"A charter of King Canute's styles Saviour's church, Canterbury, the
mother and mistress of all churches in the kingdom of
England."-_AEcclesia Salvatoris_, &c.
I conceive these accounts to be perfectly reconcilable. From Bede's
_Ecclesiastical History_ (b. i., caps. 25, 26.), we learn that, on the east
side of Canterbury, in the year 597, there was a church dedicated to the
honour of St. Martin, that was "built while the Romans were still in the
island," some two hundred years before this date. St. Martin's was the
church wherein Bertha, Queen of Kent, used to pray; she having been a
Christian of the Royal Family of the Franks.
It will, of course, be allowed that during the sixth, seventh, and eighth
centuries, different saints were held in especial honour in different
countries. For instance, not long after the arrival of the Roman
missionaries in England, various churches and monasteries,--at Canterbury,
Lindisfarne, Bamborough, Lichfield, Weremouth, and Jarrow, and the capital
city of the Picts,--were wholly or partially named after St. Peter. When
Naitan, King of the Picts, was about to build his church, he sought the
assistance of the Abbot of Weremouth, a strong supporter of Roman
observances, and "promised to dedicate the same in honour of St. Peter,"
and to follow the custom of the Roman church, in certain matters, which the
subjects of his kingdom had protested against, for more than a hundred
years.
Now, on the occasion of Queen Bertha's leaving France, she was accompanied
to England by a bishop of her native country, named Luidhard; and when it
is remembered that they settled in Kent, amongst heathens of great
superstition,--an example of which is recorded on the part of her own
husband,--it is natural to suppose they would, in some public manner, seek
the especial protection of the popular saint of France; and that saint was
Martin. For so profound was the popular veneration which the Franks at one
period offered to the power of Saint Martin, that they even computed
ordinary occurrences and national events, by an era which commenced with
the year of his death.[3]
It is therefore very probable that the public act of reverence just alluded
to, consisted in a new dedication of the repaired church, by adding to the
ancient name that of St. Martin.
That a practice of altering the names of sacred edifices in this manner was
common at the date under consideration, cannot be questioned. For example,
Bishop Aidan, about the year 652, built a church in the island of
Lindisfarne, the name of which is now unknown. This structure, however,
having been destroyed by a fire, his successor, Finan, erected another on
the same site, and apparently of the same name. But when a second fire
destroyed this church also, in some five and twenty or thirty years, "a
larger church" was erected on the old site, and gratefully "dedicated in
honour of St. Peter," by Theodore of Roman appointment, "the first
archbishop whom all the English church obeyed." (_Bede_, iii. 17. and 25.,
and iv. 2.) Here, then, a new name was given to a church on the site of a
former one of different appellation; and in Lichfield, we have two examples
of similar alterations in the names of churches; one St. Chad's Church,
Stow, and the other, the cathedral. On the site of the former, according to
Bede, Bishop Chad built a St. Mary's Church, hard by which he was buried;
"but afterwards, when the church of the most holy prince of the apostles,
Peter, was built, his bones were translated into it." (_Ecc. History_, iv.
3.) That is to say, when Chad was canonised, his remains were removed to
the site of the present cathedral, as relics over which the principal
church of the Mercian kingdom was to be erected.
Throughout the various documents relating to this church, which are
preserved in Dugdale's _Monasticon_, vol. iii. pp. 219-255, Savoy edition,
{91} the cathedral is generally styled the church of St. Mary and St. Chad.
And again, on a recently discovered seal of the dean and chapter, engraved
some two hundred years after Stephen's reign, the inscription is this:
"S' DECANI ET CAPL'I ECCLE'IE SCE MARIE ET SCI CEDDE LYCHFELD' AD
CAS."[4]
But in a grant from King Stephen to Bishop Roger de Clinton, who commenced
the present fabric, it is simply styled _ecclesia Sancti Ceddae de
Lichfield_; and in the year 1341 a document was addressed _Decano et
Capitulo ecclesiae Sancti Ceddae Lych'_, as may be learned from the
_Foedera_, vol. ii. p. 2.
We thus perceive, that the original name of Lichfield Cathedral has been
dropped for centuries, and so has that of the church which Bishop Chad
built in honour of the Virgin Mary at Stow; for this Church has, for a long
time, been known only by the name of Stow Church, or by that of St. Chad's,
Stow.
And in this manner, I fancy, may be reconciled the different names of
Saviour's, or St. Saviour's, Canterbury, and St. Martin's, Canterbury; both
alluding to the same church, THE MOTHER CHURCH of _Saxon_ England.