THE SAXON CATHEDRAL AT CANTERBURY
NOTE ON THE SAXON THANET SAINTS
Who was the holy virgin Siburgis whom St. Dunstan (960-988) on account of her sanctity buried in the Saxon Cathedral? Who were St. Florentius and St. Ymarus? These Saxon saints of Thanet's Isle are more unknown than their brethren in the west of England, where certainly their memory would have been perpetuated in the name of a headland, a bay, a church or an abbey.
Were it not for a fifteenth-century monk and former Treasurer of St. Austin's Abbey Canterbury, one Thomas of Elmham, who wrote a history of that monastery little more than one hundred years before it was dissolved by Henry VIII, we should know nothing—not even the names—of some of these Saxon saints and heroes. As it is, the information presented to us by Monk Thomas is most meagre, Florentius and Ymarus were probably "Priests or Levites" who suffered martyrdom during the incursions of the Danes. Florentius was buried in the churchyard of the church of St. Mary at Minster; and beyond this fact nothing is known of his life. St. Ymarus had been a monk of Reculver Abbey, which had been founded by King Egbert in A.D. 669, having been given by him to one[1] Bassa "a mass-priest on which to build a minster."
Reculver, though in so exposed a situation for attack by the Danes, continued as an abbey for some time after it had been given to Christ Church Cathedral by King Edred in 949,[2] but it was converted into a Collegiate Church and governed by a Dean in the time of Archbishop Agelnoth (1020–1038).[3]
Ymarus was probably martyred some time in the tenth century. Thomas of Elmham says "They translated the body of St. Ymarus a monk of Reculver to the church of St. John the Baptist which is in Thanet."
This was the parish church of Margate, and here before the year 1875 was to be found beneath the second arch of the southern arcade of the nave at the west end of the church, a coffin-shaped stone of black marble, probably Bethersden, an ancient coffin-lid with a cross wrought on the top, the shaft long and thin, resting on a calvary and having a head formed of a quatrefoil, combined with a square, placed diagonally.
This was traditionally said to cover the dust of the Saxon saint Ymar, and was there when I visited the church sixty years ago in its original position in the nave. At a so-called "restoration" in 1875, this coffin-lid was moved to the north side of the church, to the north of the pulpit (but has since been removed to the north side of the altar in the south chapel); and all the memorial brasses fixed in their ledger stones (an almost unique collection rich in beauty and number) were also barbarously moved from their places, set in rows to serve as a pavement for the
- ↑ Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, sub anno.
- ↑ Ch. Ch., Cant., MSS., Saxon Charters.
- ↑ Somner's Antiquities of Canterbury, 1640.
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