The death of St. Augustine of Canterbury

• St. Augustine died AD.605 (or 604) on 24th May  according to Thorne  which happed to be Tuesday (Bede and others suggested the date of (Septimo Kal. Junii) which was the 26th May ).
• At the Council of Clovesho in A.D. 747, it was decreed that the 26th May should be feast of St. Augustine.. In 1356 Pope Innocent VI renewed the celebration as a holidy of obligation, amking it a double. In 1882 the Pope ordered that St. Augustine day to be celebrated by the whole Church.
• His body was buried outside but close to the church of the apostles St Peter and St Paul mentioned already, for it was not yet either finished or consecrated (some believe  that he was buried first on the ground which is now Kent and Canterbury Hospital) . But as soon as new church was consecrated, the body was carried inside and honourably buried in the chapel on the north side, which had a alter dedicated to Pope Gregory.
• In it the bodies of all succeeding archbishops have been buried with the exception of two, Theodore and Brightwald, whose bodies were placed in the church itself because there was no more room in the chapel.
• Almost in the middle of the chapel is an altar dedicated in honour of the Pope Gregory, at which a priest of that place celebrates a solemn mass in their memory every Saturday.
• This is the epitaph inscribed on Augustine's tomb:
  

  Here lies the most reverend Augustine, first Archbishop of Canterbury, who was formerly sent by St Gregory, bishop of Rome; being supported by God in the working of miracles, he led King Ethelbert and his nation from the worship of idols to faith in Christ and ended the days of his office in peace he died on the twenty-sixth day of May during the reign of the same King.