Shortly after the Norman Conquest of 1066, a man from Kent emigrated to Constantinople, capital of the Roman Empire. As he had been brought up by the monks at Canterbury, he put the fortune and political influence he gained by service in the Imperial army to good use by building a church in honour of St Augustine and St Nicholas.
The Kentish man had the inside of his church decorated with icons of St Augustine and St Nicholas, and kept lamps burning before them — lamps so bright that it was never night within. The English emigres in Constantinople would gather there to make their prayers and remember the land they had been forced to flee.
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