After these things Augustine, bishop [of Britain], hallowed two bishops:
the one was named Mellitus, the other Justus. Mellitus he sent to preach
divine lore to the East Saxons, who are shed off from Kentland by the
river Thames, and joined to the east sea. Their chief city is called
Lundencaster (_now London_), standing on the bank of the foresaid
river; and it is the market-place of land and sea comers. The King in
the nation at that time was Seabright (_or Sabert_), Ethelbert's
sister-son, and his vassal. Then he and the nation of the East Saxons
received the word of truth and the faith of Christ through Mellitus, the
bishop's lore. Then King Ethelbert ordered to build a church in London,
and to hallow it to St. Paul the apostle, that he and his
after-followers might have their bishop-seat in that place. Justus he
hallowed as bishop in Kent itself at Rochester, which is four-and-twenty
miles right west from Canterbury, in which city likewise King Ethelbert
ordered to build a church, and to hallow it to St. Andrew the apostle;
and to each of these bishops the King gave his gifts and bookland and
possessions for them to brook with their fellows.
After these things, then, Father Augustine, beloved of God, departed
[this life], and his body was buried without [doors], nigh the church of
the blessed apostles Peter and Paul, which we mentioned before, because
it was not then yet fully built nor hallowed. As soon as it was
hallowed, then his body was put into it, and becomingly buried in the
north porch of the church, in which likewise the bodies of all the
after-following archbishops are buried but two; that is, Theodorus and
Berhtwald, whose bodies are laid in the church itself, because no more
might [be so] in the foresaid porch. Well-nigh in the middle of the
church is an altar set and hallowed in name of St. Gregory, on which
every Saturday their memory and decease are celebrated with mass-song by
the mass-priest of that place. On St. Augustine's tomb is written an
inscription of this sort: Here resteth Sir[47] Augustine, the first
archbishop of Canterbury, who was formerly sent hither by the blessed
Gregory, bishop of the Roman city; and was upheld by God with working of
wonders. King Ethelbert and his people he led from the worship of idols
to the faith of Christ, and, having fulfilled the days of his ministry
in peace, departed on the 26th day of May in the same King's reign.
JOHN RICHARD GREEN
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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