The tabernacula of Gregory the Great and the

conversion of Anglo-Saxon England

 


In a famous letter to his missionaries in England, Pope Gregory the Great suggested
that the newly converted Anglo-Saxons should be encouraged to build small huts, or
‘tabernacula’, in conjunction with Christian festivals. He seems to have associated these
structures with the Jewish festival of Sukkot, reflecting a missionary strategy modelled
on both the biblical conversion of the Israelites and on Gregory’s own proselytizing
approach towards the Jews of Rome. Gregory’s instructions are discussed in the light
of historical writings and archaeological evidence, which suggest that ‘tabernacula’
were indeed constructed in England during the conversion period, possibly adapted
from pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon ritual structures.
The Anglo-Saxons’ predilection for casting themselves as spiritual heirs of the
Old Testament Jews has long attracted the fascination of cultural historians,
and constitutes an important thematic approach to the study of Old English
literature, expressed most concisely by Malcolm Godden in an introductory
textbook: ‘For the Anglo-Saxons the Old Testament was a veiled way of talking
about their own situation . . . Despite Ælfric’s insistence that the old law had
been replaced by the new, at least in its literal sense, in many ways the old
retained its power for the Anglo-Saxons, and gave them a way of thinking
about themselves as nations’.1 Andrew Scheil’s recent book-length study of the
use of Jews and Israel as literary images and moral exempla in the prose of the
Venerable Bede and Ælfric of Eynsham has given the subject a particularly
thorough treatment, identifying the roots of the populus Israhel imagery in the
writings of patristic authors such as Eusebius and Gregory the Great.2
However, the typological correspondence between the Anglo-Saxons and the
Jews was not simply an exegetical conceit constructed from patristic sources by
historiographers such as the Venerable Bede, but an idea which began circulat-
ing in England several generations before Bede as the central tenet of the con-
version strategy employed by Gregory the Great’s missionaries. From the earliest
stages of the conversion period, Roman missionaries explicitly encouraged the
11
‘Biblical Literature: the Old Testament’, The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature, ed.
M. Godden and M. Lapidge (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 206–26, at 225.
12
A. P. Scheil, The Footsteps of Israel: Understanding Jews in Anglo-Saxon England (Ann Arbor, MI,
2004).
1

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 Flora Spiegel
Anglo-Saxons to identify with the Jews of the Old Testament. This approach to
conversion found its most tangible expression in Gregory’s suggestion that the
newly Christianized inhabitants of England should be encouraged to build taber-
nacula, small hut structures probably inspired by the ritual booths constructed by
medieval Jews during their celebration of the autumn Feast of Tabernacles. Here
I shall examine the literary and archaeological evidence for the construction of
tabernacula in England, and its implications for the wider theoretical background
of Gregory the Great’s missionary strategy.
  ’ E P I S T O L A A D M E L L I T U M
In his letter to Abbot Mellitus, written in July of 601 and preserved in Bede’s
Historia ecclesiastica, Gregory directed that the English practice of sacrificing
cattle to pagan gods should be converted into Christian feasts in praise of the
Creator, accompanying church dedications and saints’ days. In this, Gregory
likened the English to the Israelites in Egypt, who the God of the Old
Testament had permitted to continue their customary sacrificial cult after their
initial reception of the Law:
Vt die dedicationis uel natalicii sanctorum martyrum, quorum illic reliquiae ponuntur,
tabernacula sibi circa easdem ecclesias, quae ex fanis commutatae sunt, de ramis
arborum faciant, et religiosis conuiuiis sollemnitatem celebrent, nec diabolo iam ani-
malia immolent, et ad laudem Dei in esu suo animalia occidant et donatori omnium de
satietate sua gratias referant, ut dum eis aliqua exterius gaudia reseruantur, ad interiora
gaudia consentire facilius ualeant. Nam duris mentibus simul omnia abscidere inpossi-
bile esse non dubium est, quia et is, qui summum locum ascendere nititur, gradibus uel
passibus, non autem saltibus eleuatur. Sic Israhelitico populo in Aegypto Dominus se
quidem innotuit, sed tamen eis sacrificiorum usus, quae diabolo solebat exhibere, in
cultu proprio reseruauit, ut eis in suo sacrificio animalia immolare praeciperet.3
This was not the first time that Gregory had used the analogy of the Anglo-
Saxons and the Israelites of the Old Testament. In his Moralia in Iob, which

