Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, completed in 731 at Bede’s monastery in Jarrow on the south bank of the Tyne, famously opens by positioning Britain and its inhabitants at the edge of the world.Footnote 1 Bede’s purpose in the five books that follow is to show how the Christian faith arrived, took root and flourished in this most marginal of places.Footnote 2 For Bede, none had played a more significant part in bringing this about than Pope Gregory I (590–604), who had initiated the Roman mission to the Angli in the late sixth century, thus forging a direct link between Britain and Rome, margin and centre, and becoming the spiritual father of the English church.Footnote 3 Seeing Rome as the centre and themselves as peripheral had a profound effect on the self-understanding of the early English church and on the formation of English identity.Footnote 4 As the key figure in their Christian origin story, Gregory himself became an emblem both of the idea of the English as a united people and of their connection with Rome and the wider Christian world.Footnote 5 Accordingly, although Gregory was remembered with respect in Rome and beyond as a theologian, exegete, liturgist and administrator, it was in the English church that his cult was most enthusiastically promoted in its earliest stage.Footnote 6 The first Life of Gregory was produced at the double monastery at Whitby (now in Yorkshire) near the turn of the eighth century, and this text also gives us the earliest evidence of an altar dedicated to Gregory, located in the monastery’s church.Footnote 7 In 747, the Council of Clofesho legislated that Gregory’s feast day should be kept throughout the English church and his name included in the litany.Footnote 8 Gregory was venerated throughout the pre-Conquest period as the ‘apostle of the English’, as reflected in liturgical calendars, hymns, letters and other sources.Footnote 9
However, these relatively few textual sources can offer only a partial picture of the spread of Gregory’s cult in early medieval England. For a fuller analysis, we must turn to other types of evidence. This article will use dedication patterns to offer new insights into where, when and why Gregory was commemorated. By the end of the Middle Ages, churches, chapels and altars dedicated to Gregory could be found throughout England. Although their total number remained small, their distribution, and changes to that distribution over time, points to the symbolic meaning of Gregory’s cult as a means of connecting centres and margins. This study will attempt to identify all known pre-Reformation Gregory dedications and analyse both their geographic and chronological distribution. These findings will be brought into conversation with what we know from other sources about the spread and significance of Gregory’s cult in medieval England, to argue that Gregory dedications are most prevalent where invoking his patronage served to assert the connection between periphery and centre. In particular, I will suggest that dedications to Gregory are predominantly a feature of two periods and contexts: in the pre-Viking era, in early ecclesiastical centres that traced their origins to Gregory’s Roman mission; and during the expansion and consolidation of West Saxon rule, in places newly incorporated into the English kingdom. By comparing the English dedications with a sample from the European continent, I will argue that the smaller set of dedications from post-Conquest England should be interpreted not as a reflection of Gregory’s importance to the English church as such, but of his status in the wider church as a pope, doctor of the Church, promotor of monasticism and worker of eucharistic miracles.
Distribution Patterns
Before analysing the distribution of dedications to Gregory, it is worth making some general points about the nature of the evidence. A distribution map of church dedications is always an interpretation of partial and sometimes conflicting evidence. It is also a palimpsest, from which the individual chronological layers cannot wholly be recovered. Over the course of centuries, new churches and chapels were constructed, existing structures expanded or rebuilt, new patrons added to old, old dedications forgotten, and lost dedications recovered (not always accurately).Footnote 10 A church where all these stages are well documented would be a rare find indeed. Often, we may guess that the earliest evidence for a dedication significantly post-dates the dedication itself, and yet changes to dedications were frequent enough that we cannot always be sure the earliest known dedication is the original dedication. These factors mean that, in each individual case, establishing the medieval dedication and when it was chosen relies on a balance of probabilities. Nevertheless, standing back to look at the distribution as a whole rather than at individual cases, it is possible to discern meaningful patterns.Footnote 11 Some saints’ dedications cluster heavily in particular regions: for example, dedications to Swithun in the south, and dedications to Cuthbert in the north.Footnote 12 As I will show below, Gregory dedications are not restricted to a particular region, but they do occur more frequently in some regions than in others. Dedication patterns may also reveal changes to a saint’s popularity over time, and part of this article’s argument is that dedications to Gregory are concentrated in the period before the Norman Conquest. Sometimes, it is also possible to detect patterns in how dedications to a saint sit within the landscape. For example, the archangel Michael was associated with hilltops and waterways, while Mary was a popular choice as the patron of a second church within a larger ecclesiastical complex.Footnote 13 Several of the Gregory dedications discussed below have in common that they are associated with dedications to either Peter or Paul, or both, implying a conceptual link between these saints.
