![]() Today, Bede is widely recognised as the greatest Anglo-Saxon scholar of his day, and by many as the greatest English historian of all time. The dramatic story of what unfolded was recorded by Beada, or Bede, a monk of the great Northumbrian monastery of Jarrow. Andrew in Rome, to convert these pagan ‘angels with dirty faces’ to Roman Christianity.Īlthough the inhabitants of lowland Britain at that time were in fact made up of many rival kingdoms, including Saxons, Jutes and Angles, Pope Gregory considered them as one English nation, only ever referring to them as ‘Angli’. ![]() Whether this story is true or not, what is known is that in 596 AD Pope Gregory dispatched a Roman mission of 40 monks headed by Augustine, the prior to the Benedictine monastery of St. ![]() It is possible that the inventor of the concept of the English was actually Pope Gregory the Great, when around 580 noticing fair haired slaves for sale in an Italian marketplace he was told that they were Angles: ‘Not Angles, but angels’ was said to be his reply. ![]()
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