Early Christianity in south-west Britain : Wessex, Somerset, Devon, Cornwall and the Channel Islands /
This book offers a new assessment of early Christianity in southwest Britain from the fourth to the tenth centuries, a rich period which includes the transition from Roman to native British to Saxon models of church. The book will be based on evidence from archaeological excavations, early texts and...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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Oxford, UK ; Havertown, Pennsylvania :
Windgather Press,
2020.
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| Summary: | This book offers a new assessment of early Christianity in southwest Britain from the fourth to the tenth centuries, a rich period which includes the transition from Roman to native British to Saxon models of church. The book will be based on evidence from archaeological excavations, early texts and recent critical scholarship and cover Wessex, Devon and Cornwall. In the south-west, Wessex provides the greatest evidence of Roman Christianity. The fifth-century Dorset villas of Frampton and Hinton St Mary, with their complex baptistery mosaics, indicate the presence of sophisticated Christian house churches. The fact that these two Roman villas are only fifteen miles apart suggests a network of small Christian communities in this region. The author uses evidence from St Patrick's fifth-century 'Confessions' to describe how members of a villa house church lived. Wessex was slowly Christianized. In Gloucestershire, the pagan healing sanctuary at Chedworth provides evidence of later use as a Christian baptistery. At Bradford, on Avon in Wiltshire, a baptistery was dug into the mosaic floor of an imposing villa, which may by then have been owned by a bishop. |
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| Physical Description: | 284 pages : illustrations (some color), maps ; 25 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 1911188550 9781911188551 |