Undergirding church dedication research is the understanding that the choice of patron held significance, with certain saints being seen as desirable or appropriate because of their associations with particular places or people.Footnote 14 For local saints, such as founders and leaders of religious communities, or local holy men and women, this was on account of their personal connections. However, most of the dedications of medieval England were to saints whose cult had a wider reach, and who were chosen for the symbolic meanings they invoked.Footnote 15 The choice of dedication, therefore, could function as a statement about the identity, ideals and affiliations of a community. It was the bishop who supplied the chrism for the consecration of a church and officiated at the service, and he would therefore have been well placed to influence the selection of a patron saint. Donors and land-owners could also be influential figures.Footnote 16 Their choice was not constrained by the availability of relics: these were not essential to the rite (although they were considered desirable) and, if they were used, did not have to be those of the saint invoked as patron.Footnote 17 However, the presence of an important relic could influence the dedication.Footnote 18 In early medieval England, dedications to universal saints were, by far, more common than to local saints, with a clear preference for biblical saints and Roman martyrs.Footnote 19 That Gregory appears in this company from an early date underscores his importance in the early English church.
The earliest dedications to Gregory are known from narrative sources, like the altar in the monastery at Whitby already mentioned. Bede records another altar dedicated to Gregory in the north portico of the monastery of SS Peter and Paul, Canterbury, and a portico dedicated to Gregory in the cathedral of St Peter at York.Footnote 20 Other sites are not documented until later but may belong to the pre-Viking age as well. These include St Gregory by St Paul’s in London, documented by the early eleventh century, but possibly an early foundation;Footnote 21 Rendlesham in Suffolk, which was an important settlement in the early kingdom of East Anglia;Footnote 22 and Kirkdale in Yorkshire, where an inscription commemorates the restoration of ‘St Gregory’s minster’ shortly before the Norman Conquest, and archaeological evidence suggests a thriving ecclesiastical site by the mid-eighth century, which can probably be identified with the place known as Cornu Vallis in the textual record.Footnote 23 In York, early origins have been suggested for the church of St Gregory, Micklegate (now destroyed), as a subsidiary church that formed part of a group of churches connected to Christ Church, alias Holy Trinity; the dedications of these churches together mirrored the dedications of the altars at Christ Church in Canterbury, and were perhaps chosen following the promotion of York to metropolitan status in 735.Footnote 24 Early origins have also been suggested for the only church dedicated to Gregory in the medieval diocese of Durham: Kirknewton (Northumberland), although the earliest extant church fabric and written records date only to the early twelfth century.Footnote 25
Among the medieval churches dedicated to Gregory, there are twenty for which there is pre-Conquest evidence, whether documentary, archaeological or architectural. The preponderance of these is found in the dioceses along the eastern seaboard, reflecting the origins of Gregory’s cult in the Roman mission to the kingdoms of Kent and Northumbria and its spread from these centres. In Canterbury diocese, in addition to the chapel to Gregory at St Augustine’s priory, there was a church in Wye that was probably dedicated to Gregory.Footnote 26 The East Anglian diocese of Elmham, into which the earlier diocese of Dommoc was amalgamated, had churches of St Gregory in Pentlow in Essex (joint dedication with George);Footnote 27 in Sudbury,Footnote 28 Barnham,Footnote 29 and HemingstoneFootnote 30 in Suffolk (as well as Rendlesham already mentioned); and in HeckinghamFootnote 31 and NorwichFootnote 32 in Norfolk. In the East Midlands, in the expansive diocese of Dorchester, which encompassed the earlier bishoprics of Leicester and Lincoln, the church at Fledborough (Leicestershire) is documented by the eleventh century, although its dedication only enters the record later.Footnote 33 Graham Jones has suggested Ratby (also Leicestershire) as another early Gregory dedication.Footnote 34 St Gregory’s, Northampton (now destroyed), is documented from the eleventh century. Saxon burials were found near it, and its proximity to St Peter’s, where archaeologists have uncovered remains of an eighth-century hall complex, has led John Blair to suggest an earlier church of St Gregory contemporary with that complex.Footnote 35 However, because sites like this tended to develop over time, it is also possible that the church of St Gregory was constructed at a later date to complement the existing church, hall and cemetery.Footnote 36 In York diocese, in addition to the dedications mentioned above, the church of St Gregory at Bedale has pre-Conquest masonry.Footnote 37
