Canterbury Cathedral

Before studying about and visiting Canterbury Cathedral, I had only surface knowledge about the history of the building. In fact, mostly what I knew about the cathedral stemmed from my brush with Chaucer and his Canterbury Tales. Since I’m an English major this comes as no surprise that my scant knowledge of the place was linked through literature. But as I soon learned, the cathedral has a deeper history and place of importance in Britain’s religious landscape that moves well beyond the scope of Chaucer.

The existence of Canterbury Cathedral is coupled with the beginning of Christianity in England. Pope Gregory the Great is the man responsible for launching England’s conversion; according to tradition, he “had seen English youths in Rome and pronounced them not ‘Angles but angels’” (Morgan 77). The pope also knew that the queen of Kent was a Christian so he chose to send the first mission there, led by a Roman monk named Augustine. After converting the king, Augustine founded an abbey, and soon after became the first Archbishop of Canterbury in 601.

Canterbury Cathedral was thus built in the style called Anglo-Norman Romanesque. Along with Canterbury, cathedrals such as Durham, Tewskesbury, Winchester, Old Sarum, Chichester, Ely, Norwich, and Bath are built in this style. Willson gives further insight into the plans of cathedrals such as Canterbury: “Cathedrals were built in the shape of a cross, with the upper portion of the cross pointing toward the east. The lower portion was represented by the nave, which was the main body of the church . . . The transepts, large projections built to the north and south, represented the arms of the cross. It was above the intersection of nave and transepts that the central tower was erected” (113). On my visit to the cathedral, one of my favorite architectural aspects was the complicated network of ribbed vaulting in the nave and transepts. Although not as large and grand as the nave and tower in comparison, I also appreciated the peace and atmosphere of the cathedral’s cloisters.

Architecture aside, the cathedral is also notable for its shrine to Thomas à Becket, who was martyred in the cathedral in 1170. The story goes that Henry the king and Thomas the archbishop, having once been on the best of terms and insuperable allies, quarreled badly on the issue of church versus kingly authority. In a brief moment of rage, Henry was overhead declaring, “’What a parcel of fools and dastards have I nourished in my house that none of them will avenge me of this one upstart priest!’ Four knights, taking the king at his word, and no doubt hoping for reward, sailed to England to murder the Archbishop. They came upon him in his cathedral and cut him down with their swords, the last blow splitting their victim’s tonsured skull and spilling his brains on the stone floor of the north transept” (Hibbert 64). After Becket was buried in the church, the cathedral became a pilgrimage site almost immediately. As Chaucer wrote, “from every shires ende/ Of Engelond to Canterbury they wende,/ The holy blissful martyr for to seeke” (Norton lines 15-17). The story of Becket’s loyalty to the church and uncalled-for death remains a poignant story in the history of the cathedral.

Canterbury Cathedral is also notable for being the burial place of Edward Plantagenet, the “Black Prince,” and King Henry IV. Today the cathedral still serves as a place of worship and as the cathedral of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who is the leader of the Church of England and the worldwide Anglican Communion.

--------------------------
Works Cited

Hibbert, Christopher. The Story of England. London: Phaidon, 1992.

Morgan, Kenneth O., ed. The Oxford History of Britain. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999.

Norton Anthology of English Literature. 8th ed, Major Authors. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: Norton & Co., 2006.

Willson, David Harris. A History of England. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972.