The encounter of Western and Eastern structures in Spain, between the Muslims from North Africa and the inhabitants of the kingdom of the Visigoths, with its fusion of Roman, Christian and German elements, took place in the eighth century. From the beginning of that same century we get a vivid picture of the impact of the Christian missions from Rome on a more northern society, that of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England, a picture that reveals some interesting features of the earlier patterns of behaviour in western Europe and of the kind of changes that were taking place at the time.

When attempting to reconstruct the patterns of marriage and the family in pre-colonial African societies, at least in the coastal areas where they have changed most, the absence of indigenous documents leads one to turn to the writings of outsiders, that is, of travellers and traders, of administrators and missionaries. Missionary accounts often have a particular interest because, since Christian practice is linked to specific patterns of the domestic life, the upholders of the new faith often discuss the difficulties with which they are faced in this sphere, thus revealing some critical aspects of the system they are attempting to change.

Such was the case in England during the Anglo-Saxon period. In what Wormald (1978: 39) has labelled that ‘instant best-seller’, The Ecclesiastical History of the English Church and People, the Northumbrian monk, Bede, tells of some of the problems involved in converting the pagan English.