patristic · letter · 18 July 601 · Latin
The instruction that the temples of the English were not to be destroyed but purified and reused, and their sacrifices turned into feasts of the martyrs — because a mind cannot be cut off from everything at once, and one climbs a height by steps and not by leaps. It is the clearest surviving statement of how the Roman mission actually meant to convert a people.
Bede, HE 1.30; not among the doubted pieces