Lecture Wk II Thursday:  Added items

POLICY OF CONVERSION
              BY GRADUALIST AND ASSIMILATIONIST MEASURES
Letter of Pope Gregory to Abbot Mellitus for Augustine in Britain, 601 A.D.

When by God's help you reach our most reverend brother Bishop Augustine,
we wish you to inform him that we have been giving careful thought to the
affairs of the English, and have come to the conclusion that the temples of
the idols among the people should on no account be destroyed.

The idols themselves are to be aspersed with holy water, altars set up in them,
and relics  deposited there. For if these temples are well‑built, they must be
purified from the worship of demons and dedicated to the service of the true
God.  In this way, we hope that the people, seeing that their temples are not
destroyed, may abandon their errors and, flocking more readily to their
accustomed resorts, may come to know and adore the true God.

And since they have a custom of sacrificing many oxen to demons, let some
other solemn feast be substituted in its place, such as a day of Dedication or the
Festivals of the holy martyrs whose relics are enshrined there ....For it is
certainly impossible to eradicate all errors from obstinate minds at one stroke,
and whoever wishes to climb to a mountain top climbs gradually step by step,
and not in one leap.                In Bede, History of the English Church &  People

 Bede was a Northumbrian/English Christian monk; he wrote his book in the first
third of the 8th century, and is here describing events that would have taken place
approximately a century earlier.  Bede’s account is one of the few sources we have
about the pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon kingdom.

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Germanic legal systems:  “lucrative justice” – system based on fines
         wergeld = man money  - pay victim’s family & king a fine based on
                                                 the worth of the victim (warrior vs slave)
        solution to problem of vendetta & blood feud in perpetuity among Germans
Legal codes: customary law written in Latin
         sign of increasing political organization of Germanic tribes and
                                       power of Germanic kings

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Monks versus priests:

Priest = recipient of sacrament of Holy Orders, has power to perform sacraments
                                including sacrament of the Eucharist
             secular clergy: live “in the world,” minister to the laity in parishes

Monk = withdrawal from world includes withdrawal from role of priest in the world
              live according to a rule (regula) = regular clergy
              monks are not necessarily priests: Benedicit is not a priest
                          later more monks will become priests, but not serve “in the world”