Gregory the Great and the Conversion of Europe

A reluctant pope

In 590 the city of Rome was in a desperate state. Plague had just killed the pope. Floods had destroyed grain stores. The Lombards threatened from the north, and the emperor in Constantinople sent little help. The clergy and people chose as pope a man who did not want the job: Gregory the Great.

Gregory came from a wealthy Roman senatorial family and had served as prefect, the city's top civil official. Then he had given away his wealth, turned his family home into a monastery, and become a monk. He served as the pope's ambassador in Constantinople before returning to his monastery. When elected, he reportedly tried to flee the city. He called himself "servant of the servants of God," a title popes still use.

Gregory became one of the most important popes in history, and one of only two called "the Great" (the other is Leo). Shelley sees him as the bridge between the ancient and medieval church [check]:

• Ruler of Rome: With no effective imperial government, Gregory organized the city's food supply from the church's vast estates, ransomed captives, negotiated with the Lombards, and paid soldiers. The pope became, in effect, the civil ruler of Rome.
• Pastor: His Pastoral Rule taught bishops how to care for souls with wisdom and humility. It was read throughout the Middle Ages. Alfred the Great translated it for English clergy.
• Teacher: His writings were simpler and more practical than Augustine's. His Dialogues, full of miracle stories (including the life of Benedict), shaped popular medieval faith. He popularized teaching about Purgatory, a place of cleansing after death for souls not yet ready for heaven.
• Worship: "Gregorian chant" is named after him, though the chant developed later.
• Missionary: Most famously, he sent a mission to England.

"Not Angles, but angels"

The English historian Bede tells a famous story. Before he was pope, Gregory saw fair-haired boys for sale in the Roman slave market. He asked where they came from and was told they were Angles (English). "Not Angles, but angels," he replied, and he resolved to send them the gospel.

In 596 Gregory sent a party of about forty monks led by Augustine of Canterbury (not the same as Augustine of Hippo). They were terrified of the barbarous English and nearly turned back. But in 597 they landed in Kent, whose king, Æthelberht, had a Christian Frankish wife, Bertha. The king listened, gave them a base in Canterbury, and soon was baptized. Canterbury became and remains the senior see of the English church.

Gregory's instructions to the missionaries were remarkably flexible. Do not destroy the pagan temples, he wrote. Destroy the idols, sprinkle the buildings with holy water, and turn them into churches. Let the people keep their festive feasts, but in honor of the saints. "He who would climb to a lofty height must go up by steps, not leaps." This approach of adapting rather than abolishing local customs shaped medieval mission.

The conversion of Europe (c. 400–1400)

The Irish: saints and scholars

Meanwhile, Christianity was spreading from another direction. Ireland had never been part of the Roman Empire. After Patrick's mission in the 400s, it developed a distinctive church organized around great monasteries rather than city bishops. Abbots, not bishops, held the real power. Irish monks were known for fierce asceticism, love of learning, beautiful illuminated manuscripts (like the later Book of Kells), and a passion for peregrinatio, voluntary exile for Christ.

• Columba (Colum Cille) (Colum Cille, 521–597) founded a monastery on the island of Iona off Scotland in 563. From there monks evangelized the Picts of Scotland.
• Aidan of Lindisfarne, a monk of Iona, founded Lindisfarne in 635 at the invitation of King Oswald of Northumbria. He walked the countryside preaching, famous for his gentleness and poverty.
• Columbanus (c. 543–615) set out from Ireland around 590 and founded monasteries in Gaul, Switzerland and Italy, including Luxeuil and Bobbio. He was fiery and uncompromising, and he quarreled with Frankish bishops and royals. But he revived monastic life across the Continent.

Whitby: Celtic or Roman?

In England, the Irish and Roman missions met, and they did not entirely agree. They calculated the date of Easter differently. In the Northumbrian royal household, the king sometimes celebrated Easter while his queen was still fasting for Lent. They also differed on the style of monks' haircuts (tonsure) and on church organization.

In 664 King Oswy of Northumbria called a meeting at the abbey of Whitby, led by the great abbess Hilda of Whitby, who ruled a double monastery of men and women and trained five future bishops. The Roman side argued that Peter held the keys of heaven. Oswy, not wanting to offend the doorkeeper of heaven, chose Rome. The English church was brought into the Roman system, though Irish influence remained strong.

The fruit of this blended church was remarkable. The monk Bede (c. 673–735) at Jarrow wrote the Ecclesiastical History of the English People (731), a masterpiece of early medieval history. His use of "AD" dating helped spread that system across Europe.

Boniface: apostle of Germany

Now the converted English became missionaries themselves. Willibrord worked among the Frisians in the Netherlands. The greatest was Boniface (c. 675–754), born Wynfrith in Devon. He worked in Germany for nearly forty years with the backing of the pope and the Frankish rulers. In a famous act, at Geismar he chopped down a sacred oak dedicated to the god Thor. When no thunderbolt struck him, many were converted, and he used the wood to build a chapel.

Boniface was also an organizer. He founded bishoprics and monasteries, such as Fulda, reformed the Frankish church, and bound the German church tightly to Rome. He recruited Anglo-Saxon women, including his relative Leoba, to found convents and teach. In 754, aged about eighty, he returned to Frisia as a missionary and was killed by pagan raiders, reportedly holding a book over his head. He is called the "Apostle of Germany."

How conversion worked

It is important not to imagine medieval conversion like a modern revival, with individuals making personal decisions. Usually the process went from the top down:

1. Missionaries won over a king or chief, often through his Christian wife, or by persuading him that the Christian God was more powerful in battle.
2. The ruler was baptized, often with his warriors and household.
3. The people followed, sometimes willingly and sometimes under pressure.
4. Over generations, monasteries, parish priests, preaching, festivals and saints' cults slowly turned a nominal Christianity into a lived faith.

Sometimes force was used. Charlemagne forced the Saxons to convert at swordpoint. Old beliefs and practices often survived under a Christian surface: charms, holy wells, festivals at midwinter and midsummer. Historians debate how "Christian" ordinary medieval people really were. Most now emphasize that Christianity and local cultures blended into something new.

The north and east

The conversion of Europe took six centuries. Key moments include:

• Moravia and Bulgaria (860s): the Greek brothers Cyril and Methodius created a Slavonic alphabet and liturgy (see Byzantium and the Icons).
• Poland (966), when Duke Mieszko I was baptized.
• Kyivan Rus' (988): Prince Vladimir the Great of Kyiv was baptized and ordered his people baptized in the Dnieper, tying Russia and Ukraine to Byzantine Orthodoxy.
• Hungary (c. 1000) under King Stephen.
• Scandinavia (10th–11th centuries): Denmark, Norway (under Olaf II of Norway, later Saint Olaf) and Sweden. Iceland accepted Christianity around 1000 by a vote of its assembly, allowing pagans to keep sacrificing in private.
• Lithuania (1387), the last pagan state in Europe.

By 1400, all of Europe was at least formally Christian, just as Christianity was losing much of its old heartland in Asia and Africa to Islam. The map of world Christianity had been redrawn.