St. Peter's Cathedral (Charlottetown)

St. Peter's Cathedral, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada, was founded in 1869 as a result of the influence of the Oxford Movement.

In December 1869, local artist Robert Harris (1849–1919) was commissioned to create scenes for the cathedral's first Christmas celebration.

[1] As mentioned above, the founding of St. Peter's was directly linked to the Oxford Movement — a theological and liturgical revival of the Catholic tradition within Anglicanism, which was underway in parts of the Church of England at that time.

In the 1850s, when some Charlottetown Anglicans from the Parish of Charlotte (St. Paul's) travelled abroad on business, they were inspired by the effects of this movement on the worship of England's churches.

A full schedule of Sunday and weekday worship is maintained (Matins, Evensong, and the Holy Eucharist), and there are numerous parish organizations and activities.

The round painting above the reredos is of Christ ascending to Heaven, and has been a treasured icon to generations of Cathedral parishioners.

The Sanctuary is that part of the Chapel inside the great arch, and contains the Altar, at which the Holy Mysteries of Christ's Body and Blood in the Eucharist have been celebrated daily since 1890.

In the arched niches of the Reredos are statues of Christ (centre) flanked by St. John and St. James on His right and St. Peter on His left, with additional Apostles, including St. Paul, carrying the instruments used to put them to death.

The Arch is made from grey Wallace freestone, from the Nova Scotia side of the Northumberland Strait, and is richly carved with foliage and teardrops to symbolise both the Life Christ gives and the sorrows He suffered.

The Nave: the Gospel side is lined with portraits of early Church Fathers, as follows: St. Gregory the Great, shown with a blond Anglo-Saxon acolyte, illustrates a story told by the Venerable Bede.

Harris mistakenly shows him wearing the western-style chasuble and alb instead of an eastern phelonion St. Augustine of Hippo (354 - 430) was one of the most influential theologians in Church history.

Once, while writing his book on God titled De Trinitate (On the Trinity), he went for a stroll on the beach where he saw a small boy running back and forth with a bucket, pouring water from the shore into a hole he'd dug in the sand.

St. Jerome (342 - 420), settled in Bethlehem in 386, where he lived in a cave next to that in which Christ had been born, translating the Scriptures from Hebrew and Greek into Latin.

For most of his life he was persecuted and often exiled; but his resolute character as well as his theology proved to be the outstanding obstacle to the triumph of Arianism, which faded away in the next century.

The Nave Windows: the first two (the Archangel St. Michael and the Blessed Virgin Mary & Child) are by Kemp and are memorials to Frank Carvell and Margaret Mathilda Jane Hodgson respectively.

The painting and the window placed over the door suggest that it is "through the grave and gate of death" that we pass to our joyful resurrection.

Inside the door, in the small porch, is a statue of St. Peter holding the keys "to the Kingdom of Heaven" (see St. Matt.

The Martyrdom of St. Stephen, stoned to death in Jerusalem c.35 after preaching a sermon his hearers disliked (Acts 6), occupies the space over the doors to the sacristy.

The pews commemorate Mrs. George Hodgson, who died in 1934, and accommodate the living worshippers who, surrounded by the apostles and saints of old, and the faithful departed, complete the scheme of All Souls under the Lordship of Christ in the altar painting.

Most of the plates commemorate deceased members of the Cathedral congregation, some of them familiar names from the civic and social life of Charlottetown in days gone by.

The kneelers, made by women of the Cathedral congregation, show the phoenix, a mythical bird supposed to have come back to life after perishing by fire - a symbol of the Resurrection.

The Sanctuary Lamp carries a white light, symbolic of Christ's Real Presence in the Blessed Sacrament, and showing that it is reserved nearby.

Anglican Church teaching affirms Christ's Real Presence in the Sacrament while rejecting Transubstantiation as an explanation of the manner of it.