Welcome to the British History Podcast. My name is Jamie and this is episode 138, Religious

Lives. This show is free and independent due to member support. Without members, this

just wouldn't be possible and is thanks for helping keep the community going. I offer members

only content such as extra episodes and rough transcripts. If you're interested in supporting

the show and helping this out, you can do so over at the British History Podcast.com. And

this month you can just go and click on the image of Hipster Hadrian enjoying a pint. And thank

you very much to Angelica, Kaylee, and Adam for contributing already. All right, so last week we

talked about how uneven and confused the conversion of Britain was and how the beliefs of one village

might not bear all that much similarity to the beliefs of another village, even though they might

both profess to worship the same God. Well, what about the people whose job it is to worship and

evangelize that God? What about the men and women of the cloth? Sure, as we learned last week,

monasteries in many ways were a bit like snowflakes and even worse, simply because someone held the

title of say, priest, it was no guarantee that he would even know what the Ten Commandments were,

or even that there were Ten Commandments. Father, unfurth might be professing the Seven

Polite Suggestions for all we know. I am the Lord thy God, and I would appreciate it if you'd

write from time to time, but if you're too busy, I understand. And back in the alcohol episodes,

we talked about the staggering amount of booze that the monks were allotted. But we haven't

talked all that much about what their actual lives were like. And while some of the condemnations

that we've heard about have made the islands sound like it was full of ignorant drunk monks,

let's not forget that great thinkers such as Alkouin and Beed came from British religious orders as

well. So in order to get a fuller idea of what was occurring in Britain in this era, let's talk

about a couple examples of what religious life was like. And as you already know, life in Britain

...