CANTERBURY. - The episcopal see of Canterbury (Kent, England), founded in 597 by St Augustine, Apostle of England, sent thither by St Gregory the Great, was the primatial see of that kingdom until the 15th century. After the schism, it became the primatial see of the Anglican hierarchy, a primacy it retains to this day. Among the most notable Catholic archbishops were St Lanfranc (1070–1089) and St Anselm (1093–1109), both Italians, and the holy martyr Thomas Becket (1162–70), as well as Stephen Langton (1207–28). The first Protestant archbishop was Thomas Cranmer, appointed in 1533, to whom, in 1556 under the Catholic Queen Mary Tudor, succeeded the last Catholic archbishop, Reginald Pole (1553–58). After Pole, all archbishops have been Protestant. It should be noted that Anglicans, in their lists of Canterbury archbishops, place them all in unbroken succession one after another, without any distinction, as if the Protestant ones were the legitimate successors of the Catholic ones.
Among Anglican archbishops, mention should be made of Matthew Parker (1559–75), renowned for the question of episcopal ordinations carried out by him with the Edwardine formula; John Whitgift (1583–1604), who attempted to introduce Calvinist doctrine into the Church of England through the “Lambeth Articles”; William Laud (1633–45), beheaded by his enemies; William Sancroft (1678–90), deposed for refusing to take the oath of allegiance to the new king after the expulsion of the Stuarts; and among more modern figures, E. W. Benson (1883–96), Randall T. Davidson (1903–28), and C. Gordon Lang (1928–42), noted for their pan-Protestant congresses and their efforts towards union with the Eastern schismatics.
The Anglican archbishop of Canterbury has various functions depending on whether he is considered as a dignitary within the Anglican-Episcopal communion spread throughout the world, or as head of the Church of England, or as metropolitan of the ecclesiastical province of Canterbury, or as a simple bishop of his diocese. Within the Anglican-Episcopal communion, he is regarded as the “primus inter pares” among all other bishops; he thus has absolutely no jurisdiction outside that pertaining to his own province and diocese, though temporarily or occasionally he may exercise jurisdiction over certain isolated dioceses not yet belonging to any ecclesiastical province, such as those of Gibraltar, Jerusalem, etc. He presides over the Lambeth Conferences, to which all Anglican and Episcopal bishops from around the world are invited every ten years; however, these conferences cannot formulate any canons or take any disciplinary or doctrinal decisions that are binding.
In the Church of England, that is, in the church formed by the two ecclesiastical provinces of Canterbury and York, the supreme head is the King or Queen of England, according to the 37th Article of Religion, namely, in practice, the English Parliament, to whose pleasure both the archbishop of Canterbury and the other bishops of the Church of England are subject in graver cases, while in less important matters they are subject to special delegations of Parliament (Privy Council, Court of Arches). The archbishop of Canterbury has the title of “Primate of all England,” while that of York is merely “Primate of England.” He has the right to crown the King; he is considered the first Lord of the Realm and is preceded only by members of the royal family; he is also the legal chairman of the “National Assembly of the Church of England,” that is, the assembly consisting of the united provincial assemblies of Canterbury and York.