Anglo-Saxon Christianity

The history of Christianity in England from the Roman departure to the Norman Conquest is often told as one of conflict between the Celtic Christianity spread by the Irish mission, and Roman Christianity brought across by Augustine of Canterbury.

Christianisation of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms began in AD 597, influenced by Celtic Christianity from the north-west and by the Roman church from the south-east, gradually replacing Anglo-Saxon polytheism which had been introduced to what is now England over the course of the 5th and 6th centuries with the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons. The first Archbishop of Canterbury, Augustine took office in 597 AD. In 601, he baptized the first Christian Anglo-Saxon king, Æthelberht of Kent. The last pagan Anglo-Saxon/Jutish king, Arwald, died in 686.

Æthelberht of Kent's wife Bertha, daughter of Charibert, one of the Merovingian kings of the Franks, had brought a chaplain (Liudhard) with her. Bertha had restored a church from Roman times to the east of Canterbury and dedicated it to Saint Martin of Tours, the patronal saint for the Merovingian royal family. Æthelberht himself, though a pagan, allowed his wife to worship God her own way. Probably under influence of his wife, Æthelberht asked Pope Gregory I to send missionaries, and in 596 the Pope dispatched Augustine, together with a party of monks.

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