Canterbury holds a special place in the mind and imagination of the English people. Being the spiritual home of the Anglican Communion, her Archbishop is a figure of international repute. Closer to home, the Church of England (CofE), of which Canterbury is the hub, is the established religion of the nation, with the Monarch as her Supreme Governor. The opportunities which the Archbishop has, together with the Archbishop of York and the leading bishops in the land, to influence government, and promote truth through the media, is immense. With seats allocated in the House of Lords, the CofE reaches into the heart of Westminster, a privilege allocated to no other faith. Sadly, in this apostate and liberal age, the noble See of Canterbury is more content with social issues and climate change than contending for the Gospel, the only message that can bring change to a lost people.
There are several dates key to our understanding of English history, many of which concern the invasions of foreign peoples into beautiful Kent, often called the garden of England. In 55 BC, Julius Caesar planted the Roman eagle here, while more than 1,000 years later, in 1066, William the Conqueror’s Norman cavalry would sweep away the last Anglo-Saxon King from power. Midway through this first millennium of English history, in 597 AD, a more benevolent invasion arrived. Instead of soldiers, this company consisted of a few monks and the only standard they planted on English soil was the cross of Christ.
NOW THE ANGLO-SAXONS HAVE TAKEN OVER
It was now almost two centuries since the last legions had left Britannia. Now, in 597, Britannia is no more. This is now Anglo-Saxon territory. A new nation is being forged, as England – and Englishness – develops. But the land we call England is not yet a united nation. The Anglo-Saxon Kings had carved up the territory and some of the regions we today recognise in the “Green and Pleasant Land” were being shaped. While the unity of England under one King was still almost half a millennium away, another source of unity was much closer, a unity of faith under one Church. It was this unity of faith which laid the foundations of England. This is the true significance of the arrival of this simple company of monks planting their cross on English soil. Under their watch, Canterbury was formed and we observe the beginnings of the CofE, the institution which has overseen the investiture of every Monarch, and which continues to be, despite the secularism of our times, the focal point of a nation. We can only begin to understand the emergence and development of England, which became the leading force in the most successful alliance of nations in the history of the world, the United Kingdom, by considering the creation of the Church, which became its soul and life blood.
THE BRITISH ARE “EITHER DROWNED OR SLAUGHTERED”
When this little band of monks, seemingly insignificant, arrived in Kent, the old Christian Church which had existed in Roman Britain had almost expired, south of Hadrian’s wall. The paganism of the Anglo-Saxons now ruled supreme over the soul and conscience. The Christian writer Gildas, living in Wales in the middle of the 6th Century, described the violence with which the Anglo-Saxons were emphasising their superiority; “The barbarians push us to the sea, the sea pushes us back to the barbarians. Between these two kinds of death, we are either drowned or slaughtered”. While the Celtic Christian movement in Ireland and Scotland had accomplished some modest ministry – as at Lindisfarne in Northumberland – for the most part, and probably for political and cultural reasons, the peoples did not easily mix. Therefore, these missionary monks, who arrived from France, were despatched to claim the souls of the Anglo-Saxons.
Who were they? Who sent them?
THE POPES SEIZE POWER
The second of these two questions helps to set the historical context. They were sent on a Papal mission by Pope Gregory the Great. From about the middle of the 4th Century, after Emperor Constantine had moved the centre of his Empire from Rome to Constantinople, the Bishop of Rome began to seize and develop a presumptuous power over the entire Church. I call this a ‘presumptuous’ power because it was not based in Scripture; the only warrant being political.
The Bishops of Rome were important figures in what was once the world’s leading centre. As Rome lost political power, and as the Roman Emperor moved to the east, the Bishops of Rome exerted their own influence by exploiting the power vacuum.
Prior to this, there were three great Patriarchies in the Church; Rome, Alexandria and Antioch. Rome, however, only ever became absolute in the western half of the old Roman Empire, a dominion which picked up pace after the fall of Rome, and the nations of Western Europe began to emerge. The title ‘Pope’, initially an innocuous word describing the pastoral care of leader, gradually became a badge of power and authority – associated only with the Bishop of Rome.
A VERY DIFFERENT CHURCH TAKES SHAPE
Many scholars believe that Gregory the Great was the first Pope of a new era, who expanded the office, principally by declaring that no King in Europe could govern without his authority. By this stage, the Christian Church of the persecution era could scarcely have recognised what the Church had become; prayers were being offered to saints, relics were revered, pictures of Christ were used in worship and now she was presided over by a pastor who acted as an emperor!
