obey his laws, for if I do otherwise, I may come to the gates of the kingdom of Heaven, and there should be none to open them, since I have made an enemy of the one who has the keys.”
The king having said this, all who were seated there or standing by, both great and small, gave their assent, and renouncing the less perfect custom, quickly accepted the better one.
St. Augustine of Canterbury (d. 604)
Although we know little or no personal detail about the life of St. Augustine of Canterbury, we do know that there would probably never have been an English Church without him. From the sources we get the impression of an unassuming man content to work quietly in the fields, patiently building an edifice that would dominate the English landscape for over a millennium.
Although Christian missionaries had reached the native Britons in England by the early fourth century, the Church there was in tatters by the sixth. The withdrawal of Roman legions in 410 to protect the Imperial capital had led to an immediate invasion by the Saxons, as ruthless in their pagan religion as in their barbaric behavior. The few Christians who lingered among the now-conquered Britons were disheartened and gave up all hope of convincing their conquerors to accept the Gospel. While the Irish had some luck missionizing the northern coasts, they could not penetrate the interior. It seemed that all hope for a Christian England was lost.
Yet that great missionary pope, St. Gregory the Great, would not be daunted. A legend traces his brainchild of an English mission to an encounter with English slaves in a Roman slave market: Gregory nourished a lifelong scheme to buy slaves, free them, convert them, and send them back to their homelands as missionaries. Struck with the beauty of the fair-haired English, Gregory was horrified to hear that they had no missionaries among them. He thus hatched the most carefully conceived and well-organized missionary strategy since the days of St. Paul, forming a missionary team of forty handpicked monks from his own Roman abbey under the leadership of Augustine, their prior at the time.
Augustine was the right man for the job. His sharp wit, his delicate pastoral touch, and the natural knack for administration he had shown as prior would all be necessary in the mission field. Augustine’s first task was to establish a support network in the nearest Christian community, bringing his team to France to gather resources, including interpreters and local information. His next task was to rally the spirits of his team: the horror stories they heard in France of the savageries of the Saxons made the team unwilling to go on!
Next, after convincing the team to continue, he carefully plotted out the mission strategy. It may have been Augustine’s choice to begin the mission in Kent, where rumor had it that the local king, Ethelbert, was sympathetic to Christianity, having wed a Christian wife. Plus, situated next to the channel, Kent would put the team in close geographical proximity to its French support network. Augustine’s tactic of working closely with the royal couple meant it was only a matter of time before the king—with the gentle pressure of his wife—converted, and once the king converted, so would the nation. Within a year Augustine was able to baptize ten thousand Saxons in a Christmas ceremony.
From this point onward, Augustine left a profound legacy in the English Church. He fostered a strong devotion to the pope among the English—in fact, he considered his team an extension of the papacy itself, constantly asking the pope for advice on missionary strategies. A Benedictine monk himself, he quickly built a monastery on English soil, and with it a school for training missionaries, laying the foundations for an English monastic and missionary tradition that would reshape Europe.
His correspondence shows a profound sensitivity to local customs and a willingness to allow English Christianity to take its own distinctive cultural shape, rather than be supplanted by Roman Christianity. Perhaps he learned from his own mistakes: his failure to stand up to greet Irish missionaries during a meeting, probably due to his Roman aristocratic background, was a huge cultural faux pas and caused a decades-long schism between the Roman and Irish churches. Nonetheless, the Apostle to the English has always been seen as the founder of Christianity in England and a model missionary.
The Launching of the English Mission
Bede, an English monastic scholar, tells of how Pope Gregory the Great first conceived of the plan for a mission to England, its rocky start, and its gradual successes. (From Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People)
Around AD 596, Gregory, a man famous for his holy life and solid education, became bishop of Rome, an office he held for over thirteen years. Through divine inspiration, he sent that servant of God, Augustine, along with several other God-fearing monks, to preach the word of God to the English nation.
But as soon as they had begun that work in obedience to the pope’s commands, they suddenly were seized with fear and planned to return home, terrified of proceeding to a fierce, barbaric, and pagan nation, whose language they did not even know. In unanimous agreement that this would be the safest course, they sent back Augustine—who was supposed to be ordained a bishop in England if the mission were a success—to beg St. Gregory that they might be allowed to abandon such a dangerous, burdensome and risky journey. The pope replied by sending the entire group a letter, insisting that they proceed with their labor on behalf of God’s word, trusting in the assistance of Almighty God….
Augustine, encouraged by Gregory’s letter, returned to the work of God’s word, and arrived at Britain with nearly forty companions and Frankish interpreters. The mighty Ethelbert was at that time king of Kent…. They sent a message to him, indicating that they came from Rome and brought a joyful message of eternal life in heaven with God for anyone who was willing to listen to it. The king heard this and ordered them to stay put for a while until he could decide what to do about them. For he knew about the Christian religion, having a Christian wife from France named Bertha: she had been raised a Christian and married Ethelbert only on the condition that she could continue to practice [the Faith].
A few days later he came to them, inviting them to sit in his presence in the open air. (He was afraid to meet them indoors because of an ancient superstition that, if he did so, their magical powers might be able to overpower him. But they brought divine power, not magic.) They carried a silver cross for a banner, an image of our Lord and Savior painted on a board, singing a litany and praying to the Lord for the salvation of themselves and the English people.
After Augustine had preached the word of life to the king and his attendants, the king answered: “You speak pleasantly and make attractive promises, but they are new to us and confusing, and I cannot accept them, since this would mean breaking with ancient English custom. But because you have traveled so far to my kingdom, and seem very eager and sincere in your desire to share this message, I won’t harass you, but will act as your host, providing you with supplies and allowing you to preach and gain any converts who will listen to you.” So the king allowed them to stay in the city of Canterbury, and gave them liberty to preach.
As soon as they moved into the residence he gave them, they began to imitate the practices of the early Church: frequent prayer, fasting, preaching to as many as possible, practicing self-denial, eating only the food they needed for subsistence, which they received from their converts, living exactly in the way which matched the message they were preaching, always willing to suffer and even die for the truth they preached. Because of this, several believed and were baptized, admiring the simplicity and innocence of their life, and the beauty of their teaching … until eventually the king himself was converted to their faith…. After he was baptized, greater numbers began to gather to hear the word, abandoning their pagan rituals, believing and joining the unity of Christ’s Church. The king encouraged such conversions but did not force anyone to convert: he contented himself with showing more personal affection to those who did, because he had learned from Augustine and his companions that serving Christ ought to be done voluntarily, not by force.