13
‘So on the day of the dedication or the festival of the holy martyrs, whose relics are
deposited there, let them make themselves tabernacula from the branches of trees around the
churches which have been converted out of shrines, and let them celebrate the solemnity with
religious feasts. Do not let them sacrifice animals to the devil, but let them slaughter animals
for their own food to the praise of God, and let them give thanks to the Giver of all things
for his bountiful provision. Thus while some outward rejoicings are preserved, they will be
able more easily to share in inward rejoicings. It is doubtless impossible to cut out everything
at once from their stubborn minds: just as the man who is attempting to climb to the highest
place, rises by steps and degrees and not by leaps. Thus the Lord made himself known to the
Israelites in Egypt; yet he preserved in his own worship the forms of sacrifice which they
were accustomed to offer to the devil and commanded them to kill animals when sacrificing
to him’. Historia ecclesiastica I.30, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. B. Colgrave
and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1969), p. 108; trans. adapted from Colgrave and Mynors, p. 109.
2

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 The tabernacula of Gregory the Great
pre-dated the Roman mission to the Anglo-Saxons, Gregory was already
drawing comparisons between the Jews and the inhabitants of Britain.4
However, the centrality of the analogy in Gregory’s instructions to Mellitus is
significant in that the letter represents the genesis of a conversion strategy
developed specifically for use in Anglo-Saxon England, crafted in response to
firsthand reports from the mission field. The letter shows that the correspon-
dence between his missionaries’ reports of Anglo-Saxon pagan rites and the
Old Testament invectives against idolatry had not gone unnoticed by Gregory;
animal sacrifice, like idol worship, being a generic feature of biblical pagan
practice. Drawing on the Old Testament both as an anthropological guide and
as a practical missionary manual, Gregory expected that the same methods
used by the God of the Old Testament to convert the Israelites from polythe-
ism to monotheism would work successfully in England.
Despite the high likelihood that Gregory had projected Old Testament
models of paganism onto the Anglo-Saxon situation wherever his missionar-
ies’ firsthand reports were silent, ritual slaughter does seem to have been an
important and widespread component of Anglo-Saxon pre-Christian worship,
borne out in the archaeological record by the large caches of cow and pig skulls
uncovered at sites such as Yeavering, and recorded perhaps less reliably in
chapter IX of Tacitus’s Germania with regards to first-century Continental
Germanic tribes.5 The importance of large-scale animal sacrifice to Germanic
paganism contemporary with the Anglo-Saxon period is also suggested by the
letters of St Boniface, who attempted to stamp out the practice entirely in his
mission to the Continent.6 In his De temporum ratione, Bede names November as
Blodmona
, explaining it as ‘the month of sacrifices’ as it was the month in

14
Ecce lingua Britanniae, quae nihil aliud nouerat, quam barbarum frendere, iam dudum in diuinis laudibus
Hebraeum coepit Alleluia resonare, ‘Lo, the tongue of Britain, which knew nothing other than bar-
barous gnashing, has now recently begun to resound in divine praise with the Alleluia of the
Hebrews’, XXVII.11 (PL 76:411a). Bede interpreted this passage as referring to the 596
mission of Augustine, but the Moralia was written in 591 and circulating by 595. Gregory
almost certainly meant the comment with regard to British Christianity in the immediate post-
Roman period, which he incorrectly believed was still current in England on a significant
scale. See C. Stancliffe, ‘The British Church and the Mission of St Augustine’, St Augustine and
the Conversion of England, ed. R. Gameson (Stroud, 1991), pp. 107–51, at 111–13.
15
Deorum maxime Mercurium colunt, cui certis diebus humanis quoque hostiis litare fas habent. Herculem ac
Martem concessis animalibus placant. ‘Of the gods they especially worship Mercury, whom they
consider it appropriate on certain days to make offering with human sacrifices. They appease
Hercules and Mars with animals they have relinquished to them.’ (Cornelii Taciti Opera Minora,
ed. M. Winterbottom and R. M. Ogilvie (Oxford, 1975), p. 42). On the abundant archaeolog-
ical evidence for Anglo-Saxon ritual slaughter, see D. Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Paganism (London,
1992), pp. 34–7.
16
See, for example, Ep. 28 (Die Briefe des Heiligen Bonifatius und Lullus, ed. M. Tangl, MGH Ep. I
(Berlin, 1955), p. 50, lines 24–8) and Ep. 28 (ibid., p. 100, lines 26–8).
3

