In 597 Augustine landed in Kent charged by Pope Gregory to convert the Isles. You might wonder why he did this, after all we know that Christianity had been seeping in since the end of the 1st century AD and was boosted in 312AD when the Emperor Constantine decreed that it should be the Imperial Religion. In 343 AD British bishops attended the Council of Sardica, the modern name is Sophia, capital of Bulgaria. In 400AD Christianity in mainland Britain was seen by Rome as being affected with the ‘Pelagian Heresy’ when Pelagius, a Welsh Priest, rejected the doctrine of Original Sin. By 563 Columba had established an outpost on Iona. On the face of it plenty of activity and the gospel was spreading. However, the Roman church was under pressure and it looks as though Gregory wanted to stamp Rome's authority firmly on us. He was worried about the Columban evangelism not being in line with Rome and the effects of the invasions after the Romans left in 410.
As part of this campaign, Bede tells us that in 627 Paulinus was created as bishop and sent to York to convert Northumbria. What interests me about this is that we have good evidence from Bede as to how it was done. Paulinus gave his sales pitch to King Edwin and he in turn conferred with his nobles and his Pagan priest Coefi. He was of a mind to accept the teaching because his Father in Law, Ethelbert of Kent had advised him to do so. One of his nobles said, “The present life of man, O king, seems to me, in comparison with that time which is unknown to us, like to the swift flight of a sparrow through the room wherein you sit at supper in winter amid your officers and ministers, with a good fire in the midst whilst the storms of rain and snow prevail abroad; the sparrow, I say, flying in at one door and immediately out another, whilst he is within is safe from the winter but after a short space of fair weather he immediately vanishes out of your sight into the dark from which he has emerged. So this life of man appears for a short space but of what went before or what is to follow we are ignorant. If, therefore, this new doctrine contains something more certain, it seems justly to deserve to be followed”. Coefi also agreed saying that he suspected for some time that the gods they were worshipping were useless. Coefi immediately went to the temple at Goodmanham where he desecrated the temple and destroyed the idols.
It would only be a matter of days before news of this spread across the country. Remember that the king was the fount of justice and religion, his conversion had the same weight as a direct edict. What interests me is what effect this bombshell had on Barlick in 630. Unfortunately we have no written records so once again we have to draw on what we have already teased out about old Barlick culture and attitudes.
The Pagan priests were all redundant!
