AUGUSTINE, Bishop of Canterbury, Saint. - Apart from a vague notice by Leo III (PL 102, 1032) which calls him a companion (syncellus) of St. Gregory the Great, his life before the year 596 is completely unknown. In that year, when the Pope chose him for the evangelization of the Anglo-Saxons, still pagans, A. was prior of the Benedictine monastery of St. Andrew ad clivum Scauri in Rome. A charming legend that Bede included in his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (II, 1) says that St. Gregory had thought of the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons when he was still a young monk. It is certain that as pope, in 595, Gregory ordered the priest Candidus to purchase in Gaul young slaves of that people, so that they might be educated in one of the Roman monasteries (Registrum, VI, 10), with the intention, we believe, of making them the future apostles. Two events must have contributed to the decision of 596 to send missionaries to that people at once to attempt the undertaking: that King Ethelbert of Kent, already for 20 years the husband of the Catholic princess Bertha, had in 593 obtained a certain supremacy over the Anglo-Saxon epitarchy with the title of bretwalda, and even more the changed political conditions of the kingdom of the Franks which had led to the regency of Brunhilda, favorable to carrying out the Pope's plan. In the spring A. and his companions set out from Rome. At Aix the news they received about the people they were to evangelize threw them into real discouragement, and A. himself returned to Rome to be relieved of the task entrusted to him; but the firmness of St. Gregory overcame all hesitation. He sent A. back to his companions with the title of abbot and provided with letters of recommendation that made their undertaking easier.
The following year they landed on the island of Thanet accompanied by some Frankish interpreters. A. immediately sent to announce their arrival to King Ethelbert, informing him that they came from Rome to bring that people the good news. The king, who had allowed his wife the free exercise of her religion and to bring with her a bishop who officiated at the British church of St. Martin, received the missionaries with benevolent tolerance. In its simplicity Bede's account of the arrival of the missionaries and of the beginning of their work (Hist. eccl., I, 25) is most vivid, crowned before long by great successes. Already at Pentecost of 597 the king received baptism, and at the following Christmas no fewer than ten thousand Anglo-Saxons followed his example. Meanwhile, according to the instructions received from the Pope, A. had gone to Arles to be consecrated bishop by Vergilius, pontifical vicar of Gaul. The news of such happy successes was brought to Rome by two of the missionaries sent by A. also to treat with the Pope certain questions that by now imposed themselves in the field of their apostolate. St. Gregory had such joy from it that he could not refrain from manifesting it also in letters to Bertha (Registrum, XI, 35) and to the patriarch Eulogius of Alexandria (Registrum, VIII, 29). In June of 601 A.'s envoys, to whom the Pope had joined a new band of missionaries, set out again for England, provided with letters of the Pope for the king, for the queen and for A., to whom they also brought the archiepiscopal pallium. In one of the letters to A., St. Gregory traced the general lines of the ecclesiastical hierarchy to be established in the new land of conquest (Registrum, XI, 39), consisting of two metropolitan sees, one at London and the other at York, with twelve suffragans each. As can be seen, the plan is based on the Roman division of the empire and not on the political situation of England at that time. London no longer had its former importance, so A. thought it well to fix his see definitively at Canterbury, and of the twelve suffragans he consecrated only two, Mellitus for London and Justus for Rochester. He worked much for the union of the old British element with the recently converted Anglo-Saxon one, but did not succeed: the Britons were too attached to their religious customs, although the divergences concerned matters of secondary importance, such as the rite of baptism, the celebration of Easter, the form of the tonsure, etc. He died at Canterbury on May 26, 604. Anglican historians have not always judged his person and his work justly; they have accused him of inequality to the task entrusted to him, of pride and often of too much submission to the will of Rome. There is no doubt that, placed in comparison with the great figure of Gregory the Great, that of A. remains in the shadow: to Gregory indeed is attributed the official title of Apostle of England; nevertheless no one can deny that it belongs in fact to A. His feast is celebrated on May 28.
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Benedetto Pesci