Canterbury

On Saturday I went on a field trip to Canterbury for my Christianity in Britain class. It was about an hour away by bus, south of London.

The city was hit heavily in World War II, but you can still see some remnants of the medieval city walls. Incidentally, the magnificent Cathedral was spared by filling it with sand, which was thought to dampen the bomb blasts, and by keeping men on top at all times to cover any inciendary elements with sand and then throw them off the roof. Luckily, they preserved this magnificent piece of architecture.

One thing you should know is that the cathedral was not built all at once. It was slowly added upon and built over, remodeled, etc., over time. As such, there is no official date for the age of the building; it has been a holy site before any records were kept.

This results in a pleasant patchwork of rooms. The front of the Church is used for regular services, while the elevated and partially-separated rear area lies on top of the crypt and has the choir section (where we heard what I assume is a high-church Anglican evensong performed by the Cathedral's boys' choir, which was beautiful and awe-inspiring, especially since we were sitting maybe 10 feet from them), as well as some historical artifacts, like the remains of the Black Knight, a medieval national hero.

Before we visited the Cathedral, we visited St. Martin's Chapel, which claims it is the oldest church continuously used for worship in England. It was supposedly originally built for King Ethelbert's Frankish, Catholic wife in AD 597. Ethelbert was the King who met St. Augustine of Kent when he came to Kent, which is the region of the country where Canterbury is. In this history lies the reason why Canterbury was the seat of the Catholic Church in England and is now the seat of the Church of England and the Anglican Communion.

The chapel was also the place where the director of the ND London Program was ordained an Anglican Minister 37 years ago and was his first post.