Lesson video

So if you could just make sure that you've got the title, the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons written down and underlined with the date of whatever day you're doing this lesson on, and then restart the lesson when you've done that we will get on with what we're going to learn today.

So on the screen is a very old.

an old painting of several several men, but the two that we're interested in are the two in the middle.

One is holding a box the other chap is sitting down on a throne, so we can see that one man is already more important than the other.

These are holy man, these are holy men, Christian men.

And they were both very concerned, they were both very worried about Britain in the 500s and we'll be looking at why this was.

The man on the left is a man called Augustine, he was a monk and he was the man who would be sent to England to convert or to change the Anglo Saxons from their religious beliefs.

So what they believed, and they would become Christian as a result of Augustine travelling to England.

The man on the right is a man called Pope Gregory.

Now the pope is the head, is the title, the head of the Catholic Church, the Catholic Church.

Today we have lots of different kinds of churches.

But the period that we're talking about, there was one church, one church in Western Europe called the Catholic Church, Catholic means universal.

So it was the universal church and Pope Gregory was in charge of this church and this man, Gregory was very concerned about the fact that England the Anglo Saxons, were not Christian.

Now, just to give you some background to this man, Pope Gregory.

Pope Gregory, the head of the Catholic Church, they lived in Italy, so a long, long, long way away from England.

And specifically, this is the kind of building that Pope Gregory would have seen.

So this was built over 1,000 years ago and it would have been standing when Pope Gregory was having a conversation with the monk, Augustine about what needed to happen in England.

Now, to give you an idea, I want you to remember what we've been learning about the Anglo Saxons and how they lived.

And they lived in huts, they didn't read or write, they lived.

There was a period of time when they stopped reading or writing.

Roman Empire abandoned Britain and we have 200 years when we don't really know what happened.

We do know that people stopped living in towns.

We know there was more violence, we know that people stopped being Christian, they became pagan.

Pagan is the word for people that worship many gods.

Meanwhile, in Italy, we have this So this is one of the buildings, it was built at the time this was the inside of this building.

And these are actually the original pictures that were in this beautiful church.

And Gregory would have known this church, he would have seen this church, he would have wanted.

This would have been one of the places he visited.

So from this church, we have a decision to send Augustine, from Italy, to the kingdom of Kent in England where the orange arrow is pointing.

And this is the kind of building that Augustine would have seen when he arrived.

So again, stone buildings were not really visible, you wouldn't have seen stone buildings in Anglo Saxon, England.

So Augustine was sent across Europe, all the way to the kingdom of Kent, to convert the King of Kent, a man called Aethelbert.

Now, the important thing about Aethelbert was that he was actually already.

He already knew a lot about Christianity, so he wasn't Christian, he was pagan, but he was married to a Christian princess called Bertha.

Now Bertha was from another part of Europe and he had married Bertha many years before Augustine arrived.

Bertha was allowed to remain Christian, she was allowed to bring her priest.

So when Augustine arrived in Kent, it wouldn't have been a completely new religion to Aethelbert.

Aethelbert would have known about Christianity.

And we have to imagine Aethelbert sitting in his throne with Augustine praying and chanting, and saying these prayers, explaining Christianity to him, and the world that Augustine represented to Aethelbert.

Aethelbert living in this wooden huts, still very, very powerful, very rich, but Augustine would have been telling these stories about the beautiful churches, for example, the one I just showed you in Italy, these beautiful stone churches, the power that this represented.

And Aethelbert was convinced, so the man on the left Augustine on a mission sent by the Pope, Pope Gregory on the right, Augustine went to Kent, and he converted the first king, Anglo Saxon king from paganism to Christianity.

And this is the story of how Christianity came to England.

Now there is another part of this, that you'll be reading about as well.

So there were two ways that Anglo Saxon England was converted, some partly from Augustine and then partly through monks coming from Ireland.

But you'll read about that later in the lesson.

So just very quickly, what I'd like you to do lots of names I just told you and part of the story.

So who said whom to Britain to convert the Anglo Saxons? Was it Augustine who sent Bertha? Was it Gregory the pope who sent Bertha? Did Bertha send Augustine or was it Gregory who sent Augustine to Britain to convert the Anglo Saxons? So just pause here and see if you can work out which is which.

And of course, the answer is Gregory, Pope Gregory sent the monk Augustine to Britain to convert the Anglo Saxons.

So again, we've got a timeline on the screen, I've shown you a similar timeline before.

So the different colours represent the different stages in the religion of Anglo Saxon England.

So the Romans abandoned Britain in around 400.

in the early 400s.

Christianity then almost vanished, well vanished for most of England.

We have different Christian communities remaining in Ireland, Scotland and Wales, but mostly the Anglo Saxons were pagan.

So Christianity goes, it's no longer there.

We then have the arrival of Augustine in the late 500s.

