Bell's Cathedrals: The Church of St. Martin, Canterbury: An Illustrated Account of its History and FabricRoutledge, C. F. (Charles Francis)
History
Bell's Cathedrals: The Church of St. Martin, Canterbury: An Illustrated Account of its History and Fabric
Routledge, C. F. (Charles Francis)
St. Martin's Church (Canterbury, England)
Now there is one suggestion that deserves a passing notice, and that
is, the possibility of St. Martin himself having been the founder of
the church; even in a closer sense than by merely sending masons from
his monastery, as he did to St. Ninian. In the constant interchange of
communication between Britain and Gaul, not only for commercial but for
military purposes, it may have happened that Christians had migrated,
or been transferred, from Tours to Kent--and for the benefit of Christian
soldiers, St. Martin, once a soldier himself, may have urged the erection
of a church. It is unnatural to suppose that St. Martin, who travelled
over a great part of Gaul, did not in some way associate himself with
Britons, with whom he would have been brought into contact. We know this,
at any rate, that during the latter year of his episcopate he exercised
great influence over the Emperor Maximus and his Empress--and Maximus
had resided for several years in Britain, was proclaimed emperor there
in 383, had thence invaded Gaul with a fleet and army, which were
long afterwards remembered as the "emigration of a considerable part
of the British nation," and finally settled at Trêves, where he was
more than once visited by St. Martin. Some of these British emigrants
or soldiers would very naturally have returned to their native country
and brought Christianity with them. There is no conclusive reason why
St. Martin himself, either prompted thereto by Maximus, or yielding to
the entreaties of Britons whom he met at Trêves or elsewhere in Gaul,
should not have visited Canterbury in person, and there founded the
church. It is remarked by Haddan and Stubbs that "it was a peculiarity
of British Christians that churches were not dedicated to any saint
already dead, after the fashion then beginning to be common, but were
called by the name of their living founder." Or the original dedication
made by St. Martin (acting either directly or indirectly) may have
fallen into popular disuse, and been supplanted by his own name, as
was the case with the church of St. Gregory on the Coelian Hill, which
St. Gregory had dedicated to St. Andrew, but which soon after came to
be called after himself, though he was not buried there. And attention
may be directed to instances of a similar kind at Rome, where the names
of founders lingered on in churches like the Basilica Constantiniana,
Basilica Liberiana, and St. Lorenzo in Damaso. We may also note the fact,
that a chapel in Canterbury Cathedral, originally dedicated to St. Peter
and St. Paul, soon acquired the name of its founder, St. Anselm, and even
the great Cathedral itself, the "Church of Christ," was popularly known
in the Middle Ages as the Church of St. Thomas. These latter instances
are not indeed exactly parallel, because the relics of the name-saints
were actually buried in these places, but they may be quoted as showing
how readily the original dedication may have been subsequently changed;
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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