Page:The Saxon Cathedral at Canterbury and The Saxon Saints Buried Therein.djvu/125

ST. ALPHAGE authority later chroniclers had for styling Elfmar the Abbot an Archdeacon. It is suggested by Battely, the continuator of Somner, that the monks of St. Austin's could possibly foresee that in time to come their Abbot might be suspected to be the traitor from the account given in the Saxon Chronicle, and to divert such infamous treachery from an Abbot of the famous monastery of the Benedictine Order, the monks conspired to invest the traitor with the title of Archdeacon, and to set him in Canterbury, where the scene of his villainy was enacted; such as directing the besiegers to attack the walls in certain weak places, or to cast in fire where it would do most mischief.

It is a coincidence that Almar or Elfmar the Abbot and his monastery escaped untouched; Thorne ascribes it to a miracle which has to do with the history of that abbey. It is sufficient to record here that except for the reference to an Almar, in connection with the siege and destruction of Canterbury in the Chronicles mentioned, the name of Almar, or Elfmar, as Archdeacon of Canterbury is unknown.

With regard to Almar or Elfmar the Abbot, it is recorded that he was consecrated as Bishop of Sherborne in 1017 (the See was afterwards removed to Salisbury), and after ruling that See for many years he became blind, so resigning his bishopric he returned to St. Austin's Abbey, where he lived in the infirmary a life of purity and devotion, and dying in the odour of sanctity was buried in the chapel of St. John which was on the south side of the choir of the Abbey Church, over whose grave according to tradition "a heavenly light" was often seen to hover. It seems unthinkable that such a man could have made such shipwreck of his conscience and jeopardized his soul by the act attributed to him. In the light of the Danish love of tribute, it seems much more likely that he purchased his and his abbey's safety by the payment of "blackmail."

To return to the story of the siege, after the city was taken, the pagans set the Cathedral on fire, Edmer says:

these children of Satan piled barrels one upon another and set them on fire, designing thus to burn the roof; already the heat of the flames began to melt the lead which ran down inside." 87