Synopsis
When Christianity spread from its Mediterranean base into the Germanic and Celtic north, it initiated profound changes, particularly in kinship relations and sexual mores. The author of this text traces the introduction and assimilation of the concept of spiritual kinship into Anglo-Saxon England. Covering the years 597 to 1066, he shows how this notion unsettled and in time altered the structures of the society. In early Germanic societies, kinship was a major organizing principle. Spiritual kinship of various kinds began to take hold among the Anglo-Saxons with the arrival of Christian missionaries from Rome in the 7th century. Lynch discusses in detail sponsorship at baptism, confirmation and other rituals in which an individual other than a biological parent presented someone, often an infant, for initiation into Christianity. After the ceremony, the sponsor was regarded as the child's spiritual parent or godparent, whose role complemented that of the natural mother and father, with whom the sponsor had become a "co-parent". He describes the difficulties posed by the incest taboo, which included a ban on marriage between spiritual kin.
Lynch's work reveals how Anglo-Saxons, though never accepting the sexual taboos that were so prominent in the Frankish, Roman and Byzantine churches, did create new forms of spiritual kinship.
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