Oxford Cambridge and RSA - 2025
Friday 23 May 2025 – Morning
A Level History A
Y301/01 The Early Anglo-Saxons c.400–800
Time allowed: 2 hours 30 minutes
(Verified Question Paper With Mark
Scheme Combined June 2025)
, INSTRUCTIONS
• Use black ink.
• Write your answer to each question in the Answer Booklet. The question
numbers must be clearly shown.
• Fill in the boxes on the front of the Answer Booklet.
• Answer the question in Section A and any two questions in Section B.
INFORMATION
• The total mark for this paper is 80.
• The marks for each question are shown in brackets [ ].
• Quality of extended response will be assessed in questions marked with an
asterisk (*).
**
• This document has 4 pages.
ADVICE
• Read each question carefully before you start your answer.
© OCR 2025
OCR is an exempt
[D/506/4288] DC (WW)
Charity Turn over
351706/2
, 2
Section A
Read the two passages and answer Question 1.
1 Evaluate the interpretations in both of the two passages.
Explain which you think is more convincing as an explanation of the process of
Christianisation during the period from c.400 to 800. [30]
Passage A
What attracted English kings to Christianity in the late sixth and seventh centuries?
Conversion offered advantages to kings beyond the cultural or religious. The presence of
strangely dressed religious professionals, with exotic patterns of behaviour and
equipped with books, offered a new dimension to a royal court and distinction to its king.
The Bible presented a style of kingship which was divinely ordained. It also suggested
kings had law-making and tax-raising powers. Support of a literate clergy enabled kings
to claim law-enacting powers and introduce changes in keeping with the growing
authority of kingship. Letters made it possible for a king to communicate at a distance.
The building of monasteries provided a means of establishing a permanent royal
presence in disputed territories. Christianity ensured that identical religious rituals would
be replicated at all churches throughout the kingdom, with prayers said for the king.
Conversion restructured religious life around the royal family.
Within their own kingdoms, churches and monasteries provided opportunities for kings
to establish new institutional focal points of royal authority, around which to remodel
local society. By the late seventh century, royal families were investing in family
monasteries. Conversion to Christianity provided a new institutional framework which
offered cohesion to kingdoms. It was Christianity, above all else, that enabled powerful
kings to establish themselves across the seventh century and to create a structure
which stressed their superiority.
Nicholas J. Higham and Martin J. Ryan, The Anglo-Saxon World, published in 2013.
© OCR Y301/01
2025 Jun25
, 3
Passage B
Conversion occurred ‘bottom up’, as individual Christians or households brought their
friends, kin and neighbours over to the new religion. It occurred ‘top down’ as well,
when missionaries targeted leading members of society and then expected the new
faith to percolate out from them. Force was sometimes a factor, both in getting the
leaders of society to convert, or in pushing the new religion on others.
In practice each story of Christianisation is likely to have embraced some elements of all
three of these scenarios. Missionary efforts tend to be the best known. Other more direct
techniques could be applied too. Pope Gregory advised one of the earliest English
missionaries to forcibly convert pagan shrines to Christian usage. Doing so would serve
two goals. First, it would show that the pagans’ gods did not punish the missionaries for
their desecration, implying the superior power of the Christian God. Second, it enabled
the new converts to maintain their accustomed holy places, and potentially even some
of the festivals they had celebrated there. Gregory’s advice underlines the flexibility that
Christian missionaries often displayed in order to get converts to accept the main tenets
of the new religion, up to and including the rebranding of existing religious practices. In
effect the religion took on, under a new guise, much of what had already been done in
the name of earlier beliefs.
Rory Naismith, Early Medieval Britain c.500–1000, published in 2021.
© OCR Y301/01 Turn over
2025 Jun25
Friday 23 May 2025 – Morning
A Level History A
Y301/01 The Early Anglo-Saxons c.400–800
Time allowed: 2 hours 30 minutes
(Verified Question Paper With Mark
Scheme Combined June 2025)
, INSTRUCTIONS
• Use black ink.
• Write your answer to each question in the Answer Booklet. The question
numbers must be clearly shown.
• Fill in the boxes on the front of the Answer Booklet.
• Answer the question in Section A and any two questions in Section B.
INFORMATION
• The total mark for this paper is 80.
• The marks for each question are shown in brackets [ ].
• Quality of extended response will be assessed in questions marked with an
asterisk (*).
**
• This document has 4 pages.
ADVICE
• Read each question carefully before you start your answer.
© OCR 2025
OCR is an exempt
[D/506/4288] DC (WW)
Charity Turn over
351706/2
, 2
Section A
Read the two passages and answer Question 1.
1 Evaluate the interpretations in both of the two passages.
Explain which you think is more convincing as an explanation of the process of
Christianisation during the period from c.400 to 800. [30]
Passage A
What attracted English kings to Christianity in the late sixth and seventh centuries?
Conversion offered advantages to kings beyond the cultural or religious. The presence of
strangely dressed religious professionals, with exotic patterns of behaviour and
equipped with books, offered a new dimension to a royal court and distinction to its king.
The Bible presented a style of kingship which was divinely ordained. It also suggested
kings had law-making and tax-raising powers. Support of a literate clergy enabled kings
to claim law-enacting powers and introduce changes in keeping with the growing
authority of kingship. Letters made it possible for a king to communicate at a distance.
The building of monasteries provided a means of establishing a permanent royal
presence in disputed territories. Christianity ensured that identical religious rituals would
be replicated at all churches throughout the kingdom, with prayers said for the king.
Conversion restructured religious life around the royal family.
Within their own kingdoms, churches and monasteries provided opportunities for kings
to establish new institutional focal points of royal authority, around which to remodel
local society. By the late seventh century, royal families were investing in family
monasteries. Conversion to Christianity provided a new institutional framework which
offered cohesion to kingdoms. It was Christianity, above all else, that enabled powerful
kings to establish themselves across the seventh century and to create a structure
which stressed their superiority.
Nicholas J. Higham and Martin J. Ryan, The Anglo-Saxon World, published in 2013.
© OCR Y301/01
2025 Jun25
, 3
Passage B
Conversion occurred ‘bottom up’, as individual Christians or households brought their
friends, kin and neighbours over to the new religion. It occurred ‘top down’ as well,
when missionaries targeted leading members of society and then expected the new
faith to percolate out from them. Force was sometimes a factor, both in getting the
leaders of society to convert, or in pushing the new religion on others.
In practice each story of Christianisation is likely to have embraced some elements of all
three of these scenarios. Missionary efforts tend to be the best known. Other more direct
techniques could be applied too. Pope Gregory advised one of the earliest English
missionaries to forcibly convert pagan shrines to Christian usage. Doing so would serve
two goals. First, it would show that the pagans’ gods did not punish the missionaries for
their desecration, implying the superior power of the Christian God. Second, it enabled
the new converts to maintain their accustomed holy places, and potentially even some
of the festivals they had celebrated there. Gregory’s advice underlines the flexibility that
Christian missionaries often displayed in order to get converts to accept the main tenets
of the new religion, up to and including the rebranding of existing religious practices. In
effect the religion took on, under a new guise, much of what had already been done in
the name of earlier beliefs.
Rory Naismith, Early Medieval Britain c.500–1000, published in 2021.
© OCR Y301/01 Turn over
2025 Jun25
