Bede: The Ecclesiastical History of the English People - Chapter 30

On July 18, 600 CE, Pope Gregory writes a letter to Abbot Mellitus, one of the men who was sent to help Augustine, on the subject of pagan temples and customs. Careful to avoid alienating pagans, Gregory's attitude is liberal, moderate and practical; temples may be preserved and reconsecrated as Christian places of worship, but idols are to be destroyed. In addition, customary sacrifices made to pagan gods can be modified to serve the Christian God. Instead of offering sacrificial cattle to their old gods, worshipers should slaughter them for their own food and give thanks to God. Gregory's plan preserves peace within an established religious community and attracts new members to the faith by blurring the line between new ideas and ancient traditions. Pope Gregory hopes that the familiarity of pagan sites and similarity of rituals will help to inculcate the new Christian faith into the hearts and minds of the early Britons.

Points Noted:

• Why is Gregory telling Abbot Mellitus to tell Augustine instead of just directly communicating with Augustine himself? Is he someone close to Pope Gregory and is he closer to the Pope than Augustine? Did Augustine receive a letter with similar instructions? 

Bede: The Ecclesiastical History of the English People - Chapter 29

There are many converts and not enough bishops, "the harvest was great and the workers were few," so Pope Gregory sends more men (Mellitus, Justus, Paulinus and Rufinianus) and ecclesiastical objects, such as vessels, clothes, manuscripts and relics needed for the administration of the churches. In a separate letter, he sends Augustine a pallium of white wool to be worn on special occasions. The pallium signifies Augustine's status of archbishop and confers the power to ordain bishops.

Augustine is to ordain 12 bishops and will have authority over them. London, however, is an exception and has its own archbishopric. In addition, he is to ordain a bishop at York of his own choosing. Once enough people have converted, the bishop of York, will then become an archbishop who will ordain 12 bishops under him. Augustine will have authority over these men and all the bishops of Britain. After Augustine's death, the bishop of London will have no authority over York and the one consecrated first will be the senior of the two. Pope Gregory expects them to share authority and confer with one another.

Points noted:

• The bishops of London and East Saxony have special privileges. Could this be because they were established when the Romans occupied Britain?
• Pope Gregory must really trust Augustine to give him oversight of all the bishops in Britain. An ecclesiastical hierarchy is being created in Britain and Augustine is head of it. 

Liberation Philology's Old English iPhone App

I've been using Liberation Philology's Old English iPhone app for a while now and have come to really appreciate it. Although I have been using it to learn new vocabulary, I haven't really used the verb and noun flashcards to identify the verb tenses and noun declensions until now.

I tried memorizing the some of the paradigms in Mitchell and Robinson's A Guide to Old English by using my Flashcard app, but memorizing the endings was tedious and challenging. I much prefer reviewing them using the Old English app. The quizzes are in the multiple choice format using a specific set of words for each level. The endings are not studied in isolation (which is what I was doing), but are appended to words which are to be parsed. The only negative is that it is not possible to cumulatively test vocabulary, verb and noun forms learned from previous levels because each level is independent of the others. Overall though, at $2.99, the app is a great tool when used with a good textbook.

Mitchell and Robinson's book, is considered an excellent textbook by many. However, I am troubled by the book's format. The first part of the book is densely packed with information and paradigms regarding the declensions of nouns, verb forms and tenses and grammar, while the second part contains actual Old English text, appendices and a glossary. Ambitious autodidacts are given a list of objectives to master and must skip around from section to section in a disjointed pattern, while keeping in mind that this should be done in conjunction with the readings. After reassuring the student that it might actually be possible to understand OE after a page or two of easy reading (which look a lot like modern English), the book plunges into the murky depths of actual medieval texts. This is probably akin to having a first semester Latin student read The Twelve Caesars by the ancient Roman historian Suetonius!

Since OE is not a modern language and does not have the popularity of ancient Latin, there seems to be very few books which teach it in the same manner whereby the budding foreign language student is introduced to a few useful everyday words, simple grammar and graded reading exercises with each section building upon the last. Many Latin books, such as the classic Wheelock's Latin are designed this way and it would be nice to see a similar book for OE.