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 Flora Spiegel
which the cattle were slaughtered en masse in order to provide food throughout
the winter, accompanied by dedications to the native gods.7 As with Gregory’s
accompanying directive to Mellitus regarding the conversion of pagan shrines
into churches, the idea was to introduce explicitly Christian celebrations, such
as saints’ days, into the Anglo-Saxon ritual year by associating them with pre-
existing native festivals.
Gregory’s rather bizarre prescription that the Anglo-Saxons should build
huts out of tree branches during these slaughter ceremonies, his description of
the huts as tabernacula, and his couching these instructions in the context of the
Israelites’ reception of the Law after their forty-year sojourn in the desert, all
suggest an explicit reference to the Jewish festival of Sukkot. Sukkot is the
week-long autumn harvest feast held five days after Yom Kippur in commem-
oration of the end of the Israelites’ forty years in the wilderness. Biblical
accounts of the festival celebrations (primarily Deut. XVI) prescribed sacrifices
of cattle, offerings of agricultural produce and a ritual rereading of the
Decalogue. In the Vulgate, the festival was called the sollemnitas tabernaculorum, or
‘Feast of Tabernacles’ (for example, Deut. XVI.13–16 and XXXI.10). As
Gregory uses the term tabernacula in close conjunction with sollemnitas in the
passage quoted above, it is probable that he intended it as a specific reference
to the sollemnitas tabernaculorum named in the Old Testament. Although the usual
meaning of tabernaculum in Medieval Latin is either ‘tent’ (where it is used syn-
onymously with tentorium), or ‘the Old Testament Tabernacle’ (referring to both
the mobile tabernacle built by Moses, and to Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem),
neither of these definitions is reflected in Gregory’s letter, where he uses the
word to describe temporary structures made of branches.8
Gregory’s role as legal advocate for Jewish communities throughout the
former Roman Empire, his personal relationships with Jewish converts to
Christianity in Rome, and his involvement in numerous legal disputes over
Jewish public festivals make it quite certain that he was aware of early-medieval
Jewish traditions for celebrating the holiday by building an outdoor sukkah
(Heb. ‘booth’) roofed in green branches or straw, representing the mobile
dwellings occupied by the Israelites in the aftermath of their exodus from
17
Nouember, Blodmonath . . . mensis immolationem quod in eo pecora quae occisuri erant diis suis voverent.
‘November [is] “Bloodmonth”, the month of sacrifices in which they dedicated to their gods
the beasts that they were about to slaughter.’ Ch. XVI, De temporum ratione, ed. C. W. Jones,
Bedae opera didascalica, CCSL 123B (Turnhout, 1977), pp. 330 and 332.
18
For the definitions and Old English equivalents of tabernaculum and tentorium, see P. Lendinara,
‘The Old English Renderings of Latin tabernaculum and tentorium’, Anglo-Saxonica: Festschrift für
Hans Schabram zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. K. R. Grinda and C. D. Wetzel (Munich, 1993),
pp. 289–325, esp. 289n.
19
For detailed discussion of Gregory’s relationships with Jewish converts and Jewish commu-
nities in the former Roman empire, see S. Katz, ‘Pope Gregory the Great and the Jews’, Jewish
4

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 The tabernacula of Gregory the Great
Egypt.9 This temporary structure usually was erected at the side of the syna-
gogue for the duration of the week-long festival, serving as the focal point for
outdoor feasts, juggling and dancing.10 Gregory’s letter to Mellitus gives
instructions for building precisely this type of structure, rather than a tent or
mobile temple. As Gregory specifies that the trees growing around the shrines
should be used in constructing these tabernacula, he may also have intended the
festival to provide a convenient occasion for the disposal or ritual defiling of
groves which had served as foci for pagan worship.11 Gregory’s association of
the building of tabernacula with the convivium of feasting (et religiosis conuiuiis
sollemnitatem celebrant) also suggests that he envisioned the occasion as a light-
hearted communal celebration cast in the model of the early-medieval Jewish
festival.12
Gregory’s prescription for the Anglo-Saxons to begin their process of conver-
sion by celebrating a proto-Jewish festival and praying to the Old Testament
Creator exemplifies his stated goal of converting the English by increments
(gradibus uel passibus, non autem saltibus). In Gregory’s worldview, his Jewish con-
temporaries occupied the middle position on the spectrum of rationality between
Christians and practising pagans.13 The English, on the other hand, represented
an extreme of pagan barbarism on the western frontier of Roman contact. The
Epistola ad Mellitum suggests that the new plan was that the missionaries should

