Anglo-Saxon Saints: St Augustine of Canterbury

The story of St Augustine of Canterbury begins not with him, but with Pope Gregory.

Before Gregory became Pope, he came across a Roman slave market. Even though the Sun was bright and caused him to squint, he noticed a couple of children with blonde hair and blue eyes. The light accentuated their features, making them stand out and they became deeply impressed upon him.

He walked up to the slaver-trader and asked who they were and where they came from. The slave-trader replied, “They are Angles from Deira, where King Aella rules.”

Gregory retorted, “They are not Angles, but angels”.

Deira was an area on the West coast of England and was ruled by King Aella. Gregory, without taking his eyes of the children, said “They will be rescued from ‘de ira’ (wrath) and their king will sing ‘Allelu’ (Praise God).”

Gregory sought the audience with the Pope, begging to be sent on a mission to Deira, but he was denied his request. This encounter burdened the Pope-to-be so much that when he took office, he sent a missionary to preach Christ to the Anglo-Saxons.

Gregory chose Augustine to go to England. At first, he was unhappy with his new mission. He preferred his life in Rome, where he was a Prior of a monastery. But after some lengthy discussion with Pope Gregory, he was eventually persuaded to go. He was accompanied by 40 missionaries and was later joined by interpreters he hired in Gaul.

In 597 AD, he landed in Thanet and made his way to the court of King Ethelbert. His wife, Bertha, was a Christian princess who had recently married the king. The king was happy for her to carry on being a Christian and to have her own chaplain, but was worried about the Christian ‘witchcraft’, as he called it.

On the petition of his wife, the king agreed to meet with Augustine. They met in the open air, away from any Christian site or pagan shrine. Augustine explained his mission to the king, who listened in silence, considering all he said to him. At the end, the king explained that he was unsure, but happy for him to preach within his kingdom. He allowed Augustine to use the chapel which he had restored for his wife.

Soon after this meeting, the king was baptized as a Christian and Augustine was consecrated as Archbishop to the English.

The church grew, and the chapel became too small. So the king granted them to use a site within the city walls of Canterbury. It was a former Roman era church which had fallen into ruins. Augustine began to restore the site and the church soon filled this space too.

However, not all went well for Augustine. He saw that the Celtic Christians were not within the communion of the Roman Church. The sacraments had their own flavour within their Celtic tradition. And so, Augustine reached out to the Celtic priests to talk.

Their first meeting was beneath the boughs of an ancient oak tree near the border of Wales. The oak was a sacred tree to the Celts’ ancestors. The air was thick with tension. The Anglo-Saxons were enemies with the Celts and so this meeting could cause friction between the two communities.

Augustine began, not in consolidation, but with accusations. He accused the Celtic Church of heresy as they refused to come under the Papal rule. The Celts felt this was unfair, as Britain had not been a Roman province for over 200 years. They both agreed on the outcome of the Council of Nicea, but disagreed vehemently on the sacrament of baptism and the dating of Easter.

Both parties left the meeting unhappy.

A second meeting was arranged, but the Celts were unsure whether they should abandon their traditions and adopt the customs of the Roman church. On the way to this second meeting, the Celtic bishops and clergy consulted a hermit. He told them, “If he is a man of God, follow him. If he stands up as you arrive, then accept his words. But if he remains seated throughout the meeting, then have no more to do with the Roman church.’

Sadly, Augustine remained seated. Symbolically, the archbishop adopted the position of a king. In a royal court, the king remains seated while his courtiers stand. Through his action, Augustine was expressing he was acting as the ‘monarch’, the one in charge, and the Celtic bishops were his courtiers.

Even though Augustine offered to accept all the other traditions the Celts had, his words fell flat. The Celtic bishops rejected the offer. From their perspective, they refused to bring themselves under the ‘rule’ of Augustine and the Roman Church,

This eventually resulted in the Anglo-Saxons eradicating Celtic christianity from Briton.

Augustine died in 603 AD and was buried at the unfinished Canterbury Cathedral.

He is a saint, like so many, whose life was filled with great achievements and failures. I sometimes wonder what Anglo-Saxon Christianity may have looked like if the Celtic tradition had merged with it. I guess we will never know.

Below is a letter from the Roman Catholic Church archives. It is from Pope Gregory to an abbot asking him to speak to St Augustine. It makes interesting reading.

Gregory I, Letter to Abbot Mellitus, Epsitola 76, PL 77: 1215-1216

Intro: Mellitus was about to join St. Augustine of Canterbury on the mission to England. How to deal with a pagan culture, and its symbols. Gregory I (590-604) recommends a policy of acculturation.

Tell Augustine that he should by no means destroy the temples of the gods but rather the idols within those temples. Let him, after he has purified them with holy water, place altars and relics of the saints in them. For, if those temples are well built, they should be converted from the worship of demons to the service of the true God. Thus, seeing that their places of worship are not destroyed, the people will banish error from their hearts and come to places familiar and dear to them in acknowledgement and worship of the true God.

Further, since it has been their custom to slaughter oxen in sacrifice, they should receive some solemnity in exchange. Let them therefore, on the day of the dedication of their churches, or on the feast of the martyrs whose relics are preserved in them, build themselves huts around their one-time temples and celebrate the occasion with religious feasting. They will sacrifice and eat the animals not any more as an offering to the devil, but for the glory of God to whom, as the giver of all things, they will give thanks for having been satiated.

Thus, if they are not deprived of all exterior joys, they will more easily taste the interior ones. For surely it is impossible to efface all at once everything from their strong minds, just as, when one wishes to reach the top of a mountain, he must climb by stages and step by step, not by leaps and bounds....

Mention this to our brother the bishop, that he may dispose of the matter as he sees fit according to the conditions of time and place.