Charles Cotton

“ Many beautiful and interesting objects of art, including painted glass and panelling, from the Cathedral in post-Reformation days found their way to the churches of Nackington, Adisham, Eythorne and elsewhere, to say nothing of the wonderful tapestry which was alienated from Canterbury and finally went to Aix-en-Provence. As Odo was one of the Saxon builders or cathedral restorers it will be of interest to ascertain what the historians of the Archbishops of Canterbury have to say about this remarkable man concerning his birth, parentage, education and life. ”

“ He was a turbulent Norman and more fitted to be a soldier than a priest; in the hurry of his escape from England, and from the anger of Earl Godwine, he left his pallium behind him. He appealed to the Pope, whose assistance failed in reinstating him as Archbishop of Canterbury, and returning to Jumièges, he died and was buried near the High Altar of the Abbey Church. ”

“ Alphage was born of noble and virtuous parents who gave him a good education. As a youth he renounced the world, the flesh and the Devil, going rather against the wish of his mother to the monastery of Deerhurst in Gloucestershire, where he began "to live to God," though in his desire for greater perfection he felt that his foot was not even yet on the lowermost rung of the ladder. Here he became servus servorum Dei, but feeling that life in a community was not strict enough he built himself a hut at Bath, and lived there the life of either an anchorite or a hermit. ”

“ It seems unthinkable that such a man could have made such shipwreck of his conscience and jeopardized his soul by the act attributed to him. In the light of the Danish love of tribute, it seems much more likely that he purchased his and his abbey's safety by the payment of "blackmail."
To return to the story of the siege, after the city was taken, the pagans set the Cathedral on fire, Edmer says:
these children of Satan piled barrels one upon another and set them on fire, designing thus to burn the roof; already the heat of the flames began to melt the lead which ran down inside." ”

“ Lambert was staying in Canterbury, residing with the fraternity of Christ Church. He constantly frequented the places where relics of the Archbishops were kept, to pray there, and to celebrate Mass before them: and was wont to ask all manner of questions as to whom this or that one had been and what might be the name of the one whose remains rested in this or that coffin; at length he conceived a vehement desire to obtain the body of St. Breogwine, and take it to his own country, intending, as he said, to found a monastery under the Saint's patronage. ”

“ Here, in what was becoming the heart of the Saxon City, was the Cathedral, but its treasure was at St. Austin's. Cuthbert determined that the law prohibiting intramural burials should cease, and to that end he procured from Eadbert, King of Kent, authority that in future the bodies of the Archbishops deceased should not be buried at St. Austin's as heretofore, but at Christ Church Cathedral; to the intent that they might have their resting-place where they had, living, ruled in honour. ”

“ After the payment of the above-mentioned tribute a convention was made—all the Danes who were in the kingdom were to live peaceably with the English everywhere and both nations should have, as it were, "one heart and one soul." This was confirmed by hostages and oaths given and taken on both sides, after which the Danish King, Sweyn, returned to his own country and persecution ceased in England for a while.
It is recorded by Gervase that the Cathedral has suffered thrice by fire; first when the blessed martyr Alphage was captured by the Danes, and received the crown of martyrdom ”

“ Now on the day of the coming of Dunstan, the successor of Odo, to Canterbury, he was celebrating Mass at the Altar of the Saviour, when suddenly the House was covered with a cloud, and that Dove which erst was seen of John in Jordan, again appeared and hovered over him, and when the sacrifice was completed, it settled on the tomb of the Blessed Odo which was constructed in the fashion of a pyramid to the south of the Altar. ”

“ Like his King, Edgar the Peaceful, Dunstan encouraged the people to learn the arts of peace, and again by training the clergy in all kinds of craftsmanship, they became the instructors of the people. He ordered that sermons should be preached every Sunday and that the clergy should strive to live a more spiritual life, and to keep from hawking, dicing, and drink, as well as from immorality, so that they might be able to rebuke the laity without incurring the charge of hypocrisy. ”

“ Austin's could possibly foresee that in time to come their Abbot might be suspected to be the traitor from the account given in the Saxon Chronicle, and to divert such infamous treachery from an Abbot of the famous monastery of the Benedictine Order, the monks conspired to invest the traitor with the title of Archdeacon, and to set him in Canterbury, where the scene of his villainy was enacted; such as directing the besiegers to attack the walls in certain weak places, or to cast in fire where it would do most mischief. ”

“ Elfric, the Archbishop of York; Elfric, who was Abbot of Malmesbury; and Elfric Bata (or The Bat) , a monk of Winchester and disciple of Elfric the Grammarian.
Elfric, the Archbishop of Canterbury, had been a monk of Abingdon, where the celebrated Ethelwold was his teacher. Ethelwold's chief delight was to teach young men and boys, and give them rules for grammar: by his pleasant and delightful conversation he drew them to better and higher things, for he was a popular master, and is reported to have invented "cribs" for his pupils by turning Latin books into English. ”

“ In Rome, in the thirteenth century, Innocent III had these steps removed, for he was afraid as the body of St. Peter was buried in the confessio lest some German Emperor or Antipope should be tempted to steal so valuable a relic (Willis) , and so he had this opening in the confessio walled up. On the other hand Canterbury had a passageway as described by Edmer (for the use of worshippers) , and we know that a crypt chapel occupying the whole of the area of the apse would be extremely unlikely in the seventh century. ”

