Summary: Alright, so last week we talked about how uneven and confused the conversion of Britain was. And how the beliefs of one village might not bare all that much similarity to the beliefs of another village even though they both might profess to worship the same god. Well, what about the people who’s job it was to worship and evangelize that god? What about the men and women of the cloth? Sure, as we learned last week, monasteries in many ways were a bit like snowflakes and even worse, simply because someone held the title of “priest” it was no guarantee that he would even know what the 10 commandments were… or even that there were 10 commandments. Father Unferth might have been professing the 7 Polite Suggestions, for all we know. “I am the lord, thy god… and I would appreciate it if you would write from time to time. But if you’re too busy, I understand.” And back in the alcohol episodes, we talked about the staggering amount of booze they were allotted. But we haven’t talked all that much about what their actual lives were like… and while some of the condemnations that we’ve heard about have made the island sound like it was full of ignorant drunk monks, lets not forget that great thinkers such as Alcuin and Bede came from British religious orders as well. So in order to get a fuller idea of what was occurring in Britain in this era, lets talk about a couple examples of what religious life was like. And, as you already know, life in Britain was extremely varied at this point so what I’ll be giving you isn’t an example of the average religious life but rather just a couple glimpses into individual lives. We can’t reliably assume that these exemplars can be applied to the majority of men and women of the cloth of this time, but it’s the best we’ve got. Here we go. By the seventh century, which is where we are, the Anglo Saxon kingdoms were already becoming peppered with religious communities. Religious Houses, with royal support, were establishing themselves in Kingdoms that were staunchly pagan only 100 years earlier. And we see abbeys of nuns being founded and headed up by powerful abbesses like Hild, and monasteries full of celibate men being lead by a Bishop… and we also see priests living among the people, and with their families. Yeah. Priests at this point were marrying, and presumably doing all the things that many married couples do… arguing over bills, discussing what to have for dinner, and of course, having kids. But like I said in the last episode, the monks and nuns were primarily the ones doing the heavy lifting at this point in time in Britain, so why don’t we look at a couple religious communities? And to start with, lets start with the double monastery at Hartlepool, since it has already been mentioned in the show (with it coming to prominence in our story with the story of Abbess Hild of Whitby… formerly Abbess Hild of Hartlepool).
