# The Saxon Cathedral at Canterbury and The Saxon Saints Buried Therein/Chapter 3

CHAPTER III
THE CHURCH OF CUTHBERT
A.D. 741-942
THE building above described appears to have undergone little or no change during the next 150 years. It was used as the Church of the Archbishop, but the ecclesiastical centre of gravity was to be found in the neighbouring Abbey of St. Austin and in its Church of Saints Peter and Paul. This was on account of the school set up there by Archbishop Theodore, and also, probably to a greater extent, by reason of the policy adopted on its foundation by King Ethelbert and St. Austin, that it should be the burial-place of the Kings of Kent and the Archbishops of Canterbury. All the Archbishops up to the time of Cuthbert (741-759) had been buried at St. Austin's, with the result that the Metropolitical Church possessed no tomb of a distinguished local saint to draw the attention or the devotion of the multitude; and its ambulatory and Crypt Chapel were destitute of any great attraction except for the relic, in the latter place, of the head of the Irish monk, Furseus.
It might have been thought that the particular function of a confessio was fulfilled by the possession of this relic, as its proper meaning is the vault or crypt under the High Altar which contained the relics of a saint or martyr; Cianipini and others use it to signify the grilled opening before the altar, through which, approached by a flight of steps down from the west, relics might be viewed.
The Archbishop who preceded Cuthbert was Nothelm, who was a student of history. He had been a priest of the diocese of London, and had not only been the means of transmitting to the Venerable Bede ​information respecting the reintroduction of Christianity into England and its settlement under St. Austin, having been taught by that most reverend Abbot of St, Austin's, Albinus, a man of great and encyclopædic learning, but had journeyed to Rome and had collected much in the way of letters, documents, etc., from the archives there, which he had copied and sent to Bede for his History. He had been quite content, when Archbishop, to allow things to continue as under his predecessors; but Cuthbert, his successor, was of a different calibre, a far-seeing and astute prelate, whose desire was to make his Church pre-eminent in the country. 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. 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. To this end, as Edmer states, he
(1) baptisms might be held therein, and
(2) inquiries of Courts of Justice appointed for divers causes which were wont to be held in the Church of God for the correction of evil-doers; also
(3) that the bodies of the Archbishops might be buried in it," etc.
William Thorne, the chronicler of St. Austin's Abbey, gives us a very human account of the way in which Archbishop Cuthbert changed the policy of his predecessors. Thorne was a monk of St. Austin's at the end of the fourteenth century. He was born at Thorne in the parish of Minster in the Isle of Thanet; the Abbey possessed the manor and ​the Court House there, which had formerly been the Nunnery, known as St. Mildred's, so called after the second Abbess, who had been buried in the Church there dedicated to SS. Peter and Paul, which Archbishop Cuthbert had consecrated. Thorne was possibly a relative of Abbot Nicholas Thorne (1278-1283), and he had acted as Attorney for the Abbot-Elect, William Welde, at the Papal Court in 1389.
Though Thorne wrote six and a half centuries after the event, his indignation is so great in relating the circumstances that one might think that the calamity occurred in his own day.
"Thus it came to pass in the year of Our Lord 758 the aforesaid Archbishop Cuthbert, being attacked with heart disease, and feeling that he was about to die, realized that the time had now arrived when the trick that he had planned might at length be played off against the Church of St. Austin; and that the serpent-like birth which had been so long in the womb, might now at last be produced, even though the birth pangs brought death in their train; he was lying by himself in his own Church as the end drew near, and summoning his whole household and the monks—who were nothing loth to obey—he bound them by a solemn oath not to divulge his illness or his death, nor to give any signal thereof by the ringing of bells, nor to perform any funeral services for him, until he should have been buried several days.
"All these commands were dutifully obeyed, for not till he had been three days in the grave were the bells rung for him or tidings of his death published. On receiving the news Aldhun, Abbot of St. Austin's (748-760), came with the monks intending to convey away the Archbishop's body according to the usual custom; but when he found that he was already buried, and that the ancient custom of burial ​had been altered by the King's authority he was greatly distressed, and returned to his own house feeling that he had been defrauded of his heart's desire.
It is true that Jaenbert returned to the original plan and directed that his old monastery should be his burial-place, to ensure which, Gervase says, he had himself conveyed there whilst alive; but he was the last Saxon Archbishop to be buried at St. Austin's, all his successors being buried in the Cathedral.
There are no further records of this building except notices of the burials of the Archbishops therein, till Edmer's account of the fire in 1067; in which calamity not only was the Cathedral entirely consumed but
There is no picture, plan, or even representation on a seal, of this building that I know of. Professor Willis shows the Church on his ​"Conjectural Plan" as an octagon standing to the east of the Cathedral, connected with it by a passage leading from the south aisle. Sir Wm. St. John Hope in his article on the plan and arrangement of the first Cathedral Church of Canterbury, gives a plan showing an octagon due east of the apse of the Cathedral and connected with it by an opening directly from one to the other. It must have been of considerable capacity, as ten Archbishops are known to have been buried therein; and possibly six others whose place of burial, except that it was in Christ Church, is unknown.
It is difficult to hazard an opinion as to what this Church of St. John was like, or even where it stood; except that, as Edmer says, it was built to "the east of the Great Church and nearly touching it." But here again, we must bear in mind that these words are a schoolboy's recollections and make allowances accordingly. Professor Willis emphasizes that communication with Rome was always maintained in those early centuries, and that the Saxons did indeed imitate Roman models very closely; and he points out in a Note that the baptistery of Constantine stands in a somewhat similar relative position to the Church of the Lateran, "but at a greater distance," from where he places the building at Canterbury on his conjectural plan; and also that the baptistery at St. Peter's was at the end of the North Transept. He also suggests that this baptistery was octagonal in shape.
Professor G. Baldwin Brown, in Arts of Early England, Vol. II, was of opinion that it was probably cruciform, as more in accordance with tradition, and as it had to serve for burials as well as baptisms and other purposes. But whatever its shape may have been, I think we have shown that Cuthbert's baptistery must have been later than the eastern apse and crypt and not, as the Professor suggests, of an earlier date.
Sir Wm. St. John Hope thought the baptistery was octagonal outside and circular within, but Edmer merely says that it was "to the east of the Great Church, and nearly touching it." What was its shape, size or style, who can tell in the absence of any record whatsoever? It is ​in vain that attempts to solve such a mystery are made, and we must be content to leave the matter where Edmer left it.
The following is a list of the names and dates of the Archbishops who are recorded to have been buried in the Church of St. John:
* ↑ Canon Livett's Report on the West Wall of the Crypt, Canterbury, 1925.
* ↑ Gervase, Act. Pont. Cant. (p. 1640).
* ↑ Thorne's Chron., 2184.
* ↑ Thorne's Chron., 1772.
* ↑ Willis, Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral, p. 27.
* ↑ Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, April 11th, 1918, Second Series, Vol. XXX, p. 152.