“ The name of Canons as applied to Cathedral Clerks has not yet occurred in documents of English origin; and yet the custom of monachism has apparently become extinct in this, their original seat, for although the Canterbury tradition (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Anno 870) placed their extinction under the pontificate of Ceolnoth (833) , they are evidently obsolete under Wulfred (813) . We are unable to say whether the Cathedral Monastery at Canterbury originally contained both monks and secular priests, the latter of whom may have gradually edged out the former ”

“ In the year 743 Archbishop Cuthbert grieved over the destitute condition of the Church over which he ruled, for it had no great men interred within its walls, inasmuch as when an Archbishop died the body was carried to the Monastery for burial according to the decrees of the Popes. ”

“ Here it was that some time early in the fourth century a body of Christians, Romans or British or both, determined to build a place in which to worship according to their newly emancipated Faith. The site chosen for such a building in this not very important military station was where it might be expected to be placed, without the walls of the Roman City, but close to one of its gates, that of the north or Staple Gate as it was called from the presence of a market for buying and selling just outside. ”

“ Alphage that the Danish invasions culminated in the attack on the City of Canterbury, the massacre of the inhabitants, and the captivity and martyrdom of the Archbishop, it is necessary to enter into this period of our history in rather more detail.
From the year 787 when the first ships of the Danes sought the land of the English, the Saxon Cathedral was in constant and imminent danger of destruction. The eighth, ninth and tenth centuries were, to the English monasteries, times of ruin and desolation. ”

“ THERE are three writers to whom we are indebted for most of what is known about the building and arrangement of the Metropolitical Church down to the twelfth century—these are, the Venerable Bede already quoted, who wrote the Ecclesiastical History of the English Church, and died on Ascension Day, May 26, 735, to whom we owe much, and not least for the statement as to the actual origin of the building. Secondly must be named Edmer the Singer, who was a boy at the Monastic School and afterwards a monk in the establishment, and Precentor of the Cathedral. ”

“ And the land in the West at Filtington and at Newton, he has bequeathed to his sisters and their children. And let Aelfheah Esne's son's land go ever in his kin. And he has bequeathed to Archbishop Wulfstan one neck-rood and one ring and one psalter; and to Bishop Aelfheah one rood. And he has forgiven under God's favour, to the Kentish people, the loan which they owe to him; and to the Middle Saxons and the Southerns the money he advanced to them. ”

“ Peter at Rome, in addition to a direct west to east passage leading to the confessio, there were also north and south entrances, from the transept or nave of the church leading to the polyandrium—the curved passage which followed the inner wall of the apse—and communicating with the confessio chapel at its eastern limit, where it turned west, direct to the burial-place of the saint buried therein. Sir William St. John Hope thought that at Canterbury this method of entrance and exit extended simply from the transept close to the east wall of the church. ”

“ In 984 Ethelwold, Bishop of Winchester, died, and Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury (admonished by St. Andrew in a vision, as he believed) , called upon the Abbot to leave his monastery at Bath, take on the office of Bishop and administer the See of Winchester. Ethelwold, the late Bishop, had evacuated the secular clerks who had been serving that Cathedral, and had installed Regulars. Both classes of clergy were, therefore, interested in the appointment of his successor. The choice of the Archbishop was wise—Alphage was a holy and devoted Bishop, as the history of his life shows. ”

“ The roundel on the left at the bottom represents the saint at Glastonbury when he had gone to the church to return thanks for his recovery from the serious illness which determined him to become a monk. He was hindered by the Devil who had locked the church door and lost the key. However, the saint ascended the roof by a ladder and got in that way with the help of an angel who placed him before the altar, where he was discovered next morning. On the outside is the Devil kept off by the angel. ”

“ Up to this time the Kings of Kent, the Archbishops, the religious (Gervase says monks, but they were clerks at the Cathedral) , as well as the monks of the Abbey and people of the city, had been buried in the atrium or churchyard of the Church of the Apostles Peter and Paul, beyond the walls; for the Romans declared on first coming into England that cities were for the living and not for the dead. [2] To this end, as Edmer states, he
"Built a church on the east part of the greater church, almost touching the same, and solemnly hallowed it in honour of the blessed John Baptist. ”

“ At this time there arose a dispute between the regulars and seculars, and those in high positions took sides. In Mercia, the monks were turned out of the churches, and the married clergy were reinstated in their old positions; but in East Anglia the monks were supreme. In the height of this contest, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York attended a Witenagemote at Winchester, elected Edward, son of Edgar, as King and crowned him. At this meeting the question of regulars and seculars again came up, and on the demand that the monks should be expelled and seculars retained, a miracle occurred. ”

“ Saviour's, or Christ Church, at the Cathedral would continue as a community of Clerks under the Archbishop as their Abbot, with whom they lived a common life, as it would have been an entire innovation at that time for monks to have formed the familia of a Cathedral Church. [8]
Saxon Invasions
It will be remembered that for about 150 years before St. Austin arrived in Britain, successive bodies of Saxons, Angles and Jutes had made descents into the country. Up to the first of these invasions, Christianity had been established in the Roman Province and elsewhere in the land ”

“ Austin had been consecrated Bishop, that things should be altered to meet the new conditions of a clergy with pastoral duties to perform, and that "all, whether under monastic vow or not, were to live the life of monks as far as was practicable, together with the Bishop himself." That this was probably the case is evidenced by the charter of Archbishop Wulfred (807-832) to the familia of Christ Church, rather more than 200 years afterwards; this is a grant dated 813, permitting the familia to enjoy certain houses which they themselves had built upon the re-edifying of the Monastery. ”