Gregorian mission

The Gregorian mission was the missionary endeavour sent by Pope Gregory the Great to the Anglo-Saxons in 596 AD, headed by Augustine of Canterbury, which attempted to convert the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity. After the Roman Empire recalled the legions from the province of Britannia in 410, Britannia was invaded and settled by Germanic tribes, who remained pagans. In the late 6th century, Pope Gregory sent a group of missionaries to Kent, in order to convert Æthelberht, the king of Kent, who was married to a Frankish princess. Besides the purely missionary motives of the delegation, Gregory probably also wished to expand the areas acknowledging the primacy of the popes, as well as a desire to influence the rising power of the Kentish state. Gregory chose Augustine, who was the prior of Gregory's own monastic foundation in Rome, to head the mission, and prepared the way by soliciting aid from the various 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 were able to write to Gregory that the mission was successful and conversions were taking place. Another group of monks and clergy were dispatched in 601, bearing items and books for the new foundation. Æthelberht was converted, but the exact date of his conversion is unknown, but it occurred before 601. Gregory intended for Augustine to be the metropolitan archbishop of the southern part of the British Isles, and that included ruling any remaining native British clergy. However, attempts to secure the natives cooperation came to nothing after a series of meetings between Augustine and the local bishops.

Before Æthelberht's death in 616, a number of other bishoprics had been established, but after that date, a pagan reaction set in, and the see, or bishopric, at London was abandoned. Æthelberht's daughter married Edwin, the king of the Northumbrians and by 627 Paulinus, the bishop that accompanied her north had converted Edwin and a number of other Northumbrians. When Edwin died in 633, however, his widow and Paulinus were forced to flee to Kent. Although the missionaries did not manage to stay in all of the places they evangelized, by the time that the last of the missionaries died in 653, they had established themselves in Kent and the surrounding countryside, and contributed a Roman tradition to Christianity in Britain.

Background to the mission

Map of the general outlines of some of the British kingdoms about 600

After the withdrawal of the Roman legions from the province of Britannia in 410, the natives of the island of Great Britain were left to defend themselves against the attacks of the Saxons. Before the withdrawal Britannia had been converted to Christianity and had even produced its own heretic in Pelagius. Britain sent three bishops to the Council of Arles in 314, and a Gaulish bishop went to the island in 396 to help settle disciplinary matters. Material remains testify to a growing presence of Christians, at least until around 360. After the legions left, pagan tribes settled the southern parts of the island, but Western Britain, beyond the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, remained Christian. This native British Church developed in isolation from Rome under the influence of missionaries from Ireland. After the departure of the legions, this British church was centred on monasteries instead of bishoprics. Other distinguishing characteristics were its calculation of the date of Easter and the style of the tonsure haircut that clerics wore. Evidence for the survival of Christianity in the eastern part of Britain during this time includes the survival of the cult of St Alban and the occurrence of eccles, derived from the Latin for church, in place names. There is no evidence that these native Christians tried to convert the Anglo-Saxons. The invasions destroyed most remnants of Roman civilization in the areas held by the Saxons and related tribes, including the economic and religious structures.

Gregory the Great and his motivations

It was against this background that Pope Gregory I decided to send a mission, often called the Gregorian mission, to convert the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity in 595. The Kingdom of Kent was ruled by Æthelberht, who had married a Christian princess named Bertha before 588, 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. Together in Canterbury, they restored a church that dated to Roman times—possibly the current St Martin's Church, Canterbury. Æthelberht was a pagan at this point but allowed his wife freedom of worship. Liudhard, however, does not appear to have made many converts among the Anglo-Saxons. One biographer of Bertha states that under his wife's influence, Æthelberht asked Pope Gregory to send missionaries. The historian Ian Wood feels that the initiative came from the Kentish court as well as the queen.

Gregory dictating from a 10th century manuscript

Other historians, however, feel that Gregory initiated the mission, although the exact reasons remain unclear. A famous story recorded by Bede, an eighth-century monk who wrote a history of the English church, relates that Gregory saw fair-haired Saxon slaves from Britain in the Roman slave market and was inspired to try to convert their people. Supposedly Gregory inquired about who the slaves were. He was told 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. However, later, in 595 Gregory wrote to one of the papal estate managers in southern Gaul, asking that he buy English slave boys in order that they might be educated in monasteries. Some historians have seen this purchase as signalling that Gregory was already planning the mission to England at this point, and planned to send the purchased slaves as missionaries, but the letter itself doesn't make this interpretation explicit.

