Gravestone, Southwell Minster

From ancient Sumer, through to Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, and Rome, religion and state power have been intertwined for nearly 6,000 years.

In the year 590 CE, a wealthy Roman senator’s son named Gregorius Anicius became pope, and just over a decade later he sent a Roman missionary named Paulinus to Britain, in an effort to convert the pagan Anglo-Saxons to Christianity.

The arranged marriages and political machinations involved in spreading the influence of the Roman Christian church would require volumes to explain, so we won’t attempt it here.

At the time of Paulinus‘ arrival the place now called England was a patchwork of kingdoms and smaller client chiefdoms including Kent, West Seaxa (Wessex), and East Anglia.

Further north lay the kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira – both would soon amalgamate into the powerful kingdom of Northumbria.

In between lay the various small kingdoms which would eventually become Mercia.

Squeezed in among various major and minor chieftains was a leader named “Snot“, who would give his name to “Snotengaham” – “the home of Snot‘s people”.

By the High Middle Ages, and the time of Robin Hood balladry, this settlement had become known as “Nottingham”.

Around the year 627 CE, Paulinus founded a small church in a village near “Snotengaham” now called Southwell Minster.

The Saxon peasantry around Southwell Minster would have seen the wealth of the church and its officers increase over the centuries.

The Saxon peasantry would have witnessed the brutal takeover of their local lands and church by the Normans during the 11th century.

The Saxon peasantry would have watched the local priests and bishops installed by their new Norman overlords become fat from a rich living made off tithes and the sale of indulgences.

The English peasantry would eventually see Henry VIII dissolve and ransack the English Catholic monasteries, making himself head of the church.

By 1620, many of the more hyper-religious Protestant English were so disgruntled with the new Anglican church created by Henry VIII that they had formed separatist congregations, with many heading to places like the Netherlands and North America, in hopes of setting-up theocratically governed communities.

I will leave it to your own judgment whether the time since Pope Gregory sent Paulinus among the Saxons (and up to the funeral of Pope Francis this week) has been a time of moral and ethical progress created by religion.

My own feelings on the matter are best summed-up by this weathered and lichen covered headstone in the grounds of Southwell Minster.