Quarterly Rev. ns 24 (1933–4), 113–36, esp. pp. 119 and 124–6. Sukkot and Passover were the
two most prominent public Jewish festivals in Roman diaspora communities, and symbols
associated with Sukkot, such as the lulav and etrog, are among the most frequently depicted
motifs in the frescoes decorating the third- and fourth-century Jewish catacombs in Rome,
suggesting the historical importance of the festival to Gregory’s local Jewish community. See
M. H. Williams, The Jews Among the Greeks and Romans: A Diasporan Sourcebook (London, 1998),
p. 61; and T. Rajak, ‘The Jewish Community and its Boundaries’, The Jews Among Pagans and
Christians in the Roman Empire, ed. J. Lieu, J. North and T. Rajak (London, 1992), pp. 9–28,
at p. 18.
10
For specific customs relating to the celebration of the festival of Sukkot in medieval
European Jewish communities, albeit deriving from primary sources earlier and later than
Gregory’s time, from which no first-hand reports of Sukkot customs survive, see I.
Abrahams, Jewish Life in the Middle Ages (New York, 1958), pp. 128, 151, 260 and 396.
11
Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Paganism, pp. 41–3.
12
Sukkot seems to have had a particular reputation for public hilarity in both the ancient and
early Christian Greco-Roman world. Plutarch (Quaestiones Conviviales IV.6.2) described the
holiday’s feasting, music and public processions as comparable to Dionysian rites. John
Chrysostom singled Sukkot out for special complaint while castigating Christians in his com-
munity in Antioch, c. 380 CE, for participating in the public celebrations accompanying
Jewish holidays (Aduersus Iudaeos, I.1).
13
See for instance, Gregory’s Moralia in Iob, XXXV.42 (PL 79:772), which favourably compared
his Jewish contemporaries to his own pagan ancestors. For discussion of the ‘Ladder of
Contemplation’ (scala considerationis) as a central concept in Gregory’s understanding of a
world ordered by reason, see C. E. Straw, Gregory the Great: Perfection in Imperfection (London,
1988), p. 33.
5

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 Flora Spiegel
first bring the English up to the intellectual level of the Jews, with knowledge of
the Law, the Old Testament, and the concept of a single deity and Creator; and
later introduce them to the distinctive Christian elements of the faith, such as the
doctrine of original sin, the Trinity, and the life and person of Jesus Christ.
    
