The first of Canterbury
by Mike Oettle
“AUGUSTINE,
First Archbishop of Canterbury and Missionary, 605” reads the entry in the
calendar for 26 May.
For some he is a great hero of the Faith; for others he is a bumbling diplomat and an unimaginative missionary who relied on his Pope to provide the methods by
which he persuaded the pagan Anglo-Saxons to abandon their traditional faith
and turn to Jesus Christ. Perhaps the most familiar thing about him is the
English version of his name: Austin – which probably conjures up the image of a
motorcar. At any rate, he was the first in the office now held by Rowan Williams, and is in this way important to the story of the Church of England and of the Anglican Communion in more recent times.
Whatever one decides about the calibre of this man, the story of the Roman mission to England is a fascinating one with interesting characters along the way. It begins with a monk called Gregorius, remembered as St Gregory the Great, who (legend has it) was on the Forum (market-place) of Rome one day in AD 575 when he saw a group of flaxen-haired boys offered for sale as slaves. “Who are they? Where do they come from?” he wanted to know, and was told: “Angles, from Deira.”[1] He replied: “Angels, rather, and saved from the day of wrath [dies iræ]. Who is their king?” “Ælle,”[2]
he was told. “And Alleluia shall be sung in those parts,” Gregory responded.
But he was not permitted to go to England as a missionary, and had to wait
until he was elected Pope in 590 before he could make plans to send such a
mission.
The man he chose to lead the mission of 30 or so monks was Augustinus, or Augustine, like Gregory an aristocrat and the prior of Gregory’s own monastery. After a false start – his companions became alarmed by horror stories about the wild land across the Channel and wanted to send their leader back to Rome – Augustine and his party reached the island of Thanet, in the Jutish kingdom of Kent, in the spring of 597 and sent to Æthelberht (Ethelbert),[3]
King of Kent and overlord of Essex[4] and East Anglia,[5] for permission to settle in his kingdom.
Ethelbert, although a pagan, was probably prepared to hear the gospel through the efforts of his Queen, a Frankish princess named Bertha, a Christian who had married him on condition that she could practise her religion and had brought her own chaplain, Bishop Liudhard, with her. There is no record that Liudhard was anything of a missionary (although he, Bertha and Ethelbert have all been called saints), but Ethelbert received Augustine favourably. He provided them with a residence in Canterbury[6] and the old Roman church of St Martin, Bertha’s own chapel, for worship. Some say the residence was Ethelbert’s own palace, but the king’s gift of this building probably came later.
By the time Pentecost arrived, Ethelbert was baptised. And while he put no pressure on his subjects to turn to Christianity, more and more responded to the missionaries’ message. At Christmas 597, 10 000 men of Kent were baptised in a river. Augustine was made bishop the following year as a result. In 601 he was made metropolitan of England and was sent extra missionaries – including saints Mellitus, Justus and Paulinus. Gregory’s letters to Augustine – a constant stream during Augustine’s brief seven years in England – included instructions to convert pagan shrines to Christian use and to consecrate 12 suffragan bishops.
As
Christianity spread in England, so did Ethelbert’s influence. He wrote the
earliest surviving code of Anglo-Saxon laws, and by the end of his life he was
chosen Bretwalda (overlord) of all the English kingdoms south of the Humber. It
is not clear whether this took place before or after Augustine’s death, but
the king’s generosity to the Church grew. He had churches and cathedrals built
in various centres, including a cathedral for the Kingdom of Middlesex[7] in London. In Canterbury, he aided Augustine in the restoration of a ruined Roman church which was then dedicated as Christ Church Cathedral. Similarly they converted a pagan shrine into the church of St Pancras, and erected the Monastery of Saints Peter and Paul, where Augustine was buried after his death in 605, as was Ethelbert when he died in 616. It was afterwards called St Augustine’s, and further kings of Kent and archbishops of Canterbury were buried there.
The Roman mission was not the only Christian body in Britain at the time. The Celtic
Church, founded among the Romanised Britons but separated from Rome during the
Dark Ages, was still strong in Wales, Cornwall, Scotland, Ireland and the Isle
of Man. But Augustine’s efforts to attain unity with the Welsh bishops were
frustrated as much by their stiff-necked attitude as by his own unbending
manner, and it was some 200 years before England and Wales knew a united
church.
Whatever his shortcomings, Augustine built well. The Holy Spirit was clearly at work in England during his lifetime. While others improved on the foundations he laid, the structure has endured.
