History of The Church of England - Augustine and The Anglo-Saxon Period

Augustine and The Anglo-Saxon Period

Main article: Christianization of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms See also: Anglo-Saxon Christianity, History of the Scottish Episcopal Church, and Church of Ireland#History

Anglicans traditionally date the origins of their Church to the arrival in the Kingdom of Kent of the Gregorian mission to the pagan Anglo-Saxons led by the first Archbishop of Canterbury, St Augustine, at the end of the 6th century. Alone among the kingdoms then existing Kent was Jutish, rather than Anglian or Saxon. However, the origin of the Church in the British Isles extends farther back (see above).

Ethelbert of Kent's queen Bertha, daughter of Charibert, one of the Merovingian kings of the Franks, had brought a chaplain (Liudhard) with her. Bertha had restored a church remaining from Roman times to the east of Canterbury and dedicated it to Saint Martin of Tours, the patronal saint of the Merovingian royal family. This church, Saint Martin's, is the oldest church in England still in use today. Ethelbert himself, though a pagan, allowed his wife to worship God in her own way, at St Martin's. Probably influenced by his wife, Ethelbert asked Pope Gregory I to send missionaries, and in 596 the Pope dispatched Augustine, together with a party of monks.

Augustine had served as praepositus (prior) of the monastery of Saint Andrew in Rome, founded by Gregory. His party lost heart on the way and Augustine went back to Rome from Provence and asked his superiors to abandon the mission project. The pope, however, commanded and encouraged continuation, and Augustine and his followers landed on the Island of Thanet in the spring of 597.

Ethelbert permitted the missionaries to settle and preach in his town of Canterbury, first in Saint Martin's Church and then nearby at what later became St Augustine's Abbey. By the end of the year he himself had been converted, and Augustine received consecration as a bishop at Arles. At Christmas 10,000 of the king's subjects underwent baptism.

Augustine sent a report of his success to Gregory with certain questions concerning his work. In 601 Mellitus, Justus and others brought the pope's replies, with the pallium for Augustine and a present of sacred vessels, vestments, relics, books, and the like. Gregory directed the new archbishop to ordain as soon as possible twelve suffragan bishops and to send a bishop to York, who should also have twelve suffragans. Augustine did not carry out this papal plan, nor did he establish the primatial see at London (in the Kingdom of the East Saxons) as Gregory intended, as the Londoners remained heathen. Augustine did consecrate Mellitus as bishop of London and Justus as bishop of Rochester.

Pope Gregory issued more practicable mandates concerning heathen temples and usages: he desired that temples become consecrated to Christian service and asked Augustine to transform pagan practices, so far as possible, into dedication ceremonies or feasts of martyrs, since "he who would climb to a lofty height must go up by steps, not leaps" (letter of Gregory to Mellitus, in Bede, i, 30).

Augustine re-consecrated and rebuilt an old church at Canterbury as his cathedral and founded a monastery in connection with it. He also restored a church and founded the monastery of St Peter and St Paul outside the walls. He died before completing the monastery, but now lies buried in the Church of St Peter and St Paul.

In 616 Ethelbert of Kent died. The kingdom of Kent and those Anglo-Saxon kingdoms over which Kent had influence relapsed into heathenism for several decades. During the next 50 years Celtic missionaries evangelized the kingdom of Northumbria with an episcopal see at Lindisfarne and missionaries then proceeded to some of the other kingdoms to evangelize those also. Mercia and Sussex were among the last kingdoms to undergo Christianization.

The Synod of Whitby in 664 forms a significant watershed in that King Oswiu of Northumbria decided to follow Roman rather than Celtic practices. The Synod of Whitby established the Roman date for Easter and the Roman style of monastic tonsure in Britain. This meeting of the ecclesiastics with Roman customs and local bishops following Celtic ecclesiastical customs was summoned in 664 at Saint Hilda's double monastery of Streonshalh (Streanæshalch), later called Whitby Abbey. It was presided over by King Oswiu, who did not engage in the debate but made the final ruling.

A later archbishop of Canterbury, the Greek Theodore of Tarsus, also contributed to the organisation of Christianity in England, reforming many aspects of the church's administration.