More practical matters, such as the acquisition of new provinces acknowledging the primacy of the papacy, and a desire to influence the emerging power of the Kentish kingdom under Æthelberht, were probably involved. The mission may have been an outgrowth of the missionary efforts against the Lombards. At the time of the mission, England was the last area of the Roman Empire still 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.

The choice of Kent and Æthelberht was probably dictated by a number of factors, including the fact that Æthelberht had allowed his wife to worship freely. Trade between the Franks and Æthelberht's kingdom was well established, and the language barrier between the two regions was apparently only a minor obstacle, as the interpreters for the mission came from the Franks. Another reason for the mission was the growing power of the Kentish kingdom. Since the eclipse of King Ceawlin of Wessex in 592, Æthelberht was the leading Anglo-Saxon ruler; Bede refers to Æthelberht as having imperium, or overlordship, south of the River Humber. Lastly, the location of Kent near the Franks allowed support from a Christian area. There is some evidence, including Gregory's letter's to Frankish kings in support of the mission, that some of the Franks felt that they had a claim to overlordship over some of the southern British kingdoms at this time. The presence of a Frankish bishop could also have lent credence to claims of overlordship, if Liudhard was felt to be acting as a representative of the Frankish church and not merely as a spiritual adviser to the queen. Available archaeological remains support the notion that there were cultural influences from Francia in England at that time.

Sending the mission

In 595, Gregory chose Augustine, who was the prior of the abbey of St Anthony in Rome, to head the mission to Kent. Gregory selected monks to accompany Augustine and sought support from the Frankish kingdom. The Pope wrote to a number of Frankish bishops on Augustine's behalf, introducing the mission and asking that Augustine and his companions be made welcome. Copies of letters to some of these bishops survive in Rome. The pope wrote to King Theuderic II of Burgundy and to King Theudebert II of Austrasia, as well as their grandmother Brunhild, seeking aid for the mission. Gregory thanked King Chlothar II of Neustria for aiding Augustine. Besides hospitality, the Frankish bishops and kings provided interpreters, and were asked to allow some Frankish priests to accompany the mission. By soliciting help from the Frankish kings and bishops, Gregory helped to assure a friendly reception for Augustine in Kent, as Æthelbert was unlikely to mistreat a mission who visibly had the support of his wife's relatives and people. The Franks at this time were attempting to extend their influence in Kent, and helping Augustine's mission would further that goal. Chlothar, in particular, needed a friendly realm across the Channel to help guard his kingdom's flanks against his fellow Frankish kings.

Arrival and first efforts

Illustration of St Luke from the St. Augustine Gospels, traditionally held to be one of the books sent by Gregory to Augustine in 601.

The mission comprised about 40 missionaries, some of whom were monks. Soon after leaving Rome, the missionaries halted, daunted by the nature of the task before them. They sent Augustine back to Rome to request papal permission to return. Gregory refused and sent Augustine back with letters encouraging the missionaries to persevere. In 597, the mission landed in Kent. They achieved some initial success soon after their arrival: Æthelberht permitted the missionaries to settle and preach in his capital of Canterbury where they used the church of St Martin's for services, and this church became the seat of the bishopric. Neither Bede nor Gregory mentions the date of Æthelberht's conversion, but it probably took place in 597. In the early medieval period, large scale conversions required the ruler's conversion first, and large numbers of converts are recorded within a year of the mission's arrival in Kent. By 601, Gregory was writing to both Æthelberht and Bertha, calling the king his son and referring to his baptism. A late medieval tradition, recorded by the 15th-century chronicler Thomas Elmham, gives the date of the king's conversion as Whit Sunday, or 2 June 597; there is no reason to doubt this date, although there is no other evidence for it. Against a date in 597 is a letter of Gregory's to Patriarch Eulogius of Alexandria in June 598, which mentions the number of converts made, but does not mention any baptism of the king. However, it is clear that by 601 the king had been converted.

After these conversions, Augustine sent Laurence back to Rome with a report of his success along with questions about the mission. Bede records the letter and Gregory's replies in chapter 27 of his Ecclesiastical History: Augustine asked for Gregory's advice on a number of issues, including how to organise the church, the punishment for church robbers, guidance on who was allowed to marry whom, and the consecration of bishops. Other topics were relations between the churches of Britain and Gaul, childbirth and baptism, and when it was lawful for people to receive communion and for a priest to celebrate mass.

