597 – The Jutish kingdom of Kent was Christianized by St. Augustine of Canterbury, Apostle to the English from Rome and Apostle of Kent, though naturally thorough Christianization took more time.
630 – East Anglia was Christianized this year by St. Felix of Burgundy.
625-635 – St. Paulinus, consecrated Bishop of York by the Archbishop of Canterbury, converted Edwin, King of Bernicia, before his marriage to Aethelburg, sister of Eadbald, King of Kent, in 625. Among those he converted while there was the later St. Hilda of Whitby.
After Edwin’s death in 633, Paulinus and Aethelburg fled back to Kent. Paulinus was later raised to Archbishop of York by the Pope, but by that time had become Bishop of Rochester, so the appointment was just titular.
Two years after Paulinus and Aethelburg fled, St. Aidan arrived in Bernicia with a contingent of Columban monks and was given the Isle of Lindisfarne upon which to build a monastery by Oswald, Christian king of both Bernicia and Deira. He became not only Abbot, but Bishop of Lindisfarne, and from thenceforth, the two kingdoms remained Christian. Bernica and Deira remained separate though linked kingdoms until 654, after which Deira existed as a sub-kingdom in Northumbria until 679.
653-655 – Christianization of Mercia begun under King Penda and finished under King Peada, with no reversion.
665 – After a series of conversions and reversions, Essex was made permanently Christian by Jaruman, Bishop of Mercia, who was sent by Wulfere, King of Mercia and Essex’s overking.
681 – Bede credits St. Wilfrid with Christianizing Sussex this year, though Christian missions existed there previously, such as the Irish monastery in Bosham headed by Dicul. Wildfrid did found the kingdom’s first see at the Abbey of Selsey, where it remained until moving to Chichester in 1082.
685 – Wessex underwent several cycles of conversion and reversion from 635, until the ascenscion to the throne of Caedwalla, who was unbaptized but pro-Christian in 685. The Diocese of Wessex was founded in 635, with its first see at Dorchester, moved to Winchester in 660, but the population stayed mostly pagan until Caedwalla.
686 – In 661, Wulfere of Mercia invaded the Jutish kingdom on the Isle of Wight and forcibly converted its inhabitants. Then he left, and the people immediately reverted to their old religion. Caedwalla invaded in 686, killed King Arwald in battle, executed the king’s heirs after forcibly baptizing them, slaughtered much of the Jutish population, forced the remainder to adopt the West Seax dialect, and imported West Seax colonists.
995 - Olav Tryggvasson, King of Norway, Christianized the Jarldom of Orkney (Nodor, the North Isles, i.e. Orkney and Shetland) by fiat, threatening the jarl, Sigurd the Stout, that if he did not convert and be baptised along with all his subjects, then the king would ravage every island in both archipelagoes.
Minsters
In the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms before the Danish invasion, the life of the Church revolved around minsters. A minster was endowed by the local king, ealdorman, or thegn for a group living collectively whose main purpose was to perform the daily office, whether all men, all women, or men and women together in a community around a church. Usually, at least the first superior was a relative of the beneficient lord.
Though the central purpose of a minster was to carry out the daily office, Anglo-Saxon cenobites were not the purely contemplative sort prevalent on the Continent, but more like Augustinian canons, working in the community.
For the early centuries, a minster (derived from monasterium and cognate to the Irish mainster) was synonymous with a local church, specifically one attached to a monastery. The same, or at least something similar, was the case in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland (where the word was mainstir) under the various Celtic Rules (of St. Colmcille, St. Brigit, St. Fechin, etc.). Over time, the minster became a mother church to outlying field churches and chapels of surrounding villages and hamlets.
At the beginning of the High Middle Ages, those minsters which had survived the Viking Age took on a certain prestige over newer establishments. The biggest minsters became cathedrals, the other survivors the chief of a hundred, with newer minsters and field churches eventually becoming secular parishes.
The Norman Conquest in 1066 overturned the Anglo-Saxon
system and implanted in its place a church system along Continental lines.
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