Gregorian mission

Ethnographic map of Britain as of the beginning of the VII century.

The Gregorian Mission (the name “Augustinian Mission” is encountered) is a mission sent by Pope Gregory I to Britain in 596 with the aim of converting the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity. Led by Augustine of Canterbury , after the death of the last missionary in 635, the mission strengthened the position of Christianity among the Anglo-Saxons of southern England. Along with the Irish and Frankish missions, she converted other areas of Britain to the Christian faith, and also influenced the Scottish Hibernation Mission in continental Europe.

By the end of the 6th century, pagan Germanic tribes had already settled in many areas of Britain, which by this time probably took control of modern Kent and other coastal areas. In 596, Pope Gregory I sent a group of missionaries led by Augustine to Kent to convert King Kent Etelbert I , whose wife, Bertha Kent , was a Frankish princess and a Christian believer to Christianity. Augustine was the prior of the monastery of Gregory in Rome, and Gregory provided a safe path for the mission, asking for help from the Frankish rulers, asking them to help the missionaries pass unhindered.

In 597, forty missionaries arrived in Kent and received permission from тthelbert I to preach Christianity freely in his capital, Canterbury . Soon the missionaries wrote to Gregory I, informing him of their successes and that the conversion of the monarch to the Christian faith took place. The exact date of Etelbert's baptism is unknown, but it happened earlier than 601 years. The second group of monks and clergy was sent in 601, along with books and other items for new missions. Gregory I appointed Augustine the archbishop of the metropolis of the southern part of the British Isles and gave him authority over the clergy from the native British, but after several meetings with Augustine the “old” Celtic bishops refused to recognize his authority.

Before the death of Etelbert I in 616, a number of other dioceses were created, but after this date paganism strengthened its position again, and the bishopric of London was abandoned. The daughter of Etelberta, Etelburg , married King Edwin of Northumbria , and in 627 Paulin of York , the bishop who accompanied her to the north, converted Christianity to Edwin and a number of other Northumbrians. When Edwin died, around 633, his widow and Paulin were forced to flee to Kent. Although the missionaries could not remain in all the areas they had Christianized , by the time the last one died — around 653 years — they had consolidated Christian positions in Kent and the surrounding countryside and promoted Roman tradition in the practice of Christianity in Britain.