May 27: Saint Augustine of Canterbury
Apostle to England
A Benedictine monk sent by Pope Gregory the Great to be a missionary among pagans. He became the great re-evangelizer of ancient Britannia, but also the first Archbishop and Primate of England. He is Saint Augustine of Canterbury, known throughout the world by the name of the abbey he founded and where he was buried.
Born perhaps on November 13, 534, he was Prior of the Roman monastery of St. Andrew on the Caelian, when Pope Gregory the Great called him to carry out a delicate mission: to re-evangelize England, after it had once again become predominantly pagan with the invasion of the Saxons (5th-6th century).
Pope Gregory knew Augustine because they were brother monks in the St. Andrew monastery. He entrusted him with forty monks to accompany him on his mission.
Having set out full of zeal, when they reached Provence, the monks heard terrifying stories of the violent behavior of the Saxons. So Augustine returned to Rome to ask the Pope to be relieved of that task. Gregory the Great, however, reassured him and convinced him to continue his mission. Before leaving Provence, Augustine received his Episcopal Ordination from the Archbishop of Arles.
Thus, in 597, Augustine and his companions landed on the Isle of Thanet, in south-eastern England, now Kent County. As the Venerable Bede recounts in his Historia Ecclesiastica, Ethelbert, the King of Kent - of pagan origins - received the monks outdoors and not in a dwelling - the reason linked to "an ancient superstition, in case they practiced some magical art".
Augustine and his monks presented themselves to the King with a silver cross “and the image of Our Lord and Savior painted on a tablet, and intoning litanies they offered their prayers to the Lord for the eternal salvation of themselves and of those to whom they had been sent”.
They were kindly welcomed by Ethelbert, who allowed Augustine to preach. The benevolent attitude of the sovereign is due to his wife, Queen Bertha, a Christian and daughter of Charibert I, King of Paris, who had brought a chaplain with her to England and was able to establish a small Christian community. According to tradition, the King also converted and received Baptism and with him thousands of his subjects. He was the first King of England to convert to Christianity and to be later venerated as a Saint.
Just outside the walls of Canterbury, Augustine founded a monastery and later an abbey. He rebuilt and re-consecrated an ancient church dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul, which became the Cathedral.
He always remained in epistolary contact with Gregory the Great, who sent other missionaries to help him. In fact, in 601, Justus and Mellitus arrived, bringing him books, relics and the pallium, receiving the title of Archbishop and Primate of England. The Pope also asked him to ordain, as soon as possible, twelve new Bishops.
In 604 Augustine ordained Mellitus, the first Bishop of London, and Justus, the first Bishop of Rochester. In London, King Ethelbert built a church dedicated to St. Paul, where the current Anglican Cathedral is located.
On May 26, 604, Augustine died and was buried in the church inside the abbey he founded.