The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews reminds Christians that they are surrounded by a great “cloud of witnesses.” (NRSVA) That “cloud” has continued to grow in size since then. In this column we will be thinking about some of the people and events, over the past 2000 years, that have helped make up this “cloud.” People and events that have helped build the community of the Christian church as it exists today.
Every nation has its ‘deep story,’ the way that it consciously and unconsciously draws on its history (and its imagined history) to define its modern identity. None more so than the English. Today, the idea of what it means to be ‘English’ lies behind much of the heated and contested conversation in England about its character and its place within the UK. What is often overlooked is the origin of ‘Englishness’ and the way that the Christian Church largely invented the label as part of the conversion of the early Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.
The English in the popular imagination
We often take for granted the existence of a place called ‘England’ and a community of those living there to be ‘English’.
Most people imagine this was because the English (ie the Anglo-Saxons) were a recognisable ethnic group who left northwestern Europe to seize land at the end of Roman Britain in the 5th century; drove out the British (Celtic) inhabitants during the ‘Dark Age’ wars of the 6th century; and created a community that we can call ‘England’ by the middle of the 7th century. Hence references in popular culture to modern people being ‘Anglo-Saxon’ (ie ‘English’), even ‘pure Anglo-Saxon.’
However, things were more complex and the implications of this are very significant. They are still relevant today in debates over national identity.
The Viking Wars and political rebranding
2025 is the anniversary of the crowning of one of the most important kings of England that most people have never heard of. In September 925, Athelstan was crowned king of Wessex at Kingston upon Thames.
As a result of the Viking Wars, large parts of England in the east and north had been seized by incoming Norse-speaking rulers and settlers during the second half of the 9th century. The Christian Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of East Anglia, Northumbria, and the eastern regions of Mercia had been conquered by Viking pagan armies. However, under Athelstan’s grandfather, Alfred the Great (died 899), father, Edward the Elder (died 924) and aunt Ethelfled Lady of the Mercians (died 918) the only surviving Anglo-Saxon kingdom – Wessex (the West Saxons) – had fought back.
At first, this meant that the lands south of the Thames and in the West Midlands remained in Anglo-Saxon hands, ruled by the king of Wessex and allies in the West Midlands (in what was left of the old kingdom of Mercia).
New labels were invented to describe these rulers and the lands under their control. Alfred was occasionally called “Anglorum-Saxonum Rex” (King of the Anglo-Saxons) but his usual royal title was “Rex Anglorum” (King of the Angles/English). It was a clever piece of political terminology that positioned him as representing all ‘Christian Anglo-Saxons,’ as a people distinct from the ‘pagan Danes’ (the latter a catch-all label of convenience for Viking bands and settlers) and the ‘Christian Welsh.’ It implied that all the Anglo-Saxon peoples (despite their long history of division into separate rival kingdoms) were one recognisable ethnic community: the ‘Angli’ (English). This rebranding continued under his son, Edward the Elder.
In the early 10th century, the fight against the Vikings was taken to the East Midlands and areas of Norse control there were conquered. Then, under Athelstan, the area was extended even further. His reign would see a West Saxon king annex Viking Northumbria, invade Scotland and finally defeat a huge alliance of Viking forces, Scots and Welsh in 937, at the Battle of Brunanburh.
During his reign a new royal title of REX TO (tius) BRIT (anniae) – King of all Britain – appeared on his coinage, along with the first representation of any English monarch wearing a crown. In 927, at Eamont, south of Penrith, rulers of the Welsh, Scots, and independent Anglo-Saxons around Bamburgh (in Northumbria) accepted Athelstan, king of England, as their overlord. In one of his documents he called himself “Athelstan, king of the English, through the favour of the Almighty raised to the throne of the kingdom of the whole of Britain.”
Athelstan’s kingdom was one that included Anglo-Saxons, Danish and Irish-Norse Vikings and whose authority overshadowed the neighbouring kingdoms of the Scots and the Welsh. It was an achievement forged in wars that were conducted on a scale larger than any fought in previous phases in the Viking Wars. Modern historians have hailed him as the creator of a united ‘England’ (albeit with borders rather different to today’s).
