Saint Theodore of Canterbury

Saint Theodore of Canterbury (born c. 602, Tarsus, Cilicia, Asia Minor—died Sept. 19, 690, Canterbury, Kent, Eng.; feast day September 19) was the seventh archbishop of Canterbury and the first archbishop to rule the whole English Church.

Appointed by Pope St. Vitalian, Theodore was consecrated in 668 and then set out from Rome with SS. Adrian, abbot of Nerida, Italy, and Benedict Biscop, later abbot of Wearmouth and Jarrow, Durham. In 669 they reached Canterbury, where Theodore made Adrian the abbot of SS. Peter and Paul monastery, afterward named St. Augustine’s. There they created a famous school influential in the lives of such brilliant scholars as the celebrated historian St. Bede the Venerable and the skilled church architect St. Aldhelm.

Theodore organized the English Church, many sees of which were vacant on his arrival and others of which needed to be divided. In 672 he called at Hertford the first general synod of the English Church to end certain Celtic practices and to divide dioceses. The division issue was postponed, but the synod imposed the date of the Roman Easter, established obedience for clerics and monks, forbade bishops to interfere in other dioceses, and reaffirmed the church teaching on marriage and divorce.

During this period Theodore came into sharp conflict with Wilfrid, whom he had made bishop of York but whom he soon deposed. Wilfrid went to Rome in 677/678 to protest. Meanwhile, in 678, Theodore helped settle relations between King Aethelred of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia and King Ecgfrith of Northumbria, whom Aethelred had defeated in battle. Theodore’s synod at Hatfield in 679 cleared the English Church from associations with the heresy of the Monothelites (q.v.). In 686 he mended the conflict with Wilfrid by admitting his error and effecting Wilfrid’s restoration. Theodore’s Penitential, a collection of his rulings made by his disciples, became influential in England and on the Continent.

Theodore’s greatest achievement was to adapt the Roman ideal of a centralized church to English conditions. His establishment of a centralized church under the archbishopric of Canterbury in close alliance with secular rulers was maintained by his successors. No biography of Theodore has survived.