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Pope Gregory the Great and the Gregorian mission to England

590–604 CE (mission 596–597)·Religion & ideology·Italy and Anglo-Saxon England·
590–604 CE (mission 596–597)Date
Religion & ideologyCategory
13Empires active
Date
590–604 CE (mission 596–597)
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.

See the world map in 590–604 CE (mission 596–597) →More religion & ideologyThe Post-Classical / Medieval era

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

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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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