It had taken over 450 years for the idea of an ‘English’ political nation to emerge. Yet, when it did, the idea of a culturally ‘English people’ was already 300 years old. And this was a direct result of the way that the mixed pagan Germanic kingdoms were seen, initially from the perspective of the pope in Rome, and then by those who pioneered the Christian conversion on the ground in the 7th century. Alfred the Great and his successors were working with a concept that was centuries old by the time they and their propagandists sought to use it as a counterpoise to a new wave of pagan (Viking) invaders.
The Christian conversion and the invention of the ‘English’
The peoples who created new kingdoms in the wreckage of, what had once been, Roman Britain (in the 5th and 6th centuries) claimed to come from Germanic tribes named Saxons, Angles and Jutes. However, they were not very consistent in how they used these labels and their enemies tended to call them all ‘Saxons’: ‘Saesnaeg’ (to the Welsh) and ‘Sasanach’ (to the Scots). Had that stuck, English people would now be ‘Saxons,’ and living in ‘Saxony.’ But another label emerged.
The Christian mission from Rome to the Germanic kingdoms in what had once been eastern Roman Britain (arriving in Kent in 597) opted for a convenient label to describe their target audience, and it stuck. When the Northumbrian monk Bede wrote his highly influential account of the origins of his people and their conversion to Christianity, he titled it: the ‘Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum’ (Ecclesiastical History of the English People) and described how Pope Gregory the Great sent a mission (under Augustine) “to preach the Word of God to the English nation.”
In his account he also recorded a legend that Gregory met slaves in Rome and asked “What was the name of that nation?” To which the reply was that they were called Angles. Gregory had then said, “Right, for they have an angelic face, and it is right that such should be co-heirs with the Angels in heaven.’”
‘Angli’ (English), not ‘Saxones’ (Saxons) was selected as the overall label that included all the Germanics on the island of Britain. It was probably chosen to distinguish the Germanic people in Britain - the ‘Anglisaxones’ (English Saxons) – from continental ‘Old Saxons’ still living in Old Saxony in Germany.
This also insisted that – despite all the complexity and diversity on the ground – those in the ‘gentis Anglorum’ (the English nation) were a recognisable ethnic unit. The intriguing thing is that they were not one ethnic group. The evidence of archaeology, landscape studies, political geography and now modern genetic studies reveals that the emerging English community was ethnically complex. Even in its most Germanic communities, 25% were probably ‘British,’ who now dressed, spoke, and acted ‘English.’ And this became even more pronounced the further west one went. Even at the highest levels this was the case, with founders of Anglo-Saxon dynasties having British names.
When Alfred the Great sought to rally support behind his resistance to the Vikings he drew on a useful term that was already over 250 years old, and gave it enhanced political meaning which transcended old kingdom loyalties, in a world where Wessex alone had withstood Viking conquest. And the term ‘English’ had deep resonance because it was also one intimately linked to Christian faith.
But Alfred’s kingdom included those culturally recognisable as Welsh, and the newly minted English kingdom of his grandson, Athelstan, included Norse as well, many of whom were pagan. Once more the term ‘English’ and ‘England’ was culturally inclusive as it had always been – however it might appear at first glance. It represented all those who lived within its borders, whatever their ethnic origins.
In conclusion, it was the Christian Church which invented the idea of the ‘English’ – as a useful (catch-all) label – and the political nation played catch-up in its adoption of the term. As a result of the Roman Christian mission, before God the ‘English’ were thought to stand as one recognisable community - but they were never one ethnic or racial group (whatever the label or Bede implied) and the term ‘English’ was always a complex one.
That is worth reflecting on in our modern age of culture wars and identity politics. Who the ‘English’ were and are has always prompted a debate. The conversation over this continues in the 21st century, as it did in the 7th and the 10th. Just switch on the news to discover that!
Martyn Whittock is a historian, commentator, columnist and a Licensed Lay Minister in the Church of England. The author, or co-author, of fifty-seven books, his work includes: Daughters of Eve (2021), Jesus the Unauthorized Biography (2021), The End Times, Again? (2021), The Story of the Cross (2021), Apocalyptic Politics (2022) and American Vikings: How the Norse Sailed into the Lands and Imaginations of America (2023). His latest book (published in April) is: Vikings in the East. From Vladimir the Great to Vladimir Putin – the Origins of a Contested Legacy in Russia and Ukraine.