A peculiar feature of the temple complex identified by Brian Hope-Taylor in
his excavation of Edwin’s Yeavering appears to indicate that, at one pagan–
Christian transition site, at least, Gregory’s instructions regarding the con-
struction of tabernacula had been carried out to the letter.14 On the western side
of Building D2, the probable temple structure containing large caches of care-
fully arranged ox skulls, Hope-Taylor uncovered the remains of at least four
crudely constructed rectangular wattle huts, each measuring approximately six
feet by twelve feet. These huts had been built successively upon the same spot,
apparently as intentionally temporary structures. Hope-Taylor found their con-
struction puzzling in that:
The flimsiness of these huts is made the more notable by contrast with the solidity of
what must have been the parent building. If the need for an out-building had been con-
tinuous, it would surely have been built in a more permanent and sightly form, in
keeping with the structure with which it was associated. It is more probable that the
need was intermittent, and that each building was put up to fulfil a brief but recurrent
14
Examined against the archaeological record and Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica, Gregory’s accom-
panying instructions regarding the conversion of Anglo-Saxon pagan temples into churches
are more problematic. Although Blair has shown that Anglo-Saxon pagan sites routinely incor-
porated pre-existing Bronze Age mounds and earthworks, several hundred years of archaeo-
logical excavation have not produced a single example of an Anglo-Saxon church built over
the foundations of any pre-Christian structure, let alone one confidently identified as a temple
building (J. Blair, ‘Anglo-Saxon Pagan Shrines and their Prototypes’, ASSAH 8 (1995), 1–28;
Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Paganism, p. 44). Wilson (p. 45) also draws attention to two instances
recounted by Bede of pagan temples being burnt by their newly-converted users, as in the case
of the shrine at Goodmanham (Historia ecclesiastica II.13) and King Rædwald’s temple in East
Anglia (Historia ecclesiastica II.15), suggesting that Gregory’s instructions to his missionaries
were not necessarily followed by Anglo-Saxon authorities themselves. However, it is also pos-
sible that the story motif of converted kings destroying their pagan shrines (conceptually rem-
iniscent of 2 Kings XXIII, Ezek. VI.4 and Micah I.7, among numerous biblical analogues) was
a detail of Bede’s own manufacture, designed to portray his ancestors’ rejection of paganism
as dramatically as possible within a biblical framework. At present, the only confidently
identified example of a large-scale Anglo-Saxon pagan temple structure adapted for Christian
worship is Building D2 at Yeavering, but this building was destroyed within a few years of its
conversion to Christian use and no church was built subsequently on the same spot. For the
argument (after Hope-Taylor, below) that the remains of Anglo-Saxon pagan shrines are not
to be found beneath Anglo-Saxon church foundations, but in Anglo-Saxon cemeteries, see
Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Paganism, pp. 47–8 and 63–4.
15
Brian Hope-Taylor, Yeavering: an Anglo-British Centre of Early Northumbria, Department of the
Environment Archaeological Reports 7 (London, 1977), pp. 100–2.
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 The tabernacula of Gregory the Great
need, and was taken down as soon as it had served its immediate purpose.15
In the conclusion to his report, Hope-Taylor associated the hut remains directly
with Gregory’s tabernacula, and interpreted the whole assemblage of Building
D2 as physical evidence for Gregory’s instructions regarding the Anglo-Saxon
conversion having actually been implemented by Paulinus’s missionary team:
It is a coincidence too remarkable to be dismissed lightly that Building D2 alone, of all
the buildings at Yeavering, should have had a succession of short-lived, flimsy shacks
put up beside it – veritably huts made out of the boughs of trees. Moreover, the
stacked deposits of ox skulls suggestive of periodic feasts, pagan or Christian, the three
post-holes from which apparently non-structural posts [thought to have supported
pagan images] had been withdrawn at some time before the building’s destruction, and
the continued development of the Western cemetery all strongly support the hypoth-
esis that Building D2 was a heathen temple made over to Christian use.16
It is possible that Gregory’s instructions for the construction of tabernacula,
like his instructions regarding animal sacrifice, also deliberately reflected a pre-
Christian aspect of Germanic religious practice. The hut structures excavated at
the western door of Building D2 at Yeavering are in immediate physical prox-
imity not only to the temple building itself, but also to the inhumation graves in
the ‘Western Cemetery’ area of the settlement. The huts’ hypothetical pre-
conversion predecessors might therefore have served the same unknown func-
tion as the small timber or stone structures (tentatively interpreted as funerary
shrines) of similar size and rectangular shape whose remains have been found
among the graves at a number of pagan and early Christian Anglo-Saxon inhu-
mation cemeteries, including those at Bishopstone, Sussex; Polhill, Kent;
Lyminge, Kent; Morning Thorpe, Norfolk; and Spong Hill, Norfolk.17 The
resemblance is most pronounced between the hut remains at Yeavering and the
structure at the Polhill cemetery, the latter represented by sixteen postholes sug-
gesting an irregular rectangular structure roughly three by two metres in size.18
This similarity in architecture may be particularly significant given Yeavering’s
16
Ibid. p. 278.
17
For descriptions of these structural remains, see Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Paganism, pp. 47–53.
18
For detailed discussion of this ‘hut’ structure in the Polhill cemetery, see Brian Philp’s site
report in his Excavations in West Kent 1960–1970 (Dover, 1973), pp. 169–72.
19
Although Yeavering is located in the extreme north of England, there is clear historical and
archaeological evidence for its having had close ties to Kent, primarily through Edwin’s mar-
riage to a Christianized Kentish princess, Æthelburh, the daughter of Æthelberht of Kent.
According to Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica, Paulinus and his companions were granted access to
Edwin’s court through Æthelburh. A silver-inlaid iron belt buckle recovered from a grave at
Yeavering is of a Frankish design otherwise found only in Kentish graves, as is the gold coin
(G1). For descriptions of these artifacts, see Hope-Taylor, Yeavering, pp. 185 and 199; for
further discussion of the significance of their Kentish origin, see D. A. Hinton, ‘Great Sites:
Yeavering’, Brit. Archaeol. April 2001, 21–3, at p. 23.
7

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 Flora Spiegel
close ties to Kent via Edwin’s wife Æthelburh.19 Like Building D2 at Yeavering,
the roughly contemporary structure at Polhill (thought to have been built c. 650)
also displays possible evidence of a temporary outbuilding in the form of six
stake or stave-holes arranged in an arc at the northwest corner of the main
structure; that is, to the immediate right of what would have been its western
door and immediately adjacent to a patch of blackened soil containing animal
bones, perhaps representing an area used for the processing of sacrificial
offerings.20 It is therefore possible that this temporary annex to the Polhill
cemetery structure represents either a tabernaculum as prescribed by Gregory, or
one of its hypothetical traditional Germanic predecessors.
Bede’s account of the final days of Bishop Aidan (Historia ecclesiastica III.17)
at his church near the royal city of Bebba in Northumbria, provides another
intriguing parallel to the huts at the western door of the converted temple at
Yeavering: ‘Tetenderunt ergo ei egrotanti tentorium ad occidentalem ecclesiae
partem, ita ut ipsum tentorium parieti hereret ecclesiae; unde factum est, ut
adclinis destinae, quae extrinsecus ecclesiae pro munimine erat adposita, spiri-
tum uitae exhalaret ultimum.’21
Although Bede uses tentorium rather than tabernacula to describe the tempo-
rary structure erected for Aidan, the story’s Northumbrian milieu and the loca-
tion of the structure at the western door of the church suggest a partial
continuation of the practice that led to the building of the huts at the western
door of Building D2 at Yeavering and the temporary annex to the Polhill
shrine.22 Bede does not indicate whether the hut erected for Aidan had a
Christian ritual function or simply served the practical purpose of isolating a
sick man who wished to remain in close physical proximity to the church. Bede

