Little is known about Augustine’s early years or his family, though they were almost certainly Roman aristocrats. What is known is that he was prior of the Benedictine monastery of St Andrew in Rome in 596 when the Pope, St Gregory the Great, chose him to lead a mission comprising some 40 monks to evangelise the Anglo Saxons in southern England.
This desire of St Gregory’s is reputed to have arisen from an occasion in 586 when, walking through the slave market in Rome, he saw blond haired, blue eyed children. Being told they were Angles he is supposed to have said, ‘Not Angles but Angels, if only they were Christians!’
Christianity in Britain dates from the age of the Apostles; it had its own martyrs during the reign of Diocletian and had sent bishops to the first Councils held after Christianity became the religion of the Roman Empire in 313. Also, missionary monks from the Celtic church in Ireland had come to Britain as early as the second and third centuries. However, the Saxon conquest of England had forced these Christian Britons westwards, into hiding, in Wales and Cornwall. Augustine’s brief was to bring them back into the fold and to convince the warlike Saxon conquerors to become Christians.
The missionaries had not travelled far through Gaul (modern day France) when they were frightened by hair raising tales of Saxon cruelty. Augustine returned to Rome for advice. Pope Gregory had information that England was more ready for Christianity than the stories of barbarity suggested. One of the facts was that King Ethelbert of Kent was married to Bertha, a Christian princess, daughter of a Frankish King. So he sent Augustine and the monks on their way again, this time strengthened by his assurance that now was the time for evangelisation.
St Augustine’s missionary group landed near to Ebbsfleet on the Isle of Thanet in the spring of 597 and was well received by King Ethelbert. He provided them with accommodation and land in Canterbury so they could follow their own customs and gave them the old St Martin’s church for preaching. Augustine would later help King Ethelbert to write the earliest surviving Anglo-Saxon laws.
The monks followed the Benedictine Rule and their good example brought many to them for instruction and Baptism. King Ethelbert, having the example of his Christian wife, converted soon after the missionaries’ arrival but he insisted that his household should not be forced to do the same. Leaving everyone to follow their own free will may well have been the reason why so many others followed the King. On Christmas Day in 597 it seems some 10,000 converts were baptised in the river Swale.
Following on from this Augustine then travelled to Arles in France to be consecrated Bishop of the English by St.Vingilius. He sent two of his monks back to Rome to report on their work, to seek additional help and advice.
Augustine was directed by the Pope to purify pagan temples and use them for Christian worship. Pope Gregory’s missionary principles were very enlightened. In a letter to Augustine he wrote ‘He who would climb to a lofty height must go by steps, not leaps’ He suggested that pagan temples and customs should be purified and that festivals and rites should be taken over into Christian feasts. He considered it important that local customs should be retained as far as possible. It is for this reason that many modern church yards have ancient yew trees; these were sites of pagan worship. St Augustine was also directed to consecrate twelve more Bishops. Thus he was given authority over the Bishops in Britain and the evangelisation of the Kingdom of Kent began.
Work among the pagan Saxons proceeded satisfactorily, but Augustine did not always meet with success. His attempts at reconciling the Anglo-Saxon Christians with the original, Christian Britons who had been driven westwards by Anglo-Saxon invaders, ended in failure. He was neither able to convince them to give up certain Celtic customs at variance with Rome nor to forget their bitterness in defeat by helping him to evangelize their Anglo-Saxon conquerors.
Augustine spent the rest of his life spreading the word and died on 26 May 605 only a few years after his arrival. He was the first Archbishop of Canterbury and was called ‘Apostle of the English’ - as opposed to ‘Roman Britain’. His very short mission had, of course, been confined to a limited area. He is known as St Augustine the Less to distinguish him from St Augustine of Hippo and also, in some places, he is known as St. Austin.
Judy Freegard