In the early days, were Anglo Saxons and Celts at enmity? Yes. And No.

As the Anglo Saxons settled in what became England in the 600s, did they even commit genocide on the Celts who were already there? The accusation that they did so is out there. It is easy to find. However, the answer to the genocide question is No.

More generally, a complex picture emerges of enmity on the one hand and Christian reconciliation on the other. To appraise it:

• We need to distinguish between Gaelic Celts and Britonnic Celts.
• We also need to distinguish between the different Christian streams of the Gaelic Celts and the Britonnic Celts. The Gaels had the post-410 Christian spirituality descended from St Martin of Tours. This was at the height of its authenticity amongst the Gaels by the early 600s. The Britons had an older pre-410 Roman Empire Christian spirituality. This appears to have been losing its way by the early 600s.
• And we need to take careful note that in the 600s one particular pagan Anglo Saxon King, Penda of Mercia (Mercia was the Midlands of what is now England), helped by Britonnic Christian Celts, became a serial killer of other Anglo Saxon Kings who had become newly Christian.

The Anglo Saxons took over Britonnic territories, not Gaelic. Here’s a brief summary:

• As at around 450, then-Christian Britonnic Celts sent for then-pagan Anglo Saxons to help them fight against then-pagan Gaelic Celts who were raiding the Britons for slaves. But… the Anglo Saxons liked the Britonnic lands to which they had been invited as mercenaries. They began to invade it as would-be rulers.
• However, by around 500, the Britonnic Celtic general “King Arthur” was repelling the Anglo Saxons, except those in Kent, back to the European mainland they had come from.
• Then, from 540 onwards, the Anglo Saxons returned and gradually took over most of what became England. Many Britonnic Celts gravitated into what became Wales; others crossed the sea to what became Brittany. Those that remained in the Anglo Saxon territories were tolerated. In the Severn Valley, and in what is now Lincolnshire, the Britonnic Christian and Anglo Saxon pagan cultures seem to have mixed. In Mercia, and perhaps in Wessex, Celtic and Anglo Saxon ruling families seem to have mingled.

By the early 600s there was a lot of fighting going on:

• In the north, the by-now-Christian Gaels fought with then-pagan Anglo Saxon Northumbria. The Gaels were called by the Romans “Scoti”, i.e. Scots. The two people groups came to peace treaty in 604. In 616 the Gaels would honour that treaty by sheltering a refugee Germanic Angle-ish boy, Prince Oswald of Northumbria. In times after that they would lead him to the Christ, with world-shaping consequences.
• In 616 as well, the then-still-pagan Anglo Saxon Kingdom of Northumbria wrought cultural destruction upon Gwynedd, a Britonnic Celtic Christian Kingdom in what is now North Wales. It did not occupy it, however.
• By 628, the then-pagan Anglo Saxon Kingdom of Wessex, having lost lands to then-pagan Anglo Saxon Mercia, was warring to take lands from Britonnic Christian Celts.
• By 634, Britonnic Christian North Wales was wreaking revenge on mainly-still-pagan Anglo Saxon Northumbria for the destructions of 616. The revenge was so murderous as to be perceived by Prince Oswald, returning from exile to save the situation, as genocidal. So the nearest anyone seems to have got to genocide was Christian-tradition Britonnic Celt on pagan Anglo. Although Britonnic Celt had been provoked.

There were other destructions too. And a good deal of ethnic conflict. You could focus on the dark side to your heart’s content.

However, there is a lost truth which needs to come back into focus again. In the midst of much darkness, ethnicity-reconciling Christian light prevailed.

The young Prince Oswald grew up to become Saint King Oswald of Northumbria. I think of him as Early England’s Lost Christ figure. And here’s the point: his Christian ways were pure Gaelic Celt, but he was a Germanic Anglo Saxon. He embodied an ethnic reconciliation in Christ, in other words.

• Once Oswald became King of Northumbria in 635 – having ended the Britonnic Celtic revenge campaign of 634 first – he invited the Gaelic Celtic St Aidan into Northumbria to evangelise his Anglo Saxon people. St Aidan extended Christ’s love to the Angle-ish invaders. They received it so well that Aidan has become known as the Apostle to the English.
• In 635, Oswald also came to Christian treaty with the then-newly-Christian Anglo Saxon Kingdom of Wessex (i.e. the Thames Valley and some of the south west of what is now England). That was a world-shaping treaty in which today’s English royal family was first godfathered by Oswald.
• After Penda’s death in 655, Gaelic-Christian-stream monks trained by St Aidan were made welcome in the then-still-pagan Anglo Saxon Kingdom of Mercia. Their transformative effect there became world-shaping.
• St Aidan went on to have a most remarkable spiritual successor in the north. This was St Cuthbert, whose world-shaping life of prayer spanned 651 to 687.
• St Cuthbert was like Saint King Oswald in this: his Christian ways were Gaelic Celt, but he was a Germanic Anglo Saxon. He developed to embody another reconciliation as well: Roman Christian ways with Gaelic Christian ways.
• After his death, Cuthbert became the chief hero Saint of the many peoples who coalesced around Christian Identity to become the Early English. The invading Vikings even came on board with him.

Fast forward now to the period 878 to 927. King Alfred the Great of Wessex, and family, that is: (i) his son, King Edward the Elder of Wessex, (ii) his daughter, Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians, and (iii) his grandson, Athelstan, first King of the English, founded Christian England.

• It is important to understand that they did not set out to create England. They set out to secure Christian Identity for their people group in the face of invading pagan Danes. Having prevailed, they called themselves the English.
• In their devotions, the family had two great heroes. They wanted the values of those heroes restored in their own world. The heroes were? – Saint King Oswald of Northumbria and St Cuthbert. Ethnicity reconcilers in Christ, the pair of them.
• Alfred’s first act upon accomplishing his first victory over pagan Danish invaders? – A peace treaty which sowed seed for Anglo-Danish ethnicity reconciliation upon Christian foundations.
• Once he was ruling securely in Wessex, Alfred set about restoring lost Christian integrity to his people. To do that, he used Celtic Christian Welsh as a major source of input: descended from the Christian people group with whom pagan Wessex had once been locked in combat.

These are lights which are well worth recovering, I think, from our history.

Now, you can see the dark side of Anglo versus Celt as well as the light side in my book, “The Mustard Seed”. However, everyone highlights the dark side. To my knowledge, it is only in “The Mustard Seed” that you can also trace the transformative chain of Christian grace which prevailed, mainly from Celt to Anglo, as light in the darkness. It shaped the world that descends to us.

So, as to enmity between Celt and Anglo Saxon: complex. As to genocide: not a lot of truth in it. The main killer in the period was the pagan Anglo Saxon King Penda of Mercia, as follows:

• Between 632 and 655 Penda was allied with Britonnic Christian Celts to make war on many other Anglo Saxon kings, slaying five Christian Anglo Saxon Kings in the process. So the main “genocidal” thrust was against the emerging new Christian Identity of the Anglo Saxons.
• That new Identity was seeded in large measure by Gaelic Christian Celts. The Gaelic people group had been enslavers as at 450 but, by 634, harboured the most authentically Christian monks in Europe.
• Sadly and ironically, Penda was aided and abetted in his slayings of newly-Christian Anglo Saxon Kings by Britonnic Christian Celts. These had the older Christian Identity which, before about 410, had been strong even whilst the Gaels were enslavers. But by 634 these Britonnic Celts seem to have been losing the authentically Christian side of the plot.

Well, I said it was a complex picture… But, by their fruits, said Jesus Christ, you shall know them, and by inspecting fruits we may decode the picture.