According to Bede, further missionaries were sent from Rome in 601. They brought a pallium for Augustine and a present of sacred vessels, vestments, relics, and books. The pallium was the symbol of metropolitan status, and signified that Augustine was now an archbishop. Along with the pallium, a letter from Gregory directed the new archbishop to ordain 12 suffragan bishops as soon as possible and to send a bishop to York. Gregory's plan was that there would be two metropolitans, one at York and one at London, with 12 suffragan bishops under each archbishop. As part of this plan, Augustine was expected to transfer his archiepiscopal see to London from Canterbury. The move from Canterbury to London never happened; no contemporary sources give the reason, but it was probably because London was not part of Æthelberht's domains. Instead, London was part of the kingdom of Essex, ruled by Æthelberht's nephew Saebert of Essex, who converted to Christianity in 604. The historian S. Brechter has suggested that the metropolitan see was indeed moved to London, and that it was only with the abandonment of London as a see after the death of Æthelberht that Canterbury became the archiepiscopal see. This theory contradicts Bede's version of events, however.

Relations with the British Christians

Gregory had ordered that the native British bishops should be governed by Augustine, and in pursuit of this, Augustine arranged a meeting with some of the native clergy. This meeting took place at a tree later named "Augustine's Oak", which by the time of Bede was on the border of the Kentish kingdom. This meeting took place around 602 to 604 and the location is probably around the boundary between Somerset and Gloucestershire. Augustine apparently argued that the British church should give up any of their customs that did not agree with Roman practices, including the dating of Easter. He also urged them to help with the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons. After some discussion, the local bishops stated that the needed to consult with their own people before giving in to Augustine's requests, and they did so. Bede relates that they consulted an old hermit who said they should obey Augustine if, when they next met with him, Augustine rose when he greeted the natives. But if Augustine failed to stand up when they arrived for the second meeting, they should not submit to Augustine. When Augustine failed to rise at the second meeting, Bede says the British bishops refused to submit. Bede uses this story as an example of how the native clergy refused to cooperate with the Gregorian mission. Later, Aldhelm, the abbot of Malmesbury wrote in the later part of the 7th century said the native clerks would not eat with the missionaries nor would they perform Christian ceremonies with them.

One probable reason that the British clergy refused to cooperate with the Gregorian missionaries was the conflict between the natives and the Anglo-Saxons, who were still encroaching upon native lands at the time of the mission. This problem had two aspects, the first being that the British have been unwilling to preach to the invaders of their country, and the second that the invaders themselves saw the natives as second-class citizens so would have been unwilling to listen to any conversion efforts. Another issue was political, as the missionaries would have been seen not only as agents of the invaders, but also of the Roman church.

An important point is that most of the information on the Gregorian mission comes from Bede's narrative, and this reliance on one source leaves the picture of native missionary efforts skewed. First, Bede's information is mainly from the north and the east of Britain. The western areas, where the native clergy was strongest, is an area that is little covered by Bede's informants. Another concern is that although Bede presents the native church as one entity, in reality the native British were divided into a number of small political units, which makes Bede's generalizations suspect.

Spread of bishoprics

Statute of Paulinus from Rochester Cathedral

In 604, another bishopric was founded, this time at Rochester, where Justus was consecrated as bishop. In the same year, the king of Essex was converted, enabling another see to be established at London, with Mellitus as bishop. Rædwald, the king of the East Angles was also converted, but no see was established in his territory. Rædwald had been converted while visiting Æthelberht in Kent, but when he returned to his own court, he hedged his bets and worshiped both pagan gods and the Christian God. When Augustine died in 604, Laurence, another missionary, succeeded him as archbishop.

In the north of Britain, progress was made in when Edwin of Northumbria married a daughter of Æthelbert and agreed to allow her to continue to worship as a Christian. He also agreed to allow Paulinus of York to accompany her as a bishop and for Paulinus to preach to the court. By 627, Paulinus had converted Edwin, and on Easter, 627, Edwin was baptized. Many were baptized after the king's conversion. The exact date when Paulinus went north is unclear, with some historians arguing for 625, the traditional date; and others arguing it was closer to 619.

About the time that Edwin died in 633, a member of the East Anglian royal family, Sigeberht, returned to England after being converted while in exile in Francia. He asked Honorius, one of the Gregorian missionaries who was now Archbishop of Canterbury, to send him a bishop, and Honorius sent Felix of Burgundy, who was already consecrated a bishop. Felix was able to convert the East Angles.

