Holy Hierarch Æþelgár, Archbishop of Canterbury

Hyde Abbey, Winchester, England

Today in the Orthodox Church we commemorate Æþelgár, the holy Archbishop of Canterbury who succeeded Saint Dúnstán in that office. Saint Æþelgár was of the generation of saints directly subsequent to the English Benedictine Reform inaugurated by Dúnstán, Æþelwold and Ósweald. He may thus be considered among the first of the spiritual fruits of this reform, and one of the worthy workmen also in the vineyard planted by his predecessors.

Of Saint Æþelgár’s early life we know little. He was born in the first half of the tenth century. He was a monk first at Glastonbury under Dúnstán, and then at Abingdon under Æþelwold to assist in its rebuilding after having been destroyed by the Danes. In this task Æþelgár acquitted himself admirably.

Having been raised from his youth under the Benedictine Rule in its strictness under Dúnstán, Æþelgár subordinated his will to that of his abbot without question. His hagiographer surmises that Æþelgár shared his master Æþelwold’s passion for aggressive generosity and solidarity with the poor of Winchester. He was almost certainly at the abbot’s hand when Æþelwold broke up and sold the entirety of his abbey’s silver plate to alleviate a famine that was then ravaging the countryside. Æþelwold reasoned that the Church, if reduced to poverty, would again be enriched; but that it was not in the power of man to restore the life of even one of God’s beloved poor, and thus it was the job of the Church to ensure their survival.

Æþelgár’s rigorous mode of asceticism and his upright life endeared him particularly to his abbot, whose severe and meticulous personality he shared. Such was the impression he made upon Saint Æþelwold, that the holy hierarch appointed Æþelgár to become abbot of the newly-reformed Benedictine house of Newminster (or Hyde) in Winchester – an institution mentioned in An Excellent Mystery by Edith Pargeter as having been burned in the civil war between Stephen and Maud.

There, Æþelwold had pursued a ruthless and even quite cruel policy of evicting the sæcular canons from the house – often turning them out without ceremony and without support – and replacing them with Benedictine monks from Abingdon. Æþelgár was not only one of these. He was appointed their abbot. There he undertook with great zeal to restore, rebuild and embellish the house, as well as open it radically to the poor of Winchester. With the support of his bishop, Abbot Æþelgár restored the roof of Hyde Abbey and built it into a fine tower ‘of great height and beauty, with a richly-carved ceiling’.

Æþelgár served as abbot of Newminster for 16 years before he was consecrated as Bishop of Selsey in 980, where he continued working vigorously for the reform of the Church. However, it appears that he did not take the extreme measures his former master had taken against sæcular canons and married priests in his see; he allowed them to continue serving the Church. In 988, on the occasion of the blessed repose of Archbishop Dúnstán, Æþelgár was chosen to be consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury in his place; his hagiographer assumes that his appointment was political and an attempt to appease a newly-ascendant Benedictine Order by the appointment to high office of one of their own. His tenure as Archbishop was short – ‘no more than a year and three months’ before his own repose in the Lord on the thirteenth of February, 990.

During his time as Archbishop of Canterbury, Saint Æþelgár received two letters from Benedictine houses in France – the houses of Saint-Vaast and Saint-Bertin there. Both letters congratulated him on his elevation to the archpastoral see. In the case of the first, Saint-Vaast requested that the relations between the Abbey and the English archbishopric would remain friendly; and in the case of the second, there was a request for financial aid from England. Saint Æþelgár was interred with his predecessors at Canterbury. Holy hierarch Æþelgár, pray to God for us sinners!