Fondatio Abbatiae

The Foundation of the Abbey of Saint Augustine, Canterbury. (Monasticum Anglicanum.) The true light which illuminates every man coming into this world, although with a new ray of its light it illumines the whole Church when it placed the blessed Gregory as supreme pastor and pontiff of his Church, more particularly visited the English people when it deigned to summon them from the darkness and shadow of death to the knowledge of its light of faith. For Gregory, ordained supreme pontiff on the fourth day before the Nones of September in the year of the Lord [590], the word of God which he himself had intended to preach in person to the English people, being divinely admonished, he saw to it through his alumnus, the servant of God Augustine. Therefore Gregory, in the fifth year of his ordination, that is, in the year of the Lord [596], sent the blessed Augustine and with him many other monks and ministers of the word of God, to the number of about forty, to preach the Catholic faith to the English people. How these ministers of God conducted themselves on the journey towards England, and how, coming to England, they landed at Thanet, and how they were received by King Æthelberht, and how they arrived at Canterbury, I omit to discuss, since all these matters are treated in the text of the Life of Augustine. Therefore Augustine, with his companions, having obtained a place in the city of Canterbury, began to live the apostolic life.

Meanwhile, King Æthelberht, delighted by the most pure life of the servants of God and strengthened in the Catholic faith by their most sweet promises, which he had seen to be true through the display of miracles, was baptized together with his companions on the day of Pentecost in the year of the Lord 597. With the king thus baptized and confirmed in the faith, Augustine proceeded to the city of Arles in Gaul and was ordained bishop by Etherius, bishop of that city, on the sixteenth day before the Kalends of December. Having been ordained, Augustine returned to England and was received with glory and all due solemnity by the king and the people. Having obtained the episcopal see in the city of Canterbury, he immediately sent Laurence the priest and Peter the monk to Rome, to report to the blessed pontiff Gregory that the king and his kingdom had accepted the faith of Christ and that he himself had been ordained bishop for the English people, at the same time urgently seeking his advice on questions that seemed necessary. If anyone wishes to know these matters more fully, let him read Bede’s *Ecclesiastical History of the English People*, and there he will find what he seeks.

Meanwhile, after Augustine had obtained the episcopal see in the city of Canterbury, as we have said above, he recovered in that city a church, supported by royal aid, which he had learned had been built there in ancient times by the work of faithful Romans, and he consecrated it in the name of the holy Saviour, our Lord God Jesus Christ; and there he established a dwelling for himself and for all his successors, which to this day is called Christ Church Canterbury, the nurse and metropolis of all England. Now, not far from that city, to the east, situated about midway between the church of Saint Martin and the city walls, there was a temple or idol, in which the same King Æthelberht was accustomed to pray according to the rite of his people, and together with his people to sacrifice to demons rather than to God. As soon as Augustine, ordained bishop by Etherius of Arles, as is recorded below, had returned to England, he cleansed that temple from the pollutions and filth of the pagans, and, having broken the idol that was in it, he changed the synagogue into a church and dedicated it in the name of the holy martyr Pancras; and this is the first church dedicated by Augustine. The altar still stands in the south porticus of that same church, at which Augustine used to celebrate, where the king's idol had previously stood.

After these events, Augustine obtained from the king the aforesaid church of Saint Pancras, together with the adjacent land; on whose site the aforesaid Athelbert, at the urging of the blessed Father Augustine, built a church from the foundations in honor of the holy apostles Peter and Paul, and, establishing monks to serve in that same church in perpetuity, endowed it with various gifts and possessions, and the aforesaid king chose burial for himself and the succeeding kings of the Cantuarians in that church. In this church also Augustine decreed that he and his successors, the Cantuarian pontiffs, should be buried. Edward, by the grace of God king of England, etc., to the archbishop, etc., greeting. We have inspected the charter of good memory Athelbert, formerly king of England, in these words: In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Every man who lives according to God, and hopes and desires to be rewarded by God, ought to give cheerful and heartfelt consent to pious petitions, since it is certain that he can the more easily obtain what he himself has asked of God, the more willingly he himself has granted something to God. Therefore I, Athelbert, king of Kent, with the consent of the venerable Archbishop Augustine and of my princes, give and grant to God in honor of Saint Peter a certain part of the land of my right, which lies to the east of the city of Dorobernia, on the condition that a monastery be built, and that the things which I have mentioned above be in the power of the abbot who shall have been ordained there.

Therefore, I adjure and command in the name of the Lord God Almighty, who is the just judge of all things, that the aforesaid land be confirmed in perpetuity by the undersigned donation, so that neither I nor any of my successors, whether kings or princes, or persons of any condition, rank, or ecclesiastical degree, may be permitted to defraud it of anything. If anyone, however, should diminish or attempt to invalidate this donation of ours, let him be separated in the present from the holy communion of the Body and Blood of Christ, and on the day of judgment, by reason of the merit of his malice, be segregated from the company of all the saints. This land is bounded by these limits: on the east, the church of Saint Martin; on the south, the road from Burgate; on the west and north, Drutingestrete. Enacted in the city of Dorobernia, in the year of the Incarnation of Christ 605, indiction 6. † I, Athelbert, king of Kent, with sound mind and whole counsel, have strengthened and confirmed my donation with the sign of the holy cross by my own hand. I, Augustine, by the grace of God archbishop, a willing consenting witness, have subscribed. Edbaldus, Hanngisilus, Angemundus, Referendarius, Hocta, Gracys, Tougyl, Penca, Geddi.