20
Cf. Philp, who believes that these stake holes ‘represent some slight structures, perhaps built
for a process such as weaving or drying’ (Excavations, p. 171). Given that the Polhill hut was
clearly not a normal domestic dwelling, and that the similar stake holes Philp mentions from
other sites in the area were found inside domestic dwellings and not leaning against exterior
walls, these interpretations seem less convincing.
21
‘They erected a tent for him during his illness, at the west end of the church, the tent itself
being attached to the church wall. So it happened that he breathed his last, leaning against the
buttress which supported the church on the outside.’ (Text Colgrave and Mynors, pp. 262–4;
trans. pp. 263–5).
22
Moreover, Patrizia Lendinara’s analysis of the Old English vocabulary for tentorium and taber-
naculum has revealed that in Anglian dialects tabernaculum was usually translated as ‘house’ (hus)
or ‘dwelling’ (gesele, sele(ge)sceot), as in West-Saxon (eardung, eardungstow), whereas only tenth- and
eleventh-century commentators such as Ælfric and Byrhtferth used derivatives of geteld (‘tent’)
(‘Old English Renderings’, pp. 305–23). This suggests that Anglo-Saxons before Ælfric asso-
ciated tabernaculum with a more substantial type of structure than did Medieval Latin com-
mentators such as Isidore, whose Etymologiae defined the word as synonymous with tentorium
(ibid., p. 289n). However, there is no obvious indication that this peculiarly Anglo-Saxon inter-
pretation owed anything to first-hand experience of building tabernacula.
8

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 The tabernacula of Gregory the Great
only includes this detail in his account of Aidan’s death in order to explain why
a wooden post was still being venerated inside Aidan’s church in the late 640s,
despite it being an object probably visually and functionally indistinguishable
from the posts removed from Building D2 at Yeavering when it was converted
to Christian use – posts which a medieval missionary would have labelled idols.
Bede justifies this local tradition by interpreting the pillar as a church buttress
which had twice been spared miraculously from fire, having supported the ten-
torium in which the holy Aidan had breathed his last. At the very least, Bede’s
reliquary tale suggests that in the seventh century a tentorium or tabernaculum at
the western door of the church was for some reason considered important; not
regarded as an ordinary functional structure, but as a supernaturally charged
space.
Another possible literary analogue to Gregory’s tabernacula appears in King
Alfred’s preface to his translation of Augustine’s Soliloquia, which centres
around the elaborate and apparently unique metaphor of a temporary road-
side dwelling (lænan stoclife be is wæge) being constructed out of branches gath-
ered from the forest of the writings of Gregory, Jerome and Augustine.23 It
is conceivable that the emphasis on tabernacula in Gregory’s Epistola ad
Mellitum might have had some influence on this literary image, as the letter
was incorporated in the Latin original of Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica, although
it was omitted from the ninth-century Old English translation of the work
distributed under the auspices of the Alfredian educational programme.
However, it is equally possible that Alfred’s lænan stoclife simply represents an
Anglo-Saxonization of the ‘heavenly mansion’ imagery common in Latin
patristic literature.
As for the celebration of Gregory’s proto-Sukkot festival itself in England,
evidence of a different kind is present in one of the earliest surviving Insular
liturgical manuscripts, albeit without mention of either tabernacula or the Jews of
Deuteronomy. Cologne, Hist. Archiv der Stadt, Handschriften-bruchstücke, GB
Kasten B, nos. 24, 123 and 124, a fragmentary eighth-century sacramentary of
probable Northumbrian origin, contains an order for an entire votive mass Ad
fruges novas ‘For Blessing the New Fruits’, a service without precedent in the
Gelasian sacramentary (upon which the contents of the fragment appear to
have been partially based), or in any other foreign liturgical book.24 The
Northumbrian fragment includes four different blessings for new fruits, two of
23
King Alfred’s Old English Version of St. Augustine’s Soliloquies, ed. H. L. Hargrove, Yale Stud. in
Eng. (New York, 1902), p. 1, line 17.
24
The fragmentary manuscript was edited by H. M. Bannister, ‘Fragments of an Anglo-Saxon
Sacramentary’, JTS 12 (1911), 451–4. The order for the votive mass Ad fruges novas occupies
the r. and v. of Bannister’s ‘fol. d’. For the Northumbrian origin of the Cologne fragment, see
E. A. Lowe, Codices Latini antiquiores, VIII, no. 1165.
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 Flora Spiegel
which are otherwise unattested, along with the Gelasian text of the Benedictio
pomorum.25 Given the inclusion of an Old Roman form of the Benedictio ad fruges
novas (beginning with the formula Domine sanctae pater omnipotens aeterne deus qui
caelum et terram mare et omnia creasti) and a Gallican-type collect for offering wine
and oil (beginning Misericordiam pietatis tue supplices deprecamur omnipotens eterne deus)
in the Cologne fragment, it is not unreasonable to speculate that this eighth-
century mass might represent a conceptual, if not direct descendant of the
proto-Sukkot harvest festival in praise of the Creator prescribed by Gregory the
Great in his Epistola ad Mellitum, in which he also directed the Augustinian mis-
sionaries to employ whichever liturgical forms – presumably Gallican, by way of
British and Irish missionaries – were already in use in England.
     ’  

