EARLY ANGLO-SAXON CHURCH

While there were Christian writers and an episcopal authority in England prior to the coming of St. Augustine of Canterbury, they are generally overlooked, and the date of 597 AD is considered to be the beginning of a uniquely Anglo-Saxon church. The incorporation of the English church into the tribal system was part of its early success, as it was able to sway the political opinion of various royal patrons. Moreover, it develop a distinctive blend of the Anglo-Saxon and the Latin world that would be influential both to all subsequent churchmen, but also to the formation of the nation of England in general. Among the various writers that the Anglo-Saxon church would produce, St. Bede and St. Anselm would be among their intellectual pinnacle. Other Anglo-Saxon writers would seek to impose moral and political order on the national landscape, which would remain until it was abruptly swept away by Henry VIII in the 16th century