590-609 Augustine Converts Anglo-Saxons

This twenty year period covers Gregory I, an aristocrat, becoming pope. His appearance was described as 'swarthy' and he was so entranced by the golden hair of Anglo-Saxon boys in the slave markets of Rome that he wished to make them angels.

To this end he sent Augustine to England in 597 to convert the Anglo-Saxons. Although from a wealthy Roman family, Gregory had sold his estates to found monasteries and do good deeds. He reformed church services, giving his name to the solemn chanting inherited from Hebrew music -- Gregorian chant.

Gregory particularly disliked the Lombards -- describing them as unspeakable -- for causing depopulation, refusing conversion and burning churches.

In 605, a year after Gregory, the Lombard King Agilulf negotiated a truce whereby the Lombards controlled Piedmont, Lombardy, Emilia, Tuscany and Veneto, and the empire retained Rome and Ravenna, Venice, Genoa and the southern ports.

Augustine targeted King Ethelbert of Kent whose wife, Bertha, a Frankish princess, was a Christian convert. A pagan, the king nevertheless allowed Augustine to base himself at a church in Canterbury where Bertha worshipped.

Augustine respected pagan customs and his conversions were successful because he cleverly combined pagan customs with Christianity. Mother Earth became the Virgin Mary, and the Feast of Easter got its name from Eastre, the Anglo-Saxon goddess of dawn and fertility.

Ethelbert did not see Christianity as a threat, and liked its learning, discipline and its many activists willing to go out and spread these virtues among his people. He finally converted -- as did all of the English -- on the basis of fear spread by the Christians that the end of the world was nigh and if they didn't convert they'd go to hell.

He also gave Augustine the land and money to build the first Canterbury cathedral.

Augustine and his missionaries were not the only people working on converting the pagans in Britain.

There were Celtic monks from the island of Iona, off the shore of western Scotland who had been inspired by Patrick -- the young son of a town councillor living on the west coast of Britain, early 5th century, who had been kidnapped by raiders at aged 16 and suffered 6 years of slavery in Ireland before escaping, then returning to convert the Irish and by legend, ridding Ireland of snakes.

These monks had also incorporated Celtic pagan customs into Christianity -- the Celtic cross itself -- and they also shaved the front of their heads in the tradition of the Druids.

In the east, the Emperor Maurice was usurped by Phocus in 602 and after obtaining peace from the Persians in 591 they struck again, conquering Anatolia, Syria, Palestine and Egypt, carrying off the true relic of the cross.