionally found in pagan Anglo-Saxon graves - for example in the
cemetery at Portway in Hampshire. The Penitentials also required heathens
to be baptised, and existing pagan marriages to be solemnised by a
Christian ceremony. Penalties were listed for Christian clerics who
performed pagan divinations.

Documents continue to indicate the survival of paganism in the 8th
century. In AD747, one of the canons of the Synod of Clovesho - an unknown
location somewhere in England - stated that every bishop should go round
his diocese each year and forbid pagan practices such as divination,
soothsaying, and the use of augury, omens, amulets, and spells. As late as
AD786, papal legates admonished the English for dressing `in heathen
fashion' and slitting their horse's nostrils in the pagan manner. Laws
proscribing pagan practice were still being introduced in the 9th century,
under Alfred, and again in the 10th.

If paganism survived, it ought to be possible to find some traces of it in
the archaeological record. Personal possessions were used to signal social
and cultural affiliation, and the archaeologist Julian Richards's work on
pagan Anglo-Saxon cremation urns in eastern and central England has shown
that the stamped and incised designs, and the size and shape of the pots
themselves, may have reflected the age, gender, social status, and, in
some cases, religious affiliation of the deceased. T-runes, for example,
may indicate the god Tiw, and swastica-runes the god Thor. Other objects,
such as brooches, transmitted similar information.

The practise of stamping and incising pottery was mainly used on cremation
urns, and when cremation fell from use from the early 7th century, the
decoration of pottery virtually ceased. There was, however, one exception:
Ipswich Ware. This type of pottery first came into production in Ipswich
around AD720 using stamped and incised decoration. Overtly pagan designs
such as swastikas or runes were not used, but there is one Ipswich Ware
vessel decorated with stamped face-masks.

The face-mask - a stamped representation of the human face - is commonly
found on objects of the pagan period. It has been suggested that it was a
symbol of Anglo-Saxon identity, and may represent one of the pagan gods.
The symbols are known on cremation urns from both England and the
continent, and on coins, drinking cups, brooches and buckets. The Sutton
Hoo helmet has been thought to be a ceremonical mask, an indicator of the
Saxon king's mythological descent from the gods; while face-mask
decorations are also found on the Sutton Hoo ceremonial whetstone sceptre.

The Ipswich potters used a limited suite of stamp arrangements, including
pendant triangles, the staple decorative arrangement of 6th century
cremation urns in East Anglia. Pendant triangles do not appear solely on
pots. The silver-gilt mounts of the Sutton Hoo drinking cups and the
rimbands of some drinking horns are hung with pendant triangles, as were
many buckets. Thus, the only objects apart from pots which had pendant
triangle decoration were containers for liquids or food - but not all
containers for food were marked with pendant triangles.

Since the eating of food offered as sacrifice was proscribed by the
church, are we looking at vessels that were specially marked for use in
pagan ceremonies?

Certainly, there is good reason to suspect that drinking horns were
intrinsically pagan objects. The papal legates of AD786 condemned the use
of horn for communion chalices and patens, and it is likely that goats
were venerated by the pagan Anglo-Saxons. A burial at Yeavering in
Northumbria, thought to be of a pagan priest, contained a metal staff
which terminates in what appears to be a stylised goat, and the remains of
a goat's skull were found at the foot of the grave.

Yeavering, the most important royal and ceremonial centre in the north of
England in the 6th century, had the Saxon name of Ad-Gefrin, the Hill of
the Goats. The Christian portrayal of the anti-Christ was often a
goat-like figure with cloven hooves and horns. This is traditionally
explained as being a memory of the classical god Pan; but a reflection of
a Saxon veneration of goats is perhaps a more likely explanation.

Intriguingly, images of goats are rarely found on pagan Anglo-Saxon
objects. Does this mean that they were taboo, and only priests, such as
the possible example at Yeavering, were allowed them, perhaps as a badge
of office? We know from Bede that pagan priests were affected by taboos.
For example, they were not allowed to carry weapons (there are no weapons
in the Yeavering burial) and could only ride mares, not stallions.
Depictions of goats remain unknown throughout the 8th and 9th centuries,
suggesting that, like swastikas and runes, their potency survived.

Ipswich, one of the most important towns in 8th century England, may then
have been a centre of pagan survival. We have as yet no positive evidence
for a church in Ipswich in the 8th century (unlike, say, at Southampton
and London), and objects with Christian symbols are unknown - although a
number have been found at Brandon, some 16 miles to the north-east. The
only burial in Ipswich containing grave-goods with cross motifs is from
Boss Hall, about a mile outside the Saxon town. The cemetery, recently
excavated by the Suffolk Archaeological Unit, appears to have been disused
for about 100 years when the deceased was interred in the early 8th
century.

So why, at a time when the historical record suggests that churchmen were
beginning to counter pagan practices, were Ipswich potters allowed to
continue making `pagan pots'? The answer may be that Christian
power-holders turned a blind eye for the sake of trade. Ipswich was the
main redistribution centre for imported goods on the east coast of
England; and while the two other major ports of southern England, London
and Southampton, were mainly supplied by Frankish merchants, who were
Christian, Ipswich is likely to have been mainly supplied by Frisians, who
were, by and large, pagan. Thus, a clamp-down on paganism in Ipswich may
have affected trade.

The evidence for the extent of the survival of paganism is tentative and
inconclusive; but it is likely that we have traditionally overestimated
the impact of Christianity on most people for the first two centuries
after St Augustine's arrival. Paganism did not go down without a struggle;
we might almost say that, with the church's adoption of many of its
festivals and practices, it never died at all.

Paul Blinkhorn is an independent specialist in ceramics

--
Ron Branga
Eþelæceres/Othala Acres
Néoweanglia Mæþel
http://homesteading.othalaacres.com

from Thomas Jefferson in a letter to Major John Cartwright entitled
"Saxons, Constitutions and a Case of Pious Fraud" :

I was glad to find in your book a formal contradition, at length, of the
judiciary usurpation of legislative powers; for such the judges have
usurped in their repeated decisions, that Christianity is a part of the
common law. The proof of the contrary, which you have adduced, is
incontrovertible; to wit, that the common law existed while the
Anglo-Saxons were yet Pagans, at a time when they had never yet heard the
name of Christ pronounced, or knew that such a character had ever existed.


Kirsten Houseknecht
Fabric Dragon
kirsten at fabricdragon.com
www.fabricdragon.com
Philadelphia, PA     USA
Trims, Amber, Jet, Jewelry, and more...

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