Pope Gregory the Great sends Augustine's mission to convert the Anglo-Saxons
A Roman monk lands in Kent and starts England's return to Christianity
Quick facts
- Location
- Kent, England
- Sent by
- Pope Gregory the Great
- Led by
- Augustine, later first Archbishop of Canterbury
- Local king
- Aethelberht of Kent
What happened
In 595 Pope Gregory the Great, one of the most consequential popes of the early medieval papacy, chose the monk Augustine to lead a mission of about 40 companions to convert the pagan Anglo-Saxons of England, where Christianity had faded after the Roman withdrawal and Saxon settlement. Augustine landed in Kent in 597, chosen as a starting point partly because its king, Aethelberht, was married to a Christian Frankish princess, Bertha, who could smooth the mission's reception. According to the monk Bede, writing over a century later, Aethelberht met Augustine's party warily, outdoors, for fear of sorcery, but allowed them to preach and gave them land to found a monastery outside Canterbury. Augustine became the first Archbishop of Canterbury.
Why it matters
The mission tied Anglo-Saxon England's church directly to Rome rather than to the older, separately organized Celtic Christian tradition already present in Britain, a connection that shaped English religious and political life for the rest of the Middle Ages and gave Canterbury its enduring status as England's senior archbishopric.
How we know
Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, written around 731, is the primary narrative source and is corroborated by Gregory's own surviving correspondence about the mission's planning and progress.
Sources
- English Heritage. Who Was St Augustine? · Unclassified sourceenglish-heritage.org.uk · Cited as a "website" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- English Heritage. Who Was St Augustine? · Unclassified sourceenglish-heritage.org.uk · Cited as a "website" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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