Conversion and the Golden Age

The conversion of England is, on one level, all about sex and desire for the female body. Some time before 580, 20 years or so before Pope Gregory sent Augustine north to preach to the English, Bertha, the Christian daughter of the Merovingian king, Charibert, married the pagan prince (later king) Æthelberht of Kent. Freedom to practice her own religion was one of the conditions of her marriage, and she was accompanied to England by her own bishop, Liuthard. Bede tells us that, through his wife, Æthelberht was already familiar with Christianity before the Gregorian mission, and the implication is that it was the knowledge imparted by the queen that led him to welcome Augustine and his retinue so warmly. The pattern was repeated when, sometime before 625, Bertha and Æthelberht's daughter, Æthelburh, married the Northumbrian king, Edwin, their marriage becoming the ‘occasion’ for the conversion of Northumbria. One could, of course, argue that it was the desire for sons, or advantageous political alliances, rather than the desire for the women themselves, that motivated these kings; nevertheless, one cannot erase either desire or the female body from the process.

Conversions are not just about those who do the converting or are converted; they are equally about those who record the histories, stories and myths that arise from that process. Conversion, like history, comes down to us through narrative: chronicles, hagiography, and the narratives we compose around the material record. The only direct textual account of the conversion of England to survive is Bede's Ecclesiastical History, and Bede provides us largely with the doings and voices of men. In Bede, queens become the objects through which Christianisation is achieved, rather than active agents in conversion. The desired body disappears behind a mask of text. For example, we know that in 601 Pope Gregory wrote to both Æthelberht and Bertha, and that he praised Bertha for the help she had given Augustine with his mission, but Bede transcribes only the letter to Æthelberht. Similarly, while Boniface, in a letter to Æthelburh, acknowledged the ability of the queen to influence her husband with both her body and her voice, writing his acknowledgment in words that borrow from the language of carnal passion, Bede gives us only the voice of Boniface, and we learn nothing of Æthelburh's actions or response.