Augustine having had his episcopal see granted him in the royal city, as has been said, recovered therein, with the support of the king, a church, which he was informed had been built of old by the faithful among the Romans, and consecrated it in the name of the Holy Saviour, our Divine Lord Jesus Christ, and there established a residence for himself and all his successors.1 He also built a monastery not far from the city to the eastward, in which, by his advice, Ethelbert erected from the foundation the church of the blessed Apostles, Peter and Paul,2 and enriched it with divers gifts; wherein the bodies of the same Augustine, and of all the bishops of Canterbury, and of the kings of Kent, might be buried. Nevertheless, it was not Augustine himself who consecrated that church, but Laurentius, his successor.
The first abbot of that monastery was the priest Peter,3 who, being sent on a mission into Gaul, was drowned in a bay of the sea, which is called Amfleat,4 and committed to a humble tomb by the inhabitants of the place; but since it was the will of Almighty God to reveal his merits, a light from Heaven was seen over his grave every night; till the neighbouring people who saw it, perceiving that he had been a holy man that was buried there, and inquiring who and whence he was, carried away the body, and interred it in the church, in the city of Boulogne, with the honour due to so great a person.
← I.32 How Pope Gregory sent letters and gifts to King Ethelbert. [601 a.d.] · Contents · [[BEH I.34|I.34 How Ethelfrid, king of the Northumbrians, having vanquished the nations of the Scots, expelled them from the territories of the English. [603 a.d.] →]]
Footnotes
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The Cathedral: Christchurch, Canterbury; but the original structure was destroyed by fire about 1067. It was rebuilt by Lanfranc, and enlarged under his successor, St. Anselm. Prior Conrad finished and decorated the chancel, and the Church was dedicated in 1130. The choir was again burnt down in 1174, but at once rebuilt. It was completed in 1184. A new nave and transept were built between 1378 and 1410, and the great central tower was carried up to its present height by the end of the fifteenth century. ↩
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Afterwards called St. Augustine’s Abbey. ↩
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Cf. c. 27 ad init. ↩
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Ambleteuse, a small sea-port, about six miles to the north of Boulogne. ↩