Canterbury

Canterbury Cathedral, Mother Church of the Anglican Communion and seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Cathedral is both a holy place and part of a World Heritage Site. It is the home of a community of people who seek to make the Cathedral a place of welcome, beauty and holiness. The Cathedral's history goes back to 597AD when St Augustine, sent by Pope Gregory the Great as a missionary, established his seat (or 'Cathedra') in Canterbury. In 1170 Archbishop Thomas Becket was murdered in the Cathedral and ever since, the Cathedral has attracted thousands of pilgrims, as told famously in Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Canterbury Cathedral is one of the oldest Christian churches in England and it continues to play a central role in English Christianity. Originally founded in 602 AD by St. Augustine, it still functions as the cathedral of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

Canterbury was an important spiritual center ever since Augustine, but it became a major pilgrimage destination after the martyrdom of St. Thomas Becket in 1170 (familiar to most as the subject of Geoffrey Chaucer's humorous Canterbury Tales).

The grandeur of the architecture reflects Canterbury's historic and religious importance, as does the magnificent collection of medieval stained glass windows depicting miracles experienced at Thomas' shrine, biblical scenes, prophets and saints.
The history of Canterbury Cathedral begins with St. Augustine, a Roman missionary sent to England by Pope Gregory to convert the heathen Anglo-Saxons. The mission was a success: in 597 AD, Augustine baptized King Ethelbert of Kent.

In 602 AD, Augustine dedicated a cathedral church on this site to Christ the Savior. It was in fact probably an existing church building from Roman times, rehallowed by the missionary saint.

A monastery was also established in connection with the cathedral. Around 750 AD, Archbishop Cuthbert added a baptistery-mausoleum to the north of the church, but none of this survives.

In 1011, Canterbury was among the many English towns devastated by marauding Danes, who traveled up the rivers killing and pillaging from their longships. The city was destroyed, the cathedral was set on fire, and Archbishop Alphege was taken hostage in hopes of ransom.

Alphege reportedly refused to allow anyone to pay for him, and was pelted to death with oxbones at the Danish camp in Greenwich. The archbishop became a martyr and a saint and his life story is told in a medieval stained glass window in the cathedral.

Another disastrous fire broke out in 1067, the year after the Norman Conquest, destroying what was left of the Saxon cathedral. When the Norman Lanfranc was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury in 1070, the ceremony had to be held in a temporary shelter.

But Archbishop Lanfranc was a motivated and highly capable leader. He immediately set about reorganizing the monastery, asserting the primary of Canterbury over York, and rebuilding the cathedral.

Before coming to Canterbury Lanfranc had been the abbot of St-Etienne in Caen, Normandy, where he had supervised the reconstruction of the abbey church. The strong influence of the earlier building can still be traced in Canterbury Cathedral. Lanfranc's new Norman cathedral was dedicated in October 1077.

In 1093, a man named Anselm became Archbishop of Canterbury. Anselm was a quiet scholarly type, known for his wisdom and piety. But it is to him, along with the priors Ernulf and Conrad, that we owe much of the Romanesque architecture and art that survives today.

Most notably, Anselm built the huge and beautifully decorated crypt beneath the east end, which still survives fully intact. An extensive choir with ambulatory, consecrated in 1130, was then built over the crypt.

Critical to the history of Canterbury Cathedral was the murder of St. Thomas Becket on Tuesday, December 29, 1170, by order of King Henry II. The king later performed penance there in 1174. On September 5 of that same year, the great Romanesque choir was devastated by a fire.

The income from pilgrims visiting the Shrine of St. Thomas, which was reported almost immediately to be a place of miraculous healing, largely paid for the subsequent rebuilding of the cathedral.

The highly talented William of Sens began the rebuilding work on the choir in 1175, but tragically fell from faulty scaffolding in 1178 and died shortly after. William of Sens is credited with pioneering the Early English Gothic style in his choir at Canterbury Cathedral.

His successor was William the Englishman, who contributed the Trinity Chapel and Corona at the east end. These were designed specifically to house the relics of St. Thomas Becket, which were originally interred in the crypt. The work was completed in 1184.

Meanwhile, numerous artists, who had probably worked in France, were hard at work on the stained glass windows. The first stained glass panel to be completed was "Adam Delving" in 1174 or 1175, the first of more than 80 ancestors of Christ placed in the clerestory windows.

This creative activity was rudely interrupted in 1207, when Canterbury's archbishop and monks were exiled by King John. Work resumed immediately upon their return in 1213, and St. Thomas was moved to his new home in the Trinity Chapel in 1220.

Prior Thomas Chillenden (1390-1410) rebuilt the Nave in the Perpendicular style of English Gothic. In 1430 the short central tower was demolished and rebuilt at a height of 297 feet.

The medieval greatness of Canterbury Cathedral and its monastery came to an end in 1538. King Henry VIII, who had recently declared himself head of the Church of England, ordered the Shrine of St. Thomas destroyed and despoiled.

Many cartloads of treasure, representing gifts from centuries of grateful pilgrims, were carried off and appropriated by the king. One such treasure was the Regale of France, a great ruby donated by Louis VII, which Henry had made into a thumb ring. Today a candle burns at the site of the former shrine.

It ceased to be an abbey during the Dissolution of the Monasteries under King Henry VIII when all religious houses were suppressed. Canterbury surrendered in March 1539 and reverted to its previous status of "a college of secular canons."

During World War II, the cathedral's beautiful stained glass windows were removed for safekeeping from Hitler's air raids. It was a wise decision - the replacement windows were blown in. A large area of the town of Canterbury was destroyed, as was the cathedral library, but the main body of the cathedral remained intact.