Having been granted his episcopal see in the royal capital, as already recorded, Augustine proceeded with the king’s help to repair a church which he was informed had been built long ago by Roman Christians. This he hallowed in the name of our Saviour, God, and Lord Jesus Christ,1 and established there a dwelling for himself and his successors. He also built a monastery a short distance to the east of the city, where at his suggestion King Ethelbert erected from, the foundations a church dedicated to the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, enriching it with many gifts. It was here that the bodies of Augustine and all the Archbishops of Canterbury and of the Kings of Kent were to rest. This church was not consecrated by Augustine himself, however, but by Laurence his successor.
The first abbot of this monastery was the priest Peter, who was sent on a mission to Gaul and was drowned at sea in a bay called Amfleat,2 where the local inhabitants buried him without honour. But, as evidence of his holy life, Almighty God caused a heavenly light to appear over his grave every night, until the local people saw it and, realizing that a holy man lay buried there, made enquiries as to whose the body might be. Then they took up the body and interred it in a church in the city of Boulogne with the honours due to so great a man.
-
This chapter forms a natural sequel to i. 26; it is likely that Bede inserted i. 27–32 at a late stage. The Canterbury church dedications resemble those of Rome. Christ Church was the equivalent of the old Roman cathedral of St Saviour (later called St John Lateran); the single monastery just outside the walls was dedicated to the two patrons of the Roman monasteries. This last was intended to be a mausoleum for kings who would be protected from evil spirits by the prayers of the monks and the adjacent shrines of archbishops. ↩
-
Ambleteuse. ↩