Augustine and the Roman Mission to the English

About the lecture

In this module, we think about Augustine's mission to the English at the end of the 6th century AD, focusing in particular on the usefulness of the historian Bede as a source, the reasons behind the decision of Pope Gregory I to send a mission to England, the 'top-down' method of converting a population to Christianity, and the conversions of Æthelberht of Kent and Edwin of Northumbria.

About the lecturer

Professor Sarah Foot is Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History at the University of Oxford. Her main research interests lie in ecclesiastical history in the early middle ages, and she has a long-standing interest in medieval monasticism, particularly the place of monasteries in the Anglo-Saxon Church and medieval women in religion. Her wider interests encompass the place of the Church within the societies of medieval western Europe, relations between Christians and pagans in the same period, the invention of the English as an imagined community, and historical writing in the early medieval West. Her recent publications include Monastic life in Anglo-Saxon England, c. 600-900 (2006), Æthelstan (2011), and Bede's Church (2013).