St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury

Canterbury: St Augustine’s Abbey

Canterbury was the capital of English Christianity long before St Thomas Becket came along. A visit to St Augustine’s Abbey makes that abundantly clear. Many of the country’s earliest saints are buried here.

‍Highlights

• Ruins of abbey founded by St Augustine
• Burial place of at least 17 saints
• Ruins of 7th-century church

The abbey site is run by English Heritage, which has a museum in the visitors’ centre displaying some of the artefacts found in the ruins. The museum and the official guidebook do an admirable job untangling the different layers of archaeology and history. The abbey is only 300m from Canterbury Cathedral, but belongs to a different age. It also receives far fewer tourists, the ruins a less glamorous spectacle than the mighty cathedral, despite having comparable spiritual significance. The abbey has been extensively excavated in recent decades.

The oldest buildings on the site date from the 7th century. Several later additions were made before the entire complex was closed in 1538 at the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The different phases of building work are marked on the ground, enabling you to trace the history of this once mighty institution. What the guides can’t give you is the overall scale of the abbey complex during its final years: it was nearly as big as Canterbury Cathedral. And more saints were venerated here than in the cathedral.

English Heritage has installed grave markers to indicate where several of the saints were buried during the Saxon era. It should be noted that these graves were emptied of their relics during the 11th century and moved into the new Norman monastery in 1091. We don’t know where any of the saints bodies now lie in the complex, although many of them are presumably still here.

Finding the empty Saxon graves is at least easy. As you walk into the ruins of the abbey, they are clustered on the far side, some underneath a modern portico. This part of the site was originally the Saxon church of St Peter and St Paul, built in 614. It was designed to house the graves of Canterbury’s archbishops and members of its royal family.

The official guide, produced by English Heritage, does not explain how they identified the occupants of each Saxon grave. But the names are familiar enough if you know your early English history. The first eight archbishops of Canterbury are identified here, from St Augustine (d604) to St Berhtwald (d731). Admittedly some are more famous than others. There are also grave markers for St Ethelbert and St Bertha, the king and queen who welcomed St Augustine to Canterbury and led the conversion of their subjects.

St Augustine built the first monastery here in 598, the year after he arrived. The oldest building in the abbey complex dates from around then. This is the chapel of St Pancras at the far end of the site, easily recognisable from its walls of reused Roman brick and masonry. Just enough remains to give you a sense of how this prototype English church might have looked. In some ways this abbey is the birthplace of English Christianity, although many experts question the importance of St Augustine.

Guidebooks on holy places usually point out that he merely reintroduced Christianity to southern Britain. There was a flourishing Celtic church in Scotland and Wales at the time of his arrival, and Britain had previously been Christian under the Roman Empire.

But his role has hardly been over-emphasised either. For one thing, St Augustine never received the sort of veneration that was later reserved for St Thomas Becket. The abbey was renamed in his honour in the 10th century, but there is no record of mass pilgrimage to his shrine.

What St Augustine achieved was to introduce Roman-style Christianity to England, under the authority of the Pope. He also managed to convert an English king to the faith, allowing the church to operate at a state level. Whether these two achievements are positive or not is a separate issue, a matter of opinion.

Among the many other saints worth remembering at this important abbey are St Theodore of Tarsus, the 7th archbishop of Canterbury, and his colleague St Adrian of Canterbury. They did as much as anyone to develop the English church as a national institution and centre for scholarship.

St Theodore’s Saxon grave is marked, but not St Adrian’s. In some ways St Adrian is the most interesting of all Canterbury’s saints. In 668 he declined the opportunity to become archbishop here, insisting that the title go to Theodore, a colleague of his in Rome. The Pope agreed, on the condition that St Adrian would accompany him to England.

St Adrian was a brilliant scholar, fluent in Greek and Latin and a notable theologian. He was even an expert in astronomy and mathematics. Under him the church in England enjoyed its first golden age of academic excellence. The Venerable Bede, writing a couple of decades after the saint’s death, knew several people who were fluent in Greek and Latin thanks solely to his and St Theodore’s teaching.

St Adrian created the conditions for Bede to flourish. It is no exaggeration to say that England’s education system, including its earliest universities, owes this forgotten hero a debt of thanks as one of its founding figures. One further fact about this saint deserves greater prominence: he was a black African. Bede describes him as a native Berber (History iv.1).

St Adrian served as abbot of the monastery here in Canterbury for 39 years, dying in 710 on 9 January, his saint’s day. As for St Theodore, he served as archbishop for 22 years and is thought to have introduced the Litany of the Saints to western Christians, an eastern-style prayer that invokes many early saints. It is also interesting to note that his name is attached to one of Christian history’s most eye-catching documents, The Penitentials of Theodore – though he probably didn’t write it himself. This is basically a tariff of sins, listing the acts of repentance required for each transgression. It is one of the world’s first attempts to legislate on private behaviour. Needless to say, sexual activity features prominently.

If nothing else the document demonstrates how far notions of sin and morality change from age to age. It implies – and subsequent penitentials are explicit – that a young victim of sexual abuse in a monastery was required to do penance. Early Christianity was shaped by monasteries in Britain, long before any parish system was established. Monks follow a very specific calling to live apart from the everyday world – and are arguably ill equipped to write universal rules on sexual behaviour. The Penitentials and their ilk are one of the many monastic legacies that continue to affect Christianity.

Ending on a positive note, Canterbury’s abbey seems an appropriate place to remember Pope Gregory the Great. He never came to Britain, but it was he who sent the Augustinian mission to Kent. It was a daunting task, but St Gregory showed admirable good humour in reaching the decision. On seeing some fair-headed British slaves in Rome one day he asked who they were. “Angles”, came the reply. St Gregory shot back: “Not Angles, but angels.” A subtle blend of flattery and humour: he is one of the papacy’s most charismatic and successful leaders. St Gregory died in 604 and along with St Augustine is sometimes referred to as the Apostle of the English.

Saints buried at the abbey

Archbishops of Canterbury, with dates of reign and saint's day

• St Augustine (597–605) 26 May
• St Laurence (605–619) 3 February
• St Mellitus (619–624) 24 April
• St Justus (624–627) 10 November
• St Honorius (627–653) 30 September
• St Deusdedit (655–664) 14 July
• St Theodore (668–690) 19 September
• St Berhtwald (693–731) 9 January
• St Tatwin (731–734) 30 July
• St Nothelm (735–739) 17 October
• St Jambert (765–792) 12 August

Other saints:

• St Ethelbert King of Kent (d616) 25/26 February
• St Bertha Queen of Kent (d c.603) festival unknown
• St Liudhard, St Bertha’s chaplain (d603) 7 May
• St Mildred, abbess of Minster (d c.700) 13 July, translated here 1035
• St Mildgyth, sister of St Mildred (d676) 17 January, translated here 1035
• St Adrian of Canterbury, abbot here (d710) 9 January

Directions

St Augustine’s Abbey, Longport, Canterbury CT1 1PF

www.english-heritage.org.uk (search: Canterbury)

W3W: shaky.saying.region

GPS: 51.2775N 1.0880E

St Augustine’s Abbey is run by English Heritage. Entry costs £7.20 adults, £6.50 concessions, £4:30 children. The site is open weekends only in winter, with a mix of opening times and days the rest of the year — see website.