Moving westward, in Winchester, as in London, there was a church of St Gregory adjacent to the cathedral of SS Peter and Paul; this church was documented by c.901.Footnote 38 The church of Welford (Berkshire) is recorded in the Domesday book.Footnote 39 In the diocese of Worcester, the only church of St Gregory was at Tredington. Here, there is stonework from the late Saxon period and the Domesday book records the presence of a priest.Footnote 40 Located by the river Stour, this may be the property ‘by the Stour’ which was disputed between King Offa of Mercia and Bishop Heathored of Worcester in 781. Property in Tredington was certainly given to the bishop of Worcester in 747. These early legal records, together with the traces of tenth-century church fabric, have led scholars to suggest that St Gregory’s may have originated in the eighth century as a monastery with links to the cathedral.Footnote 41 The only medieval Gregory dedication in Lichfield diocese is Offchurch (Warwickshire); pre-Conquest origins for the church have been suggested on the basis of some of the architectural features and traces of a Saxon cemetery, although the place-name (‘Offa’s church’) is suggestive of the type of private church more frequently established in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.Footnote 42 Lastly, in the diocese of Hereford, the church of St Gregory at Morville (Shropshire) is exceptional in that the Domesday survey records not only the church and its staff of eight canons, but also its dedication to Gregory.Footnote 43
A relatively large number of churches dedicated to Gregory are found in the South-West, in the area that had originally been the diocese of Sherborne and which was later repeatedly divided and reorganized. Many foundations cannot be securely dated, but Norman architecture or sculpture is found at Treneglos (Cornwall),Footnote 44 Weare (Somerset),Footnote 45 and Marnhull (Dorset).Footnote 46 Treneglos in particular is probably earlier: the place-name element eglos (‘church’) suggests an early ecclesiastical site, perhaps with an original dedication now unknown.Footnote 47 In Devon, the churches of Dawlish,Footnote 48 GoodleighFootnote 49 and Venn Ottery (a chapel of Harpford)Footnote 50 are documented by the late thirteenth century.Footnote 51 Older origins are of course possible, and I will suggest below how these dedications may fit into a pre-Conquest political context.
There is evidence that dedications to Gregory continued after the Conquest. Cropton (Yorkshire) is unlikely to be older than the twelfth century, since at the time of the Domesday survey the settlement had no recorded population and consisted mainly of woodland.Footnote 52 The church, which stands beside the remains of a Norman motte-and-bailey castle,Footnote 53 was rebuilt in the nineteenth century, but a twelfth-century font survives.Footnote 54 Eight miles from Kirkdale, its dedication may have been influenced by that of the older church. From the thirteenth century, as the medieval parish system solidified, the construction and dedication of new parish churches virtually came to a halt, but chapels continued to be built, and side-chapels, aisles and altars to be added to existing churches, some of which had Gregory as their patron. In Somerset, Stoke St Gregory enters the historical record in 1233 as a chapel in North Cory parish, and there was a chapel of St Gregory in Whitchurch by 1544.Footnote 55 Preston Patrick (Cumbria) was originally a chapel dependent on Burton; the earliest recorded dedication (in 1331) is to Gregory, but it was later dedicated jointly to Gregory and Patrick, and still later Patrick became the sole patron.Footnote 56 On the whole, chapels are less well documented than churches, making patterns in their dedications more difficult to discern. These examples show that dedications to Gregory did continue into the later Middle Ages, but their relatively small number suggests that Gregory was not an especially popular choice of patron in this period.
