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Which Augustine? The Naming of the Abbey and Church of St Augustine, Bristol

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2011

DAVID H. HIGGINS
DAVID H. HIGGINS
Affiliation:
18A Downleaze, Stoke Bishop, Bristol BS9 ILT; e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

The abbey of St Augustine was named for Augustine ‘Apostle of the English’, as was its associated parish church, but was governed from its foundation by canons of the rule of St Augustine of Hippo. The two Augustines in the equation were a source of confusion. A reconstruction of the abbey's lost liturgical calendar suggests that the chapter sought to exploit this uncertainty in the matter of the foundation history of their abbey, with the aim of displacing, in the popular mind, the humble ‘English’ saint of the dedication in favour of the ‘Latin’ founder of the canons' rule.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 63 , Issue 1 , January 2012 , pp. 18 - 30
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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References

1 J. C. Dickinson, ‘The origins of St Augustine's [abbey], Bristol’, in P. McGrath and J. Cannon (eds), Essays in Bristol and Gloucestershire history, Bristol 1976, 124–5.

2 A. D. Mills, English place-names, Oxford 1991, s.v; Bede's Ecclesiastical history of the English people, ed. B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors, Oxford 1969, ii.ii. 135; A. H. Smith (ed.), Place-names of Gloucestershire, iii, Cambridge 1964–5, 127–9.

3 The itinerary of John Leland, ed. L. Toulmin Smith, London 1910, 5, 86–93.

4 The cartulary of St Augustine's abbey, Bristol, ed. D. Walker, Bristol 1998, charter no. 71.

5 Ibid. p. xiv.

6 ‘Abbot Newland's roll of the abbots of St Augustine's abbey by Bristol’, ed. I. H. Jeayes, TBGAS xiv (1889–90), 125. See also appendix below, which provides, with bibliography, a table of the year-dates of major events in the abbey's gestation.

7 Krása, J., ‘The English Psalter in the library of Křivoklát Castle’, Umeni iii (1972), 211–65Google Scholar; M. Q. Smith, ‘A thirteenth-century psalter from St Augustine's, Bristol’, in E. Ralph and J. Rogan (eds), Essays in [Bristol] cathedral history, Bristol 1991, 37–41; Two compotus rolls of St Augustine's abbey, Bristol, ed. G. Beachcroft and A. Sabin, Bristol 1938. For obvious reasons the psalter will be hereinafter referred to as ‘the Bristol Psalter’ rather than by either of the Fűrstenberg collection's titles.

8 Atchley, E. G. C. F., ‘Notes on a Bristol manuscript missal’, Transactions of the St Paul's Ecclesiological Society iv (1896–1900), 278–9Google Scholar.

9 Feast days are arranged in chronological order, with the evidence of the older sources first. The author's explanatory interpolations are in square brackets; Latin titles are given in the inflected form of the source.

10 J. C. Dickinson, The origins of the Austin canons and their introduction into England, London 1950, 133 n. 3.

11 Smith, ‘A thirteenth-century psalter’, 39.

12 Krása, ‘The English Psalter’, 217.

13 D. H. Higgins, Saint Jordan of Bristol: from the catacombs of Rome to College Green at Bristol (Bristol Historical Association cxx, 2007), 1–12.

14 M. R. James, A descriptive catalogue of the manuscripts in the library of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, Cambridge 1895, 62–5.

15 Cartulary of St Augustine's abbey, charter no. 472 of 1169×1188.

16 The chronicle of Aethelweard, ed. A. Campbell, London 1962, 54.

17 Cartulary of St Augustine's abbey, charter no. 594 of 1259.

18 J. F. Nicholls and J. Taylor, Bristol past and present, II: Ecclesiastical history, Bristol 1881, 66; The records of Bristol cathedral, ed. J. H. Bettey, Bristol 2007, 13.

19 C. D. Ross, ‘College Green [Bristol] in the Middle Ages’, in Ralph and Rogan, Essays, 19–22.

20 Records of Bristol cathedral, 10. The registers of the church of St Augustine the Less, Bristol, 1577–1700, ed. A. Sabin, Bristol 1956, fo. 1.

1 ‘Abbot Newland's roll’, 117–30.

2 Sabin, A., ‘The foundation of the abbey of St Augustine at Bristol’, TBGAS lxxv (1956), 35–42Google Scholar.

3 Dickinson, ‘Origins’, 109–26. For work on the history of the Austin canons see also his Origins.

4 Cartulary of St Augustine's abbey, pp. xiv–xxii; Records of Bristol cathedral, 3–21; J. H. Bettey, St Augustine's abbey, Bristol (Bristol Historical Association lxxxviii, 1996), 1–7, and ‘St Augustine's abbey [Bristol], 1140–1539’, in J. Rogan (ed.), Bristol cathedral: history and architecture, Stroud 2000, 15–37.