Tuesday, September 30, 2025

It is the 30th of September 2025. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org. I'm your guest host, Sam Leanza Ortiz.

 

The story of the church in England is a long one, and today we look at one of its earliest characters – St. Honorius of Canterbury, who is commemorated in the Roman, Eastern Orthodox, and Anglican communions on this, the 30^th of September.

We don’t know when or where Honorius was born, but we do know that he died on this day in 653.

What we do know about Honorius comes to us from Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of England, which was written less than a century after Honorius’s death.

We learn from Bede that Honorius was the fifth archbishop of Canterbury, and that the very first archbishop of Canterbury served within Honorius’s lifetime, and indeed, the two likely met – you may have heard of the “other St. Augustine” of Canterbury who led the first Gregorian mission to Britain at the end of the sixth century. Honorius would be the last surviving member of this dedicated group.

The Gregorian mission was commissioned by – you guessed it, Pope Gregory the Great – to reach the Anglo-Saxons in the south and east of Britain.

Christianity did exist in Britain prior to the sixth century. It may well have reached the island by the first century, with Roman legions and merchants traveling to the empire’s westernmost reaches. Existing evidence suggests definite Christian activity by the fourth century, with Christian symbols emerging in artwork among the upper classes.

The churches among the British peoples were organized enough to send delegates to a church council on the Continent, but not strong enough to fully withstand the invasion of the Anglo-Saxons.

As Roman power declined on the imperial frontiers by the fourth century, Britain was vulnerable to infighting and invasion. Tribal conflicts on the island led one king to invite mercenaries from German lands to defend his territories.

These mercenaries are known to us as the Anglo-Saxons, who Bede tells us are comprised of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. Their power took decades to accumulate, but by the middle of the sixth century, they controlled a large portion of the island, from Wessex to the south up to Northumbria.

The Anglo-Saxons brought their pagan traditions with them, undermining the centuries of Celtic Christianity that had taken hold among the native Britons.  

Bede’s presentation of the British church prior to Augustine’s arrival is not a flattering one, as they had adopted practices out of step with the broader western church, and ultimately rejected papal authority. Perhaps most troublingly, Bede conveys that upon Augustine’s arrival, British Christians refused to join Augustine’s mission to evangelize their main threat: the Anglo-Saxons.

This sets the scene for Honorius’s arrival between 597 and 601, and the work he and his fellow missionaries would do. The missionaries had some early successes, including the conversion of the kingdoms of Kent and Essex, but these were not long-lasting.

To minister to those who did convert, these missionaries set up a diocese and consecrated bishops to tie this body of believers more tightly to Rome. With Augustine as archbishop of Canterbury, he consecrated 12 other bishops, including Paulinus, a missionary who arrived in 601. 

Paulinus is important to the story, for he and Honorius are on a parallel journey that illustrates the significance of Honorius’s contributions to the English church. The two men worked in tandem to give the western church a stable footing among the Anglo-Saxon peoples.

In 627, Paulinus became the bishop of York, which is right behind Canterbury in terms of ecclesiastical significance. In that same year, Paulinus consecrated Honorius as the fifth archbishop of Canterbury.

Paulinus was invested with such authority by, confusingly, Pope Honorius, who sent a pallium, which is a vestment for archbishops, and a letter to Paulinus stating that “when either the Archbishop of Canterbury or of York shall depart this life, the survivor, being of the same degree, shall have power to ordain another bishop in the room of him that is departed; that it might not be necessary always to undertake the toilsome journey to Rome, at so great a distance by sea and land, to ordain an archbishop.”

The church’s desire to grow abroad sat in tension with the centralizing of authority in the bishop of Rome, but this move by Pope Honorius gave Paulinus of York and Honorius of Canterbury some breathing room and assurance that leadership would (most likely) not need to appeal all the way to Rome to keep leaders in the church.

This helped Honorius deal with an issue common to fledgling Christian communities in far-off lands, granting a certain sense of autonomy to the local church while staying in communion with the broader global church.

With this issue resolved, Honorius was free in his tenure as archbishop to return to the work that brought him to Britain in the first place. He authorized missions to East Anglia, and he consecrated the first Anglo-Saxon bishop, Ithamar of Rochester.

Honorius of Canterbury died on September 30, 653, officially closing the chapter of the Gregorian mission in England. The mission was on a more stable footing, as Honorius was succeeded by the first native-born Archbishop of Canterbury. This cemented the ability of the English church to manage its affairs within the Roman communion, which it would do until its break in the Reformation.

 

Today’s reading comes from the daily lectionary, from Jeremiah 32:

⁴² “This is what the Lord says: As I have brought all this great calamity on this people, so I will give them all the prosperity I have promised them. ⁴³ Once more fields will be bought in this land of which you say, ‘It is a desolate waste, without people or animals, for it has been given into the hands of the Babylonians.’ ⁴⁴ Fields will be bought for silver, and deeds will be signed, sealed and witnessed in the territory of Benjamin, in the villages around Jerusalem, in the towns of Judah and in the towns of the hill country, of the western foothills and of the Negev, because I will restore their fortunes,^[a] declares the Lord.”

 

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 30^th of September 2025, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

This show has been produced by Christopher Gillespie.

This show has been written and read by Sam Leanza Ortiz, filling in for Dan van Voorhis, who knows we have the Anglo-Saxons to thank for words like cow and pig, but the French to thank for words like beef and pork.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.