Introduction
Romans brought the gospel to Britannia in the late first century, but the influx of pagan Angles and Saxons after the Romans abandoned the province in 410 all but snuffed the Church out. One man was determined to rekindle it, and the Kingdom of Kent was to be the touch-paper.
IN 590, the Abbot of St Andrew’s monastery in Rome, Gregory, became Bishop of Rome. Ever since he had seen English slave-children for sale in the Roman Forum, he had cherished an ambition to convert the pagan island to Christianity,* and now he began by redeeming English slave-children from the slavers, perhaps with the intention of sending them back to England as missionaries. He even considered travelling to Britain himself.
But in 595 he began to lay different plans. Bertha, Queen consort of King Ethelbert of Kent, was a daughter of the King of Paris, and a Christian — her husband was still a pagan, but very open-minded — and when her chaplain Bishop Liudhard died in 596, Bertha encouraged Gregory to send Augustine, the Pope’s successor as Abbot of St Andrew’s monastery, as the head of a delegation to Kent. Gregory wrote to Bishops and Kings among the Franks asking them to offer the missionaries hospitality on the way; but the adventure almost ended before it began.
Précis
In 597, Pope Gregory the Great sent his successor as Abbot of St Andrew’s in Rome, St Augustine, to the Kingdom of Kent as a missionary to convert Ethelbert’s pagan realm. He was helped by Ethelbert’s queen Bertha, a Christian, whose own bishop had died and who was eager for a permanent replacement. (53 / 60 words)
In 597, Pope Gregory the Great sent his successor as Abbot of St Andrew’s in Rome, St Augustine, to the Kingdom of Kent as a missionary to convert Ethelbert’s pagan realm. He was helped by Ethelbert’s queen Bertha, a Christian, whose own bishop had died and who was eager for a permanent replacement.
Variations: 1.increase the length of this precis to exactly 60 words. 2.reduce the length of this precis to exactly 50 words. 3.introduce one of the following words into the precis: because, besides, just, not, or, otherwise, whereas, whether.
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