太田述正コラム#15296（2025.11.6）
＜Morris, Marc『The Anglo-Saxons: A History of the Beginnings of England』を読む（その12）＞（2026.1.31公開）

　「・・・During the first decade of Eadwine＜（注20）＞’s reign, the Christian mission to Britain had been almost completely snuffed out.

　（注20）ノーサンブリアのエドウィン（Edwin of Northumbria。c.586～632/633年）。Edwin was the son of Ælle＜（エッレ）＞, the first known king of Deira＜（デイラ）＞, and likely had at least two siblings. His sister Acha＜（アッカ）＞ was married to Æthelfrith＜（エセルフリス）＞, king of neighbouring Bernicia＜（バーニシア）＞. Edwin was forced into exile when Æthelfrith conquered Deira. His travels took him to the court of Rædwald＜（レドワルド）＞ of East Anglia, who defeated Æthelfrith in 616, allowing Edwin to ascend the thrones of Bernicia and Deira. After the death of his patron Rædwald around 624, Edwin became the most powerful ruler in Britain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_of_Northumbria
https://call-of-history.com/edwin_of_northumbria/　（＜＞内）
　「627年、キリスト教に改宗しイングランド北東部へのキリスト教布教を認めた。633年10月12日、ハットフィールド・チェイスの戦いでグウィネズ王国とマーシア王国の連合軍に敗れ戦死。死後、殉教者として聖人崇拝の対象となった。」（上掲）

⇒「注20」の二葉の歴史地図から、バーニシアとデイラの位置関係や、グウイネズ（Gwynedd）・・ブリトン人の国・・とマーシア（Mercia）の位置関係が分かります。

　As soon as Æthelberht of Kent had died in 616, the other rulers he had persuaded to convert reverted to paganism. (Or, in Bede’s borrowed biblical phrase, ‘returned to their vomit’.) In East Anglia, as we’ve seen, Rædwald was talked out of Christianity by his wife and advisers. King Sæberht of Essex was succeeded by his pagan sons, who grew angry with the bishop of London when he refused to let them eat Communion bread unless they were first baptized, and chased him into exile. Even in Kent itself, the new faith faltered and almost failed. Æthelberht’s own son, Eadbald, not only refused to embrace Christianity but, to Bede’s disgust, followed the heathen custom of During the first decade of Eadwine’s reign, the Christian mission to Britain had been almost completely snuffed out. As soon as Æthelberht of Kent had died in 616, the other rulers he had persuaded to convert reverted to paganism. (Or, in Bede’s borrowed biblical phrase, ‘returned to their vomit’.) In East Anglia, as we’ve seen, Rædwald was talked out of Christianity by his wife and advisers. King Sæberht of Essex was succeeded by his pagan sons, who grew angry with the bishop of London when he refused to let them eat Communion bread unless they were first baptized, and chased him into exile. Even in Kent itself, the new faith faltered and almost failed. Æthelberht’s own son, Eadbald, not only refused to embrace Christianity but, to Bede’s disgust, followed the heathen custom of marrying his father’s widow (i.e. his stepmother).

⇒唐の高宗が父太宗の妃の武則天を娶ったケースと同じであり、親子婚
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%A6%AA%E5%AD%90%E5%A9%9A
でないことはもとより、レビラト婚（逆縁婚）
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%AC%E3%83%93%E3%83%A9%E3%83%88%E5%A9%9A
でも、そして、ソロレト婚（順縁婚）
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%BD%E3%83%AD%E3%83%AC%E3%83%BC%E3%83%88%E5%A9%9A
ですらないのですが、キリスト教はうるさいことです。（太田）

　 The bishop of Rochester, like the bishop of London, deserted his post and fled to Francia, and even Augustine’s successor as archbishop of Canterbury, Laurence, was ready to do the same, until St Peter appeared to him in a vision and angrily exhorted him to stay put.60 It was therefore a small but significant development when Eadwine, by now the most powerful Anglo-Saxon king, married Eadbald’s sister, Æthelburh, for she, unlike her brother, had remained a Christian. At some point before 624, like her Frankish mother half a century earlier, the Kentish princess travelled north into a heathen kingdom, accompanied by a Christian priest, on the understanding that she would be allowed to practise her faith. Once the marriage had been celebrated, she and her priest set to work on converting Eadwine, encouraged by exhortations from the pope. ‘Illustrious daughter,’ said Boniface V in a letter, ‘persevere with all your might to soften his hard heart’, and enclosed a silver mirror and a gilded ivory comb as gifts for the new queen. In a similar letter to her husband, accompanied by a gold-embroidered robe, Boniface urged the king to destroy the graven images he and his people were currently worshipping. Such an uncompromising stance might seem unlikely to meet with much success, but one of the notable aspects of the Gregorian mission was its pragmatic willingness to accommodate existing rituals. Gregory the Great himself, in a letter of 601, had noted the Anglo-Saxons were ‘in the habit of slaughtering much cattle as sacrifices to devils’, and suggested that, while the devil-worship would obviously have to go, those who converted　ought to be allowed to carry on slaughtering cows and having feasts. So long as they did it in praise of God, let them eat steak. Whether he was swayed by his wife’s words, the pope’s gifts, or the reassurance that beef was still on the menu, by 627 Eadwine was ready to take the plunge. At Easter that year he was baptized in York, in a wooden church that had been specially erected for the purpose amid the ruins of the Roman city. The ceremony was performed by the queen’s priest, Paulinus, who afterwards became York’s first bishop. Other members of the royal family were baptized soon afterwards, as were lots of ordinary Northumbrians. According to Bede, on one occasion Paulinus spent more than a month at Yeavering, immersing people from the surrounding countryside in the River Glen every day from sunrise until sunset.・・・」（73～75）

⇒アングロサクソンへのキリスト教の普及がいかに容易ではなかったかが良く分かります。

（続く）