Northumbrian angels in Rome: religion and politics in the anecdote of St Gregory

Abstract

The article examines the legend of Pope Gregory's encounter with boys – Angli – in a Roman market. The legend takes the form of an anecdote which dramatises Gregory's decision to launch a mission to Britain. It is argued that this oft-cited story had political resonance and that this is discernible in the early sources of the legend: the anonymous Vita S. Gregorii and Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum. A new perspective is opened up by re-inserting the legend into the Northumbrian debates of the late seventh and early eighth centuries. By reading internal evidence with external contexts, the article establishes that the anecdote represents an attempt to revise the history of the conversion in Northumbria. This revision is intrinsically connected with a number of overlapping discourses: the stigma of the belated Northumbrian acceptance of Roman orthodoxy, the threat of the Celtic churches, monastic competition for primacy and status, and possibly dynastic rifts.