AUGUSTINE, Bishop of CANTERBURY, Saint. — Apart from a vague notice by Leo III (PL 102, 1032) who 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 pagan, Augustine was prior of the Benedictine monastery of St. Andrew ad clivum Scauri in Rome. A charming legend inserted by Bede in his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (II, 1) says that St. Gregory would have 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 buy young slaves of that people in Gaul, so that they might be educated in one of the Roman monasteries (Registrum, VI, 10), with the intention, we believe, of making them future apostles. The decision in 596 to send missionaries immediately to that people to attempt the enterprise must have been influenced by two events: the fact that King Æthelberht of Kent, already for twenty years the husband of the Catholic princess Bertha, had in 593 achieved a certain supremacy over the Anglo-Saxon province with the title of brettwalda, and even more the changed political conditions of the Frankish kingdom which had led to the regency of Brunhilda, favorable to the execution of the Pope’s plan. In the spring Augustine and his companions set out from Rome. At Aix the news they received about the people they were to evangelize threw them into such discouragement that Augustine himself returned to Rome to be released from the task entrusted to him; but the firmness of St. Gregory overcame all hesitation. He sent Augustine back to his companions with the title of abbot and furnished them with commendatory letters that made their task easier.
The following year they landed on the island of Thanet accompanied by some Frankish interpreters. Augustine immediately sent word of their arrival to King Æthelberht, informing him that they had come from Rome to bring that people the good news. The king, who had allowed his wife free exercise of her religion and to bring with her a bishop to officiate in the British church of St. Martin, received the missionaries with benevolent tolerance. Bede’s account of the arrival of the missionaries and the beginning of their work (Hist. eccl., I, 25) is vivid in its simplicity and was soon crowned with great success. Already at Pentecost in 597 the king received baptism and at Christmas some ten thousand Anglo-Saxons followed his example. Meanwhile, in accordance with the instructions he had received from the Pope, Augustine went to Arles to be consecrated bishop by Virgilius, the papal vicar of Gaul. The news of these successes was carried to Rome by two of the missionaries sent by Augustine also to discuss with the Pope certain matters that now arose in the field of their apostolate. St. Gregory was so overjoyed that he could not refrain from expressing it even in letters to Bertha (Registrum, XI, 35) and to the patriarch Eulogius of Alexandria (Registrum, VIII, 29). In June of 601 Augustine’s envoys, to whom the Pope had added a new band of missionaries, set out again for England, furnished with letters from the Pope for the king, for the queen, and for Augustine, bringing him also the archiepiscopal pallium. In one of the letters to Augustine, St. Gregory outlined 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, each with twelve suffragans. As can be seen, the plan was based on the Roman division of the empire and not on the political situation of England at the time. London no longer had the importance it once had, so Augustine wisely decided 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 hard for the union of the old British element with the newly converted Anglo-Saxons, but did not succeed: the Britons were too attached to their religious customs, although the differences were in matters of secondary importance, such as the rite of baptism, the celebration of Easter, the form of tonsure, etc. He died at Canterbury on 26 May 604. Anglican historians have not always judged his person and his work fairly; they have accused him of inadequacy for the task entrusted to him, of pride, and often of too much submissiveness to the wishes of Rome. There is no doubt that when compared with the great figure of Gregory the Great, Augustine’s remains in the shade: to Gregory indeed is attributed the official title of Apostle of England; nonetheless no one can deny that Augustine in fact belongs to II. His feast is celebrated on 28 May.