The Sixth Age.
13th year of the reign of Maurice, and in the 13th indiction, summoned a council of 24 bishops to the shrine of the blessed apostle Peter, and made decrees concerning essential church matters. He sends St. Augustine,Mellitus, and John to Britan. He also sent to Britain[1] Augustine, Mellitus, and John, and with them many other godly monks, who converted the English to Christ; moreover EthelbertEthelbert and the kingdom of Kent embrace Christianity. on being converted to the grace of Christ, with the kingdom of Kent which he governed, and the adjacent provinces, rewarded his instructor Augustine and the other holy prelates, with an episcopal seat. The nations of the Angles to the north of the Humber, under Ella and Ethelfrid, had not yet heard the word of life. In the 19th year of Maurice, in the 4th indiction, Gregory, in a letter to Augustine,London and York made metropolitan sees. directed that the bishops of London and York should be metropolitans, on receiving a pall from the Apostolic See.[2]
A.M. 4565 [614].
- ↑ See Bede's Ecclesiastical History, Book I. Chaps. 23 and 24; where will be found two of Pope Gregory's letters on the occasion. St. Augustin arrived in the Isle of Thanet, A.D. 597. Ethelbert founded St. Paul's Cathedral in 604, and Sibert, king of the East Saxons founded Westminster Abbey, A. D. 611.
- ↑ See Bede's Ecclesiastical History, Book I. Chap. 29.