King Alfred and India

I come from Kerala, the southernmost state in India referenced in the article. My last name is Thomas and every now and then people in the US look at me bewildered when I tell them my name – “But you don’t look Spanish”. I take it as an opportunity to give them a bit of a history lesson – “Do you know Christianity came to India 14 centuries before the US? And Columbus was looking for these Indians selling black pepper?”

Surprises people so much to know that Christianity exists in India, let alone that St. Thomas died in India [1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_the_Apostle

The Last Kingdom on Netflix is a pretty decent series about this time. Sort of a non fantasy version of Game of Thrones. I think there are probably a fair bit of historical inaccuracies in there but nevertheless a fascinating time and decent series. I ended up reading up on wikipedia about several of the characters (at least the non fictional ones).

This is interesting, but I don't believe it's all that surprising. Medieval Europe was very well connected. Alfred himself went to Rome when he was a child and had an extensive cultural exchange with mainland Europe. It is also well known, as the article points out, that interactions with Asia was much more widespread than what is perhaps understood by most people today (who still sees it as a dark age).

This can also be seen by the fact that Christian communities existed, not only in India, but also in China as early as the 7th Century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_China#Earliest...

There were networks of trade far older than even this between Europe and India.

Pompeii Lakshmi (1CE):

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pompeii_Lakshmi

1st century Roman coins found in Southern India:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Roman_trade_relations

Really, all these guys had to do was get to the vicinity of Rome or Constantinople, and catch a connection, and they were there.

So I take it that island at the far east of the map is Japan?

Its interesting how they thought the Nile came from Asia. And what's with Scandinavia missing?

Green notes that England is rather remote. This may be one reason for the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons.

> “The utter remoteness of the islands at the north-westerly limits of the Ocean and the barbarian nature of their inhabitants was a commonplace or topos in the work of Roman poets and historians. ….Christian commentators living in the Empire, however, adapted this secular image of the centrality of Rome in the light of a very different biblical tradition that Jerusalem was the centre of the earth. Old Testament prophecies had announced that the glory the God of Israel would one day be revealed to all peoples, even to idolatrous gentiles throughout the ‘multitude of isles’…”¹

But the theme was not exclusively eschatologic. “Bede made sophisticated use of the Roman, biblical, and patristic strands of the topos in his account of the various conversions and reconversions of peoples and regions within ‘the multitude of isles’.”

Awareness of the remoteness of Britain was likely therefore closely related to British Christian identity.

Interestingly, however, the scholarly basis of that identity was increasingly undermined. Of Charlemagne’s time, Pirenne wrote

> Among these purely Germanic Anglo-Saxons the Latin culture was introduced suddenly, together with the Latin religion, and it profited by the enthusiasm felt for the latter. No sooner were they converted, under the influence and guidance of Rome, than the Anglo-Saxons turned their gaze toward the Sacred City. They visited it continually, bringing back relics and manuscripts. They submitted themselves to its suggestive influence, and learned its language, which for them was no vulgar tongue, but a sacred language, invested with an incomparable prestige. As early as the 7th century there were men among the Anglo-Saxons, like the Venerable Bede and the poet Aldhelm, whose learning was truly astonishing as measured by the standards of Western Europe.

> The intellectual reawakening which took place under Charlemagne must be attributed to the Anglo-Saxon missionaries.³

And Alcuin, an Anglo-Saxon, was of course in charge of the Palace School. Pirenne continues:

> It was the North that now proceeded to diffuse the culture which it had received from the Mediterranean. …In this way the Anglo-Saxons became simultaneously the reformers of the language and also the reformers of the church.⁴

By Alfred’s time, however, the English were in dire need of scholarship from the continent. I haven’t a copy of English Historical Documents on me, but Fulk, to whom Alfred wrote in supplication that scholars from Rheims might be sent to revive learning in England, replied most condescendingly (whilst granting his request): he informed Alfred, as if he were some ignoramus, of the existence of church councils (as if any Christian at the time would have been unaware of their existence), rambled on about his part in the apostolic succession (as if England was not also home to bishops validly part of the episcopal succession too), and emphasised the propriety of customs in his part of the world. Alfred could do nothing but accept the onerous conditions imposed upon him near the end of the letter, such was the state of degeneration of the church.

1. Jennifer O’Reilly, “The art of authority”, in After Rome, Thomas Charles-Edwards ed., p. 141 2. Ibid, p. 142 3. Henri Pirenne, “From Mohammed and Charlemagne”, in The Pirenne Thesis: Analysis Criticism And Revision, A.F. Havighurst ed., Boston 1958, 109pp., p. 38 4. Ibid, p. 39