ST. AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY (MAY 26TH)

 

St. Augustine of Canterbury, Organizer of the British Church

Edited by Bp. Joseph (Ancient Church of the West)

May 26th is the feast of St Augustine, first archbishop of Canterbury, who is believed to have died on this day in 604AD. Not to be confused with church father Augustine of Hippo, he was a Benedictine monk, charged by Pope Gregory I in 595AD to head a mission to Anglo-Saxon England. 

St. Augustine chose Kent as his point of arrival, because King Æthelberht  had married a Christian princess, Bertha. The king allowed Augustine and his party to preach and gave them land at Canterbury to found a monastery. Augustine was consecrated bishop, and converted the king and many of the king's subjects, including thousands during a mass baptism on Christmas Day in 597AD. Our present bishop, Bp. Joseph Boyd, is 101st in an unbroken lineage beginning with St. Augustine.

At the same time that St. Augustine established his Roman mission in southern England, missionaries of the Celtic Church were moving south from Iona in Scotland. The two traditions held conflicting positions on matters of authority, organizational structure, the timing of Easter, observance of the Sabbath, and even such issues as the style of the priest’s tonsure. St. Augustine helped to bring the British Church into conformity with the Roman practices, which was completed over the next century, resulting in the suppression of the Ancient Celtic Church. 

Confrontation between was inevitable, and King Oswy of Northumbria convened a synod at the monastery of St Hilda at Whitby in 664AD. Northumbria adopted Roman observances, and within a century the whole Church in England came under Roman ecclesiastical control. Yet many Celtic features were preserved, at least until the Norman Conquest in 1066AD. The Celtic Church itself survived for several centuries in Ireland, Scotland, Brittany, and the western and northern parts of England, until it was finally brought into complete submission after the triumph of the Normans over the Anglo-Saxons and the forceful submission and replacement of the local bishoprics under the total authority of the Pope. This state of affairs continued until the re-establishment of autocephaly during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I in 1558AD. 

The Ancient Church of the West looks to St. Augustine of Canterbury as a paradigm for re-evangelizing the English-speaking church, replacing the apostasy and heresy that has corrupted her life and practice, by re-affirming our Anglican Patrimony’s commitment to Orthodoxy and Apostolicity, and replacing the liberalism and secularism that has corrupted our inheritance with the Catholicity and True Faith shared by all truly Orthodox Churches. 

Collect

O GOD, who through the preaching and wonderful deeds of blessed Augustine, thy Confessor and Bishop, didst vouchsafe to restore and re-evangelize the English people with the light of the true faith: mercifully grant, at his intercession, that we may be of one mind to do thy holy will. Through Jesus Christ Our Lord, who livest and reignest with Thee, and the Holy Ghost, One God, world without end! Amen! 

May Christ hear St. Augustine of Canterbury’s prayers for the Orthodox restoration of Anglicanism before His Throne! 

[Based upon the source text: John F. Nash, “The Sacramental Church”.]