The Gregorian mission,[1] sometimes known as the Augustinian mission,[2] was the mission sent by Pope Gregory the

Great to the Anglo-Saxons in 596 AD. Headed by Augustine of Canterbury, its goal was to convert the Anglo-Saxons to Christiani ty.[3] By the death of the last missionary in 653, they had established Christia nity in southern Britain. Along with Irish and Frankish missionaries, they conve rted Britain and influenced the Hiberno-Scottish missions to the Continent. By the time 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 w ho, later in the century, appear to have taken control of Kent and other coastal regions. In the late 6th century Pope Gregory sent a group of missionaries to K ent, to convert thelberht, King of Kent, whose wife, Bertha of Kent, was a Franki sh princess and practising Christian. Augustine was the prior of Gregory's own m onastery 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 thelberht to preach freely in his capital of Canterbury. Soon the missionaries wrote to Grego ry telling him of their success and that conversions were taking place. The exac t date of thelberht'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 fo r the new foundation. Gregory intended Augustine to be the metropolitan archbish op 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-esta blished Celtic bishops refused to acknowledge his authority. Before thelberht's death in 616 a number of other bishoprics had been established but after that date, a pagan backlash set in and the see, or bishopric, of Lond on was abandoned. thelberht's daughter, thelburg, married Edwin, the king of the N orthumbrians, and by 627 Paulinus, the bishop who accompanied her north, had con verted Edwin and a number of other Northumbrians. When Edwin died, in about 633, his widow and Paulinus were forced to flee to Kent. Although the missionaries c ould 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 surroundi ng countryside and contributed a Roman tradition to the practice of Christianity in Britain. Contents [hide] 1 Background 1.1 Sources 2 Gregory the Great and his motivations 2.1 Immediate background 2.2 Motivations 2.3 Practical considerations 2.4 Preparations 3 Arrival and first efforts 3.1 Composition and arrival 3.2 Process of conversion 3.3 Instructions and missionaries from Rome 3.4 Church building 4 Efforts in the south 4.1 Relations with the British Christians 4.2 Spread of bishoprics and church affairs 4.3 Pagan reactions 5 Spread of Christianity to Northumbria 6 Other aspects 7 Legacy 7.1 Pagan practices 7.2 Papal aspects 7.3 Cults of the saints 7.4 Art, architecture, and music 7.5 Legal codes and documents 8 See also 9 Notes

10 Citations 11 References 12 Further reading [edit]Background

Portrait labelled "AUGUSTINUS" from the mid-8th century Saint Petersburg Bede, t hough perhaps intended as Gregory the Great.[a] The Roman province of Britannia was converted to Christianity by the 4th century and had even produced its own heretic in Pelagius.[7][8] Britain sent three bis hops to the Synod of Arles in 314, and a Gaulish bishop went to the island in 39 6 to help settle disciplinary matters.[9] Material remains such as objects inscr ibed with Christian symbols and lead basins used for baptism testify to a growin g Christian presence at least until about 360.[10] After the withdrawal of the Roman legions from Britannia in 410 the natives of t he island of Great Britain were left to defend themselves. Angles, Saxons, and J utes, generally referred to collectively as Anglo-Saxons, settled the southern p arts of the island after the legions left, but most of Britain remained Christia n. A series of distinct practices collectively referred to as Celtic Christianit y developed in isolation from Rome.[7][8] Characteristic of Celtic Christianity were its emphasis on monasteries instead of bishoprics, its calculation of the d ate of Easter and the style of the tonsure, or haircut, worn by its clerics.[8][ 11] Evidence for the continued existence of Christianity in the eastern part of Britain during this time includes the survival of the cult of Saint Alban, and t he occurrence of eccles derived from the Latin for "church" in place names.[12] Ther e is no evidence that these native Christians tried to convert the Anglo-Saxons. [13][14] The Anglo-Saxon invasions coincided with the disappearance of most remnants of R oman civilisation in the areas held by the Anglo-Saxons, including the economic and religious structures.[15] Whether this was a result of the Angles themselves , as the early medieval writer Gildas argued,[16] or mere coincidence is unclear . The archaeological evidence suggests much variation in the way that the tribes established themselves in Britain concurrently with the decline of urban Roman culture in Britain.[17][b] The net effect was that when Augustine arrived in 597 the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms had little continuity with the preceding Roman civilis ation. In the words of the historian John Blair, "Augustine of Canterbury began his mission with an almost clean slate."[18] [edit]Sources Most of the information available on the Gregorian mission comes from the mediev al writer Bede, especially his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, or Eccles iastical History of the English People.[19] For this work Bede solicited help an d 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.[20] Other sources are biographies of P ope Gregory, including one written in Northern England around 700 as well as a 9 th-century life by a Roman writer. The early Life of Gregory is generally believ ed 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.[21][ 22] 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.[23] Gregory's entry in the Liber Pontificalis is short and of little us e, but he himself was a writer whose work sheds light on the mission. In additio n, over 850 of Gregory's letters survive.[24] A few later writings, such as lett ers from Boniface, an 8th-century Anglo-Saxon missionary, and royal letters to t he papacy from the late 8th century, add additional detail.[25] Some of these le tters, however, are only preserved in Bede's work.[21] Bede represented the native British church as wicked and sinful. In order to exp lain why Britain was conquered by the Anglo-Saxons, he drew on the polemic of Gi

