Page:The Saxon Cathedral at Canterbury and The Saxon Saints Buried Therein.djvu/30

THE SAXON CATHEDRAL AT CANTERBURY Chronicle of Thomas Sprott (edited by T. Hearne) records that monks were introduced on the expulsion of these seculars about 1006. All this is very confusing, but the Very Rev. J. A. Robinson, Dean of Wells, has dealt very clearly with this subject in the April number for 1926 in the Journal of Theological Studies, where he suggests that the statement about the plague is probably pure fiction, as the existence of a plague at this date is otherwise unrecorded; and he goes far to prove from Gregory's letters to Austin, that the arrangements suggested for the carrying on of the Mission implied a secular staff at Christ Church. There has been so much controversy over the constitution of the Archbishop's familia from the time of St. Austin till the Conquest, that a re-statement of the matter seems to be called for. J. M. Kemble in The Saxons in England says: "Probably it (Christ Church) had never been monastic from the very time of Austin," and Stubbs in Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents thinks that "some kind of attenuated monasticism may possibly have survived, or that the word Monachus may have gone the way of Monasterium and have become applicable to a community of clergy living a more or less common life." The Dean of Wells shows how it was necessary after St. Austin had been consecrated Bishop, that things should be altered to meet the new conditions of a clergy with pastoral duties to perform, and that "all, whether under monastic vow or not, were to live the life of monks as far as was practicable, together with the Bishop himself." That this was probably the case is evidenced by the charter of Archbishop Wulfred (807-832) to the familia of Christ Church, rather more than 200 years afterwards; this is a grant dated 813, permitting the familia to enjoy certain houses which they themselves had built upon the re-edifying of the Monastery. Wulfred describes how in the seventh year of his Episcopacy, led by Divine and fraternal piety and the love of God, he had restored and renewed the Holy Monastery of the Church of Canterbury with the aid of the "Presbyters and Deacons and all the Clergy of the same Church serving God together," etc. These words seem quite adverse to the supposition that monks were at Christ Church at that time; and he goes on to say that though the familia are thereby permitted to enjoy the above, yet the having of them should not prevent their resort to the Church for prayers at the Canonical Hours, from the 6