The Making of the Medieval Papacy: The Gregorian Mission to Kent

TLDR: A key part of this long-range effort to translate the Petrine Doctrine from abstraction to reality included the late sixth-century mission to the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Kent in Britain that Pope Gregory the Great (r. 590604) organized as discussed by the authors.

Abstract: Saber and Scroll Journal 7 no. 3 In the midst of the Western Roman Empire’s collapse, Pope Leo I (r. 440461) made the monumental assertion that the bishop of Rome was the true head of the Christian Church because Christ had designated Peter, Rome’s first bishop, as the “foundation” of his earthly Church and the “doorkeeper” of his heavenly kingdom. Leo’s reasoning became known as the Petrine Doctrine, an idea that developed into the basis of papal power throughout the Middle Ages and the theological justification for papal hegemony over all bishops and patriarchs of Christendom—both in the Greek East and in the Latin West. In the mid-fifth century, however, the western portion of the Roman Empire had suffered an unrecoverable collapse, and Roman Christianity was supplanted in the provinces with either the pagan animism of the Anglo-Saxons and Franks or the heretical Arianism of the Goths and Vandals. Leo’s bold proclamation of papal and Roman Catholic leadership did not coincide with social and political realities; he was writing at a time when the Roman Church held influence in Italy but little elsewhere. Establishing the authority of the Roman See in the Germanic kingdoms that occupied approximately what is now France, Spain, and Britain required the sustained efforts of successive popes and the churchmen who worked under their auspices. A key part of this long-range effort to translate the Petrine Doctrine from abstraction to reality included the late sixth-century mission to the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Kent in Britain that Pope Gregory the Great (r. 590604) organized. The Gregorian mission resulted in the conversion of the pagan Kentish kingdom and the establishment of the Episcopal Church at Canterbury, the first Latin Church in Britain since Roman times. More importantly, the Gregorian mission planted the seed of Latin Christianity in Britain and culminated in the conversion of the whole island less than a century later under the leadership of the pope in Rome. Pope Leo and Pope Gregory were visionaries who foresaw a universal church that would bring Latin Christianity to the new Germanic kingdoms of Western Europe. In the late sixth century, however, their vision was exactly that and nothing more. The prestige and authority of the Latin Church can be counted among the victims of the Germanic invasions of the fifth century. That the Latin Church was still extant in Gregory’s time was no small miracle in itself. Throughout late antiquity and the early Middle Ages the Church had no army of its own to enforce its The Making of the Medieval Papacy: The Gregorian Mission to Kent