The Gregorian missionJones "Gregorian Mission" Speculum p. 335 or Augustinian missionMcGowan "Introduction to the Corpus" Companion to Anglo-Saxon Literature p. 17 was a Christian mission sent by Pope Gregory the Great to England in 596 to convert the Anglo-Saxons.Mayr-Harting Coming of Christianity p. 50 The mission was headed by Augustine of Canterbury. By the time of the death of the last missionary in 653, the mission had established Christianity among the southern Anglo-Saxons. Along with the Irish and Frankish missions it converted Anglo-Saxons in other parts of Britain as well and influenced the Hiberno-Scottish missions to continental Europe.
When the Roman Empire recalled its legions from the province of Britannia in 410, parts of the island had already been settled by pagan Germanic tribes who, later in the century, appear to have taken control of Kent and other coastal regions no longer defended by the Roman Empire. In the late 6th century, Pope Gregory sent a group of missionaries to Kent to convert Æthelberht, King of Kent, whose wife, Bertha of Kent, was a Frankish princess and practising Christian. Augustine had been the prior of Gregory's own monastery in Rome, and Gregory prepared the way for the mission by soliciting aid from the Frankish rulers along Augustine's route. In 597, the forty missionaries arrived in Kent and were permitted by Æthelberht to preach freely in his capital of Canterbury.
Soon the missionaries wrote to Gregory telling him of their success and of the conversions taking place. The exact date of Æthelberht's conversion is unknown, but it occurred before 601. A second group of monks and clergy was dispatched in 601, bearing books and other items for the new foundation. Gregory intended Augustine to be the metropolitan archbishop of the southern part of the British Isles, and gave him power over the clergy of the native Britons, but in a series of meetings with Augustine, the long-established Celtic bishops refused to acknowledge his authority.
Before Æthelberht's death in 616, a number of other bishoprics had been established. After that date, a pagan backlash set in, and the see, or bishopric, of London was abandoned. Æthelberht's daughter, Æthelburg, married Edwin, the king of the Northumbrians, and by 627 Paulinus, the bishop who accompanied her north, had converted Edwin and a number of other Northumbrians. When Edwin died, in about 633, his widow and Paulinus were forced to flee back to Kent. Although the missionaries could not remain in all of the places they had evangelised, by the time the last of them died in 653, they had established Christianity in Kent and the surrounding countryside and contributed a Roman tradition to the practice of Christianity in Britain.
Background
By the 4th century the Roman province of Britannia was converted to Christianity and had even produced its own heretic in Pelagius. Britain sent three bishops to the Synod of Arles in 314, and a Gaulish bishop went to the island in 396 to help settle disciplinary matters.Frend "Roman Britain" Cross Goes North pp. 80–81 Lead baptismal basins and other artefacts bearing Christian symbols testify to a growing Christian presence at least until about 360.Frend "Roman Britain" Cross Goes North pp. 82–86
After the Roman legions withdrew from Britannia in 410 the natives of Great Britain were left to defend themselves, and non-Christian Angles, Saxons, and Jutes—generally referred to collectively as Anglo-Saxons—settled the southern parts of the island. Though most of Britain remained Christian, isolation from Rome bred a number of distinct practices—Celtic ChristianityHindley Brief History of the Anglo-Saxons pp. 3–9—including emphasis on monasteries instead of bishoprics, differences in calculation of the date of Easter, and a modified clerical tonsure.Mayr-Harting Coming of Christianity pp. 78–93Yorke Conversion of Britain pp. 115–118 Evidence for the continued existence of Christianity in eastern Britain at this time includes the survival of the cult of Saint Alban and the occurrence of eccles—from the Latin for church—in place names.Yorke Conversion of Britain p. 121 There is no evidence that these native Christians tried to convert the Anglo-Saxon newcomers.Stenton Anglo-Saxon England p. 102Mayr-Harting Coming of Christianity p. 32
The Anglo-Saxon invasions coincided with the disappearance of most remnants of Roman civilisation in the areas they held, including economic and religious structures.Kirby Earliest English Kings p. 23 Whether this was a result of the invasions themselves, as the early medieval writer Gildas argued,Yorke Kings and Kingdoms pp. 1–2 or mere coincidence is unclear. The archaeological evidence suggests significant variation in how the tribes established themselves in Britain during the decline of Roman urban culture.Yorke Kings and Kingdoms pp. 5–7 The net effect was that when Augustine arrived in 597, the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms had little continuity with the preceding Roman civilisation. In the words of the historian John Blair, "Augustine of Canterbury began his mission with an almost clean slate."Blair Church in Anglo-Saxon Society pp. 24–25
Sources Most of the information available on the Gregorian mission comes from the medieval writer Bede, especially his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, or Ecclesiastical History of the English People.Mayr-Harting Coming of Christianity p. 40 For this work Bede solicited help and information from many people including his contemporary abbot at Canterbury as well as a future Archbishop of Canterbury, Nothhelm, who forwarded Bede copies of papal letters and documents from Rome.Mayr-Harting Coming of Christianity p. 69 Other sources are biographies of Pope Gregory, including one written in Northern England around 700 as well as a 9th-century life by a Roman writer. The early Life of Gregory is generally believed to have been based on oral traditions brought to northern England from either Canterbury or Rome, and was completed at Whitby Abbey between 704 and 714.Thacker "Memorializing" Early Medieval Europe p. 63 This view has been challenged by the historian Alan Thacker, who argues that the Life derives from earlier written works; Thacker suggests that much of the information it contains comes from a work written in Rome shortly after Gregory's death.Thacker "Memorializing" Early Medieval Europe pp. 59–71 Gregory's entry in the Liber Pontificalis is short and of little use, but he himself was a writer whose work sheds light on the mission. In addition, over 850 of Gregory's letters survive.Mayr-Harting Coming of Christianity p. 52 A few later writings, such as letters from Boniface, an 8th-century Anglo-Saxon missionary, and royal letters to the papacy from the late 8th century, add additional detail. Some of these letters are only preserved in Bede's work.
