Page:The Saxon Cathedral at Canterbury and The Saxon Saints Buried Therein.djvu/137



OST authorities are agreed it is unlikely that any remaining portions of the Saxon Cathedral at Canterbury are now to be seen above ground. The eleventh-century Canterbury monk and historian, Edmer, writing a Life of Archbishop Breogwine (Anglia Sacra, Vol. II, p. 187) 3 in recounting the story of the fire which consumed the Cathedral in 1067, says that

"the whole was consumed, and nearly all the monastic offices that appertained to if, as well as the church of the blessed John Baptist, where the remains of the Archbishops were buried."

Another early Canterbury historian, however, Osbern, in his Miracles of St. Dunstan, printed by Mabillon, Ada Sanctorum Ordinis S. Benedicti (Vol. VII, p. 695), qualifies the above by stating that

"two houses indispensably necessary to the existence of the brethren, remained unhurt the refectory namely, and the dormitory as well as so much of the cloisters as enabled them, (i.e. the monks) to pass from one house to the other."

As if to show the utter destruction of the Cathedral and its domestic buildings, Edmer, in several of his Lives of the Archbishops and other works, states that for three years the ruin was left undisturbed until the time of Lanfranc (1070), who, when he was appointed Archbishop and came to Canterbury,

"found that his church was reduced to almost nothing by fire and ruin; he was filled with consternation. But although, the magnitude of the damage had well nigh reduced him to despair, he took courage, and neglecting his own accommodation, he completed in all haste the houses essential to the monks (sic). He therefore pulled down to the ground all that he found of the burnt monastery, and having dug out their foundations from under the earth, he constructed in their stead others, which excelled them greatly both in beauty and magnitude. &hellip; As for the church, which the aforesaid fire, combined with its age, had rendered completely unserviceable, he set about to destroy it utterly and erect a more noble one. And in the space of seven years he raised the new church from the very foundations, and rendered it nearly perfect."

Edmer goes on to say that during the demolition, the altars, bodies of the Archbishops, saints and relics were all removed from the ruined Saxon Cathedral, to 99