Who was the primary Archbishop of Canterbury?

26 May is the day to recollect St Augustine, who was the primary Archbishop of Canterbury 1,400 years ago and who began a convention that continues today. This is the story …

Background

The story goes back to the time of Pope Gregory the Great within the AD 590s. Pope Gregory worked to spread Christianity beyond the borders of the Roman Empire. He sent missionaries to pagan Gaul, Lombard Italy, Spain, and North Africa. He also sent missionaries to England because, after the autumn of the Roman Empire, much of southern and eastern Britain had reverted to paganism under the Anglo-Saxons.

Mission to England

The story goes that, before he became Pope, Gregory was a monk in Rome wandering through the slave market when he saw some male slaves who, unlike the others, were fair-skinned and fair-haired. He asked where that they had come from, and the slave trader told him that they were Angles from the island of Britain. Gregory remarked, or thought, “Non Angli, sed angeli”, translated into English as “Not Angles, but angels!” It is alleged that he desired to go to England himself as a missionary to those people, however the then Pope (probably Pelagius II) wouldn’t let him leave Rome. Later, when Gregory became Pope, he sent Augustine and a delegation of forty monks on his behalf.

Augustine’s Mission

Augustine began his mission to England in or around AD 597. He and his companions arrived at Ebbsfleet on the Isle of Thanet in Kent. Kent is now a county but was then an Anglo-Saxon kingdom. Here he met King Æthelbert and his wife, Queen Bertha, a Frankish princess who was already a Christian, they usually welcomed him.

As a part of Bertha’s marriage agreement, King Æthelbert had permitted her to bring a priest and have a chapel, which St Augustine used. In fact, this church, now called St Martin’s, is the oldest Christian church in England to have been in continuous use. Augustine preached outdoors, holding a silver cross and a Latin Gospel book. Augustine soon won over the king, who was baptised on White Sunday in AD 597. On Christmas Day 597, he baptised an extra 10,000 Kentish people. King Æthelbert granted Augustine land for a cathedral and monastery.

First Archbishop of Canterbury

Augustine went to Arles, where he was consecrated as archbishop. He returned to Kent with more monks and founded Christ Church and the Abbey of Saints Peter and Paul (later called St Augustine’s Abbey). Canterbury then became the bottom for the evangelisation of England, and Augustine became the primary Archbishop of Canterbury. He ordained twelve bishops and established the dioceses of London and Rochester.

His original monastery and cathedral site is now occupied by the present Canterbury Cathedral, the mother cathedral of the English Church. One of the opposite monks who accompanied St Augustine was St Paulinus, who helped to convert the Northumbrians and have become the primary Bishop of York, the second centre of the Church in England after Canterbury.

Pope Gregory directed Augustine to adapt pagan sites for Christian worship fairly than destroy them. Many ancient churches are thought to have been built on pagan sites of worship. This was shown to be true when archaeologists had the rare opportunity to look beneath an ancient church at a site in Stoke Mandeville, Buckinghamshire, which lay in the trail of HS2. Excavations found that it had been built on the location of a Roman temple.

The Church of England

Pope Gregory’s decision to evangelise England laid the muse for the English Church (called “Ecclesia Anglicana” in Latin) as a part of Christendom. Later, when it separated from papal authority under Henry VIII, it became the Church of England, however the Latin term Anglicana continues to be reflected within the adjective “Anglican” (from the Latin word for “English”, derived from “Angle”). The Anglican Communion is now a significant worldwide family of churches.

Augustine died on 26 May 604 or 605 and was buried at his abbey, which became the resting place for early archbishops. What we find out about St Augustine comes largely from the Venerable Bede, who recorded his story in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Augustine was never formally canonised, but he’s referred to as St Augustine of Canterbury to avoid confusion with St Augustine of Hippo. He can be referred to as the “Apostle to the English”, although that title is typically also given to Pope Gregory, who sent him.

Commemoration

St Augustine is remembered within the Church calendar on the anniversary of his death each 26 May. Augustine’s body was buried at St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, which became a fantastic place of pilgrimage. However, throughout the English Reformation, his shrine was destroyed and his relics were lost. There are at the very least seventeen churches in England dedicated to “St Augustine of Canterbury”, mainly in south-east England.

In 1844, a cross was erected on the spot where he is alleged to have landed in 597 and met King Æthelbert. It is now referred to as St Augustine’s Cross. A close-by plaque reads: “After many dangers and difficulties by land and sea Augustine landed eventually on the shores of Richborough within the Isle of Thanet. On this spot he met King Æthelberht and preached his first sermon to our own countrymen. Thus, he happily planted the Christian faith, which spread with marvellous speed throughout the entire of England.”

In 1988, Canterbury Cathedral, St Augustine’s Abbey, and St Martin’s Church were added to the UNESCO World Heritage List. There is now a 19-mile Way of St Augustine walking trail, which follows within the footsteps of St Augustine from Ramsgate to St Augustine’s Cross and on to Canterbury Cathedral.

Legacy

Since St Augustine was the primary Archbishop of Canterbury, there has constantly been an Archbishop of Canterbury for the last 1,400 years, and the present archbishop is the 106th to carry the title. The English Church that Augustine founded became the Church of England and a part of a worldwide communion that’s now one in all the most important branches of the Christian Church after the Catholic and Orthodox traditions.

Collect

The Anglican collect prayer for St Augustine is:

“Almighty God, whose servant Augustine was sent because the apostle of the English people: grant that, as he laboured within the Spirit to evangelise Christ’s gospel on this land, so all who hear the excellent news may strive to make your truth known in all of the world; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who’s alive and reigns with you, within the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.”