Pope Gregory the Great Sends Missionaries to Convert England
Augustine's expedition to the English keeps their old temples standing but replaces the gods inside them
Quick facts
- Pope
- Gregory I (Gregory the Great), r. 590-604 CE
- Missionary sent
- Augustine of Canterbury
- Year
- 597 CE
- Destination
- Kingdom of Kent, England
What happened
Before becoming pope, Gregory the Great had already asked Rome's bishop to send missionaries to Britain to convert the English; once elected pope himself, he acted on that same interest and sent a monk named Augustine with a group of companions to the kingdom of Kent in 597 CE, where King Ethelbert received them. Gregory's instructions to the mission, recorded in a letter to the missionary Mellitus, told Augustine not to destroy English temples but only the idols inside them, and to purify the buildings with holy water and install altars and relics of the saints there instead, reasoning that the people would abandon their old error in a place already dear and familiar to them. The mission succeeded in converting Ethelbert and established a permanent Christian foothold in England, with Augustine becoming the first Archbishop of Canterbury.
Why it matters
Gregory's strategy of converting buildings rather than demolishing them became a recurring missionary technique used well beyond England, and the mission itself restored organized Christianity to England more than a century and a half after Roman rule had ended there, planting the church that would later send its own missionaries onward into continental Europe.
How we know
The mission is described in Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, written in the early 8th century drawing on earlier records, and Gregory's own letter to Mellitus survives independently as a papal register document.
Sources
- Internet History Sourcebooks Project, Fordham University. Gregory I: Letter to Mellitus · Primary source (author-declared)sourcebooks.fordham.edu · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match).
- Internet History Sourcebooks Project, Fordham University. Pope Gregory I, Angles, Angels and the English Mission · Primary source (author-declared)sourcebooks.fordham.edu · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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Part of a timelineHistory of Christianity28 events · A crucified Jewish teacher, a persecuted sect that became an empire's official religion, and two thousand years of councils, schisms, and missions that carried it to every continentView all →