Our Father Among the Saints
Augustine of Canterbury

O Lord our God, who by your Son Jesus Christ called your Apostles and sent them forth to preach the Gospel to the nations: We bless your holy name for your servant Augustine, first Archbishop of Canterbury, whose labors in propagating your Church among the English people we commemorate today; and we pray that all whom you call and send may do your will, and bide your time, and see your glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

On May 26th (other traditions on May 27th) we commemorate St. Augustine the first Archbishop of Canterbury (died 604 or 605, not to be confused with the more famous Augustine of Hippo.)

Most Roman Catholics probably still think of the Anglican Church (in the United States known as the Episcopal Church) as arising in the sixteenth century and as a direct consequence of certain marital problems of Henry VIII. But Anglicans themselves resolutely propose another conception of their Church quite different from this simpler interpretative model. John Macquarrie, for instance, one of the most influential of living Anglican theologians, [writing in 1970] affirms:

Anglicanism has never considered itself to be a sect or denomination originating in the sixteenth century. It continues without a break the Ecclesia Anglicana founded by St Augustine thirteen centuries and more ago . . . Our present reverend leader, Arthur Michael Ramsey, is reckoned the one hundredth Archbishop of Canterbury, in direct succession to Augustine himself.

In this view, then, the Anglican Church was founded by St. Augustine of Canterbury and the current spiritual leader of the Anglican Communion, Rowan Williams, is the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury.

Christianity was introduced in the British Isles well before 300. Some scholars believe that it was done by missionaries from the Eastern or Greek-speaking half of the Mediterranean world. Celtic Christianity had its own distinctive culture, and Greek scholarship flourished in Ireland for several centuries after it had died elsewhere in Western Europe. However, in the fifth century Britain was invaded by non-Christian Germanic tribes: the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. They conquered the native Celtic Christians (despite resistance by, among others, a leader whose story has come down to us, doubtless with some exaggeration, as that of King Arthur), or drove them north and west into Cornwall, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. From these regions Celtic Christian missionaries returned to England to preach the Gospel to the heathen invaders. The wife of King Ethelbert of Kent, called Bertha, daughter of Charibert, one of the Merovingian kings of the Franks, had brought a chaplain with her (Liudhard) and either built a church or restored a church in Canterbury from Roman times and dedicated it to St. Martin of Tours, a major patronal saint for the Merovingian royal family. Ethelbert himself was a pagan, but allowed his wife to worship God her own way. Probably under influence of his wife, Ethelbert asked Pope Gregory I to send missionaries. In 596, Augustine had been prior of the monastery of Saint Andrew, founded by Pope Gregory I, and was sent by Gregory at the head of forty monks to preach to the Anglo-Saxons. They lost heart on the way and Augustine went back to Rome from Provence and asked that the mission be given up. The pope, however, commanded and encouraged them to proceed. They arrived in Kent (the southeast corner of England) in 597, and the king Ethelbert allowed them to settle and preach. Their preaching was outstandingly successful, the people were hungry for the Good News of salvation, and they made thousands of converts in a short time. In 601 the king himself was converted and baptised. Augustine was consecrated bishop and established his headquarters at Canterbury. From his day to the present, there has been an unbroken succession of archbishops of Canterbury. In 603, he held a conference with the leaders of the already existing Christian congregations in Britain, but failed to reach an accomodation with them, largely due to his own tactlessness, and his insistence (contrary, it may be noted, to Gregory’s explicit advice) on imposing Roman customs on a church long accustomed to its own traditions of worship. It is said that the British bishops, before going to meet Augustine, consulted a hermit with a reputation for wisdom and holiness, asking him, “Shall we accept this man as our leader, or not?” The hermit replied, “If, at your meeting, he rises to greet you, then accept him, but if he remains seated, then he is arrogant and unfit to lead, and you ought to reject him.” Augustine, alas, remained seated. It took another sixty years before the breach was healed.

The Anglican Bishop Stephen Neill writes:

The [Anglican] has never imagined that the Reformation was anything other than a Reformation. It was in no sense a new beginning. The English Churchman regards himself as standing in the fullest fellowship and continuity with Augustine and Ninian and Patrick and Aiden and Cuthbert and perhaps most of all, the most typically Anglican of all ancient saints, the Venerable Bede.

According to Anthony Hanson:

Anglican apologists in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries constantly maintained that the Church of England was not a breakaway Church, like the Evangelical Church in Germany or the Reformed Church in France. It was the same continuous Catholic Church that had at the Reformation “washed its face.”

Both St. Augustine and Pope Gregory the Great were Benedictine monks. Augustine not only brought the spiritual teachings of his monastic father to England but also followed Gregory’s pastoral directives after the first monks had settled in Canterbury. Gregory wrote to a perplexed Augustine who had asked what he should do about all the pagan usages of the Anglo-Saxons:

The temples of the idols among that people should on no account be destroyed… it is a good idea to detach them from the service of the devil, and dedicate them to the service of the true God. And since they have a custom of sacrificing many oxen to demons, let some other solemnity be substituted … so that they may learn to slay their cattle in honour of God and for their own feasting . . . If they are allowed some worldly pleasures in this way, they are more likely to find their way to the true inner joys. For it is doubtless impossible to eradicate all errors at one stroke . . . just as the man who sets out to climb a high mountain does not advance by leaps and bounds, but goes upward step by step and pace by pace. It is in this way that the Lord revealed himself to the Israelite people.

One wonders if the roots of the Anglican spirit of tolerance, reasonableness  and comprehensiveness cannot already be detected here. These are monastic virtues also, it might be noted. Gregory in his Vita Benedicti (written just two years before the mission of Augustine) praises St Benedict’s Rule for its balance and lucidity, two qualities that characterize his own pastoral and spiritual theology.

The above text is a compilation of these three sources: 1 , 2 , 3 .

In the end, a noteworthy example of the continuity within the Anglican Tradition. It should be said, though, that the Sarum Rite (more commonly called Sarum Use) wasn’t used in Augustine’s times (it was established by Saint Osmund, Bishop of Salisbury, in the 11th Century.)

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