Pope Gregory the Great and the Gregorian mission to England

Date

590 to 604 CE (mission 596 to 597)

Category

Religion & ideology

Region

Italy and Anglo-Saxon England

Era

Post-Classical / Medieval

Significance

Elected bishop of Rome in 590 as plague ravaged the city, Gregory I, later called Gregory the Great, reshaped the western Church and the role of the papacy.

Faced with Lombard threats and the collapse of imperial administration in Italy, he organised the city's defence and food supply, managed the vast estates of the Roman Church, and asserted Rome's spiritual leadership over the western bishops, effectively making the papacy a governing power in central Italy. He promoted monasticism, reformed the liturgy, and his pastoral writings became standard texts of the medieval Church. In 596 he dispatched the monk Augustine with a band of missionaries to the Anglo-Saxons; landing in Kent in 597, they converted King Aethelberht and founded the see of Canterbury, beginning the Christianisation of England and binding it to Rome. Gregory's blend of administrative, missionary and doctrinal initiative is often regarded as a foundational moment for the medieval papacy and for Latin Christendom's expansion into northern Europe.

Empires active in 590 to 604 CE (mission 596 to 597)

• Sassanid Empire
  224 CE to 651 CE
• Byzantine Empire
  330 CE to 1453 CE
• Classic Maya Civilization
  250 CE to 900 CE
• Kingdom of Aksum
  100 CE to 940 CE
• Pyu City-States
  200 BCE to 1050 CE
• Dvaravati
  575 CE to 1100 CE

Related religion & ideology events

• Muhammad's first revelation in the Cave of Hira
  c. 610 CE
• The Hijra: Muhammad's migration to Medina
  622 CE
• Official Introduction of Buddhism to Japan
  552 CE (traditional date; 538 CE in some sources)
• Adi Shankara and the Revival of Advaita Vedanta
  c. 700-750 CE
• Bhakti devotional movement emerges in Tamil South India
  c. 6th to 7th century CE
• Church of the East Reaches Tang China (Alopen Mission)
  635 CE

Essential reading

• Official Introduction of Buddhism to Japan
  552 CE (traditional date; 538 CE in some sources)
• Brahmagupta codifies zero and arithmetic of negatives (Brahmasphutasiddhanta)
  628 CE
• Volcanic Winter of 536 and Onset of the Late Antique Little Ice Age
  536 to 537 CE
• Antonine Plague
  165-180 CE

Further reading

A Little History of Religion

The wider story

A Little History of Religion

Richard Holloway

Accessible sweep of humanity's faiths and belief systems from prehistory to the present.

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