Bede represented the native British church as wicked and sinful. To explain why Britain was conquered by the Anglo-Saxons, he drew on the polemic of Gildas and developed it further in his own works. Although he found some native British clergy worthy of praise, he nevertheless condemned them for their failure to convert the invaders and for their resistance to Roman ecclesiastical authority.Foley and Higham "Bede on the Britons" Early Medieval Europe pp. 154–156 This bias may have resulted in his understating British missionary activity. Bede was from the north of England, and this may have led to a bias towards events near his own lands.Yorke Conversion p. 21 Bede was writing over a hundred years after the events he was recording, with little contemporary information on the actual conversion efforts. Nor did Bede completely divorce his account of the missionaries from his own early 8th-century concerns.
Although a few hagiographies, or saints' biographies, about native British saints survive from the period of the mission, none describe native Christians as active missionaries amongst the Anglo-Saxons. Most of the information about the British church at this time is concerned with the western regions of the island of Great Britain and does not deal with the Gregorian missionaries.Kirby Making of Early England p. 39 Other sources of information include Bede's chronologies, the set of laws issued by Æthelberht in Kent, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which was compiled in the late 9th century.Yorke Conversion pp. 6–7
Gregory the Great and his motivations
Immediate background In 595, when Pope Gregory I decided to send a mission to the Anglo-Saxons,Stenton Anglo-Saxon England pp. 104–105 the Kingdom of Kent was ruled by Æthelberht. He had married a Christian princess named Bertha before 588,Stenton Anglo-Saxon England pp. 105–106 and perhaps earlier than 560. Bertha was the daughter of Charibert I, one of the Merovingian kings of the Franks. As one of the conditions of her marriage she had brought a bishop named Liudhard with her to Kent as her chaplain.Nelson "Bertha" Oxford Dictionary of National Biography They restored a church in Canterbury that dated to Roman times,Hindley Brief History of the Anglo-Saxons pp. 33–36 possibly the present-day St Martin's Church. Æthelberht was at that time a pagan, but he allowed his wife freedom of worship. Liudhard does not appear to have made many converts among the Anglo-Saxons,Herrin Formation of Christendom p. 169 and if not for the discovery of a gold coin, the Liudhard medalet, bearing the inscription Leudardus Eps (Eps is an abbreviation of Episcopus, the Latin word for bishop) his existence may have been doubted.Higham Convert Kings p. 73 One of Bertha's biographers states that, influenced by his wife, Æthelberht requested Pope Gregory to send missionaries. The historian Ian Wood feels that the initiative came from the Kentish court as well as the queen.Wood "Mission of Augustine of Canterbury" Speculum pp. 9–10 Peter Heather suggests that Æthelberht sought missionaries from Rome because accepting them from Francia would imply acknowledging a subordinate status.Heather, Christendom, p. 261
Motivations Most historians take the view that Gregory initiated the mission, although exactly why remains unclear. A famous story recorded by Bede, an 8th-century monk who wrote a history of the British Church, relates that Gregory saw fair-haired Anglo-Saxon slaves from Britain in the Roman slave market and was inspired to try to convert their people. Supposedly, Gregory inquired about the identity of the slaves, and was told that they were Angles from the island of Great Britain. Gregory replied that they were not Angles, but Angels.Bede History of the English Church and People pp. 99–100Mayr-Harting Coming of Christianity pp. 57–59 The earliest version of this story is from an anonymous Life of Gregory written at Whitby Abbey about 705.Fletcher Barbarian Conversion p. 112 Bede, as well as the Whitby Life of Gregory, records that Gregory himself had attempted to go on a missionary journey to Britain before becoming pope. In 595, Gregory wrote to one of the papal estate managers in southern Gaul, asking that he buy English slave boys so that they might be educated in monasteries. Some historians have seen this as a sign that Gregory was already planning the mission to Britain at that time, and that he intended to send the slaves as missionaries, although the letter is also open to other interpretations.Markus "Chronology of the Gregorian Mission" Journal of Ecclesiastical History pp. 29–30Fletcher Barbarian Conversion pp. 113–114