In his Life of Cuthbert (721) Bede gives us a telling episode in which stricken monks being swept out to sea on rafts are being laughed at by the locals on account of the monks having deprived them of the old ways of worship with no provision of support as to what was expected of them thereafter - see Chapter Three HERE. Note that is by a supernatural demonstration of the power of prayer over the forces of nature that said locals are at last convinced. Here too there is a touch of "rustic simplicity" - in the innocence of the source-teller, a quality which makes him incapable of any falsehood!