Some of his editors are at a loss to deduce the idea or
ascertain the jurisprudence of the Roman poet.
AUGUSTINE'S MISSIONARY WORK IN ENGLAND
A.D. 597
THE VENERABLE BEDE[43] JOHN RICHARD GREEN
St. Augustine was the first archbishop of Canterbury. He was
educated in Rome under Pope Gregory I, by whom he was sent to
Britain with forty monks of the Benedictine order, for the purpose
of converting the English to Christianity. Bertha, wife of
Ethelbert, king of Kent, was a Christian. She was a daughter of
Charibert, king of Paris, and had brought her chaplain with her,
who held services in the ruined church of St. Martin, near
Canterbury.
There seemed little prospect, however, of the faith spreading among
the wild islanders until Augustine arrived on the Isle of Thanet
A.D. 596. The occasion of his being sent on this missionary errand
is said to have been connected with an incident which has often
been related, wherein it appears that Gregory, while yet a monk,
struck with the beauty of some heathen Anglo-Saxon youths exposed
for sale in the slave market at Rome, inquired concerning their
nationality.
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