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ST. MARTIN'S CHURCH
INTRODUCTION
The church is situated on a gently-sloping hill, about a thousand yards due east of the cathedral.
To one looking from the elevated terrace which bounds its churchyard, the panorama is exceedingly picturesque and beautiful. In the distance rises a range of low wooded hills that almost encircle Canterbury, and the conspicuous building of Hales' Place, now the Jesuits' College; while beneath is spread in a hollow the city itself, with its red-tiled roofs interspersed with patches of green, the library and twin towers of St. Augustine's Abbey, and above all the massive cathedral, with "Becket's Crown" in the foreground, and the central "Bell Harry" tower lifting out of the morning's mist its magnificent pinnacles and tracery.
The prospect to Dean Stanley's eye was "one of the most inspiriting that could be found in the world," because of its religious associations, and its reminder that great and lasting good could spring from the smallest beginning. But even in its physical aspect, it is one that, in England at least, can seldom be surpassed; and in olden times the view must have been even more grand and extensive than it is at present, as the church stood in almost solitary grandeur, a permanent brick and stone edifice, above the wooden buildings nestling among thickets of ash--fit emblem of the durability of Divine, as compared with the perishable nature of human, institutions. It must even then have been somewhat of a marvel, on account of the rare mode of its construction, for at that early epoch churches were usually built of hewn oak, and the stone church of St. Ninian's at Whithern is specially mentioned by Bede as having been erected "in a manner unusual among the Britons."
The hill itself, on its northern and eastern sides, is honey-combed with springs, from which down to a late period the city was supplied with water. We can imagine it studded here and there with Roman villas, of which some remains in the shape of tesselated pavements were discovered two or three centuries ago--and crowned possibly by a small Roman encampment; while the church, situated only a few yards off the road to Richborough, would frequently have been seen and admired by soldiers on their march from the sea coast to the great fortress of London, or to the southern stations at Lympne and Dover.
Imagination would picture to itself the reverence felt for so sacred and venerable a spot, yet the fact remains, that up to a recent date the present church was regarded simply as a memorial of the past, a monument erected on the site of the ancient edifice, and reproducing some of its characteristic materials.
The church has survived its period of apparent disuse after the Roman departure from Britain. It escaped the destructiveness of the Jutes, and the devastation inflicted on Canterbury by the Danish invaders, and has been preserved to us a venerable and genuine relic of Romano-British Christianity. It suffered, indeed, after the Norman Conquest, both from centuries of neglect and also from so-called restoration--becoming at one time what Mr Ruskin would call "an interesting ruin," at another time being plastered and modernised till its ancient features were almost obliterated; but even when enemies were attacking religion from without, and faith grew cold within, the worship of Almighty God was carried on continuously under the shadow of its sacred walls, and on its altar for more than thirteen centuries has been offered the Sacrifice of the Holy Eucharist.
History is silent as to its builder--silent as to the exact date of its foundation. In the simple words of Fuller, "The Light of the Word shone here, but we know not who kindled it."
The mere fact of the existence of such a church involves of necessity the further question as to its immediate origin, whether it be attributed to Roman Christians, or to British converts working under the influence, if not the direct superintendence, of their conquerors. And in discussing this, we must perforce touch lightly the fringe of that well-worn, yet ever-fascinating, inquiry respecting the "earliest introduction of Christianity into Britain"--difficult as it is in ancient traditions and allusions to dissociate fact from fiction, genuine documents from forgeries, history from legend, so eager were the so-called writers of ecclesiastical history to advance their theories, even at the expense of truth.
We may indeed derive some assistance from the fact which we learn from secular historians, that in Apostolic times there was frequent communication between Rome and Britain. After the first conquest of Britain, Roman governors were sent in almost uninterrupted succession, and with them would come, of course, legions and cohorts, perhaps even some of the Praetorian soldiers in whose company the apostle St. Paul lived for a time during the reign of Nero. British chieftains were taken prisoners to Rome, and their sons left there as hostages. Some few Romans, too, such as Seneca, the brother of Gallio, held large possessions in the island. People and places connected with Britain are mentioned by the Roman poets Martial and Juvenal, and by the historian Tacitus. With such constant intercourse as there must have been, stories at least and reports of Christianity would have been brought over to the island as early as the first century, and there were probably individual Christians either among the numerous soldiers quartered here, or among returned captives. We may be doubtful whether at so early an epoch, save perhaps in a few exceptional cases, they formed themselves into regular societies or congregations, and it is not likely that they erected for themselves permanent places of worship. No such antiquity as this can be claimed even for the remains of the Roman church found amid the ruins of Silchester; and church building, as it is generally understood, did not begin at Rome before the fourth century, and it would have taken a few years to spread thence to Gaul, and from Gaul to Britain.
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