Gregory was determined that his power must be brought to bear upon the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms of old Britannia. Before becoming Pope, he saw fair-skinned boys in a slave market. When hearing that they were Anglo-Saxon, he had a yearning to bring the Church to them. But there was something about the spirit of old Rome in his thinking, with the drive to expand his spiritual and temporal empire – and his obsession with uniformity. Having the Church among the nations united in doctrine and practice under one head and system with Rome at the heart was Gregory’s overriding objective. To achieve this, he despatched a Benedictine abbot called Augustin, 30 monks, and a priest called Laurentius to Gaul (France) with letters of authority. The French then assisted this effort and so the company arrived in Kent.
KING ETHELBERT IS CONVERTED AND BAPTISED
At face value, Augustin’s early efforts appear to have been extraordinarily successful. King Ethelbert, who controlled Kent, was married to a Christian princess from Paris who had brought a bishop with her across the English Channel. Therefore he was prepared in spirit to welcome Christian visitors. He permitted the company to preach their message and allowed permitted them to reside in the centre of his Kingdom, the City of Canterbury. June 2nd, 597, is the date given for the conversion and baptism of Ethelbert – after which Gregory summonsed Augustin to Rome, where he was invested as the first Archbishop of Canterbury. On Augustin’s return, it is recorded that 10,000 people were baptised into the Christian faith, bringing all of Kent into the domain of the Pope.
In the sovereignty of God, Augustin’s efforts undoubtedly changed England. The early glory of the British church had faded. Now a new national Church of the Anglo-Saxons was born, soon expanding and on its way to becoming the first truly national church in western Europe – and with it, all the good that that movement has been able in accomplish in 1,700 years of history. This was the Church of Anslem, the great theologian of the middle ages, and Wycliffe, the ‘The Morning Star of the Reformation’. Truth would be recovered within the CofE by men like Tyndale, Latimer and Cranmer – and the leading lights of the Reformation era would embrace the stake rather than sell the truth. The history of the CofE is a remarkable story of success but also of failure.
THE CULT OF ROMANISM
Augustin, who died in 604 |AD, lived just about long enough for us to assess the true value of his ministry. Mass baptisms do not necessarily mean mass conversions – and a change of name is not always accompanied by a change of heart. Pagan temples were not abandoned under his watch. Rather, he encouraged the people to simply change the use of the buildings, so that they became places of Christian worship. This continued the practice already begun in Rome of integrating paganism with Christianity, the apostasy which assimilated what I call the ‘Cult of Romanism’ into the Christian Church. While there was truth in Augustin’s message about Christ, there was also the alloy of error, deceiving and corrupting, which weakened his ministry. In assessing this aspect of Augustin’s ministry, Schaff writes:
It no doubt facilitated the nominal conversion of England, but swept a vast amount of heathenism into the Christian church, which it took centuries to eradicate”.
This weakness is evidenced particularly by his dealings with the traditional British Christians who either had survived the Anglo-Saxon onslaught, or who had been influenced by the Celtic Church of Ireland or Scotland. In essence there were two distinct traditions of Christianity in the British Isles by the turn of the 7th Century; the traditional Catholicism of the Church of Patrick, Columba and Aidan – and the new ‘Roman’ Catholicism, imported from Europe. One was Christ-centred with traceable roots to the early Church – while the other was Pope-driven and originated with Constantine’s takeover of the Empire.
THE GREAT ‘STAND OFF’
The two strains were irreconcilable. Before long, the British Isles would be theatre of the first great conflict between Christ and AntiChrist.
Augustin refused to accept the traditional British Celtic Christians unless they submitted to the claims of Pope Gregory over their souls. This they refused to do, resulting in a ‘stand off’. But this controversy, while illustrating Rome’s intransigence, highlights the independence of the people of the British Isles, an independence rooted in faith. In the succeeding centuries, while it seemed that Rome had won the argument, this independent spirit never departed from the soul of England and her sister nations. It continues on today despite the growing darkness of our times; a testament to the faith of our fathers.
This early controversy between the Celtic Church and Canterbury eventually boiled down to two issues; the dating of Easter, and the hairstyles of the monks. Celtic Christians followed the Eastern as opposed to the Western pattern for Easter, and their monks had longer hair, while the Romans shaved the centre of their head in what we recognise as the ‘tonsure’. Rome insisted on conformity in every detail!
THE SYNOD OF WHITBY
Whitby Abbey in Yorkshire became the scene of a great conference. The Synod of Whitby, convened in 664 AD .The preceding decades had generated so much strife and even bloodshed that there was a growing recognition that unity must be achieved. In truth, the fire of the old Celtic flame was burning low and there was a willingness to compromise. It was Wilfred, Archbishop of York, who ominously won the debate by appealing to Apostolic authority, describing the Pope as the “door-keeper”, holding the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Britain had now become Roman Catholic; the Dark Ages had reached into almost every part of Europe.
RESOURCES USED
A History of Britain, At the Edge of the World; Simon Schama
History of the Christian Church; Philip Schaff
The Papacy; J.A. Wylie
Great Tales from English History; Robert Lacey
Clogher Valley Free Presbyterian Church 