Monastic communities provide the context for another set of post-Conquest Gregory dedications. At the monastery of SS Peter and Paul, Canterbury (which by the late tenth century was known as St Augustine’s, after its founder), the old altar dedicated to Gregory in the north porticus remained in place until 1091, when it was demolished in order to complete the rebuilding of the abbey, and a new Gregory chapel was constructed.Footnote 57 Archbishop Lanfranc (d. 1089) founded St Gregory’s Priory, Northgate, Canterbury, around 1085.Footnote 58 In Christ Church Cathedral, Archbishop Anselm (d. 1109) undertook extensive rebuilding, after which the southernmost chapel off the south-east transept contained an altar dedicated to Gregory.Footnote 59 The Augustinian priory at Frithelstock (Devon), founded c.1220, had Gregory and Mary as its patrons.Footnote 60 An altar was dedicated to Augustine and Gregory in Christchurch priory at Twynham (Dorset) in 1214.Footnote 61 York Minster had an altar in the crypt dedicated jointly to Nicholas and Gregory by 1364, when it was apparently replaced by separate altars for each in the minster’s transepts.Footnote 62 The late-sixteenth-century compilation known as The Rites of Durham records an altar dedicated to Gregory at Durham Cathedral before the Reformation.Footnote 63
What patterns can we detect in this distribution? The earliest documented dedications to Gregory are located in important ecclesiastical centres: Canterbury, York and the influential monastery of Whitby. Other early, possibly pre-Viking, dedications are also found in high-status locations. Some are associated with a cathedral (London, Winchester, York Micklegate, possibly Tredington); others appear to have been important ecclesiastical or monastic centres in their own right (Kirkdale, Morville). Rendlesham was a royal estate, and Kirknewton is a mile from the seventh-century royal palace at Yeavering. Taking the pre-Conquest evidence as a whole, dedications are concentrated in the east, and especially in East Anglia, together with the middle Anglian zone around the great rivers. The antiquity of these dedications is difficult to assess, because the disruptions to church life in the Danelaw make it hard to establish continuity or discontinuity of ecclesiastical foundations across this ninth-century caesura.Footnote 64 Some may be survivals from the seventh or eighth century, with their origins in the early Roman mission to East Anglia. On the other hand, some or all of them may belong to the tenth century. The group of dedications in the south-western peninsula likewise cannot conclusively be assigned to a particular era. The evidence is Norman or later, but the churches and their dedications may be earlier than the evidence. Finally, there is a scattering of chapels and monastic dedications from the post-Conquest period. We can therefore trace in the dedication patterns the first flourishing of Gregory’s cult in high-status centres, its later concentration in areas more removed from both royal and ecclesiastical power, and finally its tapering popularity over the later Middle Ages.
National Patron
To understand these patterns, we must examine how Gregory functioned within the communion of patronal saints. As noted above, narrative and liturgical sources suggest that Gregory personified the connection between the English church and the Church universal, but was also seen as the particular patron of the people whose conversion he had initiated. We can see this understanding reflected in the dedication evidence, too. Initially, the emphasis appears to have been on Gregory’s Roman and apostolic connections. Many of the earliest dedications to Gregory are of altars, side-chapels or ancillary churches attached to main churches dedicated to Peter or Paul. This is true of the dedications at Canterbury, York and Whitby, as well as London, Winchester and Northampton. Helen Gittos has argued that church dedications were ‘used to embody relationships between churches’ in a number of ways, expressing the connections of churches to one another as parts of a single complex, elements in a larger urban setting, or affiliated institutions in different locations.Footnote 65 Assuming that the arrangement of dedications was significant, the pattern of juxtaposing Gregory with Peter and Paul points to a conceptual association between these saints. As pope, Gregory had been Peter’s successor as head of the Roman church, and just as Paul was the apostle to the Gentiles, Gregory was apostle of the English. The arrangement of the dedications, with Peter or Paul chosen as patron of the more important structure and Gregory as that of the lesser, reflects the relationship of the English church on the margins, to the Roman church at the centre. Dedications to Gregory thus expressed a particular self-understanding on the part of those who chose them. They recalled the Roman origins of their church, and signalled an ongoing allegiance to Rome as the centre to which the churches of the English should look. At the same time, Roman sympathies could also be expressed through other dedication choices: King Offa (d. 796) showed his loyalty to Rome with a series of dedications to St Peter;Footnote 66 Bishop Wilfrid (d. 709/10), echoing the dedication of Gregory’s own monastery on the Caelian Hill in Rome, dedicated both Hexham and Oundle to St Andrew;Footnote 67 likewise, the dedications in Canterbury mirrored the dedications of Roman churches.Footnote 68 Dedications to Gregory must therefore have been chosen in part for the additional meaning they carried, conveying a sense of the English as a single people with a shared spiritual identity and history represented by their apostle.
