Beginnings of Canterbury Cathedral

. . . in which Ethelbert the King, by his exhortation and advice, ordered to build a church worthy of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul, and he enriched it with various gifts, in which church the body of Augustine, and of all the Canterbury bishops together, and of their kings, might be laid.

Continuing Augustine’s Missionary Work In England,
with a selection from Ecclesiastical History of the English People by The Venerable Bede published in 731 AD. This selection is presented in 5 easy 5 minute installments. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Previously in Augustine’s Missionary Work In England.

Time: 597 AD
Place: Kent

When that accordingly was set, seven bishops of the Britons came, and all the most learned men, who were chiefly from the city Bangor: at that time the abbot of that monastery was named Dinoth. When they then were going to the meeting, they first came to a [certain] hermit, who was with them holy and wise. They interrogated and asked him whether they should for Augustine’s lore forsake their own institutions and customs. Then answered he them, “If he be a man of God, follow him.” Quoth they to him, “How may we know whether he be so?” Quoth he: “[Our] Lord himself hath said in his gospel, Take ye my yoke upon you, and learn from me that I am mild and of lowly heart. And now if Augustine is mild and of lowly heart, then it is [to be] believed that he bears Christ’s yoke and teaches you to bear it. If he then is unmild and haughty, then it is known that he is Answered by Pope Gregory: Over the bishops of Gaul we give thee no authority, because from the earlier times of my predecessors the bishop of the city Arles received the pallium, whom we ought not to degrade nor to deprive of the received authority. But, if thou happen to go into the province of Gaul, have thou a conference and consultation with the said bishop what is to be done, or, if any vices are found in bishops, how they shall be corrected and reformed; and if there be a supposition that he is too lukewarm in the vigor of his discipline and chastisement, then is he to be inflamed and abetted by thy brotherliness’s love,[1] that he may ward off those things which are contrary to the behest and commands of our Maker, from the manners of the bishops. Thou mayest not judge the bishops of Gaul without their own authority; but thou shalt mildly admonish them, and show them the imitation of thy good works. All the bishops of Britain we commend to thy brotherliness, in order that the unlearned may be taught, the weak strengthened by thy exhortation, and the perverse corrected by thy authority.[2]

[1:  A brother is here styled “his brotherliness,” as a pope “his holiness.”]

[2:  The remainder of this is not translated here.]

Augustine likewise bade [his messengers] acquaint him that a great harvest was here present and few workmen. And he then sent with the aforesaid messengers more help to him for divine learning, among whom the first and greatest were Mellitus and Justus and Paulinus and Rufinianus, and by them generally all those things which were needful for the worship and service of the Church — communion vessels, altar-cloth, and church ornaments, and bishops’ robes, and deacons’ robes, as also reliques of the apostles and holy martyrs, and many books. He likewise sent to Augustine the bishop a pallium, and a letter in which he intimated how he should hallow other bishops, and in what places [he should] set them in Britain.

The blessed Pope Gregory likewise at the same time sent a letter to King Ethelbert, and along with it many worldly gifts of diverse sorts. He wished likewise by these temporal honors to glorify the King, to whom he had, by his labor and by his diligence in teaching, opened and made known the glory of the heavenly kingdom.

And then St. Augustine, as soon as he received the bishop-seat in the royal city, renewed and wrought, with the King’s help, the church which he had learnt was wrought long before by old Roman work, and hallowed it in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ; and he there set a dwelling-place for himself and all his after-followers. He likewise built a monastery by east of the city, in which Ethelbert the King, by his exhortation and advice, ordered to build a church worthy of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul, and he enriched it with various gifts, in which church the body of Augustine, and of all the Canterbury bishops together, and of their kings, might be laid. The church, however, not Augustine, but Bishop Laurentius, his after-follower, hallowed.

The first abbot at the same monastery was a mass-priest named Peter, who was sent back as a messenger into the kingdom of Gaul, and then was drowned in a bay of the sea, which was called Amfleet, and was laid in an unbecoming grave by the inhabitants of the place. But the Almighty God would show of what merit the holy man was, and every night a heavenly light was made to shine over his grave, until the neighbors, who saw it, understood that it was a great and holy man who was buried there; and they then asked who and whence he was: they then took his body, and laid and buried it in a church in the city of Boulogne, with the honor befitting so great and so holy a man.

Then it was that Augustine, with the help of King Ethelbert, invited to his speech the bishops and teachers of the Britons, in the place which is yet named Augustine’s Oak, on the borders of the Hwiccii and West Saxons. And he then began, with brotherly love, to advise and teach them, that they should have right love and peace between them, and undertake, for the Lord, the common labor of teaching divine lore in the English nation. And they would not hear him, nor keep Easter at its right tide, and also had many other things unlike and contrary to ecclesiastical unity. When they had held a long conference and strife about those things, and they would not yield any things to Augustine’s instructions, nor to his prayers, nor to his threats, and [those] of his companions, but thought their own customs and institutions better than [that] they should agree with all Christ’s churches throughout the world; then the holy father Augustine put an end to this troublesome strife, and thus spoke:

Let us pray Almighty God, who makes the one-minded to dwell in his Father’s house, that he vouchsafe to signify to us by heavenly wonders which institution we ought to follow, by what ways to hasten to the entrance of his kingdom. Let an infirm man be brought hither to us, and, through whose prayer soever he be healed, let his belief and practice be believed acceptable to God, and to be followed by all.”

The Venerable Bede begins here. John R. Green begins here.

More information here and here, and below.

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