Gregorian mission
The Gregorian mission or Augustinian mission was a Christian mission sent by Pope Gregory the Great to England in 596 to convert the Anglo-Saxons. 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. Lead baptismal basins and other artefacts bearing Christian symbols testify to a growing Christian presence at least until about 360.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 Christianity—including emphasis on monasteries instead of bishoprics, differences in calculation of the date of Easter, and a modified clerical tonsure. 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. There is no evidence that these native Christians tried to convert the Anglo-Saxon newcomers.
The Anglo-Saxon invasions coincided with the disappearance of most remnants of Roman civilisation in the areas they held, including economic and religious structures. Whether this was a result of the invasions themselves, as the early medieval writer Gildas argued, 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. 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."
Gregory the Great and his motivations
Immediate background
In 595, when Pope Gregory I decided to send a mission to the Anglo-Saxons, the Kingdom of Kent was ruled by Æthelberht. He had married a Christian princess named Bertha before 588, 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. They restored a church in Canterbury that dated to Roman times, 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, and if not for the discovery of a gold coin, the Liudhard medalet, bearing the inscription Leudardus Eps his existence may have been doubted. 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.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. The earliest version of this story is from an anonymous Life of Gregory written at Whitby Abbey about 705. 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.The historian N. J. Higham speculates that Gregory had originally intended to send the British slave boys as missionaries until, in 596, he received news that Liudhard had died, thus opening the way for more serious missionary activity. Higham 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 consideration 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.
Higham theorises that Gregory believed that the end of the world was imminent, and 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 that he was living at the end of the sixth age, a notion that may have played a part in Gregory's decision to dispatch the mission. Gregory not only targeted the British with his missionary efforts, but he also supported other missionary endeavours, encouraging bishops and kings to work together for the conversion of non-Christians within their territories. He urged the conversion of the heretical Arians in Italy and elsewhere, as well as the conversion of Jews. Also, pagans in Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica were the subject of letters to officials, urging their conversion.
Some scholars suggest that Gregory's main motivation was to increase the number of Christians; others wonder if more political matters, such as extending the primacy of the papacy to additional provinces and the recruitment of new Christians looking to Rome for leadership, were also involved. Such considerations may have also played a part, as influencing the emerging power of the Kentish Kingdom under Æthelberht could have had some bearing on the choice of location. Also, the mission may have been an outgrowth of the missionary efforts against the Lombards. 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 that Gregory desired to bring the last remaining pagan area of the old empire back under Christian control.