The history of the Anglican Church in Europe is perhaps not that well known. In this section we seek to change that!
The Diocese in Europe is a diocese of the Church of England, in the Province of Canterbury, and was formed in 1842.Today there are 275 Chaplaincies in countries from Portugal to the Caspian Sea. A brief history can be found on the Diocese in Europe website http://europe.anglican.org/resources/resources_history.htm.
Many of the Chaplaincies, like St Thomas Becket Church, Hamburg trace their roots to special privileges being given to English trades, and to the Merchant Adventurers especially. It is a fascinating history and one of the aims of the STB400 celebration is to explore some of these roots.
In this section we present some of those Chaplaincies that have a claim to be as old, or possibly older that the ‘English Church’ in Hamburg.
If you are reading this and are from another Chaplaincy and would like you church to be profiled here, we would be happy to put up information and a link. Please send a short, preferably tailored text to the stb400 (at) stbecket.de
The foundations which would allow the establishment of the Anglican community in Russia were laid by Ivan IV (Ivan the Terrible), who reigned between 1533 and 1584. In an effort to promote trade with Europe, he gave permission for foreign communities of merchants to worship according to their own traditions, complete with their own church […]
The history of the Anglican Church in Antwerp is intimately intertwined with the city’s history as a great trading centre in the Medieval and Early Modern periods. The first English settlers were cloth merchants in around the 12th century. Their guild, the Fraternity of St Thomas of Canterbury, received extensive privileges from the Duke of […]
There has been a sizeable English community in Rotterdam since the days of the Reformation, when many Reformists fled Catholic England and established themselves in the comparative safety of Holland. At the time, Rotterdam’s status as of the main centres in which these refugees settled earned it the nickname ‘Little London’. Later, during the Netherlands’ […]