Pagan reactions

When Æthelbert died in 616, a pagan reaction set in, and Mellitus was expelled from London, and never returned. Justus was also expelled from Rochester, but he returned eventually, after going to Gaul with Mellitus. Bede relates a story that Laurence was preparing to join Mellitus and Justus in Francia when he had a dream where Saint Peter appeared and whipped Laurence as a rebuke for his plans to leave his mission. When Laurence woke up, he showed the whip marks, which had physically happened to him during the dream, to the new Kentish king, who promptly was converted and recalled the exiled bishops. In the north, Edwin was killed in battle in 633 and Paulinus returned to Kent with Edwin's widow and daughter. Only one member of Paulinus' group stayed behind, James the Deacon.

After Justus' departure from Northumbria, a new king, Oswald, invited missionaries from the Irish monastery of Iona, who worked to convert the kingdom.

Aspects of the mission

The Gregorian missionaries concentrated their efforts in areas where Roman settlement had been concentrated. It is possible that Gregory, when he sent the missionaries out, was attempting to restore a form of Roman civilization to England, modeling the church organization after that of the church in Francia at the time. Another aspect of the mission was how little of it was based on monasticism. One monastery was established at Canterbury, what later was St Augustine's, Canterbury, but although Augustine and some of his missionaries had been monks, they do not appear to have lived as monks at Canterbury. Instead, they lived more as secular clergy serving a cathedral church, and it appears likely that the sees established at Rochester and London were organized along similar lines. The Gaulish and Italian churches were organized around cities and the territories controlled by those cities. Pastoral services were centralized, with churches being built in the larger villages of the cities territorial rule. The seat of the bishopric was established in the city, and all churches belonged to the diocese and were staffed by the bishop's clergy.

Most modern historians have noted how the Gregorian missionaries come across in Bede's account as colourless and boring compared to the Irish missionaries in Northumbria, and this is directly related to the way Bede gathered his information. The historian Henry Mayr-Harting argues that in addition, most of the Gregorian missionaries were concerned with appearing with the Roman virtue of gravitas, or personal dignity not given to emotional displays, and this would have limited the colourful stories available about them.

One reason for the success of the mission was that it worked by example. Also important was Gregory's flexibility and willingness to allow the missionaries to adjust their liturgies and behavior, which the pope communicated to Augustine and his fellow missionaries. Another reason was the willingness of Æthelberht to be baptised by a non-Frank. The king would have been wary of allowing the Frankish bishop Liudhard to convert him, as that might open Kent up to Frankish claims of overlordship. But being converted by an agent of the distant Roman pontiff was not only safer, it allowed the added prestige of accepting baptism from the central source of the Latin Church. As the Roman church was considered part of the Roman empire in Constantinople, this would also gain Æthelberht acknowledgement from the emperor. Other historians have attributed the success of the mission to the large resources that Gregory put forth for the mission. He sent over forty missionaries in the first group, with more joining them later, a number that was quite large.

Legacy

St Boniface baptizing (upper) and his martyrdom (lower), from a 11th century manuscript.

The last of Gregory's missionaries, Archbishop Honorius, died on 30 September 653. After his death, a native Englishman, Deusdedit, was appointed archbishop.

The missionaries were forced to move slowly, and were not able to do much about destroying the pagan practices, temples or other sacred sites they found around themselves, which was unlike the missionary efforts that had taken place in Gaul under St Martin. There was little fighting or bloodshed during the mission. In the 630s, paganism in Kent still existed, and it was not until 640 that pagan practices were declared illegal. Although Honorius sent Felix to the East Angles, it appears that most of the impetus for conversion came from the East Anglian king.

With the Gregorian missionaries, a third strand of Christian practice was added to the British Isles, to combine with the Gaulish and the Irish strands already present. Although it is often thought that the Gregorian missionaries introduced the Rule of Saint Benedict into England, there is no evidence for this. The early archbishops at Canterbury claimed supremacy over all the bishops in the British Isles, but this claim was not acknowledged by most of the rest of the bishops. The Gregorian missionaries appear to have played no part in the conversion of the West Saxons, who were converted by a missionary sent directly by Pope Honorius I. They had also lost out in Northumbria, where after Edwin's death, the conversion of the Northumbrians was undertaken by missionaries from Iona, not Canterbury.

