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A background to Augustine's mission to Anglo-Saxon England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Rob Meens
Rob Meens
Affiliation:
University of Nijmegen
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Extract

As is well known, Bede gives a biased account of the conversion of Anglo-Saxon England. He highlights the role of the Roman mission, initiated by Pope Gregory the Great and led by Augustine, the first bishop of Canterbury. Almost as important in the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum is the effort made by the Irish to Christianize Northumbria. The Frankish contribution to the missionary process, however, is not mentioned at all, though Frankish clerics certainly played an important role in the conversion of England. This role is attested by later contacts between England and the Frankish church. The letters of Gregory the Great relating to the mission of Augustine, moreover, make it clear that this mission also benefited greatly from help supplied by the Frankish church. The continuity of the British church seems to have been stronger than Bede suggests and his statement that the Britons did nothing to convert the Angles and the Saxons should be regarded as an overstatement. It has been argued recently that Bede left out an account of the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons living west and south-west of the Mercians, the Hwicce, the Magonsæte and the Wreocensæte, not because of a lack of information, but because of the part the Britons played in it.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 23 , December 1994 , pp. 5 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

1 A recent study of the biases in Bede's work is Goffart, W., ‘The Historia Ecclesiastica: Bede's Agenda and Ours’, Haskins Soc. Jnl 2 (1990), 29–45.Google Scholar

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23 Excerpta quedam de libro Davidis, chs. 8–9 (Irish Penitentials, ed. Bieler, , p. 70).Google Scholar

24 Excerpta ex libro Davidis chs. 8–9. Cf. Praefatio Gildae de paenitentia ch. 22; Synodus Anquilonalis Britaniae ch. 2 (ibid. pp. 70, 62 and 66); and P. Cummeani(XI) 10(ibid. p. 130): ‘et qui acciperit sacrificium pollutus nocturno somno, sic peniteat [ = superponat]’. See also Kottje, , Studien zum Einfluss, pp. 77–8 and 112–13.Google Scholar

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44 Bede's Ecclesiastical History, ed. Colgrave, and Mynors, , p. 136Google Scholar: ‘sed et alia plurima unitati ecclesiasticae contraria faciebant’.

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49 See above, n. 5.

50 Research for this paper was made possible by a generous grant from the Niels Stensen Stichting. I should like to thank Mayke de Jong and Ian Wood for their helpful suggestions on an earlier version of this paper. The latter also kindly sent me the text of his article on the mission of Augustine before publication (see above, n. 3).