597. Roman missionaries, led by Augustine, arrive in Kent
597?601. Æthelberht of Kent converted to Christianity

The legendary beginning of the Roman mission to England is described in chapter nine of the Life of Gregory the Great (written at Whitby probably 704?714) and in Bede (HE, ii.1). Gregory, before he became Pope, was at the slave market in Rome and discovered some Northumbrians. He asked about their background and made three bilingual puns to show that they were ripe for conversion. (His comment that the Angles were like angels is well-known; the other two are that the kingdom's name Deira showed that they should be saved "from the wrath" (de ira) of the Lord, and that the king's name Ælle showed that Alleluia should be sung in those parts.) The Whitby Life and Bede differ in particulars, and it is likely that the full-grown tale had more to do with English love of wordplay (seen most vividly in Aldhelm, the brilliant contemporary Anglo-Latin poet) than with events in Rome over a century earlier.

One root of the tale may have been a letter of September 595 from Gregory to the priest Candidus who was setting out for Gaul, telling him to use papal revenues to buy English youths in the slave markets and put them into monasteries (see Wood, p.2, and Colgrave, p.145). Gregory may have intended to use these converted natives as missionaries to England. Another root was perhaps Gregory's comment in his Moralia in Iob, also circulating around 595, that the once-barbarous language of Britain was now beginning to sing the Hebrew Alleluia. These are the only contemporary Continental references, and if the similarity between Alleluia and the Deiran king's name was a pun waiting to happen, it probably only happened on English soil.

Bede provides the only early narrative account of Augustine's mission (HE, i.23-33, ii.2-3), though this should be supplemented with Wood's review of the Continental evidence.

In 596, Pope Gregory sent Augustine with almost forty companions to convert the English. The missionaries were sore afraid of a barbarian and heathen country and stopped partway, sending Augustine back to Gregory to ask that they be excused the mission. Gregory instead sent them an encouraging letter, dated 23 July 596, and they continued on their way (HE, i.23). Bede records a letter from Gregory to the Etherius, the bishop of Lyons, wrongly called of Arles (HE, i.24); Wood demonstrates from the register of Gregory's correspondence that this is only one of a thicket of papal letters asking support for Augustine, to bishops of Marseilles, Aix, Arles, Vienne, Autun, Tours -- which would all be on a relatively straight route from Provence to Kent (Wood, p. 5). Although Bede states that Augustine returned to the Continent to be consecrated bishop of the English after the coversion of Æthelberht (HE, i.27), a letter of Pope Gregory to Eulogius of Alexandria makes clear Augustine was consecrated on the way over (Colgrave/Mynors, p. 78 n. 1).

In 597, Augustine arrived at Thanet, where he was received by Æthelberht, and granted a dwelling-place in Canterbury and permission to preach (HE, i.25; date from HE, v.24). As Wood points out, the litany Bede records for this occasion is probably an anachronism (Wood, pp. 3-4). The Roman missionaries began to imitate the life of the apostles in Canterbury, and preached at the church of St Martin's, which was already in use for the Christian observances of the queen, Bertha, and her bishop Liudhard. Some of the people, marvelling at the simplicity of the missionaries and their faith, believed and were baptised, until at last Æthelberht himself was baptised (HE, i.26). In the letter to Eulogius already mentioned, Gregory states that at Christmas 597 over ten thousand people were baptised (Wood, p. 12). The precise date of Æthelberht's own conversion is unknown, but the outer limits seem to be the arrival of the missionaries in 597 and a letter from the Pope to the newly-converted king in 601.

Bede's account leaves out almost all mention of Frankish involvement in Augustine's mission, except for his inclusion of a letter of introduction for Augustine to bishop Etherius of Lyons (HE, i.24) and his comment that when the missionaries arrived at Thanet they had acquired some Frankish interpreters (HE, i.25). In fact, in other letters of Gregory, perhaps not known to Bede but reviewed by Wood, the Pope reports that he has heard good reports of the involvement of several Frankish kings, and especially of the queen-regent Brunhild. Further, Syagrius, bishop of Autun, received a pallium in 599 for his support of the mission. We have no details of this "involvement" and "support" outside of the record of the letters of Gregory, so we cannot say what form it took on the ground. From letters Gregory wrote to Frankish kings in 596, it seems that the English wished to become Christian, but the priests of the neighbourhood (given the context, presumably Frankish priests) had not responded. In a letter to Brunhild of 596, Gregory again makes this complaint, and notes that he wants Augustine to take some priests from the neighbourhood with him. Perhaps the Frankish rulers were thanked later by Gregory for encouraging their clergy to support or participate in Augustine's mission, though they would doubtless also be pursuing their own political aims in doing so (see Wood, p. 9).

N. Brooks, The Early History of the Church of Canterbury (Leicester: 1984)

B. Colgrave, The Earliest Life of Gregory the Great (Kansas: 1968)

B. Colgrave and R.A.B. Mynors, Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Oxford: 1969)

I. Wood, "The Mission of Augustine to Canterbury to the English", Speculum 69 (1994), 1-17