And then we have a period known as.

When the kings were converting, the Anglo Saxons who were converting to Christianity from paganism by the end of the Sixth Seventh century so by the end of the 600s, all Anglo Saxons are now officially Christian.

Now they kept a lot of their beliefs, a lot of their pagan beliefs.

And we'll talk about this in a moment.

But officially, they'd all converted to Christianity.

So within the space of about 70 or 80 years, Anglo Saxon, England had become Christian.

And then that is how it has been ever since until the modern era, where they're no longer Christian.

So the majority of the Anglo Saxon era, the Anglo Saxons are Christian.

So that's just to give you an idea, so we're going to be talking now about the conversion period so what was going on in that period after Augustine had arrived.

First of all, what would you seen if you've gone to Anglo Saxon England, before the return of Christianity? Well, all across England, there were these stone temples, they would often be made of wood as well.

But if you think of Stonehenge, for example, these very ancient stone temples and this is one example of a stone temple that Aethelbert, his archaeologist think was a temple could also have been a burial chamber as well.

But what we do know this was a very, very ancient.

it was ancient to the Anglo Saxon, so it's even more ancient now it was built many thousands of years before the birth of Christ.

It's called Wayland Smithy and this refers to a myth about Wayland the Smith.

So Wayland the Smith this is a myth that you hear or read about all across northern Europe.

So it wasn't just an Anglo Saxon England, it was also all across northern Europe.

And it was a pagan myth about a man called Wayland, who was captured by a king, forced to become a Smith and then breaks free and there are lots of different pagan aspects to it.

So when Augustine arrived, he would have seen temples like this.

And the process that he went through to convert the Anglo Saxons is very interesting.

So what I'm going to do now is there's a letter that has survived from Pope Gregory to an important priest in Britain during the conversion period.

So when Anglo Saxon England was still pagan, it wasn't to Augustine but it was to one of Augustine's friends or one of the other priests that was in town.

And we'll read it together, and then I want you to think about what's going on.

So, this is what Pope Gregory wrote.

So I have come to the conclusion that the temples of the idols in England should not be destroyed.

Augustine must smash the idols, but the temples themselves should be sprinkled with holy water and altars set up in them in which relics are to be enclosed.

For we must take advantage of well built temples by purifying them from devil worship, and dedicating them to the service of the true God.

So Pope Gregory is saying, so if you think about the image I just had, temples he's describing them as well built temples, they're good buildings in England for religious worship.

The problem for Gregory was that these temples were for the wrong reason.

In the temples, you would have had holy stones or holy bits of woods that the pagans worshipped.

So what Gregory is saying, keep the temples but change the purpose, put an alter in them, put holy relics, holy Christian relics in them.

So keep the buildings, change the purpose, when the people.

so reading again, when the people see that their temples are not destroyed, they will be more ready to come to the places they are familiar with but now recognising and worshipping the true God.

So Pope Gregory is saying, keep the temples, get rid of the idols, these statues, these magic stones that the the Anglo Saxons were worshipping , keep the temples and this will help people realise that they were worshipping the wrong thing.

Go to the temple, but now you're worshipping the right thing.

And this is the kind of thing that was then built all over England.

Now the spire, so the pointy bit was added later on.

But this is one of the oldest churches in England.

And it was built during the Anglo Saxon times.

So what we see happening from the moment that Anglo Saxon England is converted, we see churches being built all over the country, often, where pagan temples had existed.

Now, this is not just the case with places, so Gregory also said, let's take the pagan festivals, for example, Easter, Christmas, midsummer, these big, big pagan festivals, keep them but change the meaning of them.

So this is why Easter, the word Easter actually is a pagan goddess.

We now celebrate Easter, well Christians now celebrate Easter as the when Jesus was crucified and resurrected.

But we keep the name Easter because the Catholic Church decided in order to encourage people to convert to Christianity, keep the pagan temples, keep the pagan festivals, but change the meaning.

So, returning here, I want you to pause here.

I want you to read through this again and very simply answer this question, why do you think Gregory didn't want to destroy the temples? So what was the goal of this? Why did Gregory, Pope Gregory, think no we keep the temples, we keep the festivals, but we change the meanings? Just pause now and maybe write down a sentence or two in your book or your notes.

Reading this again, what was the goal that Pope Gregory was following, what was he aiming for? So once the Anglo Saxon kingdoms had been converted to Christianity, we start to see something quite dramatic happening, big changes happening.

And remember for 200 years, the Anglo Saxons did not really read or write.

They made things, they made beautiful things, but they stopped reading and writing.

Now this changes when Christianity returns to England, it changes because the Christian church thought it was very important that people could hear the Word of God through the Bible.

So the Bible is the holy book that Christians believe is the word of God, or that the stories of Christ etc.

