As is the case with many Germanic provinces far more is recorded about the conversion of the ruling houses of Anglo-Saxon England than about that of the bulk of the population. Looking at the conversion of élites may provide a way to understand broader issues of a province's conversion, though the ruling classes are also likely to be atypical; their conversion involved concerns which were not applicable to the greater part of the population. Political issues of the Anglo-Saxon conversion, in terms of the operation of overlordship and dynastic alliances, have received close attention in many previous studies. Though such factors undoubtedly could have been very important in encouraging acceptance or rejection of Christianity, or of a particular missionary faction, we should not forget also that the attitudes of Germanic élites to the new religion would have been conditioned by their pre-existing religious beliefs and practices especially where these reinforced power and authority. In considering some facets of the conversion of the Anglo-Saxon kings from this perspective, I shall in effect be providing an Anglo-Saxon case study of the approaches championed by Przemyslaw Urbanczyk, both at the conference and elsewhere, for understanding the acceptance of Christianity by early medieval elites.

Conversion and the Elites

As Dr Urbanczyck has reminded us, the Latin ‘official’ versions of royal conversion are not concerned to see matters from the royal point of view, and he has shown how theoretical and anthropological models may help in reconstructing non-Christian perspectives. To tackle the history of the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons therefore involves a certain amount of deconstruction of our main source, Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica, and among the important developments in the historiography of the Anglo-Saxon conversion in recent years has been the appreciation that Bede's narrative of conversion is one conditioned by his own ecclesiastical perspectives, and that other narratives are possible. An example of the problems of Bede's approach can be provided by the way he dealt with the initial phase of conversion. What was especially significant to Bede was the primary conversion that led to the establishment of a bishopric, and the appearance of any unbaptised king after that point was presented by him as apostasy. In Bede's analysis kings and their kingdoms were either Christian or pagan; no other combinations were possible.