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The gospel first came to England some time
before the end of the second Century, however it was
restricted largely to the South-west. |
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During
the next 4 centuries the Angles, Saxons and Picts,
worshippers of pagan deities, took over the Eastern
seaboard of England. |
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In 597
Pope Gregory sent Augustine and some 40 other clergy to
England with two tasks: to bring the gospel to the pagan
tribes and to gather the existing English churches
together into a unified Church. |
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On their
arrival they were welcomed by Ethelbert, the King of
Kent, whose wife was a Christian, and he gave Augustine
permission to settle and preach in Canterbury, the main
city of Kent. Augustine was then consecrated as bishop of
Canterbury. |
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Augustine
invited the English Bishops to meet with him to convince
them to join together, and in particular to conform their
churches to the practices and traditions of Rome which
were slightly different to those followed in England at
the time. |
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The
English Bishops, however, decided that Augustine's
approach was too autocratic, as he refused to rise to
greet them when they entered the assembly, and so they
refused his request. |
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Although
he failed in this part of his mission, Augustine was
successful in taking the gospel to many parts of England
that had not previously accepted it. |
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The
joining of the English churches thus had to wait for
another hundred years, until the coming of Theodore. |
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In 664 a
new Bishop of Canterbury was needed. The priest sent by
the English Church to be consecrated by the Pope died of
the Plague. The Pope then chose Hadrian, the Abbot of a
Monastery near Naples but he excused himself as not being
up to the job. He recommended a monk named Theodore from
Tarsus of Cilicia. |
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Theodore
was 66 when he left Rome for Canterbury. |
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On his
arrival in Canterbury in 668, accompanied by Hadrian, he
proceeded to visit every part of the island occupied by
the English people and was welcomed everywhere. He
consecrated new bishops to fill vacant sees, and created
new dioceses where necessary. |
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In 673
Theodore summoned the English Bishops and theologians to
Hertford, to the first ever synod of a unified English church. There they
agreed to work together as a unified church, meeting
yearly in convocation at Cloveshoch (probably near
London). |
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This
meeting of bishops and their clergy marks an epoch in the
Church of England. For the first time Angles and Saxons
met for common consultation, not as fellow countrymen,
but as fellow Churchmen. |
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150 years
before the English came together as a nation, thanks to
Theodore of Tarsus, there was one united Church of
England, obeying one set of canons, acknowledging the
authority of one archbishop, using the same prayers and
ceremonies from the Firth of Forth to the English
Channel. There were still 7 kingdoms but only one Church.
|
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Sources: The
Layman's History of the Church of England,
G.R. Balleine, Church Bookroom Press, 1961.
A History of the English Church and People,
Bede, Penguin Books, 1955 |
