St Augustine of Canterbury and St Melangell

Bishop and missionary. Known as the Apostle of the English, Augustine was a Benedictine monk and Prior of St Andrew's in Rome, when Pope Gregory the Great sent him with a band of 40 missionaries to evangelise England. They landed at Ebbsfleet near Ramsgate in 597. Augustine soon converted the local King Ethelbert whose wife Bertha, daughter of the King of Paris, was already Christian. Rather than ban pagan customs his missionaries incorporated some old practices into the Christian worship.

Augustine established his see at Canterbury and founded two more bishoprics at London and Rochester. He died at Canterbury around this time in 605.

From the earliest times St Augustine has been venerated as the evangeliser of the English, although his relatively short mission was confined to a limited area.

No early images of Augustine survive, but he is depicted in 14th century stained glass at Christ Church, Oxford, at Canterbury Cathedral (1470) and in a cycle of miniatures in the breviary of the Duke of Bedford (1424). He is also in 15th century frescoes in the church of St Gregory in Rome.

St Melangell

Welsh hermit and abbess. She lived sometime in the 7th or 8th century. According to her hagiography, she was originally an Irish princess who chose not to enter into an arranged marriage and became a hermit in the wilderness of the Kingdom of Powys. One day she protected a hare that was being chased by a prince's hunting dogs. The prince asked her to marry him but she refused. Instead he gave her some land to found a sanctuary and convent.

Melangell's cult has been closely centred on her 12th-century shrine at St Melangell's Church, Pennant Melangell, which was founded at her grave. The church contains the reconstructed Romanesque shrine to Melangell, which had been demolished after the Reformation. She has been venerated for centuries as the patron saint of hares; so much so that locals would not kill a hare in the parish of Pennant Melangell.

See a short film about her shrine: www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOkJExIGL2Y