Augustine of Canterbury
Augustine of Canterbury who was born in Italy in the sixth century but he died at Canterbury in England around 605. A was what they called a prior from the Roman monastery of St. Andrew. He was sent by Gregory the Great of Rome to preach an official gospel of the Roman Church with some 30 monks. He studied under Felix, bishop of Messana in Sicily and there was some danger in this mission because Gregory the Great was not recognized by every Christian as the head of the Church. a woolen vestment conferred by the Pope on an archbishop, consisting of a narrow circular band placed round the shoulders with a short lappet hanging from front and back.</Ref> Christianity and the gospel of Christ had already been preached in Britain and Northern Ireland. Irish Monasteries had been sending missionaries as far away as Iceland and the America two hundred years before. When Augustine arrived in England the after being ordained a Roman bishop somewhere in Gaul he began to preach his gospel at Thanet in Kent with the permission of King Æthelberht and has been accredited as the founder of the metropolitan see of Canterbury.
He was instructed by the Vatican to bring more missionaries and provided a pallium[1] for Augustine. He was to consecrate twelve suffragan bishops[2] for his own metropolitan area and was to set up one in the north with twelve more bishops.
This is a top-down structure that is not in accord with the teachings of Christ and what he commanded concerning exercising authority nor was it what the early Church was doing when it organized in the people in Tens as Christ commanded. Nor was Augustine calling on the people to look out among themselves for men they trust to be appointed over matters like Peter said.[3]
He established the episcopal sees[4] of London and Rochester, with Roman monks Mellitus and Justus as bishops. Canterbury, as his cathedral and it became the primatial see[5] of England.
Gregory gave him further instructions to set up a second metropolitan center at York with its own twelve suffragan bishops. Although some of this took place after Augustine died it was how the Roman Church organized itself in England.
- ↑ a woolen vestment conferred by the Pope on an archbishop, consisting of a narrow circular band placed around the shoulders with a short lappet hanging from front and back. (symbolising his metropolitan jurisdiction)
- ↑ A suffragan bishop is a bishop subordinate to a metropolitan bishop or diocesan bishop and, consequently, are not normally jurisdictional in their role. Suffragan bishops may be charged by a metropolitan to oversee a suffragan diocese. They may be assigned to an area which does not have a cathedral of its own.
- ↑ Acts 6:3 Wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business.
- ↑ An episcopal see is, in the usual meaning of the phrase, the area of a bishop's ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Phrases concerning actions occurring within or outside an episcopal see are indicative of the geographical significance of the term, making it synonymous with diocese.
- ↑ In the Western Church, a Primate is an Archbishop—or, rarely, a suffragan or exempt bishop—of a specific (mostly Metropolitan) episcopal see (called a primatial see) who has precedence over the bishoprics of one or more ecclesiastical provinces of a particular historical, political or cultural area.