The Gregorian mission was the missionary endeavour sent by Pope Gregory
I (1620s portrait pictured) to the Anglo-Saxons in 596 AD. Headed by
Augustine of Canterbury, its goal was to convert the Anglo-Saxons to
Christianity. Along with Irish and Frankish missionaries, they converted
Britain and helped influence the Hiberno-Scottish missionaries on the
continent. In the late 6th century, Pope Gregory sent a group of
missionaries to Kent to convert Æthelberht, King of Kent, whose wife,
Bertha, was a Frankish princess and practising Christian. Augustine was
the prior of Gregory's own monastery in Rome, and Gregory prepared the
way for the mission by soliciting aid from the Frankish rulers along
Augustine's route. In 597, the forty missionaries arrived in Kent and
were permitted by Æthelberht to preach freely in his capital of
Canterbury. Soon the missionaries wrote to Gregory, telling him of their
success and that conversions were taking place. A second group of monks
and clergy was dispatched in 601, bearing books and other items for the
new foundation. The exact date of Æthelberht's conversion is unknown,
but it occurred before 601. Before Æthelberht's death in 616, a number
of other bishoprics had been established. Although the missionaries
could not remain in all of the places they had evangelised, by the time
the last of them died in 653, they had established Christianity in Kent
and the surrounding countryside and contributed a Roman tradition to the
practice of Christianity in Britain.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_mission>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1512:
War of the League of Cambrai: England and a combined Franco-
Breton fleet engaged in the Battle of Saint-Mathieu, during which an
explosion destroyed each navy's most powerful ship (pictured).
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Saint-Mathieu>
1755:
The first wave of the Expulsion of the Acadians from the
present-day Canadian Maritime provinces by the British began with the
Bay of Fundy Campaign at Chignecto.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_of_Fundy_Campaign_(1755)>
1793:
The Louvre, the most visited art museum in the world,
officially opened with an exhibition of 537 paintings.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mus%C3%A9e_du_Louvre>
1904:
Russo-Japanese War: The first major confrontation between
modern steel battleship fleets took place in the Battle of the Yellow
Sea.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Yellow_Sea>
1944:
The German Army Detachment "Narwa" prevented the Soviet
Leningrad Front from capturing the strategically important Narva Isthmus
in Estonia.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tannenberg_Line>
1981:
The severed head of kidnapped six-year-old Adam Walsh was found
in a canal in Vero Beach, Florida, prompting his father John to become
an advocate for victims' rights, helping to spur the formation of the
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Adam_Walsh>
1990:
NASA's Magellan space probe reached Venus, fifteen months after
its launch.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magellan_(spacecraft)>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
leeward:
Away from the direction from which the wind is blowing. Downwind.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/leeward>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
Being a politician is a poor profession. Being a public servant is a
noble one.
--Herbert Hoover
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Hoover>