Tales of English Minsters: St. Paul's

by Elizabeth W. Grierson

When we come to study the history of Cathedrals, we find the way in which they came to be built is pretty much the same in most cases. A little church was raised to the glory of God, and a monastery was founded beside it, which became the home of a community of monks or nuns, ruled over by an Abbot or Abbess; and the church was known as the Abbey Church.

Then by-and-by, sometimes not till quite late, as at St. Albans, a ‘Bishop’s Stool’ was placed there, and the Abbey became a Cathedral.

But in the case of St. Paul’s Cathedral it is quite different. It was built for a Cathedral from the first. Its builder, instead of adding a monastery to it, as was usually done, built a monastery having its own Abbey on a little Island which stood in some marshy ground on the banks of the Thames, about a mile away.

This Island was called ‘Thorney Island,’ and the Abbey Church was dedicated to St. Peter, but soon it began to be spoken of as the ‘West Minster,’ or Westminster Abbey, by which name we know it to-day.

This was how it all came about. In the time of the early Britons there were Christian churches scattered up and down the land, and it is almost certain, from stones that were dug up when the foundations of the present Cathedral of St. Paul were being laid, that in those far bygone days a little church stood on the Hill of Ludgate, in the centre of Roman London. But, as you know, the Roman legions were recalled to Rome in A.D. 410 to help the soldiers there to drive back the vast hoards of Goths and barbarians who were pouring down from the north-west upon Italy; and when they were withdrawn from Britain, there were not enough fighting-men left to protect her shores from the next enemies who threatened her.

These were the Jutes, the Angles, and the Saxons, fierce and heathen warriors who came from Jutland and from Germany, and landed on our coasts.

They conquered the British, and rapidly forced their way inland, ravaging and pillaging wherever they went; and in the confusion and misery that followed, Christianity was completely swept away for a time, to come again with St. Augustine and St. Columba some two hundred years later. You know too, perhaps, that when St. Augustine came to Canterbury and began to preach the Gospel there, the King of Kent, Ethelbert by name, soon became a Christian. This King Ethelbert was a very powerful monarch, and he was Overlord of the King of the East Saxons, who chanced to be his nephew, and who lived in what we now call Essex. Now, while St. Augustine preached to the men of Kent, a friend of his, named Milletus, preached to the East Saxons. And when at last their King became a Christian, his uncle Ethelbert suggested that, as Kent had its Bishop of Canterbury, with his Cathedral Church, it would be a good thing for the Kingdom of the East Saxons to have a Bishop of its own who would have his Cathedral Church also.

So, as London was the Capital of the East Saxons, he proposed to help King Siebert to build a church there; and Augustine, only too glad to find that the Faith was spreading, said that Milletus should be its first Bishop.

It was in this way that the first Cathedral of St. Paul was built, and, as we have seen, Siebert also founded the church and monastery of Westminster.