page_title: Gregorian mission
section_title: Arrival and first efforts
hierarchical_section_title: Gregorian mission / Arrival and first efforts
caption_attribution_description: St Augustine's Abbey - gravesites of Mellitus, Justus and Laurence, all early Archbishops of Canterbury. Mellitus was also the first Bishop of London and Justus was the first Bishop of Rochester.
context_page_description: The Gregorian mission or Augustinian mission was a Christian mission sent by Pope Gregory the Great in 596 to convert Britain's Anglo-Saxons. The mission was headed by Augustine of Canterbury. By the time of the death of the last missionary in 653, the mission had established Christianity in southern Britain. Along with the Irish and Frankish missions it converted other parts of Britain as well and influenced the Hiberno-Scottish missions to Continental Europe.
  By the time the Roman Empire recalled its legions from the province of Britannia in 410, parts of the island had already been settled by pagan Germanic tribes who, later in the century, appear to have taken control of Kent and other coastal regions no longer defended by the Roman Empire. In the late 6th century Pope Gregory sent a group of missionaries to Kent to convert Æthelberht, King of Kent, whose wife, Bertha of Kent, was a Frankish princess and practising Christian. Augustine had been the prior of Gregory's own monastery in Rome and Gregory prepared the way for the mission by soliciting aid from the Frankish rulers along Augustine's route.
caption: Site of the graves of Laurence, Mellitus and Justus at St Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury
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