Gregory’s association with English identity undoubtedly helps to account for the almost total lack of dedications to him in Wales and Scotland.Footnote 69 I would suggest it also contributed to the relatively high number in Middle and East Anglia, and in the South-West. In both these regions, those responsible for choosing a saintly patron could use Gregory to assert the place of their local church within the wider English church and nation. In the eastern group of dedications, as mentioned, most Gregory dedications appear to be pre-Conquest, a trend perhaps associated with the integration of this region into the English kingdom following Danish incursions and then settlement in the ninth century.Footnote 70 West-Saxon control of the south-western peninsula was also cemented in the ninth and tenth centuries.Footnote 71 Although, as noted above, the Gregory dedications in this region only enter into the evidence in the Norman period or later, they may in fact have earlier origins in the centuries of West-Saxon expansion and consolidation. Nicholas Orme has observed how ‘kings and Church leaders in the late Anglo-Saxon period encouraged the cults of English saints as a means of extending political power, religious influence, and even national integration.’Footnote 72 His examples include Cuthbert, Edmund of Bury and Swithun. Although Gregory was not an English saint in the sense of having English origins, his symbolic representation of a united English church and nation meant he might well be considered an English saint for such integrative political purposes.
That the West-Saxon kings were interested in the patronage of Gregory for their nation-building project is suggested by the second English coronation ordo, a liturgical order composed in the early tenth century, which invokes Gregory’s intercession, along with that of the Virgin Mary and St Peter, during the blessing of the newly invested ruler.Footnote 73 This reference to Gregory’s patronage of the royal house of Wessex sits within a wider literary context in which the role of Gregory as a foundational figure in the history of the English people was repeatedly underscored. Following Bede, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (first composed c.890, then expanded and reworked in multiple versions) makes the Gregorian mission an integral part of the early history of the English.Footnote 74 That foundation narrative was rehearsed again in the preface to Æthelwold’s translation of the Rule of Benedict, which drew on Gregory’s spiritual authority to promote the (royally sanctioned) monastic reforms of the tenth century.Footnote 75 The lavishly illustrated Benedictional of Æthelwold, possibly produced for King Edgar’s coronation in 973, depicts Gregory in a prominent position alongside Benedict and Cuthbert, all leading saints for the English church.Footnote 76
The tenth century therefore provides a plausible historical context for a wave of dedications to Gregory. The analysis above has shown that these dedications were concentrated in precisely those areas where English identity could not be taken for granted, but needed to be asserted. As Sarah Foot has pointed out, in the late ninth century, ‘Alfred’s English were the Christian people of Kent, Wessex and western Mercia,’ but by the early eleventh century, the people of East Anglia and Northumbria were also included in the English people and polity.Footnote 77 In these newly incorporated and marginal regions of what became England, Gregory dedications could serve to cultivate a sense of national unity, connecting the peripheries of the kingdom to its centres through a shared story of salvation.
After the Norman Conquest, the cult of Gregory was taken up and promoted by the new elites, especially by archbishops Lanfranc (1070–89) and Anselm (1093–1109).Footnote 78 Yet, as Paul Hayward has argued, by the 1120s ‘Gregory seems to have been dropped as England’s apostle almost everywhere, though his cult was still accorded great respect at most abbeys and monastic cathedrals.’Footnote 79 We have seen above some examples of dedications to Gregory in these contexts. The epithet ‘apostle of the English’, however, came to be attached more and more often to Augustine of Canterbury.Footnote 80 Gregory’s role as national patron thus came under pressure from rival saints. While, following his arrival at St Augustine’s, Canterbury, Benedictine hagiographer Goscelin was promoting Augustine, Herman the archdeacon, from the abbey at Bury St Edmunds, was working to raise the profile of Edmund, the martyred king, and to position him as a patron saint for the nation.Footnote 81
Between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, the role of national patron was gradually transferred to George.Footnote 82 Graham Jones has suggested that many church dedications to Gregory were subsequently changed to George.Footnote 83 Documented instances of this are scarce, but it is not difficult to imagine confusion arising between the two saints, who had similar names and functions. Seaton (Devon) is now St Gregory’s, but medieval records all agree that the church’s patron was George.Footnote 84 The only evidence for Gregory as the medieval patron is a charter of 1267, granting rights to hold a fair on the feast of ‘Gregory the Martyr’, most likely a scribal error.Footnote 85 There is evidence for both Gregory and George at Treneglos.Footnote 86 There may indeed be cases where an earlier dedication to Gregory has left no record. George was clearly far more popular at a later stage: medieval churches dedicated to George number over one hundred, more than double the tally of those dedicated to Gregory, despite Gregory’s cult being better established at an earlier date.Footnote 87 Coming at the problem from a different angle, Lawrence Butler has noted that, of the total number of English churches dedicated to George, only a small proportion – he calculates 2.3 per cent – have surviving pre-Conquest fabric. While Butler allows that this might be the result of rebuilding, he also points out that for Gregory the proportion of churches still showing pre-Conquest fabric is much higher (14 per cent), suggesting ‘a pre-conquest preference’ for Gregory, while George enjoyed ‘a predominantly late medieval popularity’.Footnote 88 We might wonder whether the transfer of national patronage was the cause or the effect of Gregory’s tapering popularity over the course of the Middle Ages. What is clear is that, from the twelfth century, Gregory faced significant competition in his role as the patron of the English.
