Augustine of Canterbury - Death and Legacy

Death and Legacy

Before his death, Augustine consecrated Laurence as his successor to the archbishopric, probably to ensure an orderly transfer of office. Although at the time of Augustine's death, 26 May 604, the mission barely extended beyond Kent, his undertaking introduced a more active missionary style into the British Isles. Despite the earlier presence of Christians in Ireland and Wales, no efforts had been made to try to convert the Saxon invaders. Augustine was sent to convert the descendants of those invaders, and eventually became the decisive influence in Christianity in the British Isles. Much of his success came about because of Augustine's close relationship with Æthelberht, which gave the archbishop time to establish himself. Augustine's example also influenced the great missionary efforts of the Anglo-Saxon Church.

Augustine's body was originally buried in the portico of what is now St Augustine's, Canterbury, but it was later exhumed and placed in a tomb within the abbey church, which became a place of pilgrimage and veneration. After the Norman Conquest the cult of St Augustine was actively promoted. After the Conquest, his shrine in St Augustine's Abbey held a central position in one of the axial chapels, flanked by the shrines of his successors Laurence and Mellitus. King Henry I of England granted St. Augustine's Abbey a six day fair around the date on which Augustine's relics were translated to his new shrine, from 8 September through 13 September.

A life of Augustine was written by Goscelin around 1090, but this life portrays Augustine in a different light than Bede's account. Goscelin's account has little new historical content, mainly being filled with miracles and imagined speeches. Building on this account, later medieval writers continued to add new miracles and stories to Augustine's life, often quite fanciful. These authors included William of Malmesbury, who claimed that Augustine founded Cerne Abbey, the author (generally believed to be John Brompton) of a late medieval chronicle containing invented letters from Augustine, and a number of medieval writers who included Augustine in their romances. Another problem with investigating Augustine's saintly cult is the confusion resulting because most medieval liturgical documents mentioning Augustine do not distinguish between Augustine of Canterbury and Augustine of Hippo, a fourth century saint. Medieval Scandinavian liturgies feature Augustine of Canterbury quite often, however. During the English Reformation, Augustine's shrine was destroyed and his relics were lost.

The Augustine's shrine was re-established in March 2012 at the church of St. Augustine in Ramsgate, Kent, very close to the mission's landing site. St Augustine's Cross, a Celtic cross erected in 1884, marks the spot in Ebbsfleet, Thanet, East Kent, where Augustine is said to have landed, although historian Alan Kay told the BBC in 2005 that Augustine actually landed somewhere between Stonar and Sandwich. According to Kay, Ebbsfleet was not on the coast in the sixth century, and that the story of Augustine's landing there was started in 1884 by a Victorian aristocrat who needed a publicity stunt to draw people to his newly opened tea rooms.