Whatever its real-life correspondence to Anglo-Saxon pagan religious prac-
tices, Gregory’s letter clearly indicates that he had also selected the Feast of
Tabernacles for its theological and typological resemblance to the Anglo-Saxon
conversion situation. In the Old Testament, the festival was meant to com-
memorate the forty years in the desert between the Israelites’ crossing of the
Red Sea and their reception of the Law and the Covenant, with the sukkah
(ritual booth) representing the temporary dwellings of the Israelites en route to
the promised land of Canaan (Deut. XVI.13–16). The Feast of Tabernacles
was also the day on which King Solomon had dedicated the first temple in
Jerusalem (1 Kings VIII.1–6), a significance which Gregory probably had in
mind when he directed that the building of the tabernacula should accompany
church dedications in England. Moreover, in the New Testament, Jesus first
preached to the Jews from the steps of the Temple on the Feast of
Tabernacles, exhorting them as if to baptism (John VII). In an era where the
Bible was routinely consulted as a practical guide for missionary strategy, the
Feast of Tabernacles would seem an auspicious occasion for St Augustine’s
cohorts to renew their preaching efforts among the Anglo-Saxons in the hopes
of attracting a more substantial number of converts.
Gregory’s association of the Anglo-Saxons with the Jews of Deuteronomy
had contemporary relevance as well as typological significance. It is probable that
the new non-coercive approach to the English conversion advocated in the
Epistola ad Mellitum was an approach adapted from Gregory’s long-standing and
well-defined policies toward the conversion of European Jews. From the very
beginning of his papacy, Gregory repeatedly forbade the coercive conversion of
Jews in the strongest possible language, instead creating a system of financial
25
For the liturgical affinities of the individual collects, see Bannister, ‘Fragments’, 453–4.
10

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 The tabernacula of Gregory the Great
and social incentives to entice potential converts.26 Gregory’s directive to
Mellitus that missionaries should not destroy the English pagan shrines or
wholly forbid their traditional public festivals also has substantial precedent in
Gregory’s previous efforts to uphold and amplify the traditional protections of
Roman law toward Jewish festivals and places of worship. In his correspondence
with his own bishops, Gregory was particularly adamant that neither church nor
state (nor even, in two cases, overzealous recent converts from Judaism) should
annex or destroy synagogues or interfere in any way with the public celebration
of Jewish festivals.27 His letter of censure to the bishop of Terracina, written in
response to such a grievance brought by the Jew Joseph on behalf of the local
Jewish community, presents a typical example of this non-coercive missionary
philosophy, in complete accord with the underlying principle of the Epistola ad
Mellitum. ‘Hos enim, qui a christiana religione discordant, mansuetudine, benig-
nitate, admonendo, suadendo ad unitatem fidei necesse est congregare, ne quos
dulcedo praedicationis et praeventus futuri iudicis terror ad credendum invitare
poterat, minis et terroribus repellantur.’28 However, Gregory’s use of this non-
coercive approach in the conversion of European pagans (rather than European
Jews) did signal a radical shift in attitude from his earlier efforts among the
country pagans of Sardinia, Sicily and Corsica, where he had advocated punitive
fines, imprisonment and even beatings in the most stubborn cases.29
The instructions in the Epistola ad Mellitum also signalled a significant depar-
ture from Gregory’s earlier letter to Æthelberht of Kent, written in June of 601
and predating his letter to Mellitus by less than a month, in which he ordered
the English king to destroy all of the pagan shrines in his territory. Markus
interprets this as evidence of an unprecedented last-minute reversal in
Gregory’s missionary strategy, probably involving the dispatch of a second
messenger to Gaul in pursuit of Mellitus, who was already carrying the letters
to Æthelberht and Bertha.30 Gregory’s change in tone suggests that after four
26
These incentives included clothing subsidies, the manumission of Jewish slaves converting
under Jewish masters, and physical protection against retributions from a convert’s former
community. On Gregory’s legal policies and conversion approach, and his advocacy on behalf
of Jews, see J. Synan, The Popes and Jews in the Middle Ages (London, 1965), pp. 35–65; and R. E.
Sullivan, ‘Papacy and Missionary Activity in the Early Middle Ages’, MS 17 (1955), 46–106,
repr. in his Christian Missionary Activity in the Early Middle Ages (Aldershot, 1994), at p. 50.
27
Synan, The Popes and Jews, p. 45.
28
‘Indeed, it is necessary to gather those who are not in concord with the Christian religion by
gentleness, by kindness, by admonishing, and by persuading into the unity of faith; lest those
who sweet preaching and the anticipation of the terror of future judgement might be able to
invite into believing should be repelled by threats and terrors.’ Ep. I.34, S. Gregorii Magni reg-
istrum epistularum, ed. D. Norberg, CCSL 140 (Turnhout, 1982), p. 48.
29
R. A. Markus, ‘Gregory the Great and a Papal Missionary Strategy’, The Mission of the Church
and the Propagation of the Faith, ed. G. J. Cumming (Oxford, 1970), pp. 29–38, at pp. 31–2.
30
Markus, ‘Gregory the Great’, pp. 35–6.
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 Flora Spiegel
years of effort, the first reports from the mission field had not been promising;
that the missionaries lacked both the manpower and the political support to
effect a large-scale coercive conversion in southern England; that loyalty to
native religious practices was stronger than anticipated, and that while
Æthelberht himself may have shown some willingness to convert for his wife’s
sake, he was not willing to jeopardise his own political position by forcing a
foreign religion on his subjects wholesale.31 Bede’s attempts in his Historia eccle-
siastica to portray the conversion of Æthelberht as having been more or less
instantaneous reflect his interest in portraying the English as a ‘Chosen People’,
rather than historical fact.
 