Gregory’s cult therefore underwent a transformation, emphasizing new aspects of his sanctity. In the thirteenth century, it was strengthened by the spread of images of St Gregory’s vision, showing an apparition of Christ to Gregory during his celebration of the mass.Footnote 89 In addition, in late medieval England, ‘St Gregory’s Trental’ became a popular form of devotion. Involving the celebration of thirty masses over the course of a year, it was believed to be a highly effective form of intercession for the dead.Footnote 90 Although Gregory’s contribution to the conversion of the English was still remembered, he now became more strongly associated with eucharistic devotion.
As in post-Conquest England, so too on the European continent the cult of Gregory was found primarily among the clerical hierarchy and in monasteries.Footnote 91 In certain contexts, Gregory’s role in the spread of the Christian faith to the far corners of the world was commemorated, often when it could serve as an example. Pope Nicholas I deliberately emulated Gregory’s Libellus Responsionum to Augustine in his approach to Khan Boris of the Bulgarians in 866.Footnote 92 Missionaries in the sixteenth century would later draw on Gregory’s advice to Augustine and his company, seeing parallels with their own work to convert the indigenous peoples of the Americas.Footnote 93 Usually, however, it was Gregory’s contributions to monasticism, liturgy, scholarship and church order that provided the primary reasons for his veneration.Footnote 94 Among the poems of Alcuin (d. 804) are three for altars to Gregory in unspecified continental locations: in each of these, it is Gregory’s role as doctor that is noted.Footnote 95
A full inventory and analysis of continental dedications to Gregory would be beyond the scope of this article, but some examples may offer a point of comparison for the English dedications. The medieval lists of church dedications collected and edited by Oswald Holder-Egger are remarkable in the level of detail they provide, and can serve as a sample representing wider trends.Footnote 96 In these texts, Gregory appears in a handful of dedication ceremonies. Usually, these involved the use of his relics, alongside those of other saints, in the consecration of an altar which is then given a different dedication.Footnote 97 Sometimes, the presence of his relics implied his joint patronage as part of a collective such as ‘all saints’ or ‘all confessors’.Footnote 98 In a few instances, there were altars assigned to Gregory specifically: an altar dedicated in 949 at St Maximin’s Abbey, Trier; an altar to Gregory at St Eucharius’ Abbey, Trier, dedicated in 1148; and one of six altars in a crypt in the monastery of Emmeram, dedicated in 980.Footnote 99 Gregory was also the joint patron of the church of the Benedictine monastery of Petershausen, outside Konstanz, founded in the tenth century and rededicated in 1085, which had a head relic housed in the main altar.Footnote 100 Julia Smith has argued that in Petershausen the relic of Gregory served to underscore the connection of the monastery with Rome, a connection that was also symbolically manifested in other ways, including the monastery’s layout and location in relation to the city.Footnote 101 Gregory was therefore deployed there in a similar way to early medieval England, personally embodying a community’s links with Rome. It is notable that these examples, few as they are, are all found in monastic contexts. This is not to say there were no parish churches dedicated to Gregory on the continent. One such is San Gregorio Nelle Alpi, Veneto (Italy), documented in the late twelfth century.Footnote 102 Another is the church of Saint-Grégoire, Ille-et-Vilaine (France), which was donated to the chapter of Rennes cathedral by a man named Halenaldus in the eleventh or twelfth century and later became parochial.Footnote 103 A systematic study of the continental dedications and their distribution would be desirable, helping us to better understand the spread of Gregory’s cult.
