Canterbury Cathedral

Foundation by Augustine

The cathedral’s first archbishop was Augustine of Canterbury, previously abbot of St. Andrew’s Benedictine Abbey in Rome. He was sent by Pope Gregory the Great in 597 as a missionary to the Anglo-Saxons. Augustine founded the cathedral in 602 and dedicated it to St. Saviour. Archaeological investigations under the nave floor in 1993 revealed the foundations of the original Saxon cathedral, which had been built across a former Roman road.

Augustine also founded the Abbey of St. Peter and Paul outside the city walls. This was later rededicated to St. Augustine himself and was for many centuries the burial place of the successive archbishops. The abbey is part of the World Heritage Site of Canterbury, along with the ancient Church of St. Martin.

Later Saxon and Viking periods

A second building, a baptistry or mausoleum, was built on exactly the same axis as the cathedral by Archbishop Cuthbert (740-758) and dedicated to St. John the Baptist.

Two centuries later, Oda (941-958) renewed the building, greatly lengthening the nave.

During the reforms of Archbishop St. Dunstan (c909-988), a Benedictine abbey named Christ Church Priory was added to the cathedral. But the formal establishment as a monastery seems to date to c.997 and the community only became fully monastic from Lanfranc’s time onwards (with monastic constitutions addressed by him to prior Henry). St. Dunstan was buried on the south side of the High Altar.

The Saxon cathedral was badly damaged during Danish raids on Canterbury in 1011. The Archbishop, St. Alphege, was held hostage by the raiders and eventually martyred at Greenwich on April 19, 1012, the first of Canterbury’s five martyred archbishops. Lyfing (1013–1020) and Aethelnoth (1020–1038) added a western apse as an oratory of St. Mary.

Priors of Christ Church Priory included John of Sittingbourne (elected 1222, previously a monk of the priory) and William Chillenden, (elected 1264, previously monk and treasurer of the priory). The monastery was granted the right to elect their own prior if the seat was vacant by the pope, and — from Gregory IX onwards — the right to a free election (though with the archbishop overseeing their choice). Monks of the priory have included Æthelric I, Æthelric II, Walter d’Eynsham, Reginald fitz Jocelin (admitted as a confrater shortly before his death), Nigel de Longchamps and Ernulf. The monks often put forward candidates for Archbishop of Canterbury, either from among their number or outside, since the archbishop was nominally their abbot, but this could lead to clashes with the king and/or pope should they put forward a different man — examples are the elections of Baldwin of Forde and Thomas Cobham.