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Baptized but not Converted: The Vikings in Tenth–Century Francia
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
This essay focuses on one particular encounter between pagan and Christian in tenth–century Western Europe, namely the aftermath of the Viking settlement in Rouen and its environs in or around the year 911. There is little contemporary evidence for the early settlement and such as exists was written from a Christian perspective. The Vikings left no records, although their descendants wrote several romanticized accounts of their origins, again from a Christian perspective. Despite this bias in the sources, it is possible to use them to examine the interaction between the two groups. In particular, two letters survive, one from Pope John X (914–28/9) and one from Archbishop Hervé of Reims (900–22), which together give a unique perspective on what it was like at the sharp end of the Viking influx.
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References
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43 ‘[R]ogatis … his qui rebaptizati sunt et aeque ut ante baptismum juxta paganismi morem quemadmodum sues suum reversi ad volutabrum et canes ad vomitum ludicras voluptates nefando paganorum ritu exercuere’: ibid., fol. 102r.
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45 Balbulus Notker, Gesta Karoli Magni 2.19 (MGH SS n.s. 12, 90).
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47 Ibid., fol. 105r.
48 Ibid., fol. 104r.
49 Cramer, , Baptism and Change, 127.Google Scholar
50 ‘[D]e ipsa gente Northmannorum quae ad fidem divina inspirante clementia conversa olim humano sanguine grassata laetabatur’: MS 4280A, fol.106v.
51 Ibid., fol. 106v.
52 Ibid., fol. 107r.
53 Guillot, Conversion, 109.
54 Kelly, , ed., Oxford Dictionary of Popes, 121–2.Google Scholar
55 MS 4280A, fol. 102r.The Scripture passages are Ps. 32: 5;Wisd. 11: 24.
56 MS 4280A, fol. 102r.
57 Ibid., fols 102r-v.
58 Ibid., fols 103v-104r.
59 Ibid., chs 2–5, 12, 13, 15, 21–22.
60 Ibid., chs 16-19.
61 MS 4280A, fol. 103r; The Letters of Gregory the Great, transl. John R. C. Martyn, 3 vols, Medieval Sources in Translation 40 (Toronto, ON, 2004), 2: 497 (Epistola 8.1).
62 MS 4280A, fol. 103r; Letters of Gregory the Great, transl. Martyn, 3: 803 (Epistola11.56).
63 For Gregory’s views on conversion, see Dunn, Marilyn, The Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons C.597-C.700: Discourses of Life, Death and Afterlife (London, 2009), 44–54.Google Scholar
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73 Die Briefe des heligen Bonifatus und Lullus (MGH Epp. Sel. 1, 44-7; letter 26).
74 It took some hundred and fifty years to establish control over marriage. Of the seven counts or dukes from Rollo to William the Conqueror (duke 1035–87), only the brothers Richard III (duke 1026-7) and Robert I (duke 1027-35) were born in wedlock.