The English and the Celts - no genocide?

[Robert Vermaat]

The situation with the church in Britain is very interesting. The most Christianised part of Roman Britain was the south east with scant evidence of christianisation in the west. However, by the end of the 6th cent., the situation is reversed. Whether this is the result of the church and the congregation moving west, or the church only, is unknown. The important point is that, in Britain, the church moved whereas in Gaul, it didn't.

Indeed a very interesting question. The total lack of sources for these sort of details compells us to speculate. Did the church move?

Gildas, writing in the early 6th c. does not give one single hint that the Saxons drove either British or Christians before them to the West. Whereas he clearly speaks of hard times and occupying saxons, he never accuses them of persecuting Christians. Instead, he confirms that the British still have a functioning clerical organisation, more than half a century after the point where some want to see a Saxon wave of immigrants driving all before them. Gildas never ever indicates that the Britons or the Christian Britons have been driven from vast trackts of the east.

Ken Dark is of the opiniion that not only British people stayed put, but also that British Christians were around during Bede's time: Dark, Kenneth R. (2000): Britain and the End of the Roman Empire, (Tempus, Stroud).

Of course, Britain would not be the only place where Christian, under pressure of pagans, reverted back to paganism.