The foregoing examination of the Epistola ad Mellitum suggests that the typo-
logical correspondence that the Anglo-Saxons perceived between themselves
and the Old Testament Jews was not entirely a spiritual genealogy falsified by
Anglo-Saxon historiographers in the interests of religious legitimacy, but may
have unwittingly reflected the actual theoretical background that had governed
Roman efforts to convert England to Christianity. In designing a missionary
strategy for England, Gregory the Great used the Old Testament as a conver-
sion manual, drawing on the same methods and ritual expressions that the God
of the Old Testament had used in converting the Israelites from paganism to
monotheism. Accordingly, Gregory proposed that the mission of St Augustine
celebrate a version of the Feast of Tabernacles in England as a means of con-
solidating their current missionary efforts and attracting further converts.
Gregory selected this particular festival for its superficial similarity to Anglo-
Saxon pagan practices, its typological significance as a commemoration of the
Israelites’ forty years in the wilderness, and its biblical association with the
dedication of Solomon’s Temple and Jesus’s own preaching career. His hope
was that this English proto-Sukkot celebration would make Christianity appear
more attractive to converts in England by associating the new religion with tra-
ditions of feasting and celebration already familiar to Anglo-Saxons.
The excavations at Yeavering suggest that tabernacula were built on at least
one pagan-Christian transition site; however, as Building D2 at Yeavering is at
present the only known example of an Anglo-Saxon pagan temple converted
to Christian use, it is not clear how representative that site is of Anglo-Saxon
conversion-era practices as a whole. Small hut structures found in pre-
Christian and conversion-period Anglo-Saxon cemeteries such as Polhill, Kent;

31
Ibid., p. 36. Æthelberht had probably been king for less than a year when St Augustine arrived
in Kent, and his position was by no means secure. On this, see I. Wood, ‘Augustine and Gaul’,
St Augustine and the Conversion of England, ed. R. Gameson (Stroud, 1999), pp. 68–82, at p. 71.
12

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 The tabernacula of Gregory the Great
and the tentorium described in Bede’s account of the death of St Aidan do
suggest that tabernaculum-like structures had some type of ritual significance in
England both before and after conversion. Although there is evidence in
eighth-century Insular liturgical books for the celebration of harvest festivals,
these contain no mention of either the Jews of Deuteronomy or instructions
for building tabernacula. Assuming that Gregory’s instructions for the celebra-
tion of a Sukkot-like festival in England were actually implemented by his mis-
sionaries, the practice of building tabernacula was probably short-lived in
duration and had been all but forgotten by the era of Bede. Nonetheless, the
tabernacula-tradition is a concrete sign of the intensely Old-Testament theoret-
ical framework in which Roman missionaries, and later the Anglo-Saxons
themselves, regarded the conversion of England.

13

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