ABSTRACT
The Saxon invaders were indeed pagans (pagani) in every sense of the word. Like the German peoples described by Tacitus, they never lived in cities. They had no use for towns, or for the civilization which the Greeks and the Romans had built on the foundation of urban life. King Ina during his stay in Rome is said to have founded the hospitium on the banks of the Tiber for Anglo-Saxon pilgrims to the Holy City. From the seventh century onwards there was continuous contact between England and Rome: much closer contact than is sometimes realized. The libraries and scriptoria of the Benedictine houses of later days played their part in preserving, re-copying, and transmitting to future generations, not only the texts of classical paganism, but the great works of Anglo-Saxon history, biography and theology which the Elizabethan antiquarians so anxiously strove to reassemble from the wreckage of the suppressed monasteries.