ldas and developed it further in his own works. Although he found some native Br itish clergy worthy of praise he nevertheless condemned them for their failure t o convert the invaders and for their resistance to Roman ecclesiastical authorit y.[26] This bias may have resulted in his understating British missionary activi ty. Bede was from the north of England, and this may have led to a bias towards events near his own lands.[27] Bede was writing over a hundred years after the e vents he was recording with little contemporary information on the actual conver sion efforts. Nor did Bede completely divorce his account of the missionaries fr om his own early 8th-century concerns.[15][c] Although a few hagiographies, or saints' biographies, about native British saint s survive from the period of the mission, none describes native Christians as ac tive missionaries amongst the Anglo-Saxons. Most of the information about the Br itish church at this time is concerned with the western regions of the island of Great Britain and does not deal with the Gregorian missionaries.[28] Other sour ces of information include Bede's chronologies, the set of laws issued by thelber ht in Kent, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which was compiled in the late 9th ce ntury.[29] [edit]Gregory the Great and his motivations

Gregory dictating, from a 10th-century manuscript [edit]Immediate background In 595, when Pope Gregory I decided to send a mission to the Anglo-Saxons,[30] t he Kingdom of Kent was ruled by thelberht. He had married a Christian princess na med Bertha before 588,[31] and perhaps earlier than 560.[21] Bertha was the daug hter of Charibert I, one of the Merovingian kings of the Franks. As one of the c onditions of her marriage she had brought a bishop named Liudhard with her to Ke nt as her chaplain.[32] They restored a church in Canterbury that dated to Roman times,[33] possibly the present-day St Martin's Church. thelberht was at that ti me a pagan but he allowed his wife freedom of worship.[32] Liudhard does not app ear to have made many converts among the Anglo-Saxons,[34] and if not for the di scovery of a gold coin, the Liudhard medalet, bearing the inscription Leudardus Eps (Eps is an abbreviation of Episcopus, the Latin word for bishop) his existen ce may have been doubted.[35] One of Bertha's biographers states that, influence d by his wife, thelberht requested Pope Gregory to send missionaries.[32] The his torian Ian Wood feels that the initiative came from the Kentish court as well as the queen.[36] [edit]Motivations Most historians take the view that Gregory initiated the mission, although exact ly 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 Ang lo-Saxon slaves from Britain in the Roman slave market and was inspired to try t o convert their people. Supposedly Gregory inquired about the identity of the sl aves, and was told that they were Angles from the island of Great Britain. Grego ry replied that they were not Angles, but Angels.[37][38] The earliest version o f this story is from an anonymous Life of Gregory written at Whitby Abbey about 705.[39] Bede, as well as the Whitby Life of Gregory, records that Gregory himse lf had attempted to go on a missionary journey to Britain before becoming pope.[ 40] In 595 Gregory wrote to one of the papal estate managers in southern Gaul, a sking that he buy English slave boys in order that they might be educated in mon asteries. Some historians have seen this as a sign that Gregory was already plan ning the mission to Britain at that time, and that he intended to send the slave s as missionaries, although the letter is also open to other interpretations.[40 ][41] The historian N. J. Higham speculates that Gregory had originally intended to se nd the British slave boys as missionaries, until in 596 he received news that Li udhard had died, thus opening the way for more serious missionary activity. High am argues that it was the lack of any bishop in Britain which allowed Gregory to send Augustine, with orders to be consecrated as a bishop if needed. Another co

nsideration was that cooperation would be more easily obtained from the Frankish royal courts if they no longer had their own bishop and agent in place.[42] Higham theorises that Gregory believed that the end of the world was imminent, a nd that he was destined to be a major part of God's plan for the apocalypse. His belief was rooted in the idea that the world would go through six ages, and tha t he was living at the end of the sixth age, a notion that may have played a par t in Gregory's decision to dispatch the mission. Gregory not only targeted the B ritish with his missionary efforts, but he also supported other missionary endea vours,[43] encouraging bishops and kings to work together for the conversion of non-Christians within their territories.[44] He urged the conversion of the here tical Arians in Italy and elsewhere, as well as the conversion of Jews. Also pag ans in Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica were the subject of letters to officials, ur ging their conversion.[45] Some scholars suggest that Gregory's main motivation was to increase the number of Christians;[46] others wonder if more political matters such as extending the primacy of the papacy to additional provinces and the recruitment of new Christ ians looking to Rome for leadership were also involved. Such considerations may have also played a part, as influencing the emerging power of the Kentish Kingdo m under thelberht could have had some bearing on the choice of location.[33] Also , the mission may have been an outgrowth of the missionary efforts against the L ombards.[47] At the time of the mission Britain was the only part of the former Roman Empire which remained in pagan hands and the historian Eric John argues th at Gregory desired to bring the last remaining pagan area of the old empire back under Christian control.[48] [edit]Practical considerations