Holy Hierarch Bregowine, Archbishop of Canterbury

Saint Bregowine of Canterbury

Today in the Orthodox Church we commemorate the twelfth Archbishop of Canterbury, Saint Bregowine (Bregwin, or Brevin) – student of Saint Theodore, friend of Saint Lul and predecessor in office of Saint Jænberht.

Surprisingly little seems to be known about this holy saint of the Church, apart from the fact that he has an awesome name that clearly influenced Tolkien and at least one of his characters’ names in Lord of the Rings. Scholars agree that he was probably not Mercian or Kentish. In some later, post-Conquest hagiographies, he appears to have come from the mainland – a Continental Saxon. He came to Canterbury to study at the abbey school. This would have been during Saint Theodore’s time, so he may very well have been acquainted with the holy and wise Berber abbot, Saint Hadrian.

Bregowine was consecrated as Archbishop of Canterbury on 27 September 761, and received his omophor from Pope Paul I of Rome. This being the case, he was likely elected by the will of Æþelberht II, King of Kent. His archbishopric is marked by two forms of extant documentation. The first: a correspondence between himself and Saint Lul of Hersfeld, which still survives. Saint Lul and he had apparently met in Rome and had struck up a friendship there; the letters indicate that Bregowine regretted having lost contact with Lul in the midst of war, and refer to a reliquary he was sending along with the letter as a gift. The other are claims at law involving the holding of land. Saint Bregowine protested the takeover and retention of Cookham Abbey (probably near the site of the modern-day Holy Trinity Church there) by Cynewulf King of Wessex.

Bregowine ruled fewer than four years, reposing in the Lord on 26 August 764; and yet he was quickly thereafter recognised locally as a saint. He was interred, rather unusually, in the baptistery of Canterbury Cathedral rather than in the Abbey Church of Saint Augustine. His relics survived a fire that broke out in 1067 in the cathedral, and were relocated to a vault in the north transept as a result. A German monk named Lambert attempted to translate Bregowine’s relics to a monastery he planned to build on the Continent, though this attempt seems to have fallen through. However, they were moved instead to the south transept, to the shrine of Saint Gregory.

Holy Hierarch Bregowine, pray to God for us!