Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind

by Tom Holland

But was it Christian? Forcing pagans to convert at sword-point was hardly the cause for which Boniface had died, after all. Perhaps it was telling, then, that the most pointed criticism of the policy should have come from a compatriot of the sainted martyr. ‘Faith arises from the will, not from compulsion.’11 So wrote Alcuin, a brilliant scholar from Northumbria who in 781 had met Charlemagne while returning from a visit to Rome, and been recruited to his court. Pagans, he urged the king, should be persuaded, not forced to convert. ‘Let peoples newly brought to Christ be nourished in a mild manner, as infants are given milk – for instruct them brutally, and the risk then, their minds being weak, is that they will vomit everything up.’