Saint of the Day – 26 August – Saint Bregwin of Canterbury (Died 764) Archbishop of Canterbury, Defender of the rights of the Church against secular powers. Born in Saxony, in modern Germany and died in 764 of natural causes. Also known as – Bregwine, Bregowine.
Bregwin was the 13th Archbishop of Canterbury, holding that See from 759 until his death in 764. Little is known of the history of Bregwin prior to receiving the Pallium and being Consecrated by the hands of Pope St Paul I in 761.
Some traditions hold that he was a German Saxon Lord who was converted by St Theodore of Tarsus. Most of what we know of Bregwin is taken from charters and official documents of the See of Canterbury fduring his reign.
The surviving documents reveal a Church under pressure from the land-hungry petty Kings surrounding Canterbury. A surviving letter written by Bregwin in 760 to the Bishop of Mainz, St Lullius, shows him protesting the confiscating of a Church and its property by King Cynewulf of Wessex. Another charter reveals what appears to be a compulsory “donation” of land from the See of Canterbury to Aethelbert II of Kent. Biographies written after Bregwin’s death suggest that the saint was beholden to Aethelbert II for his position and the King demanded much of him.
The year of Bregwin’s death, the lands around Kent came under the domination of the Mercians and their powerful King Offa, who would split the Diocese of Canterbury in order to weaken its power. In all this, Bregwie comes across as a saintly shepherd who defended the rights of the Church and of course, in particular of his See.
According to Bregwin’s 12th Century chronicler Eadmer, Bregwin convened a Synod during his Episcopacy. Some of his letters to St Lullus (c710-786) the Bishop of Mainz in Germany, (he was an English missionary to Germany) still exist which reference a visit to Rome sometime during his Episcopacy.
The manner of St Bregwin’s death is unknown but he was venerated all over England as a Saint by the mid-12th Century. He was buried in the Chapel of Saint John the Baptist, east end of Canterbury Cathedral.
AnaStpaul 