Augustine of Canterbury
Augustine of Canterbury (d. c.604), archbishop. Italian by birth, a pupil of Felix, bishop of Messana, and a companion of Gregory, Augustine became a monk and later prior of the small monastery of St. Andrew on the Celian Hill, Rome. In 596 he was chosen by Gregory, now pope, to head the mission of monks whom he sent to evangelize the Anglo-Saxons. In Gaul they wished to turn back, but Gregory gave them fresh encouragement, defined Augustine's authority more clearly, and had him consecrated bishop. The party, considerably augmented by Frankish priests at Gregory's request, and now forty in number, landed at Ebbsfleet (Kent) in 597. They were received cautiously by Ethelbert, king of Kent and overlord of the other tribes south of the Humber, who gave them a house in Canterbury, allowed them to preach, but required time to consider their message before committing himself to becoming a Christian. His wife was Bertha, a Christian princess from Paris; but she and her chaplain Liudhard appear to have taken no significant part in the conversion of Kent, then the most powerful of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.
By 601 Ethelbert and many of his people were baptized, and more clergy were sent from Rome, together with books, relics, and altar vessels. Augustine's policy was one of consolidation in a small area, rather than of dispersal of effort in a large one. He built the first cathedral at Canterbury, which included married clerks as well as priests on its staff. He founded the monastery of SS. Peter and Paul (later called St. Augustine's), just outside the walls, as well as a ‘suburban’ see at Rochester. In the dedications and in the style of architecture (at Reculver as well as at Canterbury) his arrangements were closely modelled on those of contemporary Rome. Later in his short episcopate he established a see at London, then a town of the East Saxons, under Ethelbert's overlordship; he also attempted to secure the co-operation of British bishops in the evangelization of the Anglo-Saxons. In this he was not successful, but there is no reason to think that the fault was exclusively his.
Early writers stressed that Gregory, rather than Augustine, was regarded as the ‘apostle of the English’. Certainly the substantially authentic correspondence between them reveals Augustine as the man in the field who was executing the wishes of his superior; it also shows Gregory's wisdom and Augustine's inexperience. Gregory left him considerable freedom. He could adopt Gallican or other liturgical customs for his own use; he was independent of the bishops of Gaul, but had no control over them either; he set up his metropolitan see at Canterbury instead of London, which Gregory, using imperial records, had expected. For this he was sent the pallium, which established him in charge of the southern province, with powers to arrange for the establishment of a northern one, based at York, each of them to have twelve suffragan bishops. This plan was never fully realized, but it did make history in church organization and missionary technique. So did Gregory's Letter to Mellitus, in which Augustine was told not to destroy pagan temples, but only the idols in them. Innocent rites could be taken over and used for the celebration of Christian feasts. Error could not be eliminated at a stroke; the policy of proceeding gradually was modelled on the development of Revelation in the Old Testament.
Augustine helped Ethelbert to draft the earliest Anglo-Saxon written laws to survive. He also founded a school at Canterbury, which both received and produced books. A 6th-century uncial manuscript, called the Gospels of St. Augustine, could well have been brought to England by him; it is now at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and is used at the enthronement of archbishops of Canterbury. But the so-called Charters of Ethelbert, with Augustine as witness, are spurious.
Augustine was reputed to be a miracle-worker in life, so too when his relics were transferred in 1091 to a new site in his much enlarged abbey church. No early representations of him have survived, but he is depicted in stained glass at Christ Church, Oxford (14th century), at Canterbury cathedral (1470), and in a cycle of miniatures in the breviary of the Duke of Bedford (1424). He is also in frescoes by Viviano da Urbino in the church of St. Gregory, Rome (15th century).
Feast: 26 May (certainly the day of his death, testified at Clovesho in 747), but outside England now 27 May; translation feast at Canterbury, 13 September.
Bibliography
Click here for a list of abbreviations used in this bibliography.
- AA.SS. Maii VI (1688), 373–443; Bede, H.E., i. 23–ii. 3; D. Norberg, Gregorii Papae registrum epistolarum (C.C. 1982); P. Hunter Blair, The World of Bede (1970), pp. 41–79; H. Mayr-Harting, The Coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England (1972), pp. 51–77; R. A. Markus, ‘The Chronology of the Gregorian Mission to England’, J.E.H., xiv (1963), 16–30; M.O., pp. 750–2; P. Meyvaert, ‘Bede's text of the Libellus Responsionum’ in England before the Conquest (ed. P. Clemoes and K. Hughes, 1971); N. Brooks, The Early History of the Church of Canterbury (1984); F. Wormald, The Gospels of St. Augustine (1958); R. Gem (ed.) St. Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury (1997)
