52 Saints ~ Week 24 ~ St. Augustine of Canterbury

Multiple sources concur that almost everything we know about Augustine of Canterbury comes through Bede (673-737), a monk and a scholar. The purpose of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, 730, is to show how the Church brought unity to England, ending an era of violence and barbarism. Bede, seeing himself as a direct beneficiary of Augustine’s mission, knew from his own experience the struggle among the warring kingdoms.

The Romans’ occupation of Britain three centuries earlier had introduced Christianity to the British Isles, but when the Roman forces withdrew, invasion by the pagan Anglo-Saxons forced the Britons to the forests and hills of Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, places to which they withdrew to avoid assimilation by the conquering tribes.

Bede gives credit to Gregory the Great for reintroducing Christianity and bringing unity to Britain. For his mission, Gregory looked to a Sicilian individual, the Prior of Saint Andrew’s monastery, which Gregory had founded, who had taken the name of Augustine, for Augustine of Hippo, at his confirmation. Gregory’s chose this prior, Augustine, to lead a mission to England, the first missionary endeavor sponsored by the Papacy outside the boundaries of the Empire. On the journey to England, Augustine, with about forty persons, wanted to turn back, but he received encouraging letters from Gregory urging him forward. Augustine, working with the Kentish king Aethelberht and his Christian queen, Bertha, was enormously successful. According to Maksymilian Sas, in “Augustine of Canterbury Converting the Anglo-Saxons: A Contribution to the Identity of the Medieval Missionary” De Medio Aevo 3 (2013 / 2) ISSN-e 2255-5889, found online at academia.edu, “The king, therefore, permitted [Augustine] to proselytize the Anglo-Saxons, while not accepting yet the baptism himself. Bede [states] that the missionaries were singing a litany while coming to Canterbury, where they could use the church of St. Martin, in which Queen Bertha used to pray.” The chanted litany was a paraphrase of Daniel 9:16: “O Lord, in view of all your righteous acts, let your anger and wrath, we pray, turn away from your city Jerusalem, your holy mountain . . .” According to Sas, “Canterbury was to become the new Jerusalem, from which the missionaries [would] be sent to convert the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity, just as the apostles left Jerusalem to convert the people of Roman Empire.” Sas goes on to say that Augustine performed miracles, events which caused large numbers of Anglo-Saxons to convert to Christianity. Augustine wrote his bishop that during the Christmas season of 598, more than ten thousand Angles were baptized. Sas states that the epitaph on Augustine’s tombstone (from Bede) states “Here lies the Lord Augustine, first Archbishop of Canterbury, who was formerly sent hither by St. Gregory, bishop of Rome; being supported by God in the working of miracles, he led King Aethelberht and his nation from the worship of idols to faith in Christ.” In addition to faith, the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons connected them to a wider Christian world with a new set of values. (Source)

Robin Mackintosh, in Augustine of Canterbury: Leadership, Mission, Legacy (which I viewed on Amazon.com) asserts that the land of England itself provides a witness to Augustine’s mission:

In England, within a mile or so of the shores of Kent, the crumbling walls of the ancient Roman fort of Richborough still stand and the beach where Augustine allegedly first met Aethelberht is preserved beneath the rolling turf of, appropriately, Saint Augustine’s Golf Course, owned by the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury Cathedral. . . . The city of Canterbury itself is still surrounded by its Roman wall for nearly half of its perimeter, following the same boundary that was familiar to the first missionaries. Saint Martin’s Church, dedicated by Queen Bertha on a hillside overlooking the city and still in a remarkable state of preservation, continues as the oldest place of worship continuously in use in England.

The people, the land, and the Church attest to the witness of Augustine of Canterbury.

The daughter and granddaughter and great-granddaughter of Methodist ministers (from the English Church), as I seek to be faithful and to follow God’s leading, the English Church for me is the path I follow. I am indebted for my faith and the faith of my ancestors to Augustine of Canterbury, on whose feast day, May 26, I wrote this tribute. Perhaps we, like Augustine of Canterbury, may commit ourselves to seeking peace among warring tribes, pointing to the One who transcends all time and space.

Mary is my longest-running online friend. We met over C. S. Lewis and Elizabeth Goudge.

If you want to see all of the posts in this series, click HERE.