Page:The Saxon Cathedral at Canterbury and The Saxon Saints Buried Therein.djvu/129

ST. ALPHAGE the body with his own hands, and Archbishop Ethelnoth, Bishop Britwine, and all God's servants that were with them (Saxon Chronicle), on the 6th day before the Ides of June (June 7), together with the diocesan bishops, earls and many others, clergy and laity, carried by ship his holy body over the Thames to Southwark, where the Archbishop and his companions with worthy pomp and sprightly joy carried him to Rochester. Thence, Canute, Queen Emma and her son Hardicanute, and they all with much majesty and bliss and songs of praise, carried the Holy Archbishop into Canterbury and brought him gloriously into the church on the 3rd day before the Ides of June (the 9th); afterwards on the 17th day before the Kalends of July (June 14) the Archbishop, Bishops Elfsey and Britwine and all they that were with them lodged the holy corpse on the north side of the Altar of Christ.

It should be remembered that the body of Archbishop Odo rested on the south side of this altar; and that St. Dunstan had been buried in front of the passage-way leading to the confessio with an altar at his head.

These three Saxon Archbishops, and especially the circumstances of the death of the last, invested the Church of Canterbury with a solemnity and sanctity it had never before possessed. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle speaks of the mighty miracles done at the tomb of St. Alphage at St. Paul's. What might not now take place when the first Martyr of the Anglican Archiepiscopate lay buried in honour in his own Cathedral? The people had already reckoned Alphage as a Saint, but until convinced by Anselm in 1078 Archbishop Lanfranc would not look upon him as a Martyr.

In Canterbury, and throughout the Catholic Church, his day is kept on April 19. In the Kalendar in Register K, it is noted as a Red Letter Day; in that in the Archdeacon's Black Book, it is noted as a Black Letter Day. It is mentioned in the Canterbury Benedictional, and the Canterbury Martyrology. There are no less than five forms of benediction for him in the Canterbury Benedictional; two for April 19, and three for his translation, on June 8; and the day, of course, occurs in Hollingbourne's Psalter. It was St. Alphage who brought with 91