And not only did they do this, they started to make copies of Bibles, and they also illuminated and the word we use is to illuminate to make them colourful.

Now on the screen is one of the best examples of these Bibles.

This is called a Lindisfarne Gospels, and it was made probably by a monk in the 700s.

You have to imagine though this was by hands, there was no electricity so it's by candlelight in a stone cell on the windswept coasts of Northern England.

He probably spent most of his life doing this.

So just to zoom in, look at the detail of the painting.

This man had spent many years potentially, very carefully, drawing and painting this.

We have these beautiful images all the way through this Bible, this copy of the Bible.

And we have here two saints, two of the apostles, the apostles were Jesus's Christians believe the 12 people that Jesus gave a mission to and the Gospels, these are two of the Gospels, two the stories of Jesus's life, drawn by a monk in Lindisfarne on the northernmost coast of Lindisfarne.

And here we have just to Zoom in, so this is what most of the Lindisfarne Gospels is, is that it's written in Latin, and it's hard to understand, because it's a different language and a different kind of writing as well.

And so this was the whole Bible written out by monks in Lindisfarne.

So what I'd like you to do now is to do what we've done several times before, simply pause here, fill in the gaps using the words in the box below.

There are seven words, so see if you can work out where those seven words need to be put in this paragraph to complete the paragraph.

So pause now and then restart when you're done.

So here we go, when the Anglo Saxons arrived in Britain, they were pagan, Pope Gregory decided this needed to change so he sent a monk called Augustine to convert them to Christianity.

After this had happened, churches and monasteries were built all over the country, often where pagan temples had been.

It took a long time for pagan beliefs to be lost.

So make sure you got the correct words in the correct places.

And then when you've done that, restart the video.

So you've done this several times before.

What you're going to do now is pause the video, we're going to go to the next part of the lesson, you're going to read through the slides.

And then at the end of the slides, you're going to find these five questions that I would like you to answer in full sentences.

So pause the video, read the slides, answer the comprehension questions in full sentences, and then restart the video when you're ready.

So pause now and get going.

So don't worry if the the words on the screen are not exactly right or what you've practised.

This is just to give you an idea of the kind of things I want to see that you should be aiming for.

What was the main religion of Britain when it was part of the Roman Empire? Acceptable answer Christianity, good answered the main religion of Britain when it was part of the Roman Empire was Christianity.

The very simple difference is that one is a full sentence and the other one isn't.

So make sure that's roughly what you've got in your books don't worry if not.

Two, what did the Anglo Saxons worship? Acceptable answer many gods, we call them.

and typically they got like it'd be bits of stone or wood or places, so trees, sacred trees for example, The good answer, the Anglo Saxons worship many gods, which meant they were described as pagan.

Three, who converted Aethelbert to Christianity? Acceptable answer Augustine.

Good answer, Augustine, a monk sent by the pope converted Aethelbert to Christianity.

Aethelbert's wife Bertha was already Christian so probably told him about her religion.

So the difference again, very clear one is a single word answer the other one is full sentences with more information.

And just to let you know, you can pause the video at any moment if you want to change what you've written down.

Four who converted the kingdom of Northumbria? Acceptable answer Irish monks.

Good answer, Monks from Ireland converted the kingdom of Northumbria and set up monasteries like Lindisfarne.

So the Lindisfarne gospel is that beautiful Bible that I just showed you that was made in a monastery in Northumbria set up by Irish monks.

Five, why did the Catholic Church allow people to keep their pagan feasts? Acceptable answer to make it easier for them to change their beliefs.

Good answer, the Catholic Church allowed people to keep their pagan feats and temples because it made the new religion familiar to them.

So the church deliberately didn't demolish everything didn't start fresh.

It built on what was already there.

It gave new meaning to old festivals and places.

So last part of our lesson writing activity.

A little bit different this time and we're going to answer this question, what does the Franks Casket tell us about Anglo Saxon beliefs? This is the Franks Casket it is an Anglo Saxon box made out of whalebone and it is really quite spectacular.

Each side of the box has lots of carvings on it.

In the middle of each side we have pictures, it's like a cartoon strip almost.

And then around those pictures we have things called runes, which is the Anglo Saxon script, the alphabet that was written down.

It's a mysterious.

like, people can't be sure what the runes actually mean but some of the runes have been translated, others haven't.

So we're going to go through each of these boxes.

And then as we're going through this, I want you to then think about what is this telling us, what is this box telling us about the beliefs of the Anglo Saxons? When an Anglo Saxon saw these pictures, they would have known what these pictures were about.

So the front of the box, we have two circles in each circle there's a different story.

On the left hand side, in the blue circle, we have the story of Wayland the Smith.

Now this is a pagan story about a man called Wayland who was captured by a king and made to be a smith.

He then escapes and kills the king.

And this is a myth that was familiar all across northern Europe.

So again, this tells us that the Anglo Saxons were part of this Northern European culture, that they had similar beliefs to Northern Europeans, Germany, Scandinavia, Denmark.

On the other side, we have a story that you'll probably be familiar with, three wise men.

You see the three men, one is kneeling down at the front, they're all looking towards a throne.

And you can see on the right hand side of the pink circle, two heads, now the head above is Mary, mother of Jesus, and in the lap of Mary is Jesus himself.

So on this side, on this box, we have two very different stories.

One is a pagan story, a pagan myth, and on the other side, we have the story of the birth of Christ, the three wise men visiting Jesus.

So think about this what is that telling us about the beliefs of the Anglo Saxons? Next slide, this is a very interesting story you might have done this at primary school.

The story of how Rome was founded.

Where did the city of Rome come from? So remember, the Roman Empire was a huge empire, that Britain was once part of.

The Roman Empire then falls apart.

But the story of how Rome was founded, clearly was known to the people who made this box.

And so the story is that the founders, there were two brothers Romulus and Remus, and they were born.

they were raised by a wolf.

And you can see the wolf lying on its back.

You can see the two men.

you can see the story of the two people in the circle, it might not be very clear, but this is the story of Romulus and Remus.

Why is a box made in Anglo Saxon England talking about the founding of Rome? Very interesting.

Next one.

Now first of all, in the greens circle, you can see there's a different kind of.

there are different letters.

So we have runes, we still have runes, but we also have Latin, we have Latin.

Latin was the language of the Roman Empire.

Again, see we have the Roman Empire coming up on this box.

Now in the purple circle, you'll see soldiers.

And actually this box is taught telling the story of the Roman attack on an important town in Israel, where Jesus lives.

About 70 years after Jesus was born, there was an attack on Jerusalem by Roman soldiers.

So this this side of the box is telling us the story of a Roman attack thousands of miles away on a town in Israel.

And lastly, we have a mysterious.

this this side actually has not been.

Historians haven't been able to work out exactly what's going on here.

But what we can see is a horse in the orange circle.

And then on the right we see three figures, all in cloaks with hoods.

So it looks like they're doing something, there might be a pagan worship there.

So no one knows for sure what's happening there.

The runes have not been translated, there's disagreement about what the runes say.

But again, we have a very pagan image a horse with three hooded figures.

So pause here, write down what you can remember from the description about the Franks Casket.

So I've just shown you the different sides of the Franks casket, anything that springs to mind write down what was on the Franks casket, so pause here, whatever you can remember, even if it's just one or two things, write down what you can remember.

So here's a few things, stories about the beginning of the Roman Empire or not just the beginning, but the Roman Empire generally.

Romulus and Remus the founding of Rome, so Rome is named after Remus and there was also this image of the attack on Jerusalem.

We have stories from the Bible, the three wise men going to see Jesus.

We have pictures of animals, especially horses.

We have the pagan story of Wayland, the smith.

And we have mysterious poems written in runes.

What did these five things tell us about what Anglo Saxons believed? If you look at those five things, what does this tell us about what Anglo Saxons believed? Very simply, they were a mixture.

They were Christian, but they were also pagan, they were all jumbled up into this mixture.

So make sure you've got a few of these things down because we're going to then be using these different points to write our paragraph on the next slide.

So pause here, get what you can down, don't worry too much if you don't get everything down, but get done a few of the key points.

Okay, so what does the Franks Casket tell us about Anglo Saxon beliefs? Franks casket is the thing that we've just been looking at.

So we've got the first sentence which clearly answers the question using the words in the question.

The Franks casket tells us the Anglo Saxon religious beliefs were Christian, but influenced by German and Roman story.

So we've got the Christian story of the three wise men, but we then got the German story of Wayland the Smith, and we've got the Roman stories about Romulus and Remus.

So that's the clear first sentence, and then the rest of the paragraph is supporting that first sentence.

So this is shown by images of what? That is because what? So we simply need to fill to complete these sentences, thinking about what we've just seen, what we've just seen on the Franks casket, and therefore what we're doing we're taking these images that we see on the Franks Casket and then we're explaining what these images are.

So have a go, don't spend more than five or 10 minutes on this, five or six sentences maximum would be great.

And then when you're done, restart the video and that'll take us to the end of the lesson.

So, if you'd like to, please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, tagging @OakNational and hashtag Learn with Oak, not compulsory, just if you'd like to.

And that brings us to the end of the lesson.

So today we've been covering the religion of the Anglo Saxons, why did it change? How did it change? And what did kings get out of it, actually.

So I hope you found it interesting.

And I will see you in the next lesson, the last of our six lesson inquiry on how dark the Dark Ages were.

And have a lovely day, wherever you are.

And don't forget the quiz.

Don't forget to the quiz.

I almost did, you mustn't.