Early Middle Ages

Who Evangelized the Anglo-Saxons? The Mission to the English

The missionaries who converted the Anglo-Saxons: Augustine of Canterbury, Aidan of Lindisfarne, and the Irish, Roman, and English monks who Christianized England.

Question & answer

The Anglo-Saxons were evangelized by a combination of Roman, Italian, and Irish monks, sent in several waves from the late sixth through the eighth centuries. The first and most famous was the mission of the Augustine of Canterbury, sent by Pope Gregory the Great to Kent in 597. Augustine and his companions established the first English bishopric at Canterbury, and they set the pattern for the Roman missionary strategy that would convert most of southern England. The north and the Celtic regions were evangelized by Irish monks from Iona, led by Aidan, who established the bishopric of Lindisfarne in 635. By the late seventh century, the two streams had been united at the Synod of Whitby in 664, and the Roman tradition was established as the standard for the English church.

The Roman mission: Augustine of Canterbury

The most famous missionary to the Anglo-Saxons was Augustine, prior of the monastery of St. Andrew in Rome, who was sent to England by Pope Gregory the Great in 596. According to Bede, Gregory had been struck by the appearance of fair-haired Anglo-Saxon slaves in a Roman market, and he had been moved to attempt their conversion. He selected Augustine, a monk of his own monastery, to lead the mission, and he provided him with a small group of companions, instructions on how to adapt the Roman liturgy to the English church, and letters of introduction to the Frankish kings through whose territory they would pass.

Augustine and his companions landed in Kent in 597, where King Æthelberht had a Christian Frankish wife, Bertha, and where a small Christian community had been maintained since her arrival. Æthelberht was persuaded to accept baptism, and he allowed the missionaries to establish their base in Canterbury, his capital. Augustine was consecrated as the first Archbishop of Canterbury, and the mission began to expand into Essex and East Anglia.

Augustine’s strategy was to work through the existing political structure, converting the king and then supporting the establishment of bishoprics and monasteries in his kingdom. He was remarkably successful: by the time of his death in 604, Christianity had been established in Kent, Essex, and East Anglia, and the first English church had been organized. Augustine was less successful in his attempts to unify the British and English churches, but his successors continued the work, and the Roman mission laid the foundations of the English church.

The Irish mission: Aidan of Lindisfarne

While Augustine was working in the south, a different mission was at work in the north. Irish monks had been evangelizing the Picts and the Scots since the late fifth century, and they had established important monasteries in Ireland, Iona, and the Scottish islands. The Northumbrian king Oswald, who had been educated at Iona, invited Irish monks to evangelize his kingdom. The most important of these was Aidan, who established the monastery and bishopric of Lindisfarne in 635.

Aidan and his Irish followers evangelized Northumbria, Mercia, and the Anglo-Saxon regions along the border with the Britons. They were known for their asceticism, their learning, and their pastoral concern, and they established a distinctive tradition of monastic Christianity that combined Irish, Roman, and native English elements. The Northumbrian church, with its great monasteries of Lindisfarne, Wearmouth-Jarrow, and Whitby, became the center of a remarkable flowering of Christian learning and art, exemplified by figures such as Bede, Cuthbert, and the illuminators of the Lindisfarne Gospels.

The Irish and Roman traditions were not always in harmony. The two traditions differed on a number of practices, including the computation of Easter, the form of the tonsure, and the details of monastic observance. The conflict came to a head at the Synod of Whitby in 664, where King Oswiu of Northumbria ruled in favor of the Roman tradition. The decision was symbolic as well as practical: it aligned the English church with Rome and set the stage for further missionary work on the continent.

Other missionary figures

Augustine and Aidan were the most famous, but they were far from being the only missionaries to the Anglo-Saxons. The Roman mission was continued by a series of papal missionaries, including Mellitus, who was sent to evangelize the East Saxons, and Birinus, who was sent to evangelize the West Saxons and who baptized King Cynegils of Wessex in 634. Paulinus, a Roman monk who had been sent to Northumbria by Augustine, was another important figure, and he baptized King Edwin of Northumbria in 627, only to be driven out by the pagan reaction of 633.

The English church, once it was established, produced its own missionaries. The most important was Boniface (originally named Winfrid), who left England in 716 to evangelize the Frisians and the Germans. Boniface was supported by the papacy and by the Carolingian mayors of the palace, and he worked systematically to establish bishoprics, monasteries, and schools across the regions east of the Rhine. His most famous act was the felling of Donar’s Oak at Geismar in 723, an event that became symbolic of the victory of Christianity over Germanic paganism. Boniface was killed in 754, while evangelizing the Frisians, and he was buried at the great abbey of Fulda, which he had founded in 744.

The strategy of conversion

The Anglo-Saxon missions set the pattern for the conversion of northern Europe. The missionaries were usually monks, sent by the pope or by a major monastic house, who traveled with the protection of the king and the support of his court. The strategy was to convert the king, who would then support the establishment of bishoprics and monasteries in his kingdom. The missionaries also adapted their message to local conditions, taking account of the existing political, social, and cultural structures.

The conversion of the Anglo-Saxons was, however, not always peaceful. The pagan reaction of 633, in which the Christian king Edwin of Northumbria was killed at the Battle of Hatfield Chase by Cadwallon of Gwynedd and Penda of Mercia, was a serious setback. (Oswald, who succeeded Edwin, would later die at the Battle of Maserfield in 642.) The Vikings, who began raiding England in 793, posed a particular threat to the English church, and they destroyed several of the great monasteries of Northumbria. The Christianization of the Danelaw, the region of England under Viking control, was a slow process, and it was not complete until the eleventh century.

The Anglo-Saxon missions were also significant for the role they played in the Christianization of Europe as a whole. The English missionaries who had converted their own island soon turned to the continent, and they played a major role in the conversion of the Frisians, the Germans, and the Slavs. The Anglo-Saxon church was thus not only the recipient of Roman missions; it was also a major exporter of missionaries. The Anglo-Saxon missions to the continent, led by figures such as Boniface, Willibrord, and Ansgar, were among the most important events of the eighth and ninth centuries, and they laid the foundations of the medieval church in northern Europe.