what religion did the English follow before Christianity destroyed their old way of life?

Question

when did the english became english? what nationality were the enlish before they became english?

Jack Ske…: why the obscenity? you can see all of my questions are all about education and british culture, why foul language when one is trying ones hardest to become british.

jason s: MUSTARD BRAIN

Answer 1

You have lots of questions there!
your first questions answer is that the faith before Christianity was of the druids, they had the main center in Anglesey in North Wales, then the Romans invaded, at that time the main people of the UK were Celts. After the Romans arrived the Celts started to adopt the Roman faiths. Later on the Main Roman Faith became Christianity, when Constantine of York became Caesar.
After the Romans left the UK. the Saxons invaded, and that was where the name Angles (spelling may be wrong) come in as the name given by the Celts & Brittons to the Saxons, which is also angelsae ( the French word for English) .
The Christian Faith by that was established in the area that became England.
When the Normans invaded that was when England became England.
I hope that this answers your questions.

Answer 2

that main q there is so not an easy one to answer!!

The main belief is paganism which is still widely practised in great Britain.

Druidism was practised at the same time. It was an exclusively male religion all about being in touch with the earth and a mix of magic astronomy and astrology.

Before then the Celts worshipped all sorts of deities they had one for everything. People call that paganism but is was much more basic than that.

The two main gods were called Gog and Magog who had been one giant but split in two to form the mainland Britain and Ireland.

At least that's what I've been lead to belive through my own personal research.

Hope this helps.

Answer 3

Different tribes had different religions.

The Celts worshipped a number of gods, such as those connected with the earth, fertility, death and the underworld. The druids were Celtic priests. They believed that there was a very thin division between the "world" and the "spirit world", and that sense of "otherworldness" has contributed to many Irish legends, not to mention our own holiday of Halloween (originally a Celtic holy day).

The Celts spoke Gaelic and survived in Scotland, Wales and Ireland (where some people still speak Scots, Welsh, etc., which are Gaelic languages).

After the Romans invaded Briton, a lot of British became Romanised and also adopted Roman religion, which at that time was very mixed. There were temples to Mars, Venus, etc., and there were also other religions. Cult Religions which came from the Near and Middle East were popular, such as the Isis cult, Mithraism, and Christianity.

Romanised Britons spoke Latin.

When the Romans left Britain, the British persisted in Roman ways for a while, but eventually they were overrun by Germanic tribes, mainly the Angles, Saxons and Jutes. Their languages combined to form Anglo-Saxon, which is basically a Germanic language.

The German tribes worshipped the deities of the Germanic pantheon such as Odin, Thor and Ing. Thor and Odin were war gods but Ing was a male god of fertility. He was actually one of the most popular gods, but when Christianity was introduced to England all mention of Ing was savagely repressed. You can get an idea of Ing's popularity by personal names: there are hardly any names around nowdays commemorating Odin or Thor, but a number of names trace back to Ing, such as Ingrid and Graham (meaning "Ing's Raven").

The monks wrote that the name England came from "Angle-land". But there are other place names with "Angle" in them, such as Anglesey. I always wondered if the monks made that up to hide the fact that it was really "Ing-land"!

The Angles and Saxons eventually became Christianised, but kept their language, social structure and customs. So Christianity didn't actually destroy their old way of life.

In 1099 they were conquered by the Norman French, and the ruling class introduced French, which became the language of the court and literature. However, common people still spoke Anglo-Saxon. Eventually Anglo-Saxon adopted a lot of French vocabulary but kept its Germanic vocabulary too, as well as a Germanic grammar, resulting in "Middle English" which is what Chaucer spoke. Drawing words from different languages has given English one of the largest vocabularies of any modern language.

Answer 4

The ancient Britons were Druids.
English is a mixture of Anglo-Saxon and French.
Modern English is usually dated from around 1600. Middle English around 1200. Before that they spoke Anglo Saxon sometimes called Old English that dates from 800 or so. But that language had no French grammar and so is now considered a root language of English rather than English.

Answer 5

Before Christianity the British followed a variety of Earth religions, what we call now `Pagan` belief systems. Beliefs varied over a wide, disparate group of tribes, with local variations of similar beliefs. Animals ,birds, trees, rivers ,natural features, all had religious connotations.The Roman legions , who in some part , introduced `proper Gods` to the savages, also adopted local `Gods` alongside the pantheon of imported Roman Gods. This mix and match form of Paganism is common, with many deities doing the `same job`, and being interchangeable with any number of similar deities, ie, river Gods and water or sylvan spirits.The old religions, to some extent can be traced today in various folklore/country customs, and have been adopted to form part of Christian belief. Green Men, Harvest Festivals, Mistletoe, Ivy and Holly decorations,and many other customs have Pagan roots, as have countless place names throughout the British Isles. I have only referred briefly to the Roman era, there have been many other early religious influences, Scandinavian, and middle European. It is a VAST subject.

Answer 6

The English have never been Christian, as a whole. No nation has ever been Christian. Christians formed maybe 1% of the total population of England in the 17th century, far less than that at any other time.

m.

Answer 7

They became English at the time their land was named England. Most were Pagan before Christianity, just like everyone else.

Answer 8

Britain didn't have any fighting "for a while" once chrisitanity came?? Need to check history! We were constantly fighting over Christianity! And the English were pegan, descended from various European nations when we were repeatedly invaded.

Answer 9

Holy crap soy and angel, get your heads out of your asses.

Both the Britons and early Anglo Saxons were pagans.
The Romans controlled a vast majority of Britain before the fall of the empire and the "conquering" by the Saxons.
so the English did not follow one religion before Christianity raped their land, rather many pagan ones.

Answer 10

They were Britons (Celts) before Anglo-Saxons invaded their country around the 6th century AD and they were pagan. The Scots, Welsh and Irish are their descendants.