An important by product of the Gregorian mission was the close relations that developed between the Anglo-Saxon Church and the Roman Church. Although Gregory had intended for the southern archiepiscopal see to be located at London, this never happened. A later tradition, dating from 797, when an attempt was made to move the archbishopric from Canterbury to London by King Coenwulf of Mercia, stated that on the death of Augustine, the "wise men" of the Anglo-Saxons met and decided that the see should remain at Canterbury, for that was where Augustine had preached. The idea that an archbishop needed a pallium in order to exercise his archiepiscopal authority derives from the Gregorian mission, who established the custom at Canterbury from which it spread to the Continent by later Anglo-Saxon missionaries such as Willibrord and Boniface.

Another effect of the mission was the promotion of the cult of Pope Gregory the Great. It was Northumbrians and other English that promoted this cult, and the first Life of Gregory is from Whitby Abbey in Northumbria. Gregory was not popular in Rome, and it wasn't until Bede's Ecclesisastical History began to circulate that Gregory's cult take root in Rome too.

The mission was part of a movement by Gregory to turn away from the East, and look to the Western parts of the old Roman Empire. After Gregory, a number of his successors as pope continued it, including support for the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons. The missionary efforts of Augustine and his companions, along with those of the Irish missionaries, were the archetype for the Anglo-Saxon missionaries to Germany.

Sources

• Bede Venerablis (1988). A History of the English Church and People. Penguin Classics. ISBN 0-14-044042-9. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Blair, John P. (2005). The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-921117-5.
• Blair, Peter Hunter (2003). An Introduction to Anglo-Saxon England (Third ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-53777-0. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Brooks, Nicholas (1984). The Early History of the Church of Canterbury: Christ Church from 597 to 1066. London: Leicester University Press. ISBN 0-7185-0041-5.
• Brown, Peter G. (2003). The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, A. D. 200–1000. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 0-631-22138-7.
• Chaney, William A. (1967). "Paganism to Christianity in Anglo-Saxon England". In Thrupp, Sylvia L. (ed.). Early Medieval Society. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. pp. 67–83.
• Collins, Roger (1999). Early Medieval Europe: 300–1000 (Second ed.). New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-21886-9.
• Fletcher, R. A. (1998). The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity. New York: H. Holt and Co. ISBN 0-8050-2763-7.
• Frend, William H. C. (2003). Martin Carver (ed.). Roman Britain, a Failed Promise. The Cross Goes North: Processes of Conversion in Northern Europe AD 300–1300. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press. pp. 79–92. ISBN 1-84383-125-2.
• Herrin, Judith (1989). The Formation of Christendom. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-00831-0.
• Hindley, Geoffrey (2006). A Brief History of the Anglo-Saxons: The Beginnings of the English Nation. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers. ISBN 978-0-78671-738-5.
• Kirby, D. P. (2000). The Earliest English Kings. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-24211-8.
• John, Eric (1996). Reassessing Anglo-Saxon England. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ISBN 0-7190-5053-7.
• Jones, Putnam Fennell (1928). "The Gregorian Mission and English Education" (fee required). Speculum. 3 (3): 335–348. doi:10.2307/2847433. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• Lawrence, C. H. (2001). Medieval Monasticism: Forms of Religious Life in Western Europe in the Middle Ages. New York: Longman. ISBN 0-582-40427-4.
• Mayr-Harting, Henry (1991). The Coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 0-271-00769-9.
• Mayr-Harting, Henry (2004). "Augustine (St Augustine) (d. 604)" (fee required). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 2008-03-30.
• Nelson, Janet L. (2006). "Bertha (b. c.565, d. in or after 601)" (fee required). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 2008-03-30.
• Ortenberg, Veronica (1965). "The Anglo-Saxon Church and the Papacy". In Lawrence, C. H. (ed.). The English Church and the Papacy in the Middle Ages (1999 reprint ed.). Stroud: Sutton Publishing. pp. p. 29–62. ISBN 0-7509-1947-7. {{cite encyclopedia}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
• Stenton, F. M. (1971). Anglo-Saxon England (Third Edition ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-280139-5. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help)
• Wood, Ian (1994). "The Mission of Augustine of Canterbury to the English" (fee required). Speculum. 69 (1): 1–17. doi:10.2307/2864782. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• Yorke, Barbara (2006). The Conversion of Britain: Religion, Politics and Society in Britain c. 600-800. London: Pearson/Longman. ISBN 0-582-77292-3.