What appears to be distinctive about the English dedications, compared to the continental evidence, is their relative frequency at a comparatively early date. The popularity of Gregory in pre-Conquest England reflects a context in which it made sense, to those building and dedicating churches, to recall the origins of their church in the Gregorian mission. That mission had been sent to them directly from the heart of the Christian world and had given a powerful impetus and legitimization to the formation of English identity.Footnote 104 The Gregorian mission had brought the marginal people of Britain into communion with the centre, and indeed had recast them for a central role in salvation history, as in them the command to bring the gospel to the ‘ends of the earth’ was fulfilled.Footnote 105 This narrative was put to good use by those who, from the late ninth century onwards, began to envision the English not only as a spiritual, but also as a political community, with Gregory as its patron. Such considerations increased Gregory’s appeal as a choice of dedication beyond that which he held more generally as a holy man and teacher of the faith.
Conclusion
The evidence of church dedications surveyed here has confirmed but also nuanced the picture offered by textual sources of the spread of Gregory’s cult in early medieval England. Mechtild Gretsch has argued, based on the great distances between the earliest known dedications at Canterbury, York and Whitby, ‘that the cult of St Gregory, from its very beginnings, was a pan-English cult, not a local affair.’Footnote 106 The distribution pattern analysed here suggests that, while the cult of Gregory was indeed not restricted to a particular locality, it was also not taken up in the same way across all the early English kingdoms. The earliest altars and churches dedicated to Gregory were in important centres of the early English church that traced their origins to the Gregorian mission. As the cult was diffused from these centres, dedications to Gregory could be found in an ever wider geographic area, but they are not distributed uniformly across all early English kingdoms or dioceses. The distribution pattern thus reveals regional variations which are harder to identify from the textual evidence. The lack of early dedications to Gregory in the Mercian heartlands suggests that perhaps attitudes to the saint – and to what he represented – were different here than in other early English kingdoms. The low number of dedications in Kent, despite the leading role played by Canterbury in the promotion of Gregory’s cult, serves as a reminder that the ideals of leading churchmen were not always taken up by local communities. The group of dedications to Gregory in the South-West, on the other hand, appears to reflect a successful programme of assimilation into the English kingdom from the tenth century onwards. I have proposed here that the same may be true of the cluster in the East Midlands and East Anglia, areas which had been part of the Danelaw. This study therefore contributes to a more textured understanding of the ways in which English identity was constructed and promoted across a range of times and places.
Dedications to Gregory, as to any saint, were polyvalent, and will have meant different things to different people at different times. In the tenth century, Gregory’s long-standing association with monasticism took on fresh relevance in the context of the Benedictine reforms, and after the Conquest, his cult flourished especially in monastic circles. Later medieval dedications to Gregory reflect the significance he still held as a universal saint, revered in England as elsewhere in Europe as a doctor of the Church, proponent of monasticism, key figure in the development of the papacy, and worker of miracles, but no longer as the apostle or patron of the nation.
Within the complex landscape of the medieval cult of saints, Gregory’s place was central in some ways and marginal in others. Among a cast of almost exclusively biblical saints, Gregory was one of the few less traditional dedications to flourish during the earliest phase of English church-building. Yet in that period he was almost never the main patron but rather the dedicatee of side-chapels, porticos and secondary churches. His cult was promoted by senior ecclesiastical leaders, but limited in its popular appeal. His churches were concentrated in early ecclesiastical and royal centres, but later also in the more peripheral medieval dioceses of Exeter and Norwich. I have suggested that Gregory was useful in all these contexts as a representation of the connection between centre and margin: between Rome and the English church, between the nation and its regions. The driving force behind the development of his cult had been church leaders and secular rulers, who saw in him a patron for their vision of a united English church and later nation, and who wished to emphasize – precisely because it was not always obvious – the intimate connection between their insular church and its distant parent church in Rome. Gregory’s diminishing popularity over time, conversely, may reflect the extent to which both the idea of England itself, and England’s place within